CRITICAL STUDIES IN TELEVISION SLOW CONFERENCE - CONFERENCE PROGRAMME - Edge Hill ...
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CRITICAL CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
STUDIES IN
TELEVISION
SLOW
CONFERENCE
19 July-6 August 2021
Time Zones Overview
Contents
Time Zones Overview................................................................................................................ 0
Programme Critical Studies in Television 2021 Slow Conference Overview ........................... 2
Programme Details..................................................................................................................... 4
Monday, 19 July 2021............................................................................................................ 4
Keynote: Kristen Warner, University of Alabama ............................................................ 4
Wednesday, 21 July 2021 ...................................................................................................... 5
10-11.30am: Television Studies and Criticism in the Age of Multiplatform Television .. 5
4-5.30pm: Transnational Television Industries and their Strategies ................................. 7
Friday, 23 July 2021 ............................................................................................................ 11
9.15-11am Challenges to Teaching and Research in Television ..................................... 11
Panel: Game of Thrones – Understanding Audience Responses to a Challenging TV
Series ................................................................................................................................ 15
Monday, 26 July 2021.......................................................................................................... 17
1-2.30pm Gender and/on Television................................................................................ 17
3-4.30pm The Internet and/as Television ........................................................................ 19
Tuesday, 27 July 2021 ......................................................................................................... 23
Roundtable: Cultures of Television Studies .................................................................... 23
Wednesday, 28 July 2021 .................................................................................................... 24
9-10.30am Television’s New Narratives ......................................................................... 24
3-4.30pm Re-Writing Early Histories of Television........................................................ 27
Monday, 2 August 2021 ....................................................................................................... 31
9.15-11am Researching Television’s Histories ............................................................... 31
4pm-5.30pm Television and the Question of Quality ...................................................... 33
Wednesday, 4 August .......................................................................................................... 36
10.30-12noon Questions of Genre ................................................................................... 36Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
1.30-2.30m Nationally Specific Developments ............................................................... 38
3-4.30pm Representations of the Politically Marginalised .............................................. 40
Friday, 6 August 2021.......................................................................................................... 43
2-3.30pm Convergence: The Challenge to the Industry .................................................. 43
Television Studies: Where to? ......................................................................................... 46
1Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
Programme Critical Studies in Television 2021 Slow Conference
Overview
Day Morning Early Afternoon Late Afternoon
Monday, 19 July 4-5.15pm
Keynote: Kristen
Warner
Wednesday, 21 July 10-11.30am 4-5.30pm
Television Studies and Transnational
Criticism in the Age of Television Industries
Multiplatform and their Strategies
Television Yu Xiang
Robert Watts Patience Achakyapalkyo,
John Ellis Andrew Ijwo and
Klara Feikusara Michael Kombol
Mike Wayne and
Deborah Castro
Friday, 23 July 9.15-11am 1-2.30pm
Challenges to Teaching Panel: Game of
and Research in Thrones –
Television Understanding
James Walters Audience Responses to
Mike Wayne a Challenging TV
Rowan Aust Series
Paul Grainge Feona Attwood
Martin Barker
Clarissa Smith
Monday, 26 July 1-2.30pm 3-4.30pm
Gender and/on The Internet and/as
Television Television
Ana Tominc David Levente Palatinus
Sonia Sa JP Kelly
Cathy Mahoney Mareike Jenner
Tuesday, 27 July 2pm
Roundtable: Cultures
of Television Studies
Luca Barra
Ruchi Kerr Jaggi
2Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
Gary Edgerton
Alexia Smit
Wednesday, 28 July 9-10.30am 3-4.30pm
Television’s New Re-Writing Early
Narratives Histories of Television
Trisha Dunleavy Andy Lawrence
Michael J. Clark Carl Sweeney
Emily Walker, Brett Caryn Murphy
Mills and Justine Mann
Monday, 2 August 9.15-11am 4pm-5.30pm
Researching Television and the
Television’s Histories Question of Quality
Charlotte Stevens Tom May
Derek Johnston Tom Hemingway
Ipsita Sahu Melissa Beattie
Richard Dhillon
Wednesday, 4 August 10.30-12noon 1.30-2.30m 3-4.30pm
Questions of Genre Nationally Specific Representation of the
Gloria Salvado- Developments Politically
Corretger Deborah Castro and Marginalised
Emily Walker Concepcion Cascajosa Susanne Eichner
Lothar Mikos Rosane Svartman and Ricardo Ramirez
Felipe Muanis Julie Taddeo and
Katherine Byrne
Friday, 6 August 2-3.30pm 4-5.30pm
Convergence: the Closing Roundtable:
Challenge to the Where to?
Industry Christine Geraghty, Brett
Vilde Schanke Sundet Mills and Gabriel
Gary Edgerton Moreno-Esparza
Bärbel Goebel-Stolz
3Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
Programme Details
Monday, 19 July 2021
4pm: opening address
4.15pm – 5.15pm
Keynote: Kristen Warner, University of Alabama
Kristen Warner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative
Media at The University of Alabama. She is the author The Cultural Politics of Colorblind
TV Casting (Routledge, 2015). Kristen’s research interests are centered at the juxtaposition of
racial representation and its place within the film and television industries as it concerns
issues of labor and employment. Her work can be found in academic journals, a host of
anthologies and online platforms like the Los Angeles Review of Books and Film Quarterly.
