San Francisco State University Travis Simpson

Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts SFSU ID# 905769597

BECA 896 | Spring 2009 Culminating Examination April 8, 2009

Culminating Examination | Answer to General Question No. 4

Graduate Examination Committee Members:

Dr. Betsy Blosser (Chair)
Dr. Sami Reist
Dr. Dina Ibrahim

Making the Story:

Hollywood Style in the Production of a Hybrid Television Talk Show

Question:

Choose a current television program and identify its genre. (For example, House and Grey’s
Anatomy are dramas; 30 Rock is a sitcom.) Describe the features that distinguish this genre from
others, i.e., what is its formula? If you believe that this television program is a hybrid genre,
make sure to define the distinguishing features of each of the genres that make it a ―hybrid.‖
Apply, compare, and contrast two of the three following critical approaches to the program and
its genre:

1) Marxist criticism
2) Psychoanalytic criticism
3) Feminist criticism.

How do the types of criticism help explain the popularity of this program and its genre? Ground
your discussion in your interpretation of at least two episodes.
BECA 896 | Graduate Culminating Examination General Question 4 | TRAVIS SIMPSON

A Generic Approach

The following genre analysis of a hybrid television program takes a hybrid shape of its

own. Doing a kind of genre theory of genre analysis, Feuer (1992) suggests that there might be

three categories of approach under which a genre critique might be labeled: the aesthetic

approach, the ritual approach and the ideological approach (p. 145). The bulk of the following

study employs a kind of aesthetic approach, wherein I do what Feuer calls an attempt to define

the talk show genre ―in terms of a system of conventions that permits artistic expression‖ (p.

145). And further, again per Feuer, this review ―attempts to assess whether an individual work

fulfills or transcends its genre‖ (p. 145). Based on existing scholarship in talk show genre

criticism, I will use this aesthetic approach to build a talk show genre concept that can be applied

to the television program Storymakers – a new talk show about the Hollywood film industry that

is currently airing on the AMC cable network.

But later, after pinpointing how Storymakers fits—and does not fit—this genre model, I

will make further evaluation and analysis of the talk show genre concept with help from other

interpretive traditions – namely, that of psychoanalysis and (what I am arguing is) a post-Marxist

genre hermeneutics. In other words, having used a formalist approach to define Storymakers

through the lens of the talk show genre, I will move away from the formalist aesthetic approach

in order to capture what Mittell (2001) calls the ―cultural approach‖ to genre studies. Mittell

suggests that we would benefit from moving towards a system of generic analysis that accounts

for genre as a discursive practice, putting emphasis not on whether or not particular programs are

―bounded and stable objects of analysis,‖ but rather that our critical goal is:

to explore the material ways in which genres are culturally defined, interpreted, and evaluated. Shifting our

focus away from projects that attempt to provide the ultimate definition or interpretation will enable us to

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look at the ways in which these definitions, interpretations, and evaluations are part of the larger cultural

operations of the genre (p. 9)

Likewise, the intent of my latter analysis of the talk show genre in general—and of Storymakers

in particular—is to explore the origins and symbolic functions of the cultural logic that

contribute to its hybrid production. This review aims to promote further understanding of the

hybrid program concept in generic categorization for purposes of continuing the effort to open

the practice and field of genre and television production to contributions from programming

outliers (like Storymakers) that are constituted far outside the normative conventions of the talk

show format. Ultimately, I argue that Storymakers—because of its defiance of the grammar of

genre and its creative cross-amalgamation of the visual language of representation and standard

industry practices—can be viewed as a kind of liberating force for both purveyors and consumers

of televisual culture.

Definitions and Origins of the Talk Show Genre

Timberg (2002) distilled a basic definition of the ―talk show‖ genre. Making an

important distinction between the television ―talk show‖ as a specific program genre and

―television talk‖ as a wide ranging television characteristic that encompasses various sorts of

non-fiction programming from news to food TV, Timberg notes that, ―the television talk show,

as opposed to television talk, is the television show that is entirely structured around the act of

conversation itself‖ (p. 3). Timberg further suggests that there are four main principles that

construct the definition of the talk show genre:

The first principle of the television talk show is that it is anchored by a host (or team of hosts) who is

responsible for the tone and direction, and for guiding and setting limits on the talk that is elicited from

guests on the air . . . The second principle of the television talk show is that it is experienced in the present

tense as ―conversation.‖ Live taped, or shown in reruns, talk shows always maintain the illusion of the

present tense . . . A third principle is that television talk is a product—a commodity competing with other

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broadcast commodities . . . A fourth principle is that the give and take on a talk show, while it must appear

to be spontaneous, must also be highly structured. Scores of invisible hands shape each show (p. 3-4).

