david lavery television creativity special topics in popular culture: lost (spring 2009)

David LaveryTelevision Creativity

Special Topics in Popular Culture: Lost (Spring 2009)

New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity. Therefore, increase your necessity so that you may increase your perception.

Jalaal al-Din Rumi

Television Creativity Special Topics in Popular Culture

Paul Abbott (UK, Shameless, State of Play)

Television CreatorTelevision Creator

J. J. Abrams (US, Felicity, Alias, Lost, Fringe)



Judd Apatow (US, Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared)




Alan Ball (US, Six Feet Under, True Blood)



Roseanne Barr (US, Roseanne)



Carter Bays (r) and Craig Thomas (l) (US, How I Met Your Mother)

Television CreatorsTelevision Creators


Don Belisario (US, Quantum Leap, Magnum, PI, JAG)


Greg Berlanti (US, Everwood, Dirty Sexy Money)



Peter Berg (US, Friday Night Lights)




Carol Black and Neal Marlens (pictured) (US, The Wonder Years, Growing Pains)


Alan Bleasdale (UK, Boys from the Blackstuff)



Steven Bochco (US, Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, NYPD Blue)



James Brooks (US, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Simpsons)




Mark Burnett (UK/US, Survivor)



Stephen J. Cannell (US, The A-Team, The Rockford Files)



Glenn Gordon Caron (US, Moonlighting, Now and Again)



Chris Carter (US, The X-Files, Millennium)


Shaun Cassidy (US, American Gothic, Invasion)




Glen (left) and Les (right) Charles (US, Taxi, Cheers)


Irene Chaiken (US, The L-Word)




David Chase (US, The Rockford Files, Northern Exposure, The Sopranos)


Marc Cherry (US, Desperate Housewives)



John Cleese (UK, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers)




Bill Cosby (US, The Cosby Show)


Richard Curtis (right) and Ben Elton (below) (UK, Blackadder)



Greg Daniels (US, The Office)




Russell T. Davies (UK, Queer as Folk, Doctor Who, Torchwood)


David Eick (US, Battlestar Galactica, Bionic Woman)



Doug Ellin (US, Entourage)



Michele Fazekas (right) & Tara Butters (left) (US, Reaper)


Paul Feig (US, Freaks and Geeks)



Tina Fey (US, 30 Rock)



Tom Fontana (US, Oz, Homicide)



Bryan Fuller (US, Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me, Heroes, Pushing Daisies)



Tony Garnett (UK, Cathy Come Home, This Life)



Mark Gatiss, Jeremy Dyson (to the right), Steve Pemberton Reece Shearsmith (below) (UK, League of Gentlemen)




Larry Gelbart (US, M*A*S*H)



Ricky Gervais (left) and Stephen Merchant (right) (UK, The Office, Extras)


Vince Gilligan (US, Breaking Bad)



Jonathan Glassner (US, Stargate SG-1)



Alfred Gough & Miles Millar (US, Smallville)



Matthew Graham (on the right), Tony Jordan, Ashley Pharoah (on the left) (UK, Life on Mars)



James Griffin and Rachel Lang (New Zealand, Outrageous Fortune)



Matt Groening (US, The Simpsons, Futurama)



Barbara Hall (US, Judging Amy, Joan of Arcadia)




Earl Hamner, Jr. (US, The Waltons)


Brenda Hampton (US, Blossom, 7th Heaven)



Hart Hanson (US, Bones)



Bruno Heller (UK/US, Rome, The Mentalist)




Marshall Herskovitz (left) & Ed Zwick (right) (US, thirtysomething, My So-Called Life)



Winnie Holzman (US, My So-Called Life)

Television CreatorTelevision CreatorTelevision CreatorTelevision Creator


Paul Henning (US, Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction)



Roy Huggins (US, 77 Sunset Strip, Maverick, The F.B.I., The Fugitive)



Mitchell Hurwitz (US, Arrested Development )


Amy Jenkins (UK, This Life)



Tom Kapinos (US, Californication)




Jason Katims (US, Roswell, Friday Night Lights)


David E. Kelley [US]: Ally McBeal, The Practice, Boston Legal, Picket Fences




Glen Kessler, Daniel Zelman, Todd Kessler (US, Damages)


Michael Patrick King (L) & Darren Star (R) (US, Sex and the City)