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Wednesday, 21 July 2021
10-11.30am: Television Studies and Criticism in the Age of Multiplatform
Television
Robert Watts, Independent Scholar: ‘The Big Picture’: Considering the Impact of Binge-
Watching on Popular TV Criticism
In late 2019, the launches of both Apple TV+ and Disney+ marked a new phase in the so-
called “streaming wars” — an environment in which any new service offering original drama
must now decide whether to distribute serial content episodically as a ‘weekly pulse’, or
follow Netflix in encouraging viewers to ‘binge and burn ’through whole seasons on-demand
(Jarvey 2019). The two approaches cultivate different kinds of relationships between
platforms, texts and their audiences. Scholarship in this area has already elucidated how
foregrounding the contrast with scheduled, linear TV has been effective a form of industrial
positioning (Jenner 2018); and explored the uses and gratifications of binge-watching for
individual viewers (Glebatis Perks 2015). This paper considers another aspect of how the
binge-distribution model reshapes conceptions of television: its impact on the form and
content of popular television criticism. It focuses particularly on the role of the (Anglophone)
TV critic in mediating and positioning markedly ‘national ’TV content for transnational
consumption, and identifies some potential impacts of a shift in the critical vocabulary in
terms of TV drama’s articulation of national and local culture.
Popular TV criticism has often resembled a ‘discourse in search of an object ’(Poole 1984); a
variable, multimodal form that frequently reconfigures in response to technological,
industrial, and cultural shifts (Lotz 2008). This paper suggests that Netflix and others ’
promotion of binge-watching encourages a wider shift towards singular series reviews that
take the season, rather than the episode, as their object. These “big picture” reviews draw
more on the evaluative aesthetics of film criticism — as a mode that considers works as
unified wholes and self-contained aesthetic objects — than on traditions of “in-progress” TV
criticism organised around the fragmented and socially-situated moments of (national)
episodic broadcasting. Drawing on a study of transatlantic reviews of various British TV
dramas — broadcast weekly in the UK, but reframed as bingeable objects on US streaming
platforms — I first consider how constructions of “bingeability” intersect with the existing
legitimation discourses of “cinematic” or “event” television. Then, this notion of the “big
picture” as a critical frame is used to demonstrate how, in framing the series as a singular
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aesthetic object akin to the cinematic experience, critics tend to frame the more exotic or
foreign aspects of a national television address in broader terms, stripping away their social
meanings whilst endowing them with appeals more akin to the touristic spectacle.
John Ellis, Royal Holloway: The Streaming Disruptors are Undermining TV Studies as well
as Broadcast TV
Streaming services like Netflix are undermining the basis of our discipline. The affordances
of home video, DVD and other technologies made possible the building of audio-visual
libraries for teaching and research. They also enabled adventurous approaches to audience
research. These technologies allowed scholars and teachers to own the objects of their
researches.
Commercial streaming services are rolling back these gains. They are not libraries; they
frequently and arbitrarily withdraw films and programmes. Their processes of tailoring
content to individual tastes hide as much as they reveal. So it is increasingly impossible to
accumulate a library or to even to plan teaching based on what they offer.
Unlike European broadcasters, whose audience research is often public, their huge databases
of viewer choice and behaviour remain obstinately secret. Yet they use this data to guide their
commissioning, from the basic elements of production up to the intimate details of editing
pace and lines of dialogue. The information that they possess (but do not share) dwarfs the
capacities of academic audience research and renders it virtually irrelevant.
Enterprises like Netflix are classic 'tech disruptors' and one of their key acts of disruption has
been to take back control of texts and information from users whilst seeming to do the
opposite. You own a DVD but you only have temporary access to a streamed text.
Streaming technology itself does not require this kind of implementation: the vast and
perpetual library of TV recordings offered to UK academia by the BoB service offers a
radically different model which will be briefly explored.
But how are media studies to respond to this challenge to its very existence? I hope to
stimulate a debate on this vital issue.
Klará Feikusará, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic: Curricular Traps:
Television Studies in the Czech Republic
Television Studies have been a part of academia in Western countries for decades now.
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However, they came to the countries of Eastern Europe much later. This paper will present
problems that Television Studies face in the Czech Republic. While there always has been
some, albeit scarce, academic writing about television in the Czech Republic, Television
Studies as a theoretical major separate from the Film Studies have only been established in
2015 (Palacký University Olomouc). At other universities, Television Studies are usually part
of Film Studies department, if they are present at all. Since Television Studies are quite new in
Czech academia, they have to face a lot of difficulties that might be resolved in Western
countries, but not there. There is still a need for legitimization of them as a major and of
television as an artistic medium. Television Studies in Czech are also influenced by cultural
hierarchies (e.g. analytical works about television only deal with quality TV), Americanisation
and cinephilia. There are also more practical obstacles lie language (lack of literature or
subtitles in Czech), distribution or small number of television scholars in the country.
This paper serves as a case study of Television Studies in the Czech Republic. My research is
presented from position of someone who studies and teaches the Television Studies. My
presentation will focus on problems Czech television scholars have to deal with and the
question of how to teach Television Studies as a new academic field in the country.
4-5.30pm: Transnational Television Industries and their Strategies
Yu Xiang: Cultural Homogenisation or Narrative Transparency? A Case Study of the Dating
Show in East Africa: Hello, Mr. Right?
