Drama Series Research Articles

HBO’s Euphoria and the complexities at play in the costumed representations of contemporary masculinities

This article discusses the language of screen costume and representations of masculinity via a close reading of the successful and critically acclaimed 2019 HBO drama series Euphoria. It considers three key characters, Rue, Nate and Fez, and how each of these characters makes visible certain cultural and sociological ideologies which concern and influence current debates around diverse masculinities, social class and creative subjectivity. It is argued that the production team behind Euphoria employs creative acts of appropriation to articulate and explore the diversity of masculine lived experience within the restricted language of television. This is evidenced through the character of ‘Rue’, who sits in opposition to all other characters identified as feminine or transitioning in both narrative context and, significantly, costuming. ‘Rue’ is therefore explored as the masculine articulation and/or manifestation of the creator – Sam Levinson’s subjective position. ‘Nate’ is explored in relation to the currency of damaging stereotypes of dominant masculinity within television drama and how misconceptions around gendered identities work to reinforce, perpetuate and normalize problematic behavioural traits. It is suggested that we need to expand understandings of ordinary clothing or costume as a language, how meaning is articulated within this language and how the materiality of ordinary or unexceptional dress evolves and mutates and becomes a set of unquestioned yet dangerous symbols or significations. ‘Fez’ will be examined in response to Henri Lefebvre’s 1960s ideas around moments of contestation, alongside a discussion of the role that the body and clothing play in marking out or positioning ideas around the intersection of social class and masculinity which can be applied to differing, global manifestations of social hierarchies. Readings of ‘Fez’ highlight middle-class insecurities around subjective value and distance from working-class experience and are played out through the character’s costuming.

Beyond fact and fiction: Cultural memory and transmedia ethics in Netflix’s The Crown

The aim of this study is to discuss the potential ethical implications of the fictionalization of historical events represented across multiple media platforms – under the powerful umbrella of streaming media services en général and Netflix in particular – to examine the potential impact fictionalization has on what is culturally remembered and what is forgotten. Combining theoretical approaches from transmedia studies and cultural memory, the article addresses possible ethical conundrums involved in the Netflix historical drama series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II: The Crown. Methodologically, the article is structured as a case study underpinned by the multidimensional analytical model proposed by Erll, chosen to explore how the blurred lines between fact and fiction of the flagship historical drama The Crown could have ethical implications for and impact on what is remembered and what is forgotten regarding recent memories of the British Royal Family. The research findings indicate that a deeper understanding of the conventions of the historical fiction genre, as well as the transmedial ramifications of streaming media productions, could potentially mitigate the ethical implications of The Crown, going above and beyond fact and fiction.

Malaysia as a Film Location for Foreign Production

The foreign film industry is one of the creative industries that has helped a lot to generate the country's economy and improve the tourism sector. The arrival of foreign film production can enhance the country's reputation through the introduction of science and culture to the world community through film. In addition, the creative industry is able to introduce interesting places in Malaysia to be used as filming locations. Indirectly can promote Malaysia as a destination of choice for filming purposes. In addition to helping promote the country, job opportunities can be created for artists and behind -the -scenes crew. Various factors must be identified as to why foreign production companies make Malaysia one of their filming locations whether in the category of films, drama series, documentaries or television programs. This study aims to identify the focus location for the purpose of filming foreign films and also look at the attractions and facilities such as incentives provided by the government to the production of these foreign films for filming in Malaysia.

Komposisi Visual dan Tata Cahaya Pada Film Netflix Berjudul Squid Game

2021 was the year of Netflix’s sensation, the South Korean drama series, "Squid Game" directed by Hwang Dong Hyuk. The visual and audio production are extraordinary, and the idea of ​​the storyline is quite interesting, resulted in one of the highest ratings in Netflix. This analysis examines the creative process in the idea of ​​pictures taken in the series by studying cinematographic visual composition based on composition theory by Paul Wheeler. In this paper, the authors try to examine some of the best scenes as a sampling study, and how a composition can provide an important role in communicating the drama series’ storyline. Surely this can be developed as a further learning medium in the study of cinematography and composition.