Daniel Knauf (US, Carnivale)




David Kohan & Max Mutchnick (US, Will & Grace)


Jenji Kohan (US, Weeds)




Tim Kring (US, Crossing Jordan, Heroes)



Eric Kripke (US, Supernatural)


Lynda LaPlante (UK, Prime Suspect)




Glen Larson (US, Battlestar Galactica--original)


Denis Leary (right) and Peter Dolan (left) (US, Rescue Me)



Norman Lear (US, All in the Family, The Jeffersons)




Richard Levinson (left) and William Link (right) (US, Columbo)



Damon Lindelof (left) and Carlton Cuse (right) (US, Crossing Jordan, Lost)


Graham Linehan (L) and Arthur Mathews (R) (UK, Father Ted)




Chuck Lorre (US, Two and a Half Men, Big Bang Theory)



David Lynch & Mark Frost (US, Twin Peaks) Television CreatorsTelevision Creators

William J. MacDonald, John Milius and Bruno Heller

(US/UK, Rome)




Michael Mann (US, Miami Vice)



Jean Marsh (UK, Upstairs, Downstairs)



Quinn Martin (US, The F.B.I.)



Patrick McGoohan (UK, The Prisoner)


Terry McGovern (UK, Cracker, The Street)




Lorne Michaels (US, Saturday Night Live)



David Milch (US, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, Deadwood, John from Cincinnati)


Tim Minear (US, Angel, Wonderfalls, Firefly, The Inside, Drive)




Ronald D. Moore (US, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Carnivale, Battlestar Galactica)


Ryan Murphy (US, Nip/Tuck)



Terry Nation (UK, Doctor Who)



Sydney Newman (UK, Doctor Who, The Avengers)



Grant Naylor (Rob Grant and Doug Naylor—front row) (UK, Red Dwarf)



Rockne O’Bannon (US, Farscape)



Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer (US, Big Love)



Stephen Poliakoff (UK, Shooting the Past, Capturing Mary)




Dennis Potter (UK, The Singing Detective, Pennies from Heaven)


Rand Ravich (US, Life)



David Renwick (UK, One Foot in the Grave)



Shonda Rhimes (US), Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice)



Gina Riley & Jane Turner (Australia, Kath and Kim)



Gene Roddenberry (US, Star Trek, Stark Trek: The Next Generation)




Shaun Ryan (US, The Shield, The Unit)


Jennifer Saunders (UK, Absolutely Fabulous)




Paul Scheuring (US, Prison Break)


Josh Schwarz (US, The O.C., Gossip Girl, Chuck)



Jerry Seinfeld (US, Seinfeld)



Rod Serling (US, Twilight Zone)




David Simon (US, Homicide, The Wire)


Gzrry Shandling (US, The Larry Sanders Show)



Aaron Sorkin (US, Sports Night, West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip)




Aaron Spelling (US, Fantasy Island, Charlie’s Angel, Dynasty, Love Boat, Starsky and Hutch)


Jessica Stevenson & Simon Legg (UK, Spaced)




Matt Stone (left) and Trey Parker (right) (US, South Park)


J. Michael Straczynski (US, Babylon 5)



Grant Tinker (US, The Mary Tyler Moore)



David Walliams & Matt Lucas (UK, Little Britain)



Reg Watson (Australia, Neighbours




Jay Ward (US, Rocky and Bullwinkle, George of the Jungle)



Matthew Weiner (US, The Sopranos, Mad Men)



Joss Whedon (US, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse)


Dick Wolf (US, Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit)



David Wolstencroft (UK, Spooks)



Anthony Zuicker (US, CSI)



The Parallel Courses of Cinema & TV


François Truffaut, "Une Certaine Tendance du Cinéma Français" ("A Certain Tendency in French Cinema"), Cahiers du Cinéma (1954)


Andrew Sarris (US): Auteurism’s American champion


Drawing on the original insights of the French, the American critic Andrew Sarris translated the auteur theory into an American idiom. For a time, under the influence of Sarris’ goal of converting "film history into directorial autobiography," American intellectuals interested in the movies began to think and talk and understand the movies through the specially-ground lenses provided by the auteur theory. "Over a group of films," Sarris insisted in what amounts to his foundational principle, "a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature. The way a film looks and moves should have some relationship to the way a director thinks and feels" (Sarris 586).

