Contemporary TV Series Research Articles

Representations of the Police in Contemporary Russian Police TV Series

This article answers the question of how contemporary Russian TV series portray the police. The results derive from a single-case thematic and functionalist study of the popular Russian TV series Glukhar’ (which aired from 2008 to 2011). The show merits special attention because it was on air when the Russian police were undergoing a legitimacy crisis, which lead to the 2009 police reform. The series recognized the crisis and responded to it with a set of justifications. I analyze the show’s social and cultural contexts, its plot patterns, and the functions of its characters. I build a typology of justifications and claim that the show justifies the police through an open discussion about the reasons for and consequences of their lawlessness. The series shows that the legitimacy of the police is repeatedly questioned, but trust in the police is always restored because police officers are depicted as estranged from the state but not from the community. Thus, the show contains an interesting example of overcoming a legitimacy crisis through its recognition. The study opens the floor to further discussions about how popular culture resolves intense social debates about policing by symbolic means in a moment when police legitimacy is contested.

Serialowy obraz kobiet wiejskich

The article is based on an analysis of contemporary Polish television series and presents the image of women in rural areas, who are shown in these TV programmes. The author wishes to present the TV series' heroines, taking into account their profession, social position, their personal problems and other lifestyle elements. The images of women presented in the series are compared with the statistical data and research results concerning rural inhabitants. Polish rural women in the TV series are still quite stereotypically presented, and first of all, they are marginalized or absent, regardless that they are a substantial part of the audience of these series. Polish contemporary TV series, in which there are heroines – residents of the village, can be seen as representative of the situation and the position of women in the countryside. As well as the dominant stereotypical and traditional presentations, it is worth noting that the more modern presentations of feminist women, who through hard work, ingenuity and determination, change their situation of life and that of their families. Rural women are portrayed as managing themselves better than men, as having higher aspirations in life and trying to implement them, regardless of objective difficulties.

Narracyjna złożoność współczesnego serialu telewizyjnego na przykładzie Breaking Bad Vince’a Gilligana

The Narrative Complexity of Contemporary TV Series Based on Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad The formula of the contemporary TV series, as a product of quality television, diff ers signifi cantly from the traditional series in terms of its narrative structure and ways of building a plotline. Th is article presents an analysis of the Breaking Bad series’ “narrative complexity”, which is the most distinguishing feature of the modern TV series. “Narrative complexity” can be understood not only as a series of innovative narrative devices, such as cold opens, fl ashbacks and fl ashforwards, but is also based on the multiplicity of plotlines present in each episode, constituting a whole story over the course of the seasons. Looking at the ways used to construct a plot and the narrative techniques adopted in Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad, that is, his use of parallels and symmetries, and the plot’s focus on the development of the series’ (anti)hero, the show can be interpreted as a “result dramaand “mirroring drama”. Th rough its use of the above-listed features of “narrative complexity”, the show meets the standards for a contemporary, quality television series.

Mediamorfosi del romanzo popolare: dal 'feuilleton' al serial TV

In 1964, in Apocalittici e integrati, Umberto Eco stated that if the mistake of the apologists of mass culture was to believe that the multiplication of the industrial products was good in and of itself, on the contrary, the mistake of the apocalyptic-aristocratic disdainer of mass culture was to think that mass culture was radically poor, because of its very nature of “industrial reality”, as if culture could be produced outside the industrial conditioning. In a perspective that considers the historical evolution of the media, i.e. containing and forming the expression of the imagination, the goal is to reflect here on an analogy–one already observed and discussed in literature–between the narrative forms of the nineteenth century’s novel and contemporary TV series. Without trying to entirely define the relationship between the different forms of the literary and the audiovisual, in my essay I will tackle the transformations of the popular novel across different moments and media, using Eugene Sue's novel Les Mysteres de Paris and the TV serial Lost (J.J. Abrams, D. Lindelof, J. Lieber, C. Cuse) as case studies.

Challenging stereotypes? The older woman in the TV series Brothers & Sisters

The TV series, Brothers & Sisters, broadcast from 2006 to 2011 by ABC (USA) and a year later by Channel 4 (UK) with quite high audience rates, starts when the patriarchal figure, William Walker, dies of a heart attack and two female figures around their sixties come center stage: his wife, Nora Walker, and his long-term lover, Holly Harper. Once the patriarchal figure disappears, the female characters regain visibility by entering the labor market and starting relationships with other men. In that sense, both protagonists experience aging as a time in which they are increasingly freed from social and family constraints. However, their roles as nurturers keep on bringing them back to the domestic space in which they are safe from being involved in uncomfortable and unsuitable situations. Drawing on previous studies on the representation of the older woman in fictional media, this article intends to discern to what extent stereotypes related to the older woman are challenged through the two main protagonists of a contemporary TV series.

