More thoughts on soap operas and television seriality

14Jul09

One of my most-clicked (if not read) posts concerns how my approach to prime time serial television relates to the traditional daytime soap opera. Last year I was asked to expand on those ideas via an interview to be included in a forthcoming anthology edited by Sam Ford, Abigail De Kosnik, and C. Lee Harrington, [...]

Filed under: Genre, Narrative, Television   |  1 Comment
Tags: interview, soap opera

The Lost Payoff

14May09

Gotta take a break from grading to write about Lost’s rollicking season finale, and season 5 in general. Spoilery goodness beneath the fold.

Filed under: Genre, Narrative, TV Shows, Television   |  9 Comments
Tags: Lost

A little cynicism about the Susan Boyle phenomenon

23Apr09

First off, I just wanted to mention that I’ll be at Media in Transition 6 this weekend, so if you’re in Cambridge, say hi! I’m a respondant on a panel about using moving images as a rhetorical mode of film & media criticism on Sunday morning – it should be an interesting discussion.
In the past, [...]

Filed under: Genre, Press, TV Shows, Television   |  11 Comments
Tags: britain's got talent, reality tv, susan boyle

The Predicability of Reality TV

24Sep07

In an article from Advertising Age about pursuing cross-media branding & product integration in Dancing with the Stars, I was struck by the following quotation:
One reason for the fascination with the reality game shows is that they tend to play out the same way, episode after episode. “Week in and week out, you know what [...]

Filed under: Genre, TV Shows, Television   |  2 Comments
Tags: reality tv, television genre

Political vs. emotional bias

30Aug07

As I’ve written about before, I’m not convinced by accusations of political bias in the media – generally claims of “liberal bias” are motivated by right-wingers trying to frame the debate and make “liberal media” an unquestioned assumption. The larger biases in the media are tied to the corporate world of sponsorship and media ownership, [...]

Filed under: Genre, Media Politics   |  3 Comments

Rescue Me as hyper-masculine soap opera

12Aug07

I’ve previously blogged about the relationship between soap operas & prime time narrative, participating in a conversation at Henry Jenkins’s blog and Sam Ford’s post on the Convergence Culture blog. Basically, I think the majority of serialized shows in prime time do not take much from soap operatic narrative strategies beyond the serial form–the pacing [...]

Filed under: Genre, Narrative, Representations, TV Shows, Television   |  1 Comment
Tags: Rescue Me