Truffaut formulated the original auteur theory in opposition to the monopolization of film art by writers, Sarris’ critical venture was likewise undertaken "against the wind." He sought to undermine the too-great hold of sociological and political critics. He wanted to talk about the art in the movies he loved, not their social significance.


“Auteurism was . . . a palimpsest of influences, combining romantic expressive notions of the artist, modernist-formalist notions of stylistic discontinuity and fragmentation, and a ‘proto-postmodern,’ fondness for “lower” arts and genres. The real scandal of the auteur theory lay not so much in glorifying the director as the equivalent in prestige to the literary author, but rather, in exactly who was granted this prestige.”

Robert Stam (87)


“In its more extreme incarnations auteurism can be seen as an anthropomorphic form of ‘love’ for the cinema. The same love that had formerly been lavished on stars, or that formalists lavished on artistic devices, the auteurists now lavished on the men—and they largely were men—who incarnated the auteurists’ idea of cinema. Film was resurrected as secular religion; the ‘aura’ was back in force thanks to the cult of the auteur.”

Robert Stam (88)


The auteur theory’s appeal, the critic Peter Wollen has noted, was obvious: it "implie[d] an operation of decipherment . . . reveal[ing] authors where none had been seen before" (77). Film directors, it was argued, and soon thereafter generally assumed, could put their stamp on a wide variety of movies, even in several genres. Their attention was not focused solely on American directors, of course; they also singled out for praise French auteurs like Abel Gance, Jean Vigo, and Jean Renoir.


The auteur theory was ready to accept, of course, that "Just as not every conductor is a Leonard Bernstein, so not every director is an Alfed Hitchcock" [Dick 147]), and under its influence not all directors became maestros—those individuals Sarris categorized as "Pantheon Directors"--but many shed their anonymity, their earlier work now retrospectfully interesting, their new films anticipated. The works of a wide variety of directors were catalogued, in some cases exhaustively. And it was not only the movies of these directors that came in for greater scrutiny. The writings of auteurs and available interviews with them concerning their film aesthetics and methods were also put under the microscope.



Death of the Author

Death of the Author

Barthes, Roland. "The Death of the Author.” Image, Music, Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. 142‑48.Foucault, Michael. "What is an Author?" The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon, 1984. 101‑20.Gass, William H. ''The Death of the Author." Habitations of the Word: Essays. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. 265‑88.

Death of the

Author

Death of the

Author

Barthes, Foucault, Gass (l-r)

According to post-modernist critical theory we are—in Derrida's phrase—"logocentric." Routinely, naively we assume that the sounds uttered by a speaker make manifest precise meanings present within. We take it for granted that the "signifier" of a speaker's language is "but a temporary representation through which one moves to get at the signified, which is what the speaker, in that revealing English phrase, 'has in mind'" (Culler, Ferdinand de Saussure, 119-20).

Death of the AuthorDeath of

the Author


Semiotic inquiry often leads to similar conclusions, as in Umberto Eco's statement of post-modernist faith that "all works are created by works" and "texts . . . created by texts"; "literature comes from literature, cinema comes from cinema" (199). Today's audience (readers or viewers) of "instinctive semioticians" immediately recognizes that "all together they [the archetypes of art] speak to each other independently of the intention of their authors" (210). Indeed, Eco observes profoundly in an essay on Casablanca and the cult film,


the Author


As a corrective, deconstructionism would eliminate entirely the fiction of a speaking or writing subject. For Derrida, "the author deliquesces into writing-as-such and the reader into reading-as-such, and what writing-as-such effects and reading-as-such engages is not a work of literature but a text, writing, 'ecriture" (Abrams 567). And even though Harold Bloom has taken pains to distinguish his multi-volume analysis of the "anxiety of influence" from the anti-humanism of a Derrida, his thesis that no poet speaks entirely in his or her own voice but rather struggles, always in the end unsuccessfully, to escape the more powerful voice of ancestral poets, obviously contributes to our failing faith in the power of the author and transforms inspiration into a merely inter-textual matter. Death of

the AuthorDeath of

the Author


We do much the same with texts. "In primitive societies," Roland Barthes reminds in his essay on "The Death of the Author," "narrative is never undertaken by a person, but by a mediator, shaman or speaker, whose 'performance' may be admired (that is, his mastery of the narrative code), but not his 'genius'" (142). In literate societies, however, we have created the whole institution of authorship—largely forgetting, however, that the author is a recent invention.


