“Inside a Killer Thriller
Tonight”: Is Genre Television Born or Made?
In the opening of Jason Mittell’s
reading for this week, he quotes Supreme Court Justice’s Potter Stewart’s
definition of pornography: “I know it when I see it.” Mittell goes on in his introduction to
establish, “Genres are cultural products, constituted by media practices and
subject to ongoing change and redefinition” (Mittell 1). This reading, and the balance of the texts
for this week, argue for the role of genre as a series of codes understood,
interpreted and accepted within a given cultural space. A viewer recognizes, for example, the themes
of corporation-as-family and the long-form serial tendencies of a show like Revenge and instantly classifies it as a
soap opera. What is the role of the
viewer in this process? Though cultural mores may establish genre codes, the
implication of these readings, and of Justice Stewart’s claim, is that the
individual spectator does the defining.
After all, he, not a category
in a Netflix cue or a standard programming choice, knows it when he sees it. This process is especially evident, perhaps,
in metafictional and/or hybrid genre forms such as those discussed in Dr.
McPherson’s article on 24 or in the
viewer engagement with shows such as Lost
described by Michael Kackman. The show’s self-conscious anti-(feminine)
soapiness in this case has to consciously counteract a set of norms known to
and engaged with by individual television viewers. Genre categorization, therefore, relies upon a
subjective view: the viewer’s role in determining and identifying genre might
suggest genre not so much as a set of fixed categories, but as a tapestry of
contexts which build recognizable resonances for the individual.
Since the Mittell article is where
this inquiry started, I feel it is appropriate that it is from this article
that the example to explore this question should come. Mittell dwells fairly significantly on
Michael Jackson’s 14-minute short-film cum
music video “Thriller” (1983), which combines horror, musical, teen and noir genres to hyperstylized
effect. The melodrama of the episode is established
in the kinds of overdetermined scenery (dark shadows, standard horror set
pieces of low-lit graveyards and transmogrifying corpses) described by Jane
Feuer in discussion of roughly contemporaneous melodramas such as Dynasty.
In “Thriller” these techniques are offset by the video’s conscious
masculinity: a narratological forward motion (the episode has a clearly defined
short film plot) blends with a curious circularity as the characters constantly
loop back to the same theme, the “chorus” produced by the song itself (perhaps
a soapy, feminine side, a la 24’s
personal dramas). Amidst this complex
and confusing mix of genres is a metafictional frame. Using now-infamous MTV cutting styles, the
video vacillates between a horror plot (the “thriller”) and a narrative thread
in which Jackson and his girlfriend are watching a horror film. They are both “inside” and “observing” an
exemplification of genre – a “killer thriller tonight.” The subjectivity of the characters,
especially Jackson who controls the narrative space (pulling his girlfriend out
of the film, reminding her it’s only a “movie” but also integrating the figures
from the film into his extended performances), is highlighted in Jackson’s
constant awareness of genre. To his
girlfriend, the sequence is horrific, she is integrated into the narrative
logic of terror experienced by a horror film spectator (or participant). To him, the sequence is a performance, a
music video allowing distance as he recognizes the constructions of this
sequences artificial horror elements.
Two different characters (and
“spectators”) experience two different genres.
How does this reading relate to how
an audience subjectively views televisual genre distinctions? If genre is gendered and a cultural product,
how much are these categories pre-inscribed when we sit down to view (i.e. 24 is a masculine melodrama, no matter
how we as viewers experience it)? Or
might the drama be a soap for some, and an extended procedural for others? How does self-reflexivity within a text
impact or alter these viewer subjectivities?
Is genre not only cultural but also personal?
Works Cited
Feuer, Jane. “Melodrama, Serial Form and
Television Today.” Screen. 1(1984).
Kackman, Michael. “Flow Favorites:
Quality Television, Melodrama, and Cultural Complexity.” 5 Mar 2010. Flow. Special Issue: Flow Favorites, 2010.
11.9(2010). <http://flowtv.org/2010/03/flow-favorites-quality-television-melodrama-and-cultural-complexity-michael-kackman-university-of-texas-austin/>.
McPherson, Tara. “Techno-Soap: 24, Masculinity and Hybrid Form.” In Reading 24 Against the Clock (Reading Contemporary Television). Edited by
Steven Peacock. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007.
“Michael
Jackson: Thriller.” Dir. John Landis. Optimum Productions, 1983.
Mittell, Jason. “TV Genres as Cultural
Categories.” In Genre and Television:
From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Great post, Allison! You bring up some compelling points about how a viewer’s subjectivity alters his or her experience with a given genre. While I think that it is often easy for individuals to collectively agree on the tenets of various genres, particularly with soap opera fans, each individual viewing experience is deeply personal. I am reminded of my own experience watching the first two series of American Horror Story with roommates. During each episode, they consistently recoiled in fear, whereas I found its apparent self-reflexivity and myriad nods to the horror genre (like the lifted musical motifs and formulaic plot lines) as well as the “soapy” elements deliciously gratifying. Because my personal relationship with horror and melodrama differed from theirs and I identified the genre conventions more actively, my emotional reaction was deviated quite a bit—so much so that they didn’t understand how I was deriving pleasure. Maybe I’m just making problematic textualist assumptions about the show for my own convenience, as Mittell indicates.
ReplyDeleteAmerican Horror Story: Coven in particular is a great example of what Erendira wrote when she reiterated that not even death is final! The stakes were no longer consequential when anyone could rise up from the dead, or pass off as living, etc. etc.
DeleteThis can relate to fandom and other readings. Takes me back to our film theory discussion of Game of Thrones -- and Donna Meagle of Parks and Rec's reading of Game of Thrones. She's into the action, but also the visual pleasure,
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z_b_ywVCfk