Conspicuously absent from this definition of talk show principles is a description of the aesthetic

norms that serve as a code of production conventions for the talk format genre. While I would

readily adopt Timberg‘s genre definition in order to narrow the scope of this essay to a particular

kind of television programming, the stated purpose of this review is to demonstrate further that

Storymakers is an exceptional case of the talk show genre because of its unique production

design. Without the benefit of a formalist code for the genre, this argument would be nearly

impossible to make. The content of Storymakers is much like any talk show—although its

conversations feel less structured than most talk shows, the content features the standard hosted

interview format. What makes it different is its groundbreaking departure from the talk show

genre aesthetic. Consequently, taking Timberg‘s rubric as a starting place will allow us to

identify Storymakers as a talk show, but it will not allow us to probe the special contributions

this program makes as an example of innovative hybridity in television program design.

Timberg‘s (2002) basic definition of the talk show genre is corroborated by the fact that a

different scholar has suggested a similar generic constitution. Bolstering Timberg‘s definition

and adding further insight by comparison, Bruun (1999) suggests only a slightly alternate

definitional rubric. Fortunately, however, Bruun‘s definition also points towards an investigation

of the aesthetic code that goes to work in the television talk show genre. Despite the peculiarities

from one talk show to the next, Bruun suggests that three elements are common to the genre:

―the TV studio, the host, and the interview‖ (p. 244). The second two principles mesh well with

Timberg‘s provisions above—namely that a talk show consists of hosted conversation—but

Bruun also shows that there is one further aspect of the talk show genre that separates this type of

programming from other shows: the TV studio. Bruun explains that,

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the planning of a talk show in terms of time and space has the character of a ―now and here‖ i.e. the aim is

first of all to give viewers an experience of simultaneity between the time of the programme and its

transmission. Secondly, the aim is to create an experience of mergence of space between the programme

and its viewers, in such a way that the viewers feel as if they are participants in the programme as opposed

to spectators. The scenographic arrangement of the studio is an important element in creating the

experience of being a participant (p. 244).

Bruun goes on to reveal that the TV studio in the talk show genre generally includes a live

audience, and that the presence of that audience functions as a ―mental bridge‖ between the

studio audience and the at-home viewer, creating what Bruun calls ―simultaneity‖ – a feeling of

immediacy which conveys the sense that ―the talk show is ‗now and here‘‖ (p. 244).1 As noted

above, Timberg also points to this generic characteristic – ―talk shows always maintain the

illusion of the present tense‖ – but Bruun actually points towards a production device that

facilitates this experience: the TV studio. As we will see, the insight offered here that the studio

is the central component in this primary function of the television talk show is very important for

this essay.

But before we take a look at how Storymakers fits into this puzzle, we must first make an

interesting pit stop that further distills the centrality of these generic production principles.

1
Although it is not indicated in Bruun‘s language nor in the Notes section, this passage may be referencing language
of contemporary work by Thompson (1995), who—in tracing the impact of telecommunications technology on
modern societies—calls this phenomenon the ―reordering of space and time,‖ noting: ―The uncoupling of space and
time prepared the way for another transformation, closely linked to the development of telecommunication: the
discovery of despatialized simultaneity. In earlier historical periods the experience of simultaneity – that is, of
events occurring ‗at the same time‘ – presupposed a specific locale in which the simultaneous events could be
experienced by the individual. Simultaneity presupposed locality; ‗the same time‘ presupposed ‗the same place‘.
But with the uncoupling of space and time brought about by telecommunication, the experience of simultaneity was
detached from spatial condition of common locality. It became possible to experience events as simultaneous
despite the fact that they occurred in locales that were spatially remote. In contrast to the concreteness of the here
and now, there emerged a sense of ‗now‘ which was no longer bound to a particular locale‖ (p. 32). In addition to
pointing out the similar language, this footnote is useful throughout the rest of the essay because it uncovers the
extraordinary characteristics of what commonly seems to be an otherwise normal experience in the age of mass
media: the illusion of simultaneity is a common feature of much mediated information, but it is also an important
hallmark of the television talk and the talk show format.