Although television as a traditional media seems fading out from people’s daily routine of
acquiring information, it remains a rare asset in many of the underdeveloped areas in third
world countries. The statistics show that in 2016, there were 19.47 million TV subscribers in
Sub-Saharan Africa which is about 1.9% of its overall population, and the number is expected
to rise to 75 million by 2021 (Statista, 2020). One of the major contributors to the increase of
the number is believed to be the Chinese media company StarTimes. The private Chinese
company entered the African market in the year 2002 and established subsidiaries in more
than 30 countries with nearly 26 million subscribers by 2011. Besides international content
such as sports events and news, it also delivers Chinese movies, dramas, and reality shows.
The dating show Hello, Mr. Right produced by StarTimes and aired in Kenya and Zambia is
one of its most popular media products in African markets. The show is adapted from the
Chinese dating show If You are the One which was originally imported from Australia. The
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localization of the show format in China and Africa reflects the changing map of the global
media flows and pushes people to rethink the oblivious critique on cultural homogenization
in the 1970s. With the growing media industries in the global South, the north-to-south one-
dimensional cultural domination is ruptured with regional disjuncture. Basing on the case of
Hello, Mr. Right, this research aims to continue the unsettled discussion on the
alternativeness of hegemonic decoding following the theoretical frameworks of the cultural
imperialism paradigm (with a focus on sub-imperialist structures in the global South) and
narrative transparency theories. The two research questions are 1. Does the dating show
format (especially the Chinese version) have a specific modern imagination of romantic
relationships? 2. Is this imagery perpetuated in Hello Mr. Right or is it dissolved by the local
culture? The proposed method is discourse analysis, and the objective is to find out whether
the increasing presence of Chinese media content poses a particular imagination about
modernity, as indicated in the scripted romantic relationship in the dating show, and how
such imagination is perceived and internalized indigenously.
Patience Achakyapalkyo, Andrew Ijwo and Michael Kombol: The Influence of Television
Programme Scheduling Strategies on Audience Preferences of Television Stations in Nigeria
The study ‘The Influence of Television Programme Scheduling Strategies on Audience
Preferences of Television Stations in Nigeria’ is set out to analyze television scheduling
strategies in order to determine which influence audience preference of programmes and
television stations. The study is anchored on Uses and Gratification and consumer behaviour
theories which states that TV stations that satisfy/gratifies audience and that the differences
of audience influences their preference. It is not clear what will influence the audience where
many TV stations satisfies/gratify and recognizes audience differences. Survey was employed
to determine audience preference of television stations and possibly the strategies that
influence these preferences. Purposive sampling was used to select the popular and most
viewed TV stations that also have similar programmes. The country was stratified and 385
audiences surveyed. The data is analyzed using SPSS and presented in frequencies and tables.
The study found out that; the audiences most preferred television station in Nigeria is
Channels TV, followed by Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and then African Independent
Television (AIT) due to the television stations’ programmes and a number of programme
scheduling strategies. This means the desire or needs of audience alone do not influence their
preference but a combination of audience desire and environment and the service quality
parameters. The study recommends that television stations in Nigeria should use the
8Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
influential programme strategies realized from this work to increase audience patronage of
their television stations. Therefore, research on audience preferences should not be restricted
to only audience gratification and their environment but also the service quality parameters
(how the available is presented).
Mike Wayne and Deborah Castro: Television Industries in Cross-National Comparative
Perspective: Netflix’s Internationalization in Israel and Spain
The international expansion of U.S.-based subscription video on-demand (SVOD) services
has attracted a significant amount of scholarly attention in recent years as these internet-based
television providers create new possibilities for global audiences. In late-2019, Netflix, the
world’s most popular SVOD, has nearly 160 million subscribers in more than 190 countries
along with offices and production studios across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Yet, the
question of how best to understand SVOD global expansion in relation to national television
industries remains contested. Furthermore, little work to date has systematically compared
the process of internationalization across multiple national contexts. To fill this gap in the
literature, this analysis uses Livingstone’s (2003) framework for cross-national comparative
research to examine one global SVOD’s entry into two international markets. Drawing on
industry documents and media coverage, this paper constructs country-specific histories of
Netflix’s engagement with multi-channel pay-television providers in Israel and Spain. In both
cases, Netflix initially uses collaborations with national OTT providers to establish a
customer base before expanding its reach through new partnerships with legacy providers.
By utilizing the perspective of cross-national comparative research to explore collaborations
between Netflix and pay-television services, this analysis complicates the scholarly
understandings of SVOD global expansion by drawing attention to the significance of
national multi-channel providers. In contrast to existing scholarship that understands
localization at the macro-levels of infrastructure and regulation and the micro-levels of
content, language, and audience taste (Jenner 2018; Lobato 2019), the histories of Netflix in
Israel and Spain reveal that internationalization also operates at a meso-level where
collaborations with national pay-television providers facilitate access to national audiences.
In light of the significant differences between the Spanish and Israeli pay-television markets,
Netflix’s pattern of engagement with multi-channel providers in highlights the value of
understanding SVOD global expansion as a coherent industrial process that produces distinct,
context-dependent outcomes. This paper concludes with a discussion addressing the
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implications of these findings for future transnational television research exploring streaming
service internationalization.
