Time, Technology and Narrative Form in Contemporary US Television Drama

Time, Technology and Narrative Form in Contemporary US Television Drama PDF Author: JP Kelly
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319631187
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
This book examines how television has been transformed over the past twenty years by the introduction of new viewing technologies including DVDs, DVRs and streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. It shows that these platforms have profoundly altered the ways we access and watch television, enabling viewers to pause, rewind, record and archive the once irreversible flow of broadcast TV. JP Kelly argues that changes in the technological landscape of television has encouraged the production of narrative forms that both explore and embody new industrial temporalities. Focusing on US television but also considering the role of TV within a global marketplace, the author identifies three distinct narrative temporalities: “acceleration” (24; Prison Break), “complexity” (Lost; FlashForward), and “retrospection” (Mad Men). Through industrial-textual analysis of television shows, this cross-disciplinary study locates these narrative temporalities in their socio-cultural contexts and examines connections between production, distribution, and narrative form in the contemporary television industry.

Time, Technology and Narrative Form in Contemporary US Television Drama

Time, Technology and Narrative Form in Contemporary US Television Drama PDF Author: JP Kelly
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319631187
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines how television has been transformed over the past twenty years by the introduction of new viewing technologies including DVDs, DVRs and streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. It shows that these platforms have profoundly altered the ways we access and watch television, enabling viewers to pause, rewind, record and archive the once irreversible flow of broadcast TV. JP Kelly argues that changes in the technological landscape of television has encouraged the production of narrative forms that both explore and embody new industrial temporalities. Focusing on US television but also considering the role of TV within a global marketplace, the author identifies three distinct narrative temporalities: “acceleration” (24; Prison Break), “complexity” (Lost; FlashForward), and “retrospection” (Mad Men). Through industrial-textual analysis of television shows, this cross-disciplinary study locates these narrative temporalities in their socio-cultural contexts and examines connections between production, distribution, and narrative form in the contemporary television industry.

Prime Times

Prime Times PDF Author: John Paul Kelly
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Over the past ten to fifteen years, television has undergone a profound and rapid technological transformation, a period in which there has been a proliferation of screens and the introduction of various new distribution platforms such as the DVD box set, the Digital Video Recorder (DVR) and the internet. Within this newly configured digital mediascape, the industrial logics of the past have given way as different patterns of distribution and alternate models of production and storytelling have come to the fore. This thesis examines this period of transformation, drawing a parallel between the new industrial temporalities of the medium's current phase (referred to as "TVIII") and the emerging narrative temporalities of contemporary US drama. Taking a broad socio-cultural approach that integrates scholarship on time and technology from a wide range of disciplines, my research highlights the key temporal shifts that have taken place within the twenty-first century and maps these debates onto a study of the industrial structures and narrative forms of TVIII. Ultimately, this cross-disciplinary approach seeks to offer a broad and historically grounded analysis of recent narrative developments in US prime time drama. Focusing on the US television industry, my research proposes a number of distinct narrative and distributional modes, including "real-time" and "acceleration" (24 [Fox, 2001 - 2010]; Prison Break [Fox, 2005 - 2009]), "complex" and "non-linear time" (Lost [ABC, 2004 - 2010]; FlashForward [ABC, 2009 - 2010]) and finally "retrospective time" (Mad Men [AMC, 2007 - Present]). Using a mixture of industrial and textual analysis, this thesis highlights the intricate and interdependent relationships that underpin production, distribution, and narrative form in contemporary television industries.

Complex TV

Complex TV PDF Author: Jason Mittell
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814738850
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
A comprehensive and sustained analysis of the development of storytelling for television Over the past two decades, new technologies, changing viewer practices, and the proliferation of genres and channels has transformed American television. One of the most notable impacts of these shifts is the emergence of highly complex and elaborate forms of serial narrative, resulting in a robust period of formal experimentation and risky programming rarely seen in a medium that is typically viewed as formulaic and convention bound. Complex TV offers a sustained analysis of the poetics of television narrative, focusing on how storytelling has changed in recent years and how viewers make sense of these innovations. Through close analyses of key programs, including The Wire, Lost, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Veronica Mars, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Mad Men the book traces the emergence of this narrative mode, focusing on issues such as viewer comprehension, transmedia storytelling, serial authorship, character change, and cultural evaluation. Developing a television-specific set of narrative theories, Complex TV argues that television is the most vital and important storytelling medium of our time.

Contemporary Television Series

Contemporary Television Series PDF Author: Silvia Branea
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 144386174X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Contemporary Television Series: Narrative Structures and Audience Perception proposes an interdisciplinary and multicultural approach of old concepts like fiction, reality and narrativity applied to actual worldwide television series. The authors that have contributed to this volume analyze the almost invisible barriers between fiction and reality in television series from different perspectives. The results of their studies are extremely interesting and revealing. The new perspectives offered by this volume will be of great interest to any scholar of European and international studies, because they bring to light new ideas, new methodologies and results that could be further developed. This volume allows readers to explore these unique insights, even if they are not senior researchers, and to easily digest the content, and also to acknowledge the impact of the viewing of television series on reality and on their own lives.

