American TV Drama Research Articles

Cinematic TV drama

ABSTRACT Several television scholars have objected to the frequently made claim that TV drama in recent decades have become “more cinematic”, partly because cinematic-ness is such an ill-defined concept. This article seeks to make the concept less ambiguous and more useful by offering some basic distinctions between different meanings invoked by “cinematic”. I propose two meanings associated with production values, which are moderately evaluative, and two where “cinematic” serves as a higher compliment, one related to craft/skill, the other to notions of medium specificity. I also relate these meanings to the idea that TV series have grown increasingly cinematic. Here I argue that “film” and “television drama” are far too voluminous and heterogeneous categories to bear comparison in general, but that they can be meaningfully studied when framed as contingent creative practices grounded in time and place. The particular context for my discussion of “cinematic television” is American TV drama since the turn of the millennium. The article does not merely seek to clarify the connotations of “cinematic”, but to use cinematic-ness as a prism to through which important stylistic shifts in American TV drama can be examined. As such, the conceptual-theoretical discussion also serves historiographic purposes: The different meanings of “cinematic” highlight different industrial developments, which offer complementary perspectives on the aesthetics of American TV drama since the late-1990s.

Analysis of Naturalization and Alienation in Subtitle Translation of Modern Family

With the exchange of world cultures, cultural industries between different countries have begun to spread widely. Foreigners discuss Chinese costume dramas enthusiastically, and Chinese people also like to watch foreign sitcoms. As the number of people watching American TV dramas is increasing year by year, how to do subtitle translation well has become the focus of translation scholars. Based on the theory of domestication and foreignization put forward by the famous American translation theorist Lawrence Venuti, this paper analyzes the subtitle translation in the classic American TV series Modern Family, and discusses how to promote the best communication between different cultures in subtitle translation.

Profiles in ambiguity: how three 1960s American TV dramas “broached the unbroachable”—Vietnam

ABSTRACT Although American prime-time TV in the 1960s witnessed an “eruption” of comedies and dramas with military or combat settings, series television, like big-screen Hollywood films, virtually never dealt with Vietnam, ostensibly because the topic was “too hot” or “toxic.” Yet three overlooked series of the period did engage the war, with relative levels of explicitness and critique: Route 66 (1960–64), The Lieutenant (1963–64), and I Spy (1965–68). This paper analyzes the ways each of these dramas represented the Vietnam War, probes the implicit and explicit ideological positions each show articulated (or avoided), and offers a more nuanced account of the historical and industrial context that shaped and constrained the treatment of Vietnam in American prime-time television storytelling.

The Study of Feminism Based on Peaky Blinders

This paper makes an in-depth analysis of the "Peaky Blinders" from the aspects of role setting and plot arrangement from the standpoint of feminism, and tries to explain the breakthrough of the play in reshaping the female image and constructing the main body of female mainstream ideology. In the "Peaky Blinders", we can see the development process of feminist creative ideas from "the initial stage of essentialism tendency" to "the transitional stage of collision and integration of different feminist ideas" to "the experimental stage of trying a variety of feminist expressions" and then to "the personality stage of giving up ideas and free expression" which reflects women's recovery of initiative, women are the core and master their own emotional life. Through the analysis of the origin and development of feminism and the creation of female characters in the "Peaky Blinders", this paper reveals the great significance of female characters and tries to provide ideas for the process of creating them in film and television works for the long-term production. European and American female TV dramas can be regarded as an early and systematic bold practice of "she culture" in the field of film and television popular culture, providing rich content and various types of image texts. The image world in European and American female TV dramas corresponds to the real life under "her culture". It can be seen that European and American female TV dramas are new cultural products, which are closely related to the culture of the times and echo each other, which are its advantages. However, how to develop and improve in the future, how to develop new ideas and enrich the meaning of the text, and maintain fresh vitality and keen cultural insight are what European and American female TV dramas should think and adjust at this stage.