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Friday, 23 July 2021
9.15-11am Challenges to Teaching and Research in Television
James Walters: Have you seen this? Teaching and Research the Television Moment
The dramatic expansion of available television content in the twenty-first century has brought
with it a series of opportunities and challenges for teaching and research. In the classroom,
for example, there is greater potential to build up a framework of interrelated texts that
students can access with relative ease through online learning resources, institutional or
personal subscriptions (and perhaps through other, less official, means). At the same time,
however, the likelihood of a student cohort possessing equivalent knowledge of even one
television title, which may span many episodes and seasons, can be limited as a climate of
abundance conversely places constraints upon shared viewing experiences. Writing about
television can similarly involve negotiating the scale of single or multiple television texts and
maintaining an accessible context for useful discussion. Will an account based on season one
of a programme remain relevant for seasons eight, nine or ten, for example? Will a full
appreciation of an article-length argument depend upon many hours of committed viewing on
the part of the reader?
Against the basic truth that students and academics cannot watch every example of television
that may come up in our teaching or research, the reliance on moments as tangible focal
points has endured as a practical necessity. Moving beyond this pragmatic need, there is an
opportunity to reflect on the critical status we afford television moments. If the moment is
taken to encapsulate the aesthetic and thematic interests of an entire television text spanning
hours of screen time, for example, the weight of burden placed on a small section can be
considerable. Equally, if a moment is taken in isolation and evaluated only in terms of its
internal compositional features, there is the potential for an appreciation of the size and shape
of television texts to be subdued or suppressed. Questions of congruence and incongruence,
generality and specificity, therefore underpin the ways in which we think about television
moments.
This paper stays with some of these interests by focussing on a moment from Shrill (Hulu,
2019-). Coming at the end of the second episode of the second season, this short sequence
encapsulates some of the choices available in discussions of moments. It resonates across
multiple layers: striking in its aesthetic immediacy, its evocation of the show’s wider themes,
and its illustration of the relationships that exist between moments and their medium. Those
seconds on screen can take us in different directions, on paths that cross and converge.
11Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
Knowing which routes we are following, and our reasons for choosing them, is therefore
crucial to understanding the critical engagements that we hope to foster in our teaching and
research.
Mike Wayne: Teaching Television Industry Research Practices: Methodological and
Pedagogical Challenges
Given the difficulties associated with accessing decision-makers, producers, and creative
talent, scholarship exploring the television industry often relies on a variety of sources
including annual reports, press releases, court proceedings, archival records, third-party
industry reports, magazine features, policy documents, and newspaper articles. Like these
wide-ranging materials themselves, this approach is variously described as media
historiography, media industry studies, or trade press analysis. For scholars, our ability to
publish meaningful research in this vein is largely dependent on our ability to use our
experience with and knowledge of these sources to critically unpack their contents. As
Amanda Lotz (2018) notes, however, helping our students “develop the ‘chops’” to
effectively read and use such materials is a separate challenge (163). As such, this paper
explores the methodological and pedagogical issues the author encountered when designing a
MA-level workshop with the goal of teaching students how to conduct television industry
research using publicly available secondary data.
Using Netflix as an example, this paper will describe techniques and resources designed to
guide students through a four-step research process that begins with a conceptual approach to
identify an object of analysis (industrial discourse or industrial practice). In step two, students
locate “official” sources (including press releases and earning call transcripts), find materials
related to industry events (such as roundtables and Q&A sessions), and identify meaningful
trade press coverage. Step three offers practical techniques to transform such material into
coherent data sets with a variety of digital tools. In step four, students analyze their data and
generate findings regarding a specific television industry discourse or practice. Although all
four steps will be outlined, the bulk of this paper will be a detailed discussion of steps two
and three: finding and working with relevant secondary data. Ultimately, this work is an
exercise in pulling back the veil on television industry studies research practices in order to
help students develop critical and methodological skills associated with producing
publishable scholarship.
12Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
Rowan Aust: Methodological Chameleon or Simply not Rigorous? Qualitative research
interviews and ‘insider’ status
“…when you’ve already been doing [TV work] for years as a woman and a BAME one at that,
[it] really starts to take its toll on you emotionally and mentally. I’m struggling with it all tbh
at the moment and am finding myself teary most days and my confidence is on the floor…”
(Email, 2020)
‘‘Does that mean anything to you?” (Interview with RL, retired BBC editor, 10 January 2017)
This paper reflects upon the nuances at play when doing research interviews for television
production studies while positioned as an ex-television producer - as what has long been
identified as an “insider” (Caldwell, 2009). It reflects specifically and critically on the different
strategies that have emerged during my investigation of television production in two contexts:
its history and the contemporary industry, the latter being situated in the context of an
investigative project into frameworks of care.
These strategies echo the hierarchies of television production. Hierarchies include seniority (of
age and / or position), gender and class; they are constituent parts that oscillate throughout
encounters. To get a programme on air is a team effort but within that team is a complex display
and deployment of knowledge, position, status, hierarchy and rank, foregrounded and collapsed
as required. This is the conceptual context, as a conversation between two ‘television people’,
within which these interviews take place. Understanding the shared conceptual context is
enacted through various displays.
These displays include: to engender intimacy, television network acquaintances and
connections are announced and celebrated. Gifts are often given in an act that recalls gratitude,
a sensory memory reported by many of simply grateful for being in telly; thanks for being
allowed into an elite industry echoed by thanks for acknowledging my questions. My own
knowledge is often hidden from ageing men as they enjoy their recollections and confidences
being shared with a younger woman. In contrast, I share career experiences with women of
similar age, extracting information they often admit being relieved to disclose to a fellow (if
ex)-traveller. I behave differently depending on the subject, as television workers behave
differently depending on the situation; yes, qualitative methods are reflexive but to what extent
could and should a persona be adopted in order to collect data?
