Sam wk9

Questions answered this week;

Wilcox and Lavery (2002) identify 9 defining characteristics of ‘quality TV’ – can you apply any of these to other television series that you have viewed recently? Are there any other characteristics that you could add to their list?

Hills (2004) lists a number of defining characteristics of cult TV that contain similarities to the defining characteristics of pop genres (e.g. fantasy, science fiction) discussed earlier in the Pop Genres paper. Can you identify these and discuss why you think that these characteristics are repeatedly viewed as underpinning popular genres.
(found this question intimidating)


Hills (2004) identifies “hyper-diegesis” as a defining characteristic of cult television, meaning the fictional narrative-universe extends beyond what is being immediately represented at any given time. It is ‘expansive’, the worlds which qualifying shows construct allowing for constant renewal in that their fantastic premises are so broad as to accommodate significant changes in character, plot etc., without creators resorting to “risky reinvention”. Such premises are those designed in avoidance of absolute resolution, meaning the exploration of avenues seemingly irrelevant to the major plight of the protagonist are valid in that they further substantiate the show’s world, the finer details of which may eventually converge with key events in the series. However, even key events won’t supply resolution; so long as the “central narrative puzzle” remains unsolvable, creators are apt to “endlessly defer” narratives from an otherwise pending climax (Hills, 2004).

J.J. Abram’s ‘Lost’ is an example of cult TV driven in any and all directions by a central enigma, it’s ‘puzzle’ allowing for periodic character sketches and some very real development, a major feat considering its sprawling cast. Such freedom also allows for a rapid interchange-ability of role, characters shifting along the protagonist-antagonist continuum responsive to narrative-unfolding, as opposed to routinely jumping hurdles that tell us nothing new about them.

Wilcox and Lavery (2002) cite ‘Buffy’, whose characters exhibit a certain fluidity; for example character Spike, the once-murderous vampire who enters the Scooby Gang as its sole undead member and finally sleeps with the slayer, or Willow, who grieves the death of lover Tara by wreaking bloody mayhem, even skinning the culprit alive before (unsuccessfully) instigating the apocalypse. Characters from ‘Lost’ are similarly responsive, like ‘bad boy’ Sawyer who makes good, and ‘Other’ Julia, who undergoes a positively transformative disillusionment about leader Ben. Unlike more formulaic viewing, the above holds to Wilcox and Lavery’s “emotional realism” (2002), in as much as characters face dilemmas as three-dimensional beings with options. Wilcox and Lavery (2002) also relate literary references as a fixture of the quality/cult show. ‘Lost’ applies here also, with most of its core characters bearing the names of pre-Enlightenment philosophers (Locke, Rousseu) that position them (not permanently as noted previously) in the islands quasi-religious happenings.

Rather than gimmicky implementation to ensure a shows longevity, “deferral” often manifests as genuine innovation in which a show can display a “social awareness” (Wilcox and Lavery, 2002) utilizing the medium to question institutional and generic conventions such as those traditionally dictating the representation of gender (definitely Buffy) and race, among others.

Hills (2004) also observes cult TV’s thematic tendencies, leaning towards fantasy/science-fiction in which viewer familiarity is established gradually by way of repetition, its fantastic elements woven into the world-construction stamping it distinctively as alternate/other. To maintain the illusion, the ‘fantastic’ is treated like the ‘everyday’. What is more, the “self-consciousness” of cult television (Wilcox and Lavery, 2002) requires absolute continuity of premises, and though extraordinary aversion of actual laws, the narrative lore must be regarded as empirical (by its own populace at least). In fact, the ‘hyper-diegesis’ is very similar to Tolkien’s ‘Secondary World’ or the world-construction of high fantasy, in which the text holds both to a single protagonist while illuminating vastness in the fictitious environment (both geographically and historically) that enriches, not subsumes, the immediate sequences.

However, much like science-fiction, cult TV can juxtapose modern/urban settings with supernatural happenings (Buffy), and while maintaining the illusion with the continuity of high fantasy, can attempt contact with the actual in science fiction’s ‘what if’ vein by these settings alone. And in it’s serialized form it has access to what is current, with the naturally ensuing potential to be ‘topical’.

These ‘popular genres’ are seen to be equipped with the same semantic ability as texts from ‘significant’ canons, and yet remain without the critical visibility they surely deserve. It could be speculated that creators of ‘pop’ are aware of the stigma and even willingly pursue the mediums, providing as they do a space free of the pretence and subsequent creative constraint of the ‘serious’, producing forms discernibly neither high or low in bids to dispel culture-myths; like Philip K. Dick in his use of science fiction, a sphere he found to be at an agreeable distance from literati pomp and it’s posing as sole-carrier of the ‘logos’, contesting it’s otherwise spontaneous manifestations.