"Man is driven in total by his insecurities": Tony Soprano's Castration

HBO’s massively successful and influential crime drama series The Sopranos helped to usher in a new wave of complex, boundary-pushing narratives by confronting audiences with a fresh and subversive portrait of crime, family, and the legacy of Freud in American culture at the turn of the 21st century. The series centers around the daily life of mobster Tony Soprano as he navigates the challenges posed to his business by the RICO Act, to his family and marriage by his double life, and to his mental health by his deteriorating sense of power and identity. Previous analyses of the series have recognized that Freudian psychoanalysis is a major theme in the series as Tony visits psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Melfi to find the root causes of his depression and anxiety, but few have produced psychoanalytic readings of the series itself. Through a scene-by-scene analysis of the series pilot through a Freudian lens, this essay examines how the characterization of Tony (and others) engages with the Freudian themes of castration anxiety and the Oedipus complex in a self-conscious manner and comes to the conclusion that Tony’s neurosis is driven by an unconscious resentment of his mother.

The Impact of Selected Film Productions on the Development of Film Tourism and the Tourism Attractiveness of the Region

This paper examines how a Polish television drama series Father Matthew is used for promoting the town of Sandomierz and its vicinity. It aims to identify the tourism values presented in the film production and to describe promotional activities related to film tourism based on the results of surveys. The empirical part presents the results of surveys conducted in 2022 investigating the respondents’ interest in film and its effect on travelling for tourism. It was established which cultural and natural values were used to promote the town by exhibiting them in the TV drama series. Reference was made to the quantity and nature of information directly regarding the plot of Father Matthew published by national and regional media in Poland. It was demonstrated that the indicated film production is the main form of the town’s promotion – used for building a complete tourism product. It enhances the town’s attractiveness and recognisability and increases the use of its tourism facilities – thus stimulating the development of film tourism.

Rashna Wadia Richards, Cinematic TV: Serial Drama Goes to the Movies

Cinematic TV promises to provide much that should be of interest to television studies: a comprehensive interrogation of its titular concept, and an ‘innovative theoretical framework’ for exploring intertextuality. The book focuses on a number of high-end television drama serials in the so-called ‘American Quality TV’ tradition, although it slips easily into reading its selection as co-extensive of the wider (and, one would hope, more cosmopolitan) field of ‘contemporary serial TV drama’. The slippage would be less of a concern were it not underpinned by an introductory, US-centric history of relations between television and cinema, which quickly dismisses television as having been a ‘vast wasteland’ until it was rescued by the arrival of ‘widely acclaimed creators […] from the film industry’ in the late 1990s (p. 4). More promisingly, Wadia Richards acknowledges difficulties presented by use of ‘cinematic’ as an evaluative term, proposing instead that television should be so-called because it appropriates cinema, revealing an inherently ‘archival impulse’ (p. 3) that manifests through a range of intertextual modalities: homage, evocation, genre and parody.

The Ideological Recontextualisation of Modern Fatherhood in Scandinavian and British Nordic Noir Crime Series

Nordic Noir crime series have enjoyed much popularity and positive critical attention in Britain, as have many other aspects of Scandinavian ways of life, and the extent and nature of this cultural curiosity in the years following the international release of the originary <em>Forbrydelsen/The Killing</em> (2007) deserves further analytical attention. This article investigates one important manner in which culturally specific and ideologically charged content was received and negotiated in Britain in this period by comparing how conceptions of modern fatherhood are expressed in Scandinavian crime drama and British adaptations of the Nordic Noir crime genre. Nordic Noir series based in both cultures can be seen to share a strong thematic focus on fatherhood, especially centred on characters that embody features associated with openly affectionate and hands-on fatherhood, or “modern dads”. However, there are notable differences in how the figure of the modern dad is represented in Scandinavian crime drama and British series that appropriate key genre features of Nordic Noir, which suggests that the construct has undergone what is termed “ideological recontextualisation”. The Scandinavian modern dad characters tend to be heroes, their capacity for involved, selfless love and care for their children unproblematised and uncontested within the story worlds, while their British counterparts are far more suspect entities. Their seemingly close and loving interaction with children may be potentially sexually motivated, immaturely or selfishly handled, or even serve to mask their criminal intent, and they typically turn out to be the villains of the stories. The Scandinavian ideology connected to modern fatherhood appears, then, to have been an object of both fascination and contestation in British culture in this period, and may have been more resistant to undisputed cultural importation than female main characters with attachment issues and woolly jumpers.