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Taking a look at the origins of the talk show genre, recent research has shown that, contrary to

the traditional timeline that places the genre‘s debut in the post-war period (Timberg, 2002), the

first television talk show was called Table Talk and it aired on CBS in 1941 (Brinson, 2007,

p.410).2 The program was produced by Helen Sioussat, a protégé of Edward R. Murrow and,

holding the corporate title Director of Talks at the time Table Talk was created, it is significant

that she was also ―the first female network executive at CBS‖ (Brinson, p. 412). Taking a

stunning trip into the history of television, Brinson outlines the production elements of a TV

program that was, at the time, a kind of generic experiment:

The program was shot with two cameras on a plain set arranged as a mock living room with a sofa and

chairs surrounding a coffee table and the ―fourth wall‖. . . Since there is no existing footage of the program,

it is unknown how it was edited, the camera angles that were used, or how the shots were framed.

However, the photographic evidence indicates that the guests were positioned in ways we commonly see on

today‘s talk shows . . . A photograph of a program underway reveals a set containing a couch on which sit

three guests, a chair in the middle with Helen Sioussat in a slightly elevated position, and two chairs each

containing a guest . . . Table Talk was structured as a half-hour program . . . an audio recording of the

November 26, 1941, broadcast indicates that it was introduced by voice-over. Following a brief

presentation of the guests, the microphones on the set were activated and the viewer ―joined‖ the discussion

underway . . . At the end of the 30 minutes, the voice-over returned and ended the broadcast by asserting

that ―Miss Sioussat‘s guests don‘t know that they are no longer audible. Miss Sioussat expects to have

guests at coffee again next Wednesday at the same time. We hope you‘ll look in‖ (pp. 413-414). 3

What is remarkable about the experimental formulation described in this vignette is how

persistent the basic elements of the genre have remained since 1941. Aside from what comes

across today as a naïve approach that is betrayed by the contrivances of the voice-over narration,

2
It should be pointed out that, in making the assertion that Table Talk was the first talk show ever produced, Brinson
also makes recourse to Timberg‘s four principle codification of the generic elements of the talk show and uses this
definition to support the claim that Table Talk was the seminal instance of the genre (p. 410).
3
See Appendix A for a copy of the photograph described in the passage.

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the rest of the program content and structure reads like a contemporary episode of Charlie Rose

or Meet the Press.4 Nonetheless, the contrived voice-over is also a kind of proof of one

significant element in the genre definitions we explored above. Attempting to situate the

audience in the conversation itself, the voice-over uncovers the Table Talk producers‘ intent to

seduce the audience into believing they are actually taking part in the conversation. And the

direct address of the voice-over is the mechanism that confirms the audience‘s participation,

piercing the fourth wall and establishing the viewer‘s presence at the coffee table. The voice-

over also attempts to suggest the conversation is happening contemporaneously to the moment

we are viewing the program. Going back to the original mold of the talk show, we can perhaps

uncover the source of Timberg‘s rule; the fact that the talk show genre attempts to foist the

illusion of the present tense has always been a central characteristic of the format.

At this point, we have various formulations of this central generic characteristic that

locates the audience participation in the talk show format. Whereas Timberg (2002) calls for the

experience of the present tense, Bruun (1999) suggests that the TV studio is the element that

creates the sense of simultaneity. And Brinson (2007) shows how a simple mechanism like the

voice-over can stand in as a replacement for, or in addition to, the presence of the studio in the

process of creating the same sense of the ―here and now‖ experience. But one wonders whether

or not the presence of the studio itself is necessary. To read Bruun sympathetically, but still

making an effort to create a serious genre definition, we can take the insistence on the generic

requirement of the TV studio as a more general point: in the talk show genre, there must be some

prominent production aesthetic mechanism that renders the sense of simultaneity for the viewer.

4
Despite the fact that the talk show has emerged as a genre that frequently bears base and unsavory content, the first
talk show was molded around the concept of civil public discourse. Sioussat explained that she tried to create a
dignified conversational program with participants who represented ―important divergent viewpoints on the
controversial issue up for discussion‖ (as cited in Brinson, p. 415).