Serial Shakespeare: An Infinite Variety of Appropriations in American TV Drama by Elisabeth Bronfen

Reviewed by: Serial Shakespeare: An Infinite Variety of Appropriations in American TV Drama by Elisabeth Bronfen Sarah Hatchuel Serial Shakespeare: An Infinite Variety of Appropriations in American TV Drama. By Elisabeth Bronfen. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 2020. 256 pp. £80. ISBN 978–1–5261–4231–3. Serial Shakespeare is a timely addition in a series of recent books, such as Kinga Földváry's Cowboy Hamlets and Zombie Romeos (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), which explore audiovisual fictions with loose and implicit links to Shakespeare. Elisabeth Bronfen cogently analyses the aesthetic and political stakes of appropriations in serial TV dramas that use Shakespeare as a 'point of reference', turning him into something very different and affecting the way we then perceive Shakespeare's plays and characters. Via a methodology of 'crossmapping' (p. 9), Bronfen apprehends the seriality both sets of texts share, identifying the connection between a set of 'pathos formulas' (p. 16) and working through the consequences of this relation. The dialogue between Shakespeare and TV series is sometimes explicitly prompted by quotations or encouraged by common plot structures, themes, or dramatic devices such as interrelated narrative arcs, multiple perspectives, and open endings. The idea is then to look back at the early modern plays through the lens of their subsequent appropriations. Chapter 1 examines Westworld (HBO, 2016–), in which androids reach self-awareness through the quoting of The Tempest, King Lear, and Romeo and Juliet. The show, which reactivates the convention of seeing the world as a stage, reveals how these three plays are serially linked by one theme—the resistance of daughters against paternal sovereignty. Tyrannical Dr Ford appears as a new Prospero, controlling and surveilling his small heterotopia, facing Dolores and the other androids' rebellion and eventually abdicating his power at the end of season one, but only to trigger a new regime in which violence will prevail once more. The spectral reiterability of the android hosts offers a self-reflexive comment on Shakespeare's revitalization and on the format of serial TV itself. Chapter 2 revisits The Wire (HBO, 2002–08) in the light of the first tetralogy (the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III). Just as Shakespeare's history plays transform the chronicles of the Wars of the Roses, showrunner David Simon has tapped into news and his own documentaries on Baltimore. The chess game which is used to explain the rules of the drug dealers becomes the metaphor shared by the plays and the TV series. In both cases, the pawn, having arrived at the other end of the chessboard, can proclaim itself royalty. The Wire's serial structure echoes the first tetralogy's in its inclusion of us-and-them battles but also us-versus-us division and rivalries of dynastic conflict, in an environment where everyone plays a part: knowing they are being surveilled, the gangsters self-reflexively put on a show for the police. Chapter 3 explores House of Cards (Showtime, 2013–18), in which Claire Underwood cannot decide whether she is Lady Macbeth or Macbeth. She first, like Lady Macbeth, encourages her husband Frank to rise to power through bloody machinations. Frank regularly breaks the fourth wall by looking at the viewers and making them his accomplices. In the last season, Claire goes from First Lady to President and starts looking at us too, making us understand that she had her own [End Page 484] agenda all along. Claire is a Lady Macbeth who, having survived all self-doubt and guilty conscience, is ready to overtake and replace her husband. This first female president's hands get dirty even as she attempts to escape male control. Just as Shakespeare's plays implicitly raised the issue of Elizabeth I being a female ruler, House of Cards both debunks and reasserts the demonization of female political power, revealing how the idea of the first female president remains so distressful that US culture has to address it serially in different TV shows. Precisely, Chapter 4 sees Veep (HBO, 2012–19), Homeland (Showtime, 2011–20), and Scandal (ABC, 2012–18) as series in which the figure of the rogue queen Cleopatra resurfaces, challenging the dominant patriarchal power of...

Subtitle Translation of American Sitcom The Big Bang Theory From the Perspective of Eco-Translatology

Eco-translatology is a theory of translation put forward by Professor Hu Genshen, which regards translation as a process of “selective adaptation” and “adaptive selection”. The popularity of American TV dramas has aroused a huge demand for subtitle translation, resulting in the rapid growth of subtitle translation by fansub groups and increasing enthusiasm for subtitle translation studies in China. While there is no accordant idea about the understanding of subtitle translation of TV dramas on the internet translated by fansub groups. Based on the theoretical framework of Eco-translatology theory, this study examines the subtitle translation of The Big Bang Theory to analyze translators’ “selection” and “adaptation” on linguistic, cultural, and communicative dimensions. It also pays attention to the inappropriate selection of translation techniques made by the fansub groups. The analysis shows that in the translation process of The Big Bang Theory’s subtitles, the translators adopted various translation techniques which include the applications of buzzwords, Chinese idioms, annotations, and free translation to implement adaptive selection in linguistic, cultural, and communicative dimensions. And the fansub groups make some inappropriate selections as abusing the Chinese dialect in translation. These findings attempt to provide a reference for subtitle translation of American TV dramas available on the internet, as well as evidence of the explanatory power of Eco-translatology theory in subtitle translation studies, in order to supplement a new perspective on subtitle translation and more attention on this developing translation theory.