Contemporary Television Series

Contemporary Television Series PDF Author: Michael Hammond
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748679642
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
An engaging and provocative study of the contemporary prime-time 'quality' serial television format, this book gives a timely account of prominent programmes such as 24, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ER, The Sopranos and The West Wing and explores their influential position within the television industry. Divided into the areas of history, aesthetics and reception, the text provides an illuminating overview of an increasingly hybrid television studies discipline. Chapters consider the formal and aesthetic elements in the contemporary television serial through approaches ranging from those concerned with issues of gender and sexuality, national identity, and reception to industry history and textual analysis. The book also includes British examples of 'quality' serial television emphasizing not only their cultural specificity but also the transnational context in which these programmes operate. Features*Section introductions provide student-friendly explanations of the various approaches and methodologies employed in the book*Chapters are written by an international team of experts in the field of television studies*Ideal for use as a textbook on courses in contemporary television taught at undergraduate level

Convergent Chinese Television Industries

Convergent Chinese Television Industries PDF Author: Lisa Lin
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030917568
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This book provides a rich description of the shifting production cultures in convergent Chinese television industries, through the examination of daily production practices, showing how they embody a new set of opportunities and tensions across strategic, programming and individual levels. Lin argues that the current Chinese television landscape is an ideological, cultural and financial paradox in which China’s one-party ideological control clashes with consumer-orientated capitalism and technological advancement. These tensions are finely poised between new opportunities for innovation and creative autonomy, and anxiety over political interference marked by censorship and state surveillance. Through its in depth study of ethnographic data across Chinese broadcast and digital streaming sectors (including CCTV, Hunan Broadcasting System, and Tencent Video), this book illuminates how Chinese producers have placed their aspirations for creative freedoms within technological advancements and rhetorical strategies, both demonstrating compliance with ideological control, and leaving room for resistance and resilience to one-party state ideology. Nuanced and timely, Convergent Chinese Television Industries unveils a complex picture of an industry undergoing dramatic transformations.

Routledge Handbook on Arab Media

Routledge Handbook on Arab Media PDF Author: Noureddine Miladi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429762925
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
This handbook provides the first comprehensive reference book in English about the development of mass and social media in all Arab countries. Capturing the historical as well as current developments in the media scene, this collection maps the role of media in social and political movements. Contributors include specialists in the field from North America, Europe, and the Middle East. Each chapter provides an overview of the history, regulatory frameworks and laws governing the press, and socio-political functions of the media. While the geopolitical complexities of the region have been reflected in the expert analyses collectively, the focus is always the local context of each member state. All 38 chapters consider the specific historical, political, and media trajectories in each country, to provide a contextual background and foundation for further study about single states or comparative analysis in two or more Arab states. Capturing significant technological developments and the widespread use of social media, this all-inclusive volume on Arab media is a key resource for students and scholars interested in journalism, media, and Middle East studies.

Time in Television Narrative

Time in Television Narrative PDF Author: Melissa Ames
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1626744505
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 507

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Book Description
This collection analyzes twenty-first-century American television programs that employ temporal and narrative experimentation. These shows play with time, slowing it down to unfold narrative through time retardation and compression. They disrupt the chronological flow of time itself, using flashbacks and insisting that viewers be able to situate themselves in both the present and the past narrative threads. Although temporal play has existed on the small screen prior to the new millennium, never before has narrative time been so freely adapted in mainstream television. The essayists offer explanations for not only the frequency of time-play in contemporary programming, but also the implications of its sometimes disorienting presence. Drawing upon the fields of cultural studies, television scholarship, and literary studies, as well as overarching theories concerning postmodernity and narratology, Time in Television Narrative offers some critical suggestions. The increasing number of television programs concerned with time may stem from any and all of the following: recent scientific approaches to quantum physics and temporality; new conceptions of history and post history; or trends in late-capitalistic production and consumption, in the new culture of instantaneity, or in the recent trauma culture amplified after the September 11 attacks. In short, these televisual time experiments may very well be an aesthetic response to the climate from which they derive. These essays analyze both ends of this continuum and also attend to another crucial variable: the television viewer watching this new temporal play.

Thinking Outside the Box

Thinking Outside the Box PDF Author: Gary R. Edgerton
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 9780813171722
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Thinking Outside the Box brings together some of the best and most challenging scholarship about TV genres, exploring their genesis, their functions and development, and the interaction of disparate genres. The authors argue that genre is a process rather than a static category and that it signifies much about the people who produce and watch the shows. In addition to considering traditional genres such as sitcoms, soap operas, and talk shows, the contributors explore new hybrids, including reality programs, teen-oriented science fiction, and quality dramas, and examine how many of these shows have taken on a global reach. Identifying historical continuities and envisioning possible trends, this is the richest and most current study of how television genres form, operate, and change.

Television Series as Literature

Television Series as Literature PDF Author: Reto Winckler
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811547203
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
This book explores how television series can be understood as a form of literature, bridging the gap between literary and television studies. It goes beyond existing adaptation studies and narratological approaches to television series in both its scope and depth. The respective chapters address literary works, themes, tropes, techniques, values, genres, and movements in relation to a broad variety of television series, while drawing on the theoretical work of a host of scholars from Simone de Beauvoir and Yuri Lotman to Ted Nannicelli and Jason Mittel, and on critical approaches ranging from narratology and semiotics to empirical sociology and phenomenology. The book fosters new ways of understanding television series and literature and lays the groundwork for future scholarship in a number of fields. By questioning the alleged divide between television series and works of literature, it contributes not only to a better understanding of television series and literary texts themselves, but also to the development of interdisciplinary scholarship in the humanities.