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To some degree, the TV studio is constantly revealed by the talk show‘s acknowledgment

of the fourth wall, a standard device that situates the viewer on one side of the program content.

The spatial logic—what Bruun (1999) called the scenographic arrangement—of the talk show

genre (i.e., the way the cameras are typically arranged on one side of the action, separating the

audience from the program by an imaginary plane) adheres to this convention almost without

exception, reminding the viewer that the information provided on the screen is specifically

designed for their consumption, or the consumption of a live studio audience. As the cameras

situate the audience on one side of the action—even barring a voice-over or any form of direct

address that reminds the audience that they are the targets of a performance—the commonplaces

of the genre remain: the proscenium style setting, the high key studio lighting, the stable cameras

and their deep focus that opens the whole stage to clear view; all of these production devices

betray the presence of the studio and implicitly remind us that we are the precise target of the

performance.5 Taken as a whole, we see that the constellation of these generic elements

functions to create a sense for the viewer that they are somehow present to the space where the

conversation is taking place. As Shattuc (1997) suggests, ―talk shows are marked by the active

inclusion of the audience in the spectacle . . . The audience becomes part of the performance, just

‗on the other side of the screen‘‖ (pp 4-5).6 These basic conventions give us the sense that, as

viewers of a talk show, what we are seeing is being performed for us—that without the presence

of an audience, the events that comprise a talk show would not be taking place.

5
We will look at the Appendices in more detail later, but it should be pointed out that Appendix D includes a frame
by frame record of a typical program produced in the conventional talk show genre format.
6
It should be noted that Shattuc, like Bruun, is specifically talking about daytime talk shows which usually include a
live studio audience. But the adherence to this convention is common to all subgenres of the talk show format.
Regardless of whether or not a live audience is present in the studio, the viewing audience is always implied by the
adherence to the proscenium‘s fourth wall. Through a kind of gaze-based vicariousness that is injected through the
point of view of a proscenium style set, or through an identification with live audience members, the viewer of the
talk show is supposedly transported to the time and place of the conversation unfolding on the screen.

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The Hybrid Production Design of Storymakers

Rose (2002) pointed out that the bleeding borders of the television genre are a symptom

of the increasing demands of a competitive television marketplace, noting that,

since the 1980s, genre TV programming has rarely operated according to precise formal categories or strict

style and content conventions. The competitive pressures of six broadcast networks and a hundred or so

special cable networks have led producers and programmers to embrace concepts that deliberately cross

‗traditional‘ boundaries and fuse the widest assemblage of elements (p. 2).

From time to time, such assemblage has included not only a mix of genre rules within the

practice of conventional television production, but it has also borrowed significantly (although

somewhat infrequently) from the representational codes of the cinema (Timberg and Barker,

1990, p. 19).7 Nonetheless, if we take to heart one of the four principles of Timberg‘s (2002)

definition of the genre—that the talk show (like virtually all television programming) is ―a

commodity competing with other broadcast commodities‖—the recognition of the emergence of

hybridity as a marketing trend in modern television is by now a banal observation. Rose even

cites the NBC president, Jeff Zucker, who confesses that genre hybridity ―is what we have to do

to survive‖ (as cited in Rose, p. 3). In a note that both mitigates and strengthens this basic

explanation, Mittell (2001) refers us to Rick Altman‘s famous work on film genre, offering the

summary statement that ―the film industry promotes multiple genres around any single movie to

maximize audience appeals‖ (p. 10). But can the same be said for TV? Continuing, Mittell

7
However, it should be pointed out that Timberg and Barker (1990) cite examples from situation comedies and TV
dramas such as Frank’s Place and M*A*S*H – not talk shows. Although not a new phenomenon for television in
general, the application of the cinematic code to the talk show genre is sui generis. With that statement, however, it
should be said that, while an exhaustive content analysis of every talk format television program ever recorded is a
possible venture, the demands of such a research assignment far exceed the scope of this essay. As a result, the
conclusion that this program is aesthetically unique must be qualified by the disclosure of its untenability for the
purposes of this project. Furthermore, my point is not to celebrate Storymakers for its singularity but rather to use
its unique situation in the genre to illuminate the various contributions of its production elements and to explore how
this framework might be useful to think more clearly about the symbolic functions and effects of television talk in
general.

