Television Drama Research Articles

Analyzing politeness and refusal speech acts in popular Chinese television drama series

Analyzing politeness and refusal speech acts in popular Chinese television drama series

Malmö in the Public Imaginary: Thin Blue Line, Dialect Television Drama, and Local Patriotism

Malmö in the Public Imaginary: Thin Blue Line, Dialect Television Drama, and Local Patriotism

Middle Eastern television drama: Politics, aesthetics, practices By ChristaSalamandra, NourHalabi (Ed.), New York: Routledge. 2023. pp. 190. $160.00. (hardcover)

Middle Eastern television drama: Politics, aesthetics, practices By ChristaSalamandra, NourHalabi (Ed.), New York: Routledge. 2023. pp. 190. $160.00. (hardcover)

Development Dilemma and Improvement Measures of IP Film and Television Plays

Development Dilemma and Improvement Measures of IP Film and Television Plays

The Phenomenon of Cultural Discount and Its Reasons in the Cross-cultural Communication of Domestic TV Dramas--Taking The Legend of Zhenhuan as an Example

In the perspective of the dynamic global landscape, individuals residing overseas have several misunderstandings and prejudices towards China, resulting in a range of obstacles limiting the promotion of Chinese perspectives. Utilizing the story of an attractive Chinese narrative and cultivating a positive perception of a nation's greatness can serve as a potent strategy for mitigating opposition towards Chinese culture. Nevertheless, the occurrence of "cultural discount" frequently arises in the context of cultural export, so significantly impacting the efficacy of cultural communication. The majority of these investigations about this phenomena mostly centre around the cross-cultural communication aspects of documentary films, with comparatively less emphasis placed on TV dramas and other forms of film and television that exhibit greater efficacy in communication. This study examines the phenomena of "cultural discount" and its underlying causes by taking the TV drama The Legend of Zhenhuan as an example. The Legend of Zhenhuan was popular in China but not in the United States. The research reveals that various issues, including disparities in textual comprehension, absence of translation artistic elements, and fragmented narrative structures, have an impact on the comprehension of Chinese television dramas among western viewers. Moreover, these factors contribute to the exacerbation of the phenomena known as "cultural discount". These variables serve as a theoretical foundation for domestic film and television productions to enhance their outreach efforts, thus facilitating the more efficient dissemination of Chinese culture and the establishment of China's image.

Globally connected, nationally restrained: Platform ambiguities and censorship in Turkey's drama production

About a decade ago, Turkey's television drama makers believed that streaming platforms would expand markets and create an uncensored space. Platforms did partly reform working conditions and enable drama creatives globally to produce quality shows. Yet creatives remain politically restrained because of platforms’ compliance with state regulations. Drawing on platform studies’ emphasis on how platforms have both restraining and enabling features, and extending this towards the contradictions around creative freedom and state control, I conceptualize drama creatives’ working experiences with national and global streaming platforms through platform ambiguity. Platform ambiguity allows a grasp of how platforms exert power over cultural producers by both enabling and restraining their creative work. Dewesternizing platforms and cultural production scholarship by highlighting how drama makers are not only creative but also geopolitical subjects dependent on the state, I show that their imaginaries and labour practices are always embedded in national contexts and shaped by regulatory structures.

Multiple Construction of Nanjing s Aesthetic Image in Geo-cultural Context -- Nanjing elements in film and television drama works as an example

As a renowned historical and cultural city, Nanjing boasts a rich cultural heritage and unique humanistic landscapes. In recent years, numerous film and television dramas have been filmed in Nanjing. These works, with their diverse aesthetic styles and visual symbols, have fully displayed Nanjing s geo-cultural traits and distinctive elements, crafting a spatial aesthetic imbued with Nanjing s local character. These dramas vary in their aesthetic portrayal of Nanjing s humanistic landscapes and geography, collectively creating a colorful and multifaceted visual space that contributes to the construction of Nanjing s aesthetic image.

Violation of the Principle of Cooperation and Implicature in the Drama One Liter of Tears

The objective of this study is to provide a description of the various instances where the cooperation principle is violated and implicatures are present in the drama One Litre of Tears. The data on violation of the cooperation principle and implicatures are analyzed using Grice's theory of cooperation principle (1975) and Yule's theory of implicatures (2006). This research is a descriptive study conducted using a qualitative approach. The primary data source utilized in this study is the television drama series titled "One litre of tears." The research data consist of utterances that include breaches of the collaboration principle and encompass implicatures. Data gathering approaches employ the method of listening and recording. Data analysis techniques employ intralingual and extra-lingual correspondence methods, utilizing advanced comparison linking techniques to achieve both equalization and differentiation. The study findings indicate that there are 8 instances of violating the quantity maxim, 6 instances of violating the quality maxim, 6 instances of violating the relevance maxim, and 6 instances of violating the way maxim. These violations result in a total of 10 general conversational implicatures, 6 specialized conversational implicatures, 6 scaled implicatures, and 4 conventional implicatures.

Continuation and desperation in contemporary multiseason television drama

Abstract This paper examines how multiseason drama serials, including those characterized as ‘quality’ or ‘complex’ television, deliver their continuation across multiple seasons. It proposes ‘desperation’ as a distinctive storytelling modality in which continuation itself and the narrative means by which continuation is managed are brought to the fore, charting how this is deployed by many shows which use season-long stories and/or stories which run for the lifetime of the show. Dramas derived from literary sources are examined alongside those where original narratives are drafted while they are already underway, and the relationship among continuation, seriality, adaptation, and literary/story-telling models is considered. Finally, through discussion of ‘show bibles’ and ‘pitch bibles’ it contends that continuing dramas effectively adapt themselves through the manner in which earlier seasons generate models and possibilities for those that follow.

Sitcom as refuge, sitcom as prison: Nostalgia, anti‐nostalgia, and the embedded multi‐camera sitcom inWandaVisionandKevin Can F**k Himself

AbstractThis article claims that the recent trend in television and web streaming drama series to feature segments shot in the style of a multi‐camera sitcom, a phenomenon which is termed “embedded sitcom,” reflects the current popularity of nostalgia in popular culture. Situating the sitcom in the context of television history and theories of nostalgia, the article argues that embedded sitcom reveals the nostalgic quality of the sitcom genre as well as of the medium of television, and negotiates a larger cultural conflict between the lucrative potency of nostalgia for past media formats and a wariness of nostalgia as politically regressive.

Beyond Words

Beyond Words

Application of Intelligent Algorithms and Big Data Analysis in Film and Television Creation

With the rapid development of social media, people can access a large amount of data in a short period of time, and big data technology has emerged. With the vigorous development of cloud computing and big data, the method of mining audience interests through a large amount of data to guide film and television creation has attracted more and more attention from experts and scholars. In order to understand the current situation of film and television drama creation in China and provide suggestions for the shortcomings in the industry, this article mainly analyzes the application of intelligent algorithms for traffic prediction models and big data analysis in film and television creation. This intelligent algorithm can predict the potential audience of movies or TV dramas, helping producers and investors make decisions. This system utilizes artificial intelligence technology to select suitable actors for characters based on their matching degree and past work performance. This article applies intelligent algorithms to big data processing to improve the accuracy of data processing. This article explores the application of intelligent algorithms and big data analysis in film and television creation. Using machine learning algorithms to predict the potential audience of a movie or TV series based on historical data, providing decision-making basis for investors and producers. This system utilizes AI technology to select suitable actors for characters based on their matching degree with characters and past work performance, improving the scientific and accurate selection of roles. The application of these technologies helps to improve production efficiency and quality, reduce costs and risks, and inject new impetus into the sustainable development of the film and television industry.

Research on Risk Management and Control of Chinese Film and Television Drama Production—The Case of ‘Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace’

With the gradual enrichment of material life, people’s spiritual needs are becoming increasingly large, stimulating the development of TV dramas. The Chinese Intellectual Property (IP) film and television industry has recently been enlarging. However, some risks are hiding in this new hit. This thesis analyzes the case of ‘Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace’, a famous and typical palace fighting drama that invested a lot of money and eventually became mediocre. This study lists the main risks and corresponding reasons for this failure and separates them into script, finance, policy, and marketing, which includes the problems of the creative environment and producers’ processing methods. This essay puts different suggestions to the official department and producers in these four perspectives to improve the current situation. However, this passage has some limits due to the lack of more convincing and authentic data to get an accurate conclusion. But if recommendations can be implemented, it will greatly improve China’s film and television drama creation environment.

Depictions of social workers and other caring professionals on television

Summary Social workers, alongside many professionals in “caring” domains, often feel they are poorly represented in television dramas. This study draws on a 172-million-word database to consider how social workers and seven other professional groups (cop, doctor, nanny, nurse, priest, teacher, and therapist) are portrayed in English-medium TV programs in the period 2010–2017. IMDb plot summaries are analyzed, and 200 examples per profession (n = 1,600) are classified as negative, positive, or neutral. Employing the methodology of corpus linguistics, the study contrasts with previous research as the focus is on the language surrounding mentions of professionals rather than on visual depictions or characters’ actions. Findings The study evidences the prevalence of negative societal discourses around social workers as either judgmental bureaucrats or uncaring “childcatchers,” contextualizing the findings through comparison with other professionals. The analysis also suggests that social work characters on TV—in common with those from other female-dominated professions such as nanny or nurse—are frequently referred to in terms of their sexual availability or physical appearance. Applications Findings will have practical relevance for those interested in the recruitment, job satisfaction, and retention of practitioners, and in reducing the stigmatization of social workers and their clients. The innovative methodology employed in the study offers particular insights for social work researchers and also scriptwriters. The study evidences the ongoing need to support media professionals and the general public to better understand the challenges facing the profession and thereby reduce the tendency toward a culture of blaming individuals for society's failings.

Vicarious punishment of moral violations in naturalistic drama narratives predicts cortical synchronization

Punishment of moral norm violators is instrumental for human cooperation. Yet, social and affective neuroscience research has primarily focused on second- and third-party norm enforcement, neglecting the neural architecture underlying observed (vicarious) punishment of moral wrongdoers. We used naturalistic television drama as a sampling space for observing outcomes of morally-relevant behaviors to assess how individuals cognitively process dynamically evolving moral actions and their consequences. Drawing on Affective Disposition Theory, we derived hypotheses linking character morality with viewers’ neural processing of characters’ rewards and punishments. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine neural responses of 28 female participants while free-viewing 15 short story summary video clips of episodes from a popular US television soap opera. Each summary included a complete narrative structure, fully crossing main character behaviors (moral/immoral) and the consequences (reward/punishment) characters faced for their actions. Narrative engagement was examined via intersubject correlation and representational similarity analysis. Highest cortical synchronization in 9 specifically selected regions previously implicated in processing moral information was observed when characters who act immorally are punished for their actions with participants’ empathy as an important moderator. The results advance our understanding of the moral brain and the role of normative considerations and character outcomes in viewers’ engagement with popular narratives.

Love/Hate as lyrical sociology: Mapping the spaces of urban crime

This article considers the sociological function of television drama via the Irish television crime series Love/Hate, which aired over five seasons between 2010 and 2014 on RTÉ, Ireland’s public service broadcaster. Drawing on Andrew Abbot’s concept of ‘lyrical sociology’, it will examine how media discourse surrounding Love/Hate consistently foregrounded the connection between its fictional events and real-life crime scenarios. Media coverage of Love/Hate, as well as the content of the series itself, it will be argued, posed the problem of sympathy between audience and its violent protagonists in spatial terms, as a question of belonging or otherwise in a shared social space. In particular, the experiential quality of home as a space of belonging will be explored as a central organizing structure in the series, one which ambiguously connected the lived spaces of its domestic television audience to the highly gendered home and city spaces of Love/Hate’s story world.

Impact of Television Drama Viewing on Feminist Awareness: A Study in Lahore, Pakistan

This study assesses how watching TV dramas affects women's awareness of feminism in Lahore, Pakistan. Information is gathered through the online survey method (n=200) from female students of various public and private universities in Lahore. The study analyzes the impact of demographic factors, including age, education level, maternal education, and employment status, on young women's beliefs about traditional gender roles and their inclination toward feminism. The results of the study lend credence to the idea that feminist ideals—represented in television dramas and mothers' employment status—influence children's views on gender roles (H1 & H4). In addition, the findings indicate that education plays a significant role in forming feminist beliefs, particularly among female viewers who watch television dramas regularly (H3). However, the lack of statistical significance in the majority of models makes it impossible to definitively conclude that age has a significant impact on feminist beliefs among television drama viewers (H2).

The Aesthetics of Truth and Ecology: The World of Realistic Television Dramas

In the continuous dream-building process of China, the public has a broader interpretation of the concept ofhome and family wrapped around their daily lives. Family in their daily lives carries the love and care among individuals under the social attributes, while the unity of the country gives the public a firm foundation for life under the undertones of the growing scientific construction. Throughout the past two years, popular Chinese TV dramas, such as Age of Awakening, Ren Shi Jian, and Mountains and the Sea, have revealed the transformation in China’s development under the common terminology of multi-dimensional performance, which embodied the country and family under the great historical changes and reform of the country. This paper takes human behavior as the main perspective and expands the research on the common construction of family and nation based on aesthetics. Real aesthetics advocate through the real-life encounters of ordinary people to reflect contemporary social phenomena. This can stimulate social identity in audiences with the constructed ecology aesthetics by the community.

Nemone Lethbridge’s play Baby Blues on BBC television: maternal mental illness narratives, stigma and support in 1970s Britain

ABSTRACT In December 1973, the BBC aired Nemone Lethbridge’s auto-fictional play Baby Blues as one of their influential ‘Play for Today’ (PfT) series (1970–1984). This article explores the impact of Lethbridge’s controversial television play, which drew attention to taboo topics, such as infertility, caesarean section childbirth, infanticide, suicide, and, separately, motherhood ageism and dismissive medical professionals. It will illustrate how Lethbridge’s play Baby Blues was part of a broader change in discussing maternal mental illness and creating support for women experiencing postnatal depression and psychosis, instigated by the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM). The article situates Baby Blues within the wider history of the PfT series, with its focus on socio-political issues, and highlights the challenges Lethbridge faced in bringing the play to production. It analyses the mixed responses to the play, many of which were critical, and how this led to Lethbridge’s launching of a grass-roots self-help group, Depressives Anonymous (DA), in 1974, which was—and still is—a long-lasting legacy of Baby Blues. The article builds on the history of maternal mental illness as explored in women’s narratives and its association with stigma, support and feminism, alongside the British Broadcasting Corporation’s television series PfT, in 1970s Britain.

A corpus-based approach to the reception of Chinese television dramas streamed overseas

In recent years, the state government of China has vigorously supported the export of cultural projects. As the carrier of cultural output, television dramas carry important missions of cultural communication. In the age of convergence when the practice of watching television involves more viewer engagement, audience reception investigates how audiences may engage in a broad range of interactive experiences and activities. This paper focuses on the reception of Chinese television dramas streamed overseas on two prominent video streaming sites, YouTube and Rakuten Viki. Adopting a corpus-based approach, it first identifies the top ten most popular Chinese television dramas on the two sites. Subsequently, user-generated reviews and comments for the selected dramas are collected, and a corpus analysis is conducted on the data derived from the two platforms. The findings reveal that a) viewers exhibit a notable preference for Chinese contemporary dramas, and in particular, modern romance dramas; b) the predominant concerns underlying the reception of Chinese television dramas revolve around storylines, actors/characters and subtitles; c) reviews and comments related to subtitling can be categorized into distinct themes, which reveal the major concerns of international viewership. Through the investigation, this paper attempts to promote the translation and reception of Chinese television dramas and expand the export market of Chinese productions.