the Author


Only five centuries ago, Michel Foucault asks us to remember in his essay "What is an Author?", texts now thought of as literary were "accepted, put into circulation, and valorized without any question about the identity of their author; their anonymity caused no difficulties since their ancientness, whether real or imagined, was regarded as sufficient guarantee of their status.”


the Author


"On the other hand," Foucault observes, "those texts that we now call scientific—those dealing with cosmology and the heavens, medicine and illnesses, natural sciences and geography—were accepted in the Middle Ages, and accepted as 'true,' only when marked with the name of their author. 'Hippocrates said,' 'Pliny recounts,' were not really formulas of an argument based on authority; they were the markers inserted in discourses that were supported to be received as statements of demonstrated truth" (109).


the Author


William Gass' fine essay on "The Death of the Author" offers a dissenting opinion on Barthes' contention, noting that Barthes' obituary, substituting wish for deed, was premature: "when, in 1968, Roland Barthes announced the death of the author, he was actually calling for it." In Gass' opinion, the death of the author is comic, not tragic; it "signifies a decline in authority, in theological power, as if Zeus were stripped of his thunderbolts and swans, perhaps residing on Olympus still, but now living in a camper and cooking with propane. He is, but he is no longer a god" (265).


the Author


“[B]ecause of the technological complexity of the medium and as a result of the application to most commercial television production of the principles of modern industrial organization . . . , it is very difficult to locate the ‘author’ of a television program—if by that we mean the single individual who provides the unifying vision behind the program.”

Robert C. Allen


TV Authorship

“[Newcomb and Alley] demonstrated that despite the gigantic constituent corporate bureaucracies of this most massive of mass media—networks, advertising agencies, production companies, ratings organizations, federal regulatory authorities—the autobiographical visions of individual did manage to break through onto the television screen, just as the personal visions of artists had managed to reach expression in the older, preelectronic arts. Were these visions mitigated or, in effect, edited by television’s trilateral nature of industry, technology, and art? Certainly. But when and where had an art ever developed independently of other factors?”David Marc & Robert Thompson, Prime Time, Prime Movers


TV Authorship

While television exhibits many of the characteristics of open or writerly text it also differs from them in one fundamental characteristic: television popular, whereas open, writerly texts (in the way that Eco and Barthes originally theorized them) are typically avant-garde, highbrow ones wit minority appeal. Television, as a popular medium, needs to be thought of as "producerly." A producerly text combines the televisual characteristics of writerly text with the easy accessibility of the readerly.

John Fiske, Television Culture


TV AuthorshipTV Authorship

Unlike the writerly avant-garde text, television does not work with an authorial voice that uses unfamiliar discourse in order to draw attention to its discursivity. The avant garde author-artist will shock the reader into recognition of the text's discursive structure and will require the reader to learn new discursive competencies in order to participate with it in a writerly way in the production of meaning and pleasure. The producerly text, on the other hand, relies discursive competencies that the viewer already possesses, but requires that they are used in a self-interested, productive way: the producerly text can therefore, be popular in a way that the writerly text cannot.

John Fiske, Television Culture



“A self-conscious creative producer may be able to take what appears to be a mundane idea, a cast of no distinction, or writing that seems to be ordinary and conventional, and transform it into a better sort of television. When the happy circumstance arises in which the producer is able to assemble the best writers, actors, directors, and film editors, and is able to impress upon them a central concept that speaks his vision, then the potential is present for exceptional work. It can be created because art is mastery, discipline, and vision. It is the ability to mold constraint into a creative contour.” (Newcomb and Alley, xii-xiv)



“The quality audience gets to separate itself from the mass audience and can watch TV without guilt, and without realizing that the double-edge discourse they are getting is also ordinary TV.”

Jane Feuer (80)



Why TV is Better Than the Movies (Entertainment Weekly)1. Women thrive on TV.2. We care more about TV characters.3. TV does better with drama.4. In TV, the writer rules.5. TV is more fun to talk about.6. TV deals with mature themes more maturely.7. TV is more convenient.8. TV does better with less money.9. On TV, you can change the channel.


david lavery television creativity special topics in popular culture: lost (spring 2009)

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