This becomes additionally problematic in the field of care. If oral history works towards “the
revelation of the self” (Abrams, 2016 p.33), then what extent should the emotional engagement
13Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
of being an “insider” and amplified by a discussion of ‘care’ be used as part of this work of
revelation? The discussion of care often focuses subjects on where care is not applied to them,
particularly in the lives of freelancers. As one interviewee put it, freelancing equates with
“being completely without any sense of anyone looking out for you at all” (Interview with
Development Executive); freelancing denies a structure of care because of its atomised and
individualist construction. Conversations about care emphasise the emotional load demanded
of women in television, who must simultaneously be multiple things: professional and intimate,
open and withholding. This is work that is ongoing and present and often overwhelming for
them. What are the responsibilities of the researcher in opening up subjects like this and –
working on the proviso that all methods are flawed in part - is the methodology as described
above overly subjective? Where should the work of the “insider” stop?
Paul Grainge: The Life of Metaphor in TV and Media Industry Research
According to James Geary (2012), the primary purpose of metaphor is ‘to carry over existing
names or descriptions to things that are either so new that they haven't been named or so
abstract that they cannot be otherwise explained’. If, as he suggests, ‘metaphor is a lens that
clarifies and distorts,’ this paper examines metaphor as a specific object of study in TV and
media industry research. From environmental images of flow and streaming to cultural
images of disruption and divides, TV and media industry studies routinely deploys metaphor
as a conceptual device. Sometimes scholars draw on terms produced by the ‘discursive
engine’ of industrial cultures such as Hollywood and Silicon Valley, and other times they
develop metaphors to catalyse new ways of theorising (‘spreadable media’, ‘signal traffic’
etc). While the politics of metaphor has been examined in relation to specific abstractions like
‘platform’ (Gillespie 2017) and ‘cloud’ (Holt and Vonderau 2015), and scholars are alert to
the challenge of finding adequate vocabularies to describe change and continuity in the media
‘ecology’ (Lobato 2019), this paper reflects on the methodological import of metaphor as a
thinking device within the field of TV and media industry studies.
Gareth Morgan’s (1997) influential work on metaphor in organizational theory suggests that
the most important aspect of any metaphor rests in its power of engagement in relation to the
situation in which a metaphor is generated or used - in what it allows people to see,
understand and do, and not in any abstract characteristics of the metaphor itself. While
Morgan examines metaphors as living, practical frames for engaging and shaping the
ontological dimensions of organizational life, this paper considers the generative function of
metaphor in TV and media industry critical contexts. Reflecting on the types and hierarchies
14Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
of metaphor that have been mobilised in TV and media industry research, this paper ‘reads
for the metaphor’ in recent critical attempts to construct the field of media industry studies.
By way of focus, the paper goes back to the invited ‘think pieces’ of the inaugural issues of
Media Industries Journal (2014) and examines this collection of perspectives as a site for the
production of metaphor.
1-2.30pm
Panel: Game of Thrones – Understanding Audience Responses to a Challenging TV
Series
The end in 2019 of the eighth and final Season of Game of Thrones marked the close of much
more than a TV series. The story-world, and its grim events, had become the focus of a vast
array of speculations, debates and controversies. Winning praise for its early seasons,
substantial controversies over the fate of particular characters, and a nearly 2 million petition
protesting against its closing Season, it has nonetheless been part of a wider repositioning of
‘fantasy’ as a mode of thinking and story-telling. In 2016-7, a project mounted by an
international team of researchers set out to capture audience responses to the series ‘in flight’,
seeking to capture not simply meanings and pleasures, but also the kinds of ways different
people took up the ‘fantasy’ series into their wider thinking. The project managed to gather
more than 10,000 responses to its complex online questionnaire (delivering more than 3
million words of ‘talk’ about the series), adopting the same general methodological
(qualiquantitative) approach that worked very successfully with The Lord of the Rings and
The Hobbit film trilogies (among other projects). A book of the core findings of the project is
currently nearing completion, to be published later this year. Meanwhile, this Panel proposes
to examine three different aspects of the project’s findings, within the frame of considering
the overall cultural significance of the series.
Feona Attwood: ‘Game of Thrones – simultaneously empowering and hostile to women …’
One of the most interesting aspects of Game of Thrones from the point of view of gender and
sexual politics is the way in which the series was emphatically claimed as a world of both
exploitation and empowerment, though with a growing consensus that the final season failed
its female characters and its audience. Drawing on our participants' responses to the depiction
of women in Game of Thrones I will examine how these might be situated in relation to more
public and visible feminist analyses of the series in the context of a political environment
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which is characterised by hostility to women and sexual minorities and by a resurgence of
activism around gender and sexuality. In this context, what do audience responses have to tell
us about how we might understand the representation of gender and how useful are existing
frameworks of understanding?
Martin Barker: Game of Thrones and the new meanings of ‘fantasy’: how various audiences
estimated the value of the Show.
The last twenty years has seen a gradual complex shift in the meanings and implications of
the cultural category of ‘fantasy’. Moving away from a dominant register in which it was
seen as a combination of unreal, risky, and impoverished, it has through works such as Game
of Thrones begun to take on a sense of seriousness, quality and relevance. The emergence in
literary fields of genre-names such as ‘dark fantasy’, ‘grimdark’, and ‘hopepunk’ speak to
this transition. While fantasy is hardly new to television in any sense, Game of Thrones was
arguably pretty much the first series to fully put these possibilities in front of viewers. But
how did they respond? What evidence do we have of different modes of responding to its
‘fantasy’ nature, and with what consequences and implications?