A elipse como estratégia narrativa nos seriados de TV

This paper examines the use of ellipses (“holes” in the temporal plot) as a key narrative strategy of the writers of contemporary TV series. Several examples are presented in order to characterize the ellipse as a cognitive challenge to the public, breaking the linearity and excessive redundancy of the older series (prior to 1990) that would underestimate the intelligence of the viewer.

Menti opache. Mad Men e la rappresentazione dell’interiorità nelle serie TV

One of the most visible features of Mad Men is the opposition between the lavish visual surface and the lack of depth in the description of characters. It's very difficult to empathise with Don Draper and many other Mad Men's characters, because their psychology often seems completely inaccessible or unexpressed, contrary to what happens in most contemporary TV series. The aim of this essay is to show how and why the authorial agency conveys an 'opacity effect' that clouds the spectator's understanding of the thoughts and feelings of the characters. In doing this, I will place Mad Men inside a tradition of TV series centred on the psychology and emotions of characters. The analysis will be carried out within two theoretical frameworks: James Phelan's rethorical theory of narrative and Celestino Deleyto's model of film narrative.

Representations of the Police in Contemporary Russian Police TV-Series

Studies of representations of the police are important because they affect what people think about the police as an organization, what people expect from day-to-day interactions with police officers, and how police officers themselves work in the media-saturated context of contemporary Western societies. This study is based on an approach, which does not strictly separate studies of the police as an organization from studies of how the police are represented. In this paper, I formulate a methodological framework for analyzing representations of societal and state institutions in TV series, and I use this framework to then answer the question of how the police are represented in contemporary police TV series in Russia. This paper based on a single-case semiotic study of a popular Russian TV series called Glukhar’. I consider the show’s social and cultural contexts as well as its symbolic structures, such as visual and audial elements and its narrative. I develop a narrative model of the show, argue that the most prominent motif of the show is justification of the police’s illegal actions, and finally build a typology of these justifications. I propose a detailed analysis of two types of justifications and ultimately conclude that the TV show represents the police estranged from the state but not from society. Finally, I argue that my methodological framework can be applied to other TV series in studies, which address representations of societal and state institutions.

Open Your Eyes Wider: Overexposure in Contemporary American Film and TV Series

Meme si l’on trouve des emplois realistes de la surexposition au cinema, la surexposition semble toujours avoir une valeur symbolique, fonctionnant comme un code cinematographique qui traduit l’exposition a « l’autre » et a des etats-limites du corps ou de la conscience. Parce que l’exposition et la surexposition semblent donc liees a une esthetique du choc et de la revelation (extatique ou traumatique), l’exces de lumiere pointe souvent egalement les limites de ce que nous pouvons regarder en face. Finalement, sur un plan reflexif, si la surexposition cree un effet hypnotique, l’exces de lumiere reactive aussi notre conscience du cinema comme artifice, dans une variation contemporaine sur les allegories baroques de la vie comme songe.

Tv-serien som vor tids roman?

Jakob Isak Nielsen: "Tv-serien som vor tids roman?"AbstractJakob Isak Nielsen: “The TV Series as the Novel of our Time?”In recent years contemporary TV series – particularly American one-hour drama series such as The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-2007), The Wire (HBO, 2002-2008) and Mad Men (AMC, 2007-) – have often been likened to many of the canonic works within the history of the novel. This article discusses the validity of this hypothesis byhighlighting a number of similarities between the two art forms before ultimately demonstrating how they differ from each other and how they are best understood as products of particular media-systemic circumstances.

Representation of Asperger syndrome in contemporary movies and TV series

Representation of Asperger syndrome in contemporary movies and TV series

The American Presidency and the 25th Amendment in Contemporary TV Series: Fiction, Reality, and the Warped Mirrors of the Post-9/11 Zeitgeist

This article analyzes how recent TV series (1999-2010) have staged the American Presidency in a form of “revolving door” between fiction and reality, and how all stage a crisis allowing a vice-president to become president. While highlighting the contrasts in representations staged by series as diverse as 24, The West Wing, Commander-In-Chief, Heroes or Battlestar Galactica, this study will examine whether scripts that imagine “alternative” presidents empower us, as viewers, through projection and identification, preparing the collective subconscious for long-delayed progress and change, or whether the systematic casting of a central presidential figure simply reinforces the institution of the presidency itself. It will also question viewing in time: since History continues to unfold (or to repeat itself) after the series themselves have come to an end, is it not the case that the gap between the original viewing and a later viewing creates a “time warp” of sorts? More ironically still, is it not unavoidable that an opus that represents the Oval Office as a place of noble civics and virtuous political drama like The West Wing has become outdated compared to those series that most warp time, space, and our worldview, because fiction centering on distrust and paranoia, like 24, Battlestar Galactica, and even Heroes, better translates the post-9/11 zeitgeist?

Marcimainstream? History in two contemporary Swedish TV series

The article analyzes the Swedish director Mikael Marcimain's two most recent TV-series, Lasermannen and Upp till Kamp, with an emphasis on the ways in which these two historical works use and relate to the archival material of Swedish Public Service Television.