david lavery television creativity special topics in popular culture: lost (spring 2009)
TRANSCRIPT
David LaveryTelevision Creativity
Special Topics in Popular Culture: Lost (Spring 2009)
New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity. Therefore, increase your necessity so that you may increase your perception.
Jalaal al-Din Rumi
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Paul Abbott (UK, Shameless, State of Play)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
J. J. Abrams (US, Felicity, Alias, Lost, Fringe)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Judd Apatow (US, Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Alan Ball (US, Six Feet Under, True Blood)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Roseanne Barr (US, Roseanne)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Carter Bays (r) and Craig Thomas (l) (US, How I Met Your Mother)
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Don Belisario (US, Quantum Leap, Magnum, PI, JAG)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Greg Berlanti (US, Everwood, Dirty Sexy Money)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Peter Berg (US, Friday Night Lights)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Carol Black and Neal Marlens (pictured) (US, The Wonder Years, Growing Pains)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Alan Bleasdale (UK, Boys from the Blackstuff)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Steven Bochco (US, Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, NYPD Blue)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
James Brooks (US, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Simpsons)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Mark Burnett (UK/US, Survivor)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Stephen J. Cannell (US, The A-Team, The Rockford Files)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Glenn Gordon Caron (US, Moonlighting, Now and Again)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Chris Carter (US, The X-Files, Millennium)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Shaun Cassidy (US, American Gothic, Invasion)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Glen (left) and Les (right) Charles (US, Taxi, Cheers)
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Irene Chaiken (US, The L-Word)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
David Chase (US, The Rockford Files, Northern Exposure, The Sopranos)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Marc Cherry (US, Desperate Housewives)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
John Cleese (UK, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Bill Cosby (US, The Cosby Show)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Richard Curtis (right) and Ben Elton (below) (UK, Blackadder)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Greg Daniels (US, The Office)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Russell T. Davies (UK, Queer as Folk, Doctor Who, Torchwood)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
David Eick (US, Battlestar Galactica, Bionic Woman)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Doug Ellin (US, Entourage)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Michele Fazekas (right) & Tara Butters (left) (US, Reaper)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Paul Feig (US, Freaks and Geeks)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Tina Fey (US, 30 Rock)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Tom Fontana (US, Oz, Homicide)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Bryan Fuller (US, Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me, Heroes, Pushing Daisies)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Tony Garnett (UK, Cathy Come Home, This Life)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Mark Gatiss, Jeremy Dyson (to the right), Steve Pemberton Reece Shearsmith (below) (UK, League of Gentlemen)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Larry Gelbart (US, M*A*S*H)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Ricky Gervais (left) and Stephen Merchant (right) (UK, The Office, Extras)
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Vince Gilligan (US, Breaking Bad)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Jonathan Glassner (US, Stargate SG-1)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Alfred Gough & Miles Millar (US, Smallville)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Matthew Graham (on the right), Tony Jordan, Ashley Pharoah (on the left) (UK, Life on Mars)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
James Griffin and Rachel Lang (New Zealand, Outrageous Fortune)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Matt Groening (US, The Simpsons, Futurama)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Barbara Hall (US, Judging Amy, Joan of Arcadia)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Earl Hamner, Jr. (US, The Waltons)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Brenda Hampton (US, Blossom, 7th Heaven)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Hart Hanson (US, Bones)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Bruno Heller (UK/US, Rome, The Mentalist)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Marshall Herskovitz (left) & Ed Zwick (right) (US, thirtysomething, My So-Called Life)
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Winnie Holzman (US, My So-Called Life)
Television CreatorTelevision CreatorTelevision CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Paul Henning (US, Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Roy Huggins (US, 77 Sunset Strip, Maverick, The F.B.I., The Fugitive)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Mitchell Hurwitz (US, Arrested Development )
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Amy Jenkins (UK, This Life)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Tom Kapinos (US, Californication)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Jason Katims (US, Roswell, Friday Night Lights)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
David E. Kelley [US]: Ally McBeal, The Practice, Boston Legal, Picket Fences
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Glen Kessler, Daniel Zelman, Todd Kessler (US, Damages)
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Michael Patrick King (L) & Darren Star (R) (US, Sex and the City)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Daniel Knauf (US, Carnivale)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
David Kohan & Max Mutchnick (US, Will & Grace)