Clarissa Smith: ‘“Winter is Coming”: a televisual allegory for current dangers’
Game of Thrones has generated a number of go-to phrases, but ‘Winter is Coming’ is perhaps
the most widely repeated and, during a number of popular protests, has been quite extensively
used as a metaphor for other things. Encapsulating the dark themes of impending doom for
Westeros and its inhabitants, oncoming winter drives the narrative of the TV series and
is significant for its seeming confirmation of at least one researcher's claim that the ‘effects’
of the show lie in its affirmation ‘that the world is cruel and unjust. Followers of the story are
kept waiting for justice, which never arrives.’ (Gierzynski 2018) Our questionnaire asked
what viewers understood by the phrase ‘Winter is Coming’, to explore what kind of
associations between individual narrative themes and ‘our’ world might be illuminated. In
this paper I will outline the ways some viewers point to ‘Winter is Coming’ and its narrative
power as analogies to current 'real world' crises such as climate change and Trumpian
politics.
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Monday, 26 July 2021
1-2.30pm Gender and/on Television
Ana Tominc: Gender Representation on Early Television Food Programmes in Sex European
Countries: A cross-country comparison
This study will present a preliminary attempt at a cross-country comparative analysis of
European food programme in the 1950s and the 1960s, focusing on representation of gender
in six European contexts. Although food programming was one of the TV genres that features
on almost all European televisions from early on, although in different formats, genres and
quantities, research into early food television in Europe – and also elsewhere – is surprisingly
scarce, especially given current interest in food media (e.g. Moseley 2008, Bonner 2009,
Collins 2009, Tominc 2015, Wei and Martin 2015, Eriksson 2016, Roger 2016, Geddes
2017). The Food and Cooking on early Television, en edited collection of studies covering
eight European countries (currently in preparation by the author, Routledge, possibly 2021)
will fill some of this gap. Focusing on the first examples of food programming on television
from Portugal to Czechoslovakia, it aims to demonstrate how through various genres –
travelog, cooking instruction and advertising, satirical show – the mundaneness of food
content was used in various countries to unite the nation, to modernise and to entertain it, to
name but a few. In this, state televisions reflect creativity that is underpinned by cultural
assumptions of European societies and state ideologies, although there is also an underlying
similarity in some of its features (e.g. around attempts to create national identification, e.g.
Portugal, Italy).
Based on the findings gathered in this collection, this talk offers some comparative
observations – however limited – focusing on gender representation in food shows in six very
different contexts: Portugal, The Netherlands, UK, Italy, Yugoslavia, and East Germany. It
offers shared traits, such as an image of a male authoritative presenter or cook whose role is
to demonstrate to the nation not only what to cook, but also what to think about food. In this,
however, we find difference as some presenters strive for a turn towards a modern, new,
improved self, stripped of tradition and old thinking, while in some especially Western
countries, there is also yearning for the old times and traditions. Women tend to be still
traditional cooks and mothers, although in some cases, this is also rapidly changing,
especially thorough the 1960s.
Through these observations, I argue in favour of television studies that go beyond divisions
established after the World War II; rather, as Mihelj and Huxtable (2018) have argued,
17Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
television – and specifically the associated media cultures – should be studied as sub-types of
modern television “designed to promote an alternative vision of progress and belonging”
(ibid., p.9).
Furthermore, from the perspective of food studies, a cross-country comparative approach to
television (ibid.) as attempted here can more usefully demonstrate how early food television
in Europe reflected and (possibly) transformed the lives of Europeans as a whole as they
shared in the decades following the War a similar sense of optimism for the future and, at the
same time, yearning for the past.
Sonia Sa: Portuguese Television News and Gender: Hobbling white and eradicating black
women
Feminist movements in Portugal have reached new dimensions and diverse representations,
both in the public domain - essentially in politics and leadership positions - as well as in the
balance between private and public life. However, when the analysis is the television prime
time commentary of news in Portugal, the result is the epithet of gender inequality and factual
discrimination against black women. In the content analysis we conducted over three
consecutive years, we concluded that women's participation in these information programs is
about 10% and black women is zero. From these results we analyze the ineffective
application of Getting the Balance Right (International Federation of Journalists, 2009) on
Portuguese informative television, in a clear and constant trample on gender equity and
ethical and racial diversity in the media.
Cathy Mahoney: ‘History is a beautiful thing’: Feminising the recent past in Derry Girls and
Glow
This paper will consider two Female Ensemble Dramas (FED) that represent the recent past
from an explicitly feminine perspective; Derry Girls (Channel 4 2018 - present) and
G.L.O.W. (Netflix 2017 - present). Both series are what Alison Landsberg refers to as
'historically conscious dramas' (2015: 62) in that they do not seek to recreate "real" people or
events from the past, but rather the 'lived contours' of a particular historical moment (62).
This paper will explore the ways in which both series 'make palpable the social norms and
expectations' (Landsberg 2015: 86) of being a women or girl in 1980s America and 1990s
Northern Ireland. It will consider the series' use of popular music, clothing and props from
the two periods to generate a sense of familiarity and nostalgia for audiences for whom the
two periods are likely within living memory, whilst also offering a critique of those periods.
18Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
Both series utilise comedy, narrative and dialogue to expose the periods' problematic and
prejudicial racial, religious and gendered politics and this paper will demonstrate the ways in
which the FED format facilitates and bolsters this critique. Both series explicitly de-centre
masculine perspectives. In Derry Girls, the one male member of the central group of
characters is not only othered by his gender, but also by his nationality as the only
Englishman in Derry. In G.L.O.W. narrative impetus is derived from a group of women
attempting to subvert the expectations of the sporting and entertainment industries by
establishing an all female wrestling programme. This de-centering is key to both series’
exploration of historical female subjectivity and critique of the remembered past.
This paper will finally consider both series use of television as a historical anchor point
through the incorporation of original broadcasts and news coverage form their diegetic
periods. In both series the television set is the primary source of news and information and,
by depicting real footage of well known historical events such as the Challenger Shuttle
disaster and Omagh bombing, is also a source of historical verisimilitude for audiences. This
paper will suggest the potential of television as a conduit for history and particularly for
histories that offer alternative perspectives and critiques on traditionally masculine pasts
3-4.30pm The Internet and/as Television
David Levente Palatinus: Streaming Trends and Platform Wars: Shifting Trends and the
Case of The Expanse
Over the past years, cultural and political discourses on television as well as on television
scholarship, have become dominated by the rhetoric of ‘crisis’: one of the most emblematic
tropes, in public perception as well as in scholarship, ‘crisis’ has been frequently deployed to
describe the protracted struggle between broadcast and streaming media platforms and
formats. Many have seen the proliferation of digital content distribution as that which brings
about the decline, or at least the radical repositioning of broadcast television (Lury 2011;
Edgerton 2010; Mikos 2016), while other have taken a more celebratory approach to the
broadening of digital perspectives: some have argued this shift towards streaming services
produced new exciting consumption practices that complement traditional forms of viewing
(Barnes 2019, Shuster, 2018); others have argued digital platforms potentially open new
horizons to an even more pronounced transnationalization of television (Green, 2019) via a
wider distribution of local productions (Szcepanik and Vonderau, 2013; Szcepanik, 2018) as
19Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
well as international cooperations, or the circulation of cultural legacies (Haegedoorn, 2015,
2019). Some critics pointed to the apparent boom in television content being available (and
consumed) by audiences, constituting ‘peak television’.
On the other hand, surveys and empirical data (see Nielsen, 2020) seem to confirm that
broadcast television, as format and as cultural form, is still significant, with specific types of
audiences still tuning in on their preferred types of programs, opting for specific types of
content distributed via linear television.
Clearly, these fluctuating trends provide exciting sources for research into audience behavior,
production and distribution models, and a broader cultural conceptualization of what
television stands for in an increasingly mediated and digital environment. What seems to be
relatively underexplored, however, are questions of content, quality, and participation, and
the ways specific forms of television drama shape our understanding of these aspects in the
streaming era.
Through a case study of Amazon Prime’s The Expanse (Syfy, 2015-2018, Amazon Prime
2019-), this paper is to direct attention to the impact the growing proportion of streaming
platforms have on audiences participatory behaviors – as amply demonstrated by the massive
and expanding social media fandom of the program. First, the paper will comment on the
correlation between specific formats and genres, aimed at niche audiences, being capable of
garnering significant fandom and attaining an iconic cultural status, and streaming platforms’
potential to offer a more streamlined viewing experience (the illusion of more control through
more personalized content). Secondly, it will ask whether streaming platforms’ own original
productions constitute an ‘aesthetic shift’ commensurate to what used to be termed ‘quality’
television (Akass and McCabe, 2007). To that end, I will briefly address cultural perceptions
of quality, complexity, affect and participation in relation to trending genres. Particularly, I’m
interested in casting light on the ways specific television distribution and production (and,
consequently, consumption) models become conducive to specific (niche) genres, which The
Expanse is a quintessential example of.
JP Kelly: ‘What’s on in the box?’: Methods for archiving and analysing video-on demand
catalogues
When using a video-on-demand [VOD] service such as Netflix or the BBC iPlayer, we are
typically confronted with hundreds of different recommendations at once. This plethora of
content can feel somewhat overwhelming, resulting in what John Ellis (2000) rather presciently
described many years ago as “choice fatigue”. However, the default interfaces of such services
20Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
offer just a small glimpse into the much more extensive catalogues of content that sit behind
them. The desktop version of the iPlayer, for example, includes approximately 120 different
recommendations, but beneath this is a catalogue of approximately 7,000-8,000 titles.
The interface plays a crucial role in making sense of VOD catalogues – sometimes promoting
and sometimes hiding content – and in this way they operate as “site[s] of new economies and
forms of power” (Ash, 2016:4). Given their cultural significance, interfaces have been subject
to a number of studies in recent years (e.g. Chamberlain 2011; Kelly 2011; Johnson 2017,
2019). However, far less attention has been paid to the catalogues upon which these interfaces
operate. To a large extent, this is due to the methodological challenges involved in the analysis
of catalogues. Despite these difficulties, VOD catalogues play a crucial role in the
contemporary media experience and it is therefore imperative that we develop new
methodologies that will allow us to examine them more effectively. As Ramon Lobato
maintains, “as television studies moves further into the Internet age, it must develop a robust
understanding of how catalogs work if it wishes to understand wider dynamics of access,
choice, and diversity in digital distribution.” (2018:2)
There have been several attempts to put VOD platforms more clearly on the research agendas
of media studies scholars (Lobato 2017, Johnson 2019) yet the methodological barriers still
remain. In the case of VOD catalogues, the primary obstacle is limited access to catalogue data.