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(2001) warns that, ―though we may find similar trends in television, we cannot simply import

such an argument into a distinct medium with vitally different industrial imperatives and

audience practices‖ (p. 10). And to further illustrate why the cross platform application of genre

theory is dangerous, we can go back to Rose for a contrary insight. Having explained that

hybridity serves its purpose as a marketing mechanism, Rose advises:

Despite the ―promiscuous hybridity‖ . . . the entire television industry, including TV critics, also continues

to operate under a basic conviction that readily understood, mainstream television genres provide valuable

programming signature and means of identification. Network viewing cycles may change from the

conventional to the inventive and then back to the conventional, but programmers still long for a strong

situation comedy and a strong drama to anchor their prime-time schedules . . . Cable networks are created

solely to showcase a single genre (p. 3).

Clearly, the demands of TV programming mark a clear distinction between the way genres

function on television and in the cinema. But the AMC network—a TV channel whose primary

programming model is organized around the distribution of movies—provides an interesting case

study in this analysis. Taking Mittell‘s (2001) critique to heart, it is important to recognize that

the genre demands of the AMC channel are extraordinary in the world of television

programming. Being one of the few television networks that are defined by content that is

explicitly not made for TV, AMC has the unique burden of maintaining a cinematic brand in the

television medium. As a result, we might find a clue as to why Storymakers has been designed

and produced in such a hybridized style. As Mittell (2003) points out, ―generic categories are

one of the most prevalent means by which audiences discern, discriminate, and distinguish

among the vast realm of media products offered by cultural industries‖ (p.37). Consequently,

the producers at AMC, recognizing their audience‘s desire to see movies, have created a talk

format television program that mimics the production elements of the cinema.

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Analysis of Production Elements in the Storymakers Talk Show

One of the things that makes Storymakers such an excellent case study for genre analysis

is that it is the direct descendant of an earlier program—Shootout—also a talk show about the

entertainment industry and also produced and hosted by Peter Guber and Peter Bart.8 Shootout,

however, was not produced in a hybrid format; it obeyed all the conventions of the talk show

genre. Consequently, to draw out a more clear delineation of the production elements in

Storymakers, I will make recourse to a comparative analysis with the Shootout program.9 These

comparisons will be demonstrated by contact sheets provided in Appendix items B, C and D.10

The Absence of the Studio: Lighting and Mise-en-scène

In both segments of the first episode of Storymakers, we see groups of entertainment

personalities seated on comfortable furniture – plush chairs and sofas – that have been casually

organized in a rectangular pattern so that all interlocutors can easily address each other. The

conversation is taking place in a large living space that resembles a modern-day living room,

subtly adorned in the trappings of the comfortable upper middle class lifestyle. The participants

in the Storymakers conversations all seem very at ease; glasses of white wine in standing reserve

on their side tables, the group carries on in thoughtful and spontaneous conversation as though

they had just finished a fine meal in the dining room. The space is lit in a soft, warm and diffuse

amber-yellowish glow that emanates in a natural hue which matches the lamp lighting scattered

8
Respectively, the current chairman of Mandalay Entertainment and the Editor in Chief of Variety magazine, both
are veteran Hollywood producers.
9
It should be stated here that, regretfully, to date only one episode of Storymakers has been produced for air.
Because the assignment specifically called for an analysis of at least two episodes, I am making a compromise by
looking at the Shootout program to highlight various features of these programs. I argue in defense of this decision
that, when this project was first assigned, only a couple weeks had passed since the first episode had aired. Despite
the fact that only one show had aired, I had reason to believe that future shows would soon be distributed (and there
is plenty of evidence that such shows are on the way) (Loewenstein, 2009). Unfortunately, no new shows have aired
since the first and, as a result, this essay is unable to offer a two episode analysis.
10
The contact sheets provided in Appendix B and Appendix C consist of screen caps taken from two-minute
segments of each program offered on the AMCtv.com website. The screen caps were generated by capturing a
single frame at one second intervals throughout the clip.

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throughout the room.11 No lapel microphones are visible; in fact, nothing that suggests this is a

television production (aside from the forgettable fact that we are looking into this room via the

cameras‘ lenses) is visible in any way.12

The reason this description of the space is important is because of how directly this

production space contravenes the talk show genre code. As we discussed earlier, Bruun (1999)

pointed out that one of the mainstays of the talk show genre is the TV studio. Here, there is not

only an absence of a studio, but in direct contrast to the talk show genre convention where an

audience is implicitly recognized and included by the construction of a fourth wall, the producers

of this program make a very intentional effort to make the conversation look as though it is

taking place in someone‘s home, completely removing the inner workings of the production

mechanism from the audience‘s frame of mind.