From Elif to Esty? Unorthodox and Turkish German Cinema's Captivity Narrative

Abstract The 2020 Netflix drama series Unorthodox draws on tropes from a vexed archive of transcultural cinema, in particular Turkish German cinema. Through the frame of the captivity narrative, this essay examines how the series about a young Hasidic Jewish woman who escapes her family and community in Williamsburg, New York, and flees to Berlin presents culturally determined themes of victimhood, oppression, and gendered subjugation. A comparison with Turkish German films, such as 40 Square Meters of Germany (40 Quadratmeter Deutschland, dir. Tevfik Başer, West Germany, 1986) and When We Leave (Die Fremde, dir. Feo Aladağ, Germany, 2010), calls attention to the continuity of the captivity narrative, with its troubling themes, and asks the question of intent. As scholars have indicated in the case of Turkish German cinema, filmmakers have frequently been faced with the task of appealing to German mainstream audiences eager to see their own cultural stereotypes reaffirmed on screen. Rooted in colonialist and Orientalist fantasies, the captivity narrative provided an effective conduit. But what is it still doing in Unorthodox? Close readings of several scenes from the series and engagement with Hortense Spillers's concept of “pornotroping” as well as Hamid Naficy's “housebondage” and Meyda Yeğenoğlu's “unveiling” reveal at once the problems and the possibilities of Unorthodox as it employs and subverts the captivity narrative. The essay concludes with an analysis of place, namely, the Berlin setting of the series, as a historically fraught context that likewise raises questions about intentionality and the role of Germany's past and present.

K 드라마 영웅서사에 내재한 충서(忠恕)사상

This study aims to examine the thought inherent in the hero narrative of the TV drama series, Itaewon Class. That is because it is judged that the universal value of mankind is contained in the heroic narrative, which is the prototype of the narrative. This is why this study aims to explore the philosophical thoughts of chung-seo (忠恕) as a theoretical background. The idea of chung-seo, a core concept of Confucius along with benevolence (仁) and rite (禮), is understood in terms of Juja’s ideas. In this context, chung (忠) refers to jinsimjigi (盡心之己) which means doing one’s best to keep his heart, and seo (恕) refers to not forcing others to do what he or she does not want to do. This study utilizes the heroic narrative stages advanced by Christopher Vogler as a method to analyze the drama, Itaewon Class in order to find the intertextuality between the drama and the ideology of chung-seo. Therefore, this paper first confirms that the drama is a heroic narrative, and tries to reveal the thought inherent in the drama. The study results are as follows: In the drama, Itaewon Class with a heroic narrative, a vocation is given to the main character, Sae-Roi Park to exclude violence, and the changed vocation is to prove that the business ethics is keeping faith with his coworkers. And, through the fulfillment of the main character’s vocation, the drama successfully acquires the elixir of moral life orientation. In addition, as a result of analysis, it was found that the main character, Sae-Roi Park, is a character with the idea of chung, the necessary and sufficient condition for a hero. In this context, chung is extended from the self, to the others, to the society, etc. Based on this, the main character practices the idea of chung, which returns chung to the main character, leading him to achieve his purpose. This is the universal moral value contained in the drama. Through this, this study confirms that the ideology inherent in the drama Itaewon Class is the ideology of chung-seo.

Capítulo 7. Pillorying the Pillars: the EU identity crisis through the lens of Italian contemporary film and TV drama

This chapter investigates screen representations of migrants in Italian productions over the last two decades through a methodological blend of textual analysis and statistical analysis of select hard data.A representative sample of feature films (Saimir, Good morning Aman, La desconocida, Cover Boy, Mar Nero, Francesca, Terraferma, Fuego en el mar) reveals a balance between narratives of clash and encounter between cultures while highlighting the frequency of the victim paradigm almost always through a vision ab intra that, in most cases, carries a symbolic function of condemnation of a social issue (be it racism or injustice) and of promoting integration in the form of compassionate realism.However, a detailed analysis of audience numbers and box office records (both in Italy and in other European markets such as Spain) also reveals the low impact and public outreach of these films. The real paradigm shift in the past two decades has been from film to serial television, which has become capable of attracting audiences of millions and multiplying exports.Thus, the second part of the chapter will argue how, through a distinctive blending and dramatization of true facts and fiction, series like Gomorra, Suburra and El Comisario Montalbano push beyond traditional stereotypes and can be seen as paradigmatic of the crisis of the European Identity as a result of the failure (by Italian and EU institutions alike) to keep true to the so-called Pillars that the European entity has set itself.&#x0D; Palabras clave: EU Pillars, Migration/migrants, Italy, Feature film, TV serial drama, Audience outreach.

The Case of &lt;i&gt;Deutschland 83&lt;/i&gt;: Global Internet-Distributed Television and its Effects on Local Viewing Behavior and Industry Practices

This article examines the German drama series Deutschland 83 and its unexpectedly low German viewership as a case study. Highlighting the benefit of integrating audience research into analyses of shifting industrial practices, this article illuminates the complexities of negotiating local tastes in an era of global content flows. Viewer feedback reveals the importance of understanding viewing behavior in the streaming age as a confluence of content-based preferences and expectations of a specific technologically afforded user experience. This shift in viewing behavior not only has implications for production practices and local producers but also informs how local private broadcasters adjust in order to remain competitive within the growing German television landscape.

Görsel işitsel çeviri: “Orange Is the New Black” dizisinin İngilizce-Türkçe alt yazılarının Toury’nin öncül normları ve çeviri stratejileri açısından değerlendirilmesi

Görsel işitsel çeviri alanı çeviribilim açısından oldukça yeni bir alandır ve çeviribilim çatısı altında bir paradigma olarak nitelendirilebilir. Söz konusu literatüre bir katkı sunmak amacıyla kalem alınan bu çalışmada, 2013-2019 yılları arasında yedi sezon yayınlanan komedi drama türündeki “Orange Is The New Black” dizisinin İngilizce orijinali ve Türkçe alt yazı çevirileri incelenmiştir. Dizide, kadın mahkumların hapishanede yaşadıkları duygusal olaylar, geçirdikleri tecrübeler, aralarındaki iletişim, aşkları, değişimleri ve geçmiş hayatları detaylı olarak anlatılmaktadır. Bu açıdan orijinal dizideki İngilizce alt yazı olay örgüsüsü Türkçe alt yazıda ne oranda korunmuştur veya korunabilmiş midir sorusundan hareketle, Türkçe versiyonda uygulanan çeviri stratejileri örneklendirilmiş ve çeviride kaynak mı yoksa erek odaklı bir yaklaşım mı benimsendiği betimlenmeye çalışılmıştır. Yapılan araştırmada özellikle dublajla karşılaştırıldığında incelenen Türkçe alt yazıların çoğunlukla kaynak metne sadık kalarak aktarıldığı görülmüştür. Bu da Türkçe alt yazının Toury’nin öncül normları içerisinde yer alan yeterlik kutbuna yakın bir çeviri yaklaşımıyla oluşturulduğunu göstermektedir. Son olarak kaynak odaklı yaklaşım benimsenmesinin arkasındaki olası nedenler değerlendirme kısmında ifade edilmiştir.

Changes and continuities of Makjang drama in the Korean broadcasting industry

ABSTRACT This paper examines the changes and continuities of makjang drama series within the structural changes that abound in the Korean broadcasting industry. Based on analysis of publications by terrestrial broadcasters and statistics of television ratings, the findings indicate that terrestrial television networks, which have been the major production and distribution outlets of Korean television dramas, recognize makjang drama to be important in securing their position following the entry of new players into the market, namely mobile and social media platforms, streaming services, and new broadcasters. While leading screenwriters and production studios strive to evolve and move away from the genre by reflecting the changing tastes of audiences, terrestrial broadcasters continue programming makjang drama despite criticisms against the genre as they record high television ratings with strong support from older audiences. In spite of criticisms and controversies over their improbable plots and violent and sensational clichés, the findings of this study explain that much of broadcasters’ persistence in producing makjang drama should be understood within the context of industrial changes.

Uncovering The Elements, Viewer’s Perception and Factors of Violent Content in Netflix ‘You’ Drama Series

This qualitative study focuses on the elements, viewer's perception and factors of violent content in the Netflix 'You' drama series. Three research objectives were addressed: (1) To analyse the elements that influence the viewers' perception to watch Netflix 'You' drama series, (2) To identify the viewers' perception of reality in the violent content portrayed in the Netflix 'You' drama series, and (3) To identify the contributed factors generating the viewers' perception of reality on the violent content portrayed in the Netflix 'You' drama series. The Cultivation Theory guided this study where meaningful findings were obtained through in-depth interviews with six (6) informants who subscribed to Netflix, watched 'You' drama series for season one and season two, which lived in the Klang Valley. Data analysis were conducted with data gathering and using the NVivo to analyse the coding. The thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Overall, the findings revealed significant themes in every research questions. For RQ1, the elements that influence the viewers' perception of watching 'You' drama series on Netflix were genre selection, binge-watching, and attraction to violent content. For RQ 2, the viewers' perception of reality on the violent content portrayed in the Netflix 'You' drama series has been revealed through the act of murder and torture, brutal actions, anxiety, fear and cautiousness. The RQ3 has revealed the accepting and dismissing violence, personal, and other experiences were the contributed factors generating the viewers' perception of reality on the violent content portrayed in the Netflix 'You' drama series. Keywords: Perception of violent content, perception of reality, violence portrayal, cultivation theory, binge-watching.