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Jenji Kohan (US, Weeds)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Tim Kring (US, Crossing Jordan, Heroes)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Eric Kripke (US, Supernatural)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Lynda LaPlante (UK, Prime Suspect)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Glen Larson (US, Battlestar Galactica--original)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Denis Leary (right) and Peter Dolan (left) (US, Rescue Me)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Norman Lear (US, All in the Family, The Jeffersons)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Richard Levinson (left) and William Link (right) (US, Columbo)
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Damon Lindelof (left) and Carlton Cuse (right) (US, Crossing Jordan, Lost)
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Graham Linehan (L) and Arthur Mathews (R) (UK, Father Ted)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Chuck Lorre (US, Two and a Half Men, Big Bang Theory)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
David Lynch & Mark Frost (US, Twin Peaks) Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
William J. MacDonald, John Milius and Bruno Heller
(US/UK, Rome)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Michael Mann (US, Miami Vice)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Jean Marsh (UK, Upstairs, Downstairs)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Quinn Martin (US, The F.B.I.)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Patrick McGoohan (UK, The Prisoner)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Terry McGovern (UK, Cracker, The Street)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Lorne Michaels (US, Saturday Night Live)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
David Milch (US, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, Deadwood, John from Cincinnati)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Tim Minear (US, Angel, Wonderfalls, Firefly, The Inside, Drive)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Ronald D. Moore (US, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Carnivale, Battlestar Galactica)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Ryan Murphy (US, Nip/Tuck)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Terry Nation (UK, Doctor Who)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Sydney Newman (UK, Doctor Who, The Avengers)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Grant Naylor (Rob Grant and Doug Naylor—front row) (UK, Red Dwarf)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Rockne O’Bannon (US, Farscape)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer (US, Big Love)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Stephen Poliakoff (UK, Shooting the Past, Capturing Mary)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Dennis Potter (UK, The Singing Detective, Pennies from Heaven)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Rand Ravich (US, Life)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
David Renwick (UK, One Foot in the Grave)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Shonda Rhimes (US), Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Gina Riley & Jane Turner (Australia, Kath and Kim)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Gene Roddenberry (US, Star Trek, Stark Trek: The Next Generation)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Shaun Ryan (US, The Shield, The Unit)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Jennifer Saunders (UK, Absolutely Fabulous)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Paul Scheuring (US, Prison Break)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Josh Schwarz (US, The O.C., Gossip Girl, Chuck)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Jerry Seinfeld (US, Seinfeld)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Rod Serling (US, Twilight Zone)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
David Simon (US, Homicide, The Wire)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Gzrry Shandling (US, The Larry Sanders Show)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Aaron Sorkin (US, Sports Night, West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Aaron Spelling (US, Fantasy Island, Charlie’s Angel, Dynasty, Love Boat, Starsky and Hutch)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Jessica Stevenson & Simon Legg (UK, Spaced)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Matt Stone (left) and Trey Parker (right) (US, South Park)
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
J. Michael Straczynski (US, Babylon 5)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Grant Tinker (US, The Mary Tyler Moore)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
David Walliams & Matt Lucas (UK, Little Britain)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorsTelevision Creators
Reg Watson (Australia, Neighbours
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Jay Ward (US, Rocky and Bullwinkle, George of the Jungle)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Matthew Weiner (US, The Sopranos, Mad Men)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Joss Whedon (US, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse)
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Dick Wolf (US, Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
David Wolstencroft (UK, Spooks)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Anthony Zuicker (US, CSI)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television CreatorTelevision Creator
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
The Parallel Courses of Cinema & TV
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
François Truffaut, "Une Certaine Tendance du Cinéma Français" ("A Certain Tendency in French Cinema"), Cahiers du Cinéma (1954)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Andrew Sarris (US): Auteurism’s American champion
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Drawing on the original insights of the French, the American critic Andrew Sarris translated the auteur theory into an American idiom. For a time, under the influence of Sarris’ goal of converting "film history into directorial autobiography," American intellectuals interested in the movies began to think and talk and understand the movies through the specially-ground lenses provided by the auteur theory. "Over a group of films," Sarris insisted in what amounts to his foundational principle, "a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature. The way a film looks and moves should have some relationship to the way a director thinks and feels" (Sarris 586).
Truffaut formulated the original auteur theory in opposition to the monopolization of film art by writers, Sarris’ critical venture was likewise undertaken "against the wind." He sought to undermine the too-great hold of sociological and political critics. He wanted to talk about the art in the movies he loved, not their social significance.