미국 드라마 “The Office”에 나타난 요청화행 전략

This study examines the request types and strategies used in American TV drama “The Office”. All requests have a head act. The head act is an essential factor to realize the speech act of request, so the 10 head act types are identified and divided by the level of directness. 10 head act types are analyzed from speaker-oriented, hearer-oriented, and speaker-hearer oriented perspectives. Head act types are as follows. 1)mood derivable, 2)explicit performative, 3)hedged performative, 4)obligation statement, 5)need statement, 6)want statement, 7)suggestory formulae, 8)query preparatory, 9)strong hint, 10)mild hint. The results show that the frequency of mood derivable is the highest among the request strategies. Explicit performative and hedged performative strategies are fewer used in the material. The hearer-oriented perspectives are frequently used in mood derivable, obligation statement, and query preparatory. Speaker-oriented perspectives are frequently used in need statement and want statement. The speaker-hearer oriented perspectives are frequently used in suggestory formula. Strong hint and weak hint requests suggest a variety of linguistic examples in sociocultural contexts.

드라마 영어에서 관습적인 표현에 대한 자각력 증진 방안에 관한 연구

The purpose of this paper is two-fold: 1) to help EFL learners distinguish between language oriented practical expressions (LOPE) and socially oriented practical expressions (SOPE) or conventionalized expressions and 2) to promote EFL learners’ awareness on SOPE in an English television series. In order to do this, one case study was performed. Participants were three college students who were English majors. Material was an American TV drama, Desperate Housewives, season 1, episode 1. This case study consisted of 3 phases. In the first phase, the subjects had no instruction and picked out their preferable expressions. In the second phase, they had instruction only about a definition of SOPE. In the third phrase, they experienced how to enter into the target speech community and what to learn. The result showed that all the subjects moved from LOPE through SOPE. They all agreed that SOPE would be the better choice. The subjects could move out of ‘language learning’ and move into ‘social learning’ which means learning social norms, values, symbols, etc. The pedagogical implication is this. When you, as a teacher, instruct SOPE or conventionalized expressions, you should guide your students like the third phase of this study. You would do well to talk about norms, values, and symbols with your students through media utterances.(Kookmin University)

Dressed for Work: The Sartorial Representations of Working Women in Early 21st-Century American Primetime Dramas

The present study is theoretically located in the field of critical feminist studies of the representation of women in the mass media. It discusses the ways in which working women characters construct and express their occupational identity in selected American primetime TV dramas of the early 21st century. The observed strategies, which range from highly restricted self-expression to unbridled sartorial liberty, appear to be heavily correlated with the prestige of the presented occupations and their levels of masculinization/feminization. Moreover, the self-limiting sartorial choices of high-achieving professional women, frequently containing their femininity, result from the competitive nature of prestigious yet traditionally male-gendered occupations. However, it is also pointed out that working women are generally depicted as determined to accentuate the physical aspects of their femininity regardless of the established dress code or traditional gendering of their occupations. Thus, the sartorial choices made by the female characters at the workplace serve in the analyzed TV shows as symbolic manifestations of women’s growing confidence as players on the job market in their own right.

Adventures between TV and film, and between Britain and America

This article explores the connections and distinctions between cinema and TV, and between the screen cultures of Britain and the USA, in British spy and detective adventure fictions of the 1960s. One such connection is the sites where films and TV series were made. Many British television adventure series of the 1960s were filmed at the same production facilities as British cinema, such as at Pinewood or at British National Studios in Elstree, near London. A second connection is that those studios’ soundstages and backlot buildings were used to represent international locations, because the export of cinema and television fiction from the UK to the USA centred on representations of international modernity, fashion and adventure. The style of 1960s adventure depended on the resources of Pinewood studios, where James Bond films were made, or the sets built at Elstree which provided simulated foreign locales for the TV adventure series The Saint, The Avengers, The Champions and Department S, for example. Each of these TV series was exported to the USA, and at the same time, American finance was used to begin the cycle of James Bond films, beginning with Dr No in 1962, which were made in British studios and also in Jamaica (a British territory). The Bond films’ spy adventures in exotic settings shared aesthetic features with TV spy and detective narratives, partly because of these similar uses of places and production facilities. The article shows how the distinctions between TV and cinema were blurred in the strange story of how James Bond first appeared on screen. It was in an American TV drama, rather than a British cinema film, and some of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels derived from ideas developed for a planned American television series.