Editing: Shot/Reverse-Shot, Reaction Shots and Frame Fucking

In fact, the absence of the fourth wall in this production is notable for another reason: it

indicates the cinematic editing technique that is employed throughout. The producers have

purposefully arranged the cameras around the room so that they can take advantage of the

―shot/reverse-shot‖ convention of the Hollywood style.13 As Bordwell (2006) explains,

―shot/reverse-shot exchanges reiterate the information about character placement‖ (p. 124). But

they also help communicate the intimacy of the conversation, showcasing reaction shots and

allowing the viewer to recognize the interaction of the participants; at times, the conversation

11
Although it does appear they have added some production lights overhead, and perhaps from a few camera angles,
the untrained eye would not be able to discern the presence of this production enhancement. For the widest shots of
the set, see Appendix B, frames 111- 125.
12
Due to the magic of editing, it cannot be certain, but there appear to be four different camera angles—and hence,
one would assume, four cameras—used in this production. Compare at Appendix D to see the standard 3 camera set
of the conventional TV talk show.
13
This technique persists throughout, but for a clear example see Appendix C, frames 6 – 48. Again, compare at
Appendix D to see the standard 3 camera set of the conventional TV talk show.

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even begins to feel like cozy dinner party banter. In addition to the setting, this coziness is also

partly due to a digital editing technique that has the vulgar nomenclature ―frame fucking‖

(Bordwell, p. 155). Because the program is not shot live-to-tape, and because there are at least

four cameras worth of footage to choose from, the editors are able to pull, slide and thrust

various frames in and out of the timeline of the program in order to quicken or lengthen the pace

of the interactions and to draw our attention to different aspects of the speakers‘ gestures and

expressions. One reason this is such a startling aspect of the Storymakers program is that,

traditionally, the time and cost it takes to plot and weave together footage in the editing process

has been far too prohibitive for the talk-show format—a format that (like all live-to-tape TV

programming) has been celebrated for its cost effectiveness.

Framing: Close Ups, Over the Shoulder Shots, Shallow Depth of Field

To exaggerate the shot/reverse-shot placement of the participants, the producers have also

decided to use ―close ups‖ and ―over the shoulder‖ framing that not only creates a more intimate

composition, by directing our attention away from the out-of-focus foreground and towards the

subject in the shallow field of focus, they hold our attention to the conversation.14 When

designing the show, Andrew Fried, producer of the Storymakers program, explained that they

were looking to accomplish a style that captured the sense of the ―here and now‖ authenticity of

a documentary style aesthetic:

We looked at a lot of ―dirty‖ camera work to come up with the look, you know, we wanted ―dirty‖ over-

the-shoulders, we wanted lamps in the foreground, and the corner of the couch in the foreground—just

really whatever we could do to make it feel like you‘ve dropped in on something, and almost voyeuristic

(A. Fried, personal communication, April 3, 2009).

14
For substantive examples, see Appendix B, frames 12 – 18 and most of the shots of Danny Boyle in Appendix C.
Compare at Appendix D to see that every shot uses deep focus, rendering details that smash the planes of view into
one persistently viewable field.

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The result of this voyeuristic feeling is that we feel as if we are hiding and peeking-in on the

conversation from a safe and comfortable distance behind the action. This is a common

technique in filmmaking, as Bordwell draws out further the distinction between film and TV

production elements when he explains that ―[m]ost filmmakers have come to prefer a shallow-

focus look. (They find the deep space yielded by digital video a drawback.)‖ (p. 185).15 In some

shots, the shallow depth of field is exaggerated by the use of close-ups and ultrafast prime lenses,

such as throughout most of the segment in Appendix C, where through most of the frames we see

the interlocutors framed from the neck up.