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
“Auteurism was . . . a palimpsest of influences, combining romantic expressive notions of the artist, modernist-formalist notions of stylistic discontinuity and fragmentation, and a ‘proto-postmodern,’ fondness for “lower” arts and genres. The real scandal of the auteur theory lay not so much in glorifying the director as the equivalent in prestige to the literary author, but rather, in exactly who was granted this prestige.”
Robert Stam (87)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
“In its more extreme incarnations auteurism can be seen as an anthropomorphic form of ‘love’ for the cinema. The same love that had formerly been lavished on stars, or that formalists lavished on artistic devices, the auteurists now lavished on the men—and they largely were men—who incarnated the auteurists’ idea of cinema. Film was resurrected as secular religion; the ‘aura’ was back in force thanks to the cult of the auteur.”
Robert Stam (88)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
The auteur theory’s appeal, the critic Peter Wollen has noted, was obvious: it "implie[d] an operation of decipherment . . . reveal[ing] authors where none had been seen before" (77). Film directors, it was argued, and soon thereafter generally assumed, could put their stamp on a wide variety of movies, even in several genres. Their attention was not focused solely on American directors, of course; they also singled out for praise French auteurs like Abel Gance, Jean Vigo, and Jean Renoir.
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
The auteur theory was ready to accept, of course, that "Just as not every conductor is a Leonard Bernstein, so not every director is an Alfed Hitchcock" [Dick 147]), and under its influence not all directors became maestros—those individuals Sarris categorized as "Pantheon Directors"--but many shed their anonymity, their earlier work now retrospectfully interesting, their new films anticipated. The works of a wide variety of directors were catalogued, in some cases exhaustively. And it was not only the movies of these directors that came in for greater scrutiny. The writings of auteurs and available interviews with them concerning their film aesthetics and methods were also put under the microscope.
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Death of the Author
Death of the Author
Barthes, Roland. "The Death of the Author.” Image, Music, Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. 142‑48.Foucault, Michael. "What is an Author?" The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon, 1984. 101‑20.Gass, William H. ''The Death of the Author." Habitations of the Word: Essays. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. 265‑88.
Death of the
Author
Death of the
Author
Barthes, Foucault, Gass (l-r)
According to post-modernist critical theory we are—in Derrida's phrase—"logocentric." Routinely, naively we assume that the sounds uttered by a speaker make manifest precise meanings present within. We take it for granted that the "signifier" of a speaker's language is "but a temporary representation through which one moves to get at the signified, which is what the speaker, in that revealing English phrase, 'has in mind'" (Culler, Ferdinand de Saussure, 119-20).
Death of the AuthorDeath of
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Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Semiotic inquiry often leads to similar conclusions, as in Umberto Eco's statement of post-modernist faith that "all works are created by works" and "texts . . . created by texts"; "literature comes from literature, cinema comes from cinema" (199). Today's audience (readers or viewers) of "instinctive semioticians" immediately recognizes that "all together they [the archetypes of art] speak to each other independently of the intention of their authors" (210). Indeed, Eco observes profoundly in an essay on Casablanca and the cult film,
Death of the AuthorDeath of
the Author
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
As a corrective, deconstructionism would eliminate entirely the fiction of a speaking or writing subject. For Derrida, "the author deliquesces into writing-as-such and the reader into reading-as-such, and what writing-as-such effects and reading-as-such engages is not a work of literature but a text, writing, 'ecriture" (Abrams 567). And even though Harold Bloom has taken pains to distinguish his multi-volume analysis of the "anxiety of influence" from the anti-humanism of a Derrida, his thesis that no poet speaks entirely in his or her own voice but rather struggles, always in the end unsuccessfully, to escape the more powerful voice of ancestral poets, obviously contributes to our failing faith in the power of the author and transforms inspiration into a merely inter-textual matter. Death of
the AuthorDeath of
the Author
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
We do much the same with texts. "In primitive societies," Roland Barthes reminds in his essay on "The Death of the Author," "narrative is never undertaken by a person, but by a mediator, shaman or speaker, whose 'performance' may be admired (that is, his mastery of the narrative code), but not his 'genius'" (142). In literate societies, however, we have created the whole institution of authorship—largely forgetting, however, that the author is a recent invention.