The Age of the Antihero in Contemporary American TV Dramas

Over the past two decades, we have seen a surge of antiheroes in American TV dramas. Ranging from Tony Soprano to Dexter Morgan, from Piper Chapman to Claire Underwood, the antiheroes are morally, ethically, and often legally problematic figures to say the least. Despite their controversies, it seems they replaced the imaginary position of the more traditional heroes in TV with the allure of the dark side. Why do people love the antiheroes, the people with flaws and mixed morals? What do they represent as a whole? This paper analyzes the rise of the antihero in contemporary American TV dramas from multiple perspectives. It argues that the antiheroes are not only a result of the rapidly changing society but also of the advent of the post-network era. The antiheroes in popular TV shows, such as Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Wire, Dexter, to name a few, basically represent the contemporary societal changes and politico-economic crises which challenge and even deconstruct the existing values systems. In doing so, they often embody highly critical views on the contemporary world. However, they are also an essential part of the radically transformed American TV industry, in which complicated characters as well as complex narratives could flourish so successfully. Simply put, the rise of the antihero was necessary for the evolution and global expansion of the American TV industry. In conclusion, this paper argues that, to understand the rise of the antihero and the impact it could have, these two sides behind the rise of the antihero have to receive due consideration.

When lying is more than deceiving

Abstract Lying is a common but controversial verbal phenomenon in human society. This paper aims to uncover the motivation and mechanism of lying as regards its definition, classification and operation by analyzing both the speaker’s production and the addressee’s interpretation process. The Relevance-Adaptation Model is adopted as its theoretical framework. Lying cases, retrieved from an American TV drama Lie to Me, are analyzed from different perspectives to provide concrete evidence for the theoretical assumptions. The findings are two-fold: Theoretically, this paper formulates a working diagram of the Relevance-Adaptation Model with some modifications to the original to be better applied to the field of lying. Empirically, it supports the claim that the presumption of relevance motivates both the speaker and the addressee to lie or to process lying in the first place. Then, both communicators will enter a relevance-adaptation phase through making structural choices inter-adapt with relevant contextual correlates. An optimal lie is one which is maximally relevant and maximally adapted to the context to benefit the speaker and/or the addressee.

포스트네트워크 시대 텔레비전 드라마 연구

This paper explores new features of TV dramas in the post-network era, also known as, the post-broadcast era. In the past two decades, the so-called “quality TV series” originated from the US have been very successful, not only in terms of audience shares, but also in terms of critical acclaim. In 2011, the British Indian novelist Salman Rushdie claimed, television dramas, such as Mad Men, The Sopranos, and The Wire, just to name a few, were the new literature of this age. The success of quality American TV dramas is a global phenomenon. The changing media environment makes them more accessible to the global audiences. The rise of streaming media services, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, forever changed the way people watch and consume TV dramas. As they became a new major platform for TV dramas, it also changed the function of TV dramas in a society. Focusing on select TV dramas, this paper aims to explicate some major changes and features of the contemporary TV drama narrative. In doing so, it will reveal how the TV drama we know has evolved in our contemporary world.

Analysis of Japanese Remedial English English Learners’ Motivational Trajectories from a Complex Dynamic systems Theory Perspective

This study examined how low-level Japanese English learners’ motivation changes throughout an English course in which English is taught through reflective teaching practice. In order to investigate students’ motivational fluctuation, Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) was applied. CDST can measure how learners’ motivation changes by focusing on the process of change, as opposed to whether learners’ motivation changed or not by investigating pre- and post-data, which has been the mainstream approach in motivational research for decades. At the end of each class, a “Weekly Motivational Questionnaire” (WMQ) (Nitta, 2013; Nitta & Asano, 2010) was distributed to 14 participants, and the instructor kept a journal after the class. The materials and techniques used in this class included an American TV drama, games related to the class contents, group/pair work, and the Jigsaw Method (Aronson & Patnoe, 1997). Since the class focused on improving student listening and speaking ability, a TV drama was used as the main teaching material. Trajectory patterns were obtained using the results of the WMQ. Consequently, five motivational patterns were recognized. Through individual analyses, for instance, the importance of repeated use of tasks that are related to students’ interests are implied. A motivational developmental sequence is also hypothesized.