This paper addresses this particular methodological challenge by developing and
demonstrating one way to gather and archive longitudinal catalogue data for the BBC iPlayer.
Using a dataset compiled over a period of approximately 12 months, I employ exploratory data
analysis [EDA] (Tukey 1977) to consider what kinds of patterns we can detect within a VOD
catalogue. This includes a consideration of the volume of titles belonging to certain channels
and genres as well as their availability. In doing so, I use to EDA to consider what we can learn
about the “dynamics of access, choice and diversity” (Lobato 2018:2), specifically in the
context of public service broadcasting.
Finally, this paper will supplement the iPlayer catalogue dataset with an iPlayer interface
dataset, enabling a consideration of the relationship between the two – a relationship which
has received little if any critical attention thus far. Given that VOD interfaces and catalogues
are interdependent (one cannot function without the other), this paper ultimately argues that
not only do we need to develop more innovative methodologies to help us archive and study
these platforms, but that we should not necessarily conceptualise and analyse interfaces and
catalogues as distinct entities.
21Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
Mareike Jenner: Controlling Television
Binge-watching has emerged as dominant mode of viewing in streaming culture: embraced
by industry its use of interfaces that privilege the practice (Jenner 2018, Johnson 2019) and
audiences Perks 2015, Steiner and Xu 2018). In light of this, it is important to look back to
see how the practice fits into a broader continuum of television’s ancillary technologies and
associated viewing practices, such as channel-surfing and its relationship with the remote
control.
This paper frames binge-watching as continuation of previous viewing practices to evade the
television schedule. In other words, television’s ancillary technologies that allow audiences to
control television. Importantly, this control is not power, but control over a viewer’s
immediate environment. This kind of individual control is framed by a neoliberal ideology in
which ‘self-improvement’ is sold as a way to package cultural capital (see, for example,
Feher 2009). In particular, the paper explores channel-surfing and its relationship with the
technology of the remote control and how it relates to binge-watching and its relationship
with the Netflix interface. Bellamy and Walker (1996) discuss the remote control as
technology that gives audiences autonomy and control over television. Similarly, the Netflix
interface forces viewers to take control over their own, personalized schedule in what Lisa
Perks calls ‘entrance flow’ (Perks 2015). Both discourses link in and (in the case of Netflix’
use of binge-watching) even capitalise on notions of ‘good’ TV as cultural capital, a strategy
of self-improvement.
Thus, this paper deals with the intersection of viewing practices, technologies and cultural
capital as mode of ‘self-improvement’ within neoliberal cultures.
22Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
Tuesday, 27 July 2021
2pm
Roundtable: Cultures of Television Studies
Ruchi Kerr Jaggi, Luca Barra, Alexia Smit, Gary Edgerton
Chair: David Levente Palatinus
23Critical Studies in Television Slow Conference 2021 Conference Programme
Wednesday, 28 July 2021
9-10.30am Television’s New Narratives
Trisha Dunleavy: WTF June? The Handmaid’s Tale and the significance of unexpected
choice’
The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu/MGM, 2017-) is a multi-season television adaptation of
Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel. With three seasons aired to date, a sizeable international
audience, and prestigious industry awards, The Handmaid’s Tale (THT) is a notable success
for US-produced ‘premium’ TV drama. However THT’s most discussed distinction as TV
drama has been its unflinching visualisation of Atwood’s nightmarish Gilead, the post-
apocalyptic, faux-theocratic, totalitarian society that has replaced contemporary America. The
epidemic of infertility that has helped form this dystopian world is a problem that Gilead’s
male oligarchy addresses via the enslavement of still fertile women as ‘Handmaids’. Absolute
rule by a fundamentalist patriarchy and the imperative to build a new population to sustain it,
legitimise the ritual rape of Handmaids by Gilead’s leaders. While every Gilead resident is
held to a rigidly proscribed role, THT’s central interest, following the novel, is the subjection
and sexual servitude of women, the key vehicle for which is primary character and
Handmaid, June Osborne (Elizabeth Moss). ‘WTF June’, is the label that one reviewer has
ascribed to the closing scene of THT’s second season. Having dangled the possibility that
June will escape from Gilead, the narrative twists sharply when she chooses the more
dangerous of two possible options: to remain in Gilead while sending her infant, Nicole, to
Canada under the protection of Handmaid Emily. In making this decision, June chooses not
to take what seems a one-off opportunity to escape her life as a Handmaid; one that she has
ardently pursued earlier in this same season.
Albeit frustrating for viewers who want her to leave Gilead while she can, June’s ‘WTF’
decision, rather than being the mistake and calamity that some reviewers have suggested, can
instead be analysed for its demonstration of the narrative fundamentals of long-form TV
drama. Identifying strategies important to THT’s effectiveness in this arena, this paper posits
that sustaining the longevity expected of it as multi-season TV drama necessitates a trade-off
between progression (a feature of complexity) and stasis (a feature of simplicity) in THT’s
narrative. There is narrative simplicity, for example, in THT’s tactical deployment of Gilead
as a situational ‘problematic’ (Ellis, 1982: 154); a convention designed to maximise the
longevity of a TV drama by anchoring its narrative in stasis. Additionally, because June’s
experience and perspectives are so pivotal to THT’s investigation of Gilead, its writers must
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