Death of the AuthorDeath of
the Author
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Only five centuries ago, Michel Foucault asks us to remember in his essay "What is an Author?", texts now thought of as literary were "accepted, put into circulation, and valorized without any question about the identity of their author; their anonymity caused no difficulties since their ancientness, whether real or imagined, was regarded as sufficient guarantee of their status.”
Death of the AuthorDeath of
the Author
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
"On the other hand," Foucault observes, "those texts that we now call scientific—those dealing with cosmology and the heavens, medicine and illnesses, natural sciences and geography—were accepted in the Middle Ages, and accepted as 'true,' only when marked with the name of their author. 'Hippocrates said,' 'Pliny recounts,' were not really formulas of an argument based on authority; they were the markers inserted in discourses that were supported to be received as statements of demonstrated truth" (109).
Death of the AuthorDeath of
the Author
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
William Gass' fine essay on "The Death of the Author" offers a dissenting opinion on Barthes' contention, noting that Barthes' obituary, substituting wish for deed, was premature: "when, in 1968, Roland Barthes announced the death of the author, he was actually calling for it." In Gass' opinion, the death of the author is comic, not tragic; it "signifies a decline in authority, in theological power, as if Zeus were stripped of his thunderbolts and swans, perhaps residing on Olympus still, but now living in a camper and cooking with propane. He is, but he is no longer a god" (265).
Death of the AuthorDeath of
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Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
“[B]ecause of the technological complexity of the medium and as a result of the application to most commercial television production of the principles of modern industrial organization . . . , it is very difficult to locate the ‘author’ of a television program—if by that we mean the single individual who provides the unifying vision behind the program.”
Robert C. Allen
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
TV Authorship
“[Newcomb and Alley] demonstrated that despite the gigantic constituent corporate bureaucracies of this most massive of mass media—networks, advertising agencies, production companies, ratings organizations, federal regulatory authorities—the autobiographical visions of individual did manage to break through onto the television screen, just as the personal visions of artists had managed to reach expression in the older, preelectronic arts. Were these visions mitigated or, in effect, edited by television’s trilateral nature of industry, technology, and art? Certainly. But when and where had an art ever developed independently of other factors?”David Marc & Robert Thompson, Prime Time, Prime Movers
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
TV Authorship
While television exhibits many of the characteristics of open or writerly text it also differs from them in one fundamental characteristic: television popular, whereas open, writerly texts (in the way that Eco and Barthes originally theorized them) are typically avant-garde, highbrow ones wit minority appeal. Television, as a popular medium, needs to be thought of as "producerly." A producerly text combines the televisual characteristics of writerly text with the easy accessibility of the readerly.
John Fiske, Television Culture
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
TV AuthorshipTV Authorship
Unlike the writerly avant-garde text, television does not work with an authorial voice that uses unfamiliar discourse in order to draw attention to its discursivity. The avant garde author-artist will shock the reader into recognition of the text's discursive structure and will require the reader to learn new discursive competencies in order to participate with it in a writerly way in the production of meaning and pleasure. The producerly text, on the other hand, relies discursive competencies that the viewer already possesses, but requires that they are used in a self-interested, productive way: the producerly text can therefore, be popular in a way that the writerly text cannot.
John Fiske, Television Culture
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
TV AuthorshipTV Authorship
“A self-conscious creative producer may be able to take what appears to be a mundane idea, a cast of no distinction, or writing that seems to be ordinary and conventional, and transform it into a better sort of television. When the happy circumstance arises in which the producer is able to assemble the best writers, actors, directors, and film editors, and is able to impress upon them a central concept that speaks his vision, then the potential is present for exceptional work. It can be created because art is mastery, discipline, and vision. It is the ability to mold constraint into a creative contour.” (Newcomb and Alley, xii-xiv)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
TV AuthorshipTV Authorship
“The quality audience gets to separate itself from the mass audience and can watch TV without guilt, and without realizing that the double-edge discourse they are getting is also ordinary TV.”
Jane Feuer (80)
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
TV AuthorshipTV Authorship
Why TV is Better Than the Movies (Entertainment Weekly)1. Women thrive on TV.2. We care more about TV characters.3. TV does better with drama.4. In TV, the writer rules.5. TV is more fun to talk about.6. TV deals with mature themes more maturely.7. TV is more convenient.8. TV does better with less money.9. On TV, you can change the channel.
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture
Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture