Identity In Television Research Articles

Behind the money: Alejandro González Iñárritu as career director

This article is presented in two halves. The first analyses little known interviews with Iñárritu before he made his career in feature films that document his practice in radio, advertising and television drama. These interviews focus on his early conception of the relation between art and commerce and his views on the Mexican media scene in the 1990s. The second half of the article analyses the rare primary materials themselves: radio commercials, television idents and, at much greater length, his first feature-length fiction film, an experimental drama made for Televisa in 1995 called Detrás del dinero/Behind the Money. The conclusion argues that even as Iñárritu has more recently distanced himself from broadcasting, his later career as an artistic and commercially successful feature film director embodies a precarious balance between artistic innovation and mass culture and a focus on the audience which he first learned in his early work in advertising, radio and television.

Fluid typography: transforming letterforms in television idents

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to propose that, within the practice of motion branding, transforming type has been largely neglected by existing theorists and its importance to wider marketing trends overlooked. It will be observed that previous texts on transitional letterforms have tended to focus on changes in global arrangement and in doing so have neglected to recognise the significance of changes that occur at a local level, within individual letterforms.Design/methodology/approach– Taking an interdisciplinary approach, with examples including idents and bumpers from Channel 4, Sky, FOX, Five and MTV. New methods of understanding these artefacts will be introduced, with emphasis on how they affect the relationship between broadcaster’s identities and the medium of television. Modes of definition and understanding that have previously been applied to holographic poetry will be applied to the field of on-screen artefacts.Findings– The paper will discuss how branding has adapted to incorporate the features of the medium of television, and propose new methods of classification for the associated processes of metamorphosis, construction, parallax and revelation.Originality/value– Motion branding, in the form of television idents, is frequently described as containing “motion typography”, but this and related terminology is vague or misleading – and reduces all forms of kineticism to simple motion. On-screen branding often operates more complex temporal behaviours. Lack of sufficient vocabulary to describe such transformations has forced practitioners to describe their work in terms of previously existing work, thereby limiting the perceived scope of their ideas and the possibility of innovation. This paper resolves the lack of existing vocabulary by providing new definitions of four categories of fluid transformation that appear in contemporary television idents.

Constructing Hearing Loss or “Deaf Gain?” Voice, Agency, and Identity in Television's Representations of d/Deafness

Representations of deafness and Deaf culture on television have significantly increased and improved in the last 26 years. This paper explores these changing depictions, examining entertainment television from 1987 through 2013. Findings suggest that the pathological model persists, in which deaf characters are framed as vulnerable or dehumanized, and promote the cochlear implant as a “cure” for deafness. At the same time, episodes about tolerance and acceptance reinforce deafness as a cultural trait, especially in storylines in which multiple characters speak in American Sign Language. While ASL frequently appears in d/Deaf representations, its portrayal is incomplete and simplistic, downplaying its grammatical complexity. These competing discourses illustrate that what it means to be deaf or experience deafness is culturally constructed depending on context and experience, and reflects real-life tension between the Deaf community and medical experts who continue to pathologize deafness. Only through diversity in the roles for d/Deaf actors will television help to counter stigmas about disabilities and promote mainstream acceptance of Deaf culture.

Establishing a Multi-ethnic Imagined Community?

■ Television is often conceived as a unifying force, creating a national ‘imagined community’. This article tries to apply this concept to the audience of domestic fiction in Flanders, in particular ethnic minority viewers. Based on in-depth interviews with 80 young adults of both Flemish and ethnic minority backgrounds, it focuses on the viewing of domestic soaps. The findings show very similar patterns of reception, both groups preferring American fiction and criticizing Flemish fiction. An important difference is that ethnic minority viewers do not consider the soap world as a representation of their own reality. A related difference concerns their dissatisfaction with the portrayal of ethnic minorities, in spite of the attempts of programme makers to provide positive role models. While confirming the importance of ethnic identity in television viewing and demonstrating the variety within the assumed homogeneous national viewing community, the similarities found caution against a binary opposition between native Flemish and ethnic minority viewpoints. ■

Language Image in National Minority Language Television Idents. TG4 (Teilifís na Gaeilge, Ireland) and Whakaata Māori (Māori Television, New Zealand)

National television plays a key role in exploring central beliefs and versions of official and popular culture. The language used in broadcasting has huge symbolic importance. Negotiation between the national status of an official minority language (such as Irish in Ireland or te reo Māori in New Zealand) and the reality of its daily use

From fanfare to funfair: the changing sound world of UK television idents

Identifying a television channel on-air has become increasingly important in the multi-channel age. For viewers it is a navigational necessity; for broadcasting executives it contributes to corporate branding. But despite the fact that television is an audiovisual medium, the so-called channel idents which appear between programmes are almost always discussed in terms of their visual rather than their audio characteristics. This article aims to go some way to correct this imbalance in arguing that the latter have evolved in a distinctive manner. Initially borrowing the idea of the fanfare from the cinema, UK broadcasters in recent years have developed a softer style, then drawn on dance and other forms of popular music and finally employed sound effects in the production of channel idents.