WOMEN REPRESENTATION IN POLYGAMY GENRE TV DRAMA SERIES

The current development of films and drama series as mass media has a role as an effective form for conveying a message and “Mega Series Suara Hati Istri: Zahra” is one that raises a discussion with gender issues in the form of social relations between women and men. This drama series also tells the culture of polygamy and women's role is still dominated by men in social life. Based on this description, this research is built on the issue of gender and the role of women which represented in the media. The research uses Sara’s Mills discourse analysis in order to see how women represented in a polygamy genre. Focused on the micro features to analyzed how women represented by level such as subject-object position and director-viewers position. There are ten scene in total which analyzed and described by the visual images, forming dialog into text to analyze it from the text form , and also the symbols that shown in by the scenes. Based on the methods, in this research was found that there are differences in the position of women and men in the practice of polygamy where the men’s role is dominance. the formation of this drama series, which is considered to reflect the values of everyday life as well by depicting the position of women as discourse which seen from the position of the reader role and is considered by the director.

Dual ambivalence: The Untamed Girls as a counterpublic

The male-male romance web series The Untamed reached a height of media interest in the summer of 2019 in China. Numerous Chinese young women were obsessed with the drama centred on the relationship between the two male protagonists, and many fan followers identified themselves as ‘ The Untamed Girls’. Through online observation of young female fans of the male-male romance web series, this study articulates how they were self-organised as a counterpublic and utilised strategic ways to negotiate with the party-state censorship. Drawing upon the conceptualisation of ‘ambivalence’, the study analyses a dual ambivalence in their collective actions. It is argued that The Untamed Girls’ participation as a popular feminist project is, however constantly intertwined with an assumption of heteronormativity and an internalised misogyny, where these seemingly empowered women are simultaneously reaffirming a heterosexual regulation of sexual desires and devaluing women when they celebrate the male-male romance embodied in such a drama series.

Gender roles and equality through popular Asian drama series: critical interpretations and pedagogical implications

Abstract The paper draws on two drama series in Asia and demonstrates that studying issues related to gender roles and equality through popular historical Asian drama series is both challenging and fruitful. The present study not only illustrates the complexity involved in studying gender roles and gender equality, but also suggests several teaching pedagogies. Looking at gender roles and equality from a historical perspective and employing a comparative analysis of the past and present can help students assess whether gender roles and equality have remained the same or evolved in the Asian context. Critical literacy enables the broadening of perspectives when taking into consideration the gender roles adopted by the various characters to survive in the complex world. Critical literacy, pedagogies of affect as well as pedagogies of invitation and transformation can be utilized to examine how performing assigned gender roles can result in favouritism, which may in turn lead to atrocities. The implications of the study may be applicable to contexts outside Asia.

Rethinking women’s guilty pleasures in a social media age: From soap opera to teen drama series

Fans of teen drama television series often feel that their pleasures are devalued. The history of research into soap opera fans (the genre from which teen drama series derive) tells us that this is unsurprising, as women’s popular pleasures have long been denigrated. Gaining global popularity in the mid-2000s, teen drama fandoms have almost exclusively played out on social media, and this article asks how fans’ experiences of their ‘guilty pleasures’ might have changed in a social media age. The article argues that two things remain unchanged: (1) the stubbornness of gendered and classed assumptions about ‘acceptable’ forms of culture and (2) the policing of behaviour within fandoms. But a noteworthy change lies in the norms themselves; that is, laborious and emotional fan practices are now more valuable than ‘likes’ and other social media metrics, a shift that undoes decades-old understandings of acceptable attachments to popular cultures.

VTubers and anime culture

This study attempts to identify Malaysian youth's interest in anime culture and one of its subcultures, Virtual YouTubers (VTubers). Anime, manga and drama series count amongst the most popular and well-received types of Japanese popular culture since the 1990s, where their translation into various languages have rendered them globally renowned. A plethora of studies have been done on anime and manga globally. However, studies on its subculture, VTubers, an online platform that uses a digital avatar generated using computer graphics, are still scarce, particularly in the Malaysian context. A total of 104 respondents participated in an online survey conducted using Google Forms. The respondents comprised Japanese language students from two public universities in Malaysia. Some of the respondents are members of a Japanese Cultural Club from one of the universities. The survey was divided into three sections: respondents' background, respondents' interest in anime culture, and their interest in VTubers. The results showed that the most popular culture is anime, followed by manga, song and seiyuu (voice actor/actress). The most well-liked anime genre is fantasy, followed by humour, love stories (romance), and mystery. Most of the respondents knew the word "VTuber" from anime, friends, and internet platforms such as YouTube.