Identifying systemic creativity in Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad

This article considers Vince Gilligan’s highly innovative Breaking Bad (2008–13) as the outcome of a collaborative creative process shaped by the interaction between Gilligan, as the principal creative agent, with the evolving domain and field of American television. The innovativeness of Gilligan’s series is conceptualized here by means of applying Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s systems view of creativity, whereby Gilligan’s access to and impact on the domain of TV production is examined: he is seen as operating within the simultaneously constraining and enabling factors of the structures inherent to American television, its modes of production and viewership. This article elucidates how the innovativeness of Breaking Bad was the outcome of Gilligan’s adherence to and departure from particular traditions of form, format and structure inherent to the production of American TV drama – in conjunction with the radical transformations that the domain and field of American television were undergoing at the time.

Cultural Proximity and Genre Proximity: How Do Chinese Viewers Enjoy American and Korean TV Dramas?

This article examined a transnational viewing process, in which Chinese audience watch American and Korean TV dramas. Cultural proximity and genre proximity were adopted to predict media involvement and enjoyment. A quantitative content analysis was conducted with a probability sample of 16,440 comments from 411 TV dramas. It was found that cultural proximity failed to predict enjoyment but succeeded in explaining involvement. It also revealed two different routes to enjoyment—to enjoy Korean dramas through involvement with characters and American dramas through involvement with the narrative. Genre proximity was found in action/crime but not in fantasy/adventure. The level of involvement varied in different genres, such as romance, horror/crux, and comedy.

A study on the receptive-productive vocabulary distinction using the American TV drama, The good wife

The purpose of this paper is to seek possible answers to the question ‘Is it necessary to distinguish between receptive vocabulary and productive...

Canada: ADR & The Associates

This chapter examines law and justice on Canadian television. Canadian viewers generally prefer to watch American TV dramas over Canadian dramas so Canadian TV operates under the shadow of American TV. My close analysis of The Associates, and especially one of its characters, Robyn Parsons, reveals that Canadian legal TV is unique in its portrayal of alternative dispute resolution processes. This is noteworthy given how much American TV focuses on the trial to the near exclusion of other lawyerly work. Using the work of W.J.T. Mitchell, I inquire what the TV show wants and conclude that The Associates wants viewers to think about and perhaps embrace alternative dispute resolution.

The pop culture expressed in K24: Shakespeare in chaos

K24, first staged in 2005, was built around a story of an ensemble rehearsing Romeo and Juliet. Based on the American TV drama formula, K24 was performed in six episodes, each of which lasted one hour and at the end of which kept the audience in suspense. By using references to Japanese Internet culture and former Taiwanese Shakespearean adaptations, this production appropriated, mimicked, and deconstructed Shakespeare’s text as well as popular culture. The wave of popularizing and localizing Shakespeare began in Taiwan in the 1990s to celebrate the newly claimed freedom and artistic expression of cultural diversity. K24 employed this postmodernist tradition to parody Shakespeare. The Chinese pronunciation of this play title was punned to sound similar to the English word, chaos. The chaos (K24) responded to the consequence of democratization, paying tribute to the interaction of Shakespeare and Taiwan over the past two decades. It also demonstrated the ways in which Shakespeare was negotiated to remain appealing among the young generation in a new era of globalization and glocalization.

An attempt to raise Japanese EFL learners’ pragmatic awareness using online discourse completion tasks

This practical paper discusses the effect of explicit instruction to raise Japanese efl learners’ pragmatic awareness using online discourse completion tasks. The five-part tasks developed by the authors use American tv drama scenes depicting particular speech acts and include explicit instruction in these speech acts. 46 Japanese efl college students enrolled in an English grammar course received explicit instruction and completed the tasks in five consecutive classes using an e-portfolio system that allows them to share their learning outcomes. Their pragmatic awareness was measured by pre- and post-instruction pragmatic judgment tasks. The results showed that the participants’ pragmatic awareness developed significantly after the instruction. The learners evaluated the awareness raising activities as effective; however, their learning outcomes reveal challenges in developing grammatical and lexical knowledge together with pragmatic knowledge. This paper will discuss the effects of the instruction, the participants’ perception of the usefulness of the tasks, and their actual responses to the tasks to further identify the challenges that Japanese efl learners should meet to develop well-balanced communicative competence in the language.