Abstract
Abstract Lockdown has given us an occasion to discover new television series and to revisit others. TV series accompany us in our ordinary lives, but they can also be a resource or refuge in extraordinary situations. As the enduring success of Friends proves, they provide us with universes of comfort. TV series provide strong common cultural referents, which populate both ordinary conversations and political debates. TV series, by virtue of their aesthetic format (their duration, weekly and seasonal regularity, and the fact that they are, or were until recently, usually viewed in the context of the home), the attachment they inspire to their characters, the democratization and diversification of modes of viewing them (internet, streaming, discussion forums), make possible a specific form of education and constitution of a public. TV shows are hence a medium for political and ethical discussion. The article studies two series, Homeland and The Bureau, which are paradigmatic examples of a genre that has grown exponentially since the beginning of the century, and which we refer to as the “security series” genre. These series are great works of art and can also be seen as powerful tools for educating and informing the public.
Highlights
Lockdown gave us an occasion to discover new television series and to revisit others
I follow earlier themes from my work on film and on TV series,1 inspired by Stanley Cavell, and on the power of the experience of popular culture, in order to connect these themes to the place of cultural data in our lives – with regard to the genre I refer to as “security series.”
The idea that drives my work, as well as Martin Shuster’s in his very important book New Television,6 and which Cavell pursued throughout his career, is that there is a parallel between ordinary language and aesthetic judgment
Summary
Lockdown gave us an occasion to discover new television series and to revisit others. The idea that drives my work, as well as Martin Shuster’s in his very important book New Television, and which Cavell pursued throughout his career, is that there is a parallel between ordinary language (sensitivity to what we should say when) and aesthetic judgment (the discourse of criticism as determining importance) This form of criticism – this ordinary criticism – requires taking seriously the moral intentions of the producers and screenwriters of television series and movies, and the constraints imposed on these forms of fiction, again in the tradition of Cavell’s reading: breaking with a critical tradition that saw the intelligence of a film as a by-product of critical reading, Cavell emphasized that “What we are to see is the intelligence that a film has already brought to bear in its making”:7 the fact that the material itself educates the viewer, as well as the critic, and that its relevance is not dependent on a critical eye. This intertwining of the private and the public is an intertwining of modes of constitution of the public, and is expressed in new modes of subjectivation by the public
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