Handheld Camera Movement

Perhaps the most notably defiant production element in the whole program is the use of

the handheld camera. This particular element is very difficult to see in the contact sheets and

truly requires a viewing of the moving footage to appreciate, but we can point to at least one case

where it is somewhat apparent.16 In the actual footage, we can watch as the camera operator

carefully frames shots, subtly zooms in and out, sometimes even panning to catch the back and

forth of conversations. Constantly working to achieve the new framing, the aesthetic

significance of handheld camera work is that it adds a kind of ―liveness‖ or sense of ―reality‖ to

the look of the shot. This sense of liveness is exaggerated by the constant, yet subtle, movements

that are noticeable as the camera operators‘ muscles are constantly micro-adjusting to support the

weight of the rig.

15
The best example of the use of shallow depth of field is probably the reaction shot of Amy Adams in Appendix B,
frames 29 and 30. Note the over the shoulder framing and the inclusion of the lamp out of focus in the back of the
shot. The resulting composition boasts multiple planes of depth, but the shallow focus keeps our attention on the
subject.
16
In Appendix C, at frames 10 and 11, we can see suddenly that the size of Danny Boyle‘s head has changed,
showing him to be slightly smaller in proportion to the size of the screen.

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The reason that this element has such a significant impact to the overall aesthetic of the

Storymakers program is that it is constantly present, feeling as if we are looking at the entire

conversation through a more human perspective, one that is alive and organic. And it is perhaps

most interesting to note that—recalling how the TV studio and its audience are the hallmark

device in the talk show genre—this handheld technique approaches a superiority in its

replacement of this aesthetic element. Where the TV studio serves as the old talk show standard

that situates the audience, it also renders a kind of pretense to the talk show genre. There is an

inherent falsity present in the talk show that is induced by the recognition that what we are

seeing is a performance—a recognition that is necessarily implied by the audience‘s presence.

Contrarily, it would seem that the primary appeal of the talk show is that it offers its viewer a

chance to truly take part in an interesting conversation with extraordinary people. But the genre

conventions have, to some degree, persistently impeded this effect. When watching a talk show,

one frequently gets the sense that the content is planned and rehearsed at worst, and

preconceived at best. In this light, it may be possible to make the argument that Storymakers is

the first talk show program to thoroughly accomplish this goal of seamlessly inserting the viewer

into the conversation – an accomplishment that became possible when the handheld documentary

technique was applied to the genre. Indeed, the significance of this handheld style is also rooted

deep in the history of filmmaking, and to fully appreciate how and why Storymakers makes use

of the aesthetic element, we need to look deeper into the origins of this technique.

Origins of the Storymakers Production Elements

The production elements that are featured in Storymakers have a unique and circuitous

history. Ironically, aspects of what is commonly described as the Hollywood style (Bordwell,

15
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Staiger and Thompson, 1985) find their origins in the world of non-fiction documentary film.17

During the 1950s, the practices of documentary filmmaking underwent a significant change in

the United States when the development of new and more versatile recording technologies

emerged, making the task of recording both visual and audible media much easier for the

documentary producer. Renowned documentary historian Erik Barnouw (1993) describes these

developments here:

Among American documentarists, maneuverable 16mm equipment rapidly displaced 35mm during the

1950‘s [sic]. Use of the tripod, once regarded as essential, was in decline. Yet mobility was hampered by

several remaining problems . . . the system that obliged talking people to hover near microphones, which

were fastened by cable to recording equipment (in turn, fastened to the camera), had to be abolished . . .

During the late 1950‘s [sic], groups in various places were striving for these goals. One such group was

formed in 1958 at Time, Inc., in New York by Robert Drew. He persuaded the organization to finance

experiments that would carry the candid photography tradition of Life magazine forward into film, with

mobile, synchronized sound shooting. His enthusiasm had been ignited by a cameraman whose work he

had long admired, and who became a leader in the experiments—Richard Leacock . . . At Time, Inc., the

Drew unit began a series of experiments . . . In a crucial breakthrough, they developed a wireless

synchronizing system . . . They acquired wireless microphones, utilizing miniature transmitters . . . In

technical terms, the work reached a peak in 1961 in the film Eddie, about racing car driver Eddie Sachs, in

which the camera, recorder, and microphone became independently mobile elements (p. 235-236).

Later recruited to become the ABC TV network‘s documentary unit, Drew and Leacock applied

this technology to create some of the seminal works in the documentary film genre that has come

to be known as either ―cinéma vérité‖ or ―direct cinema.‖18 As Barnouw notes, ―The ABC-TV

network thus contributed to the pioneering of a genre. But the special glories of the genre were

17
The documentary film format – the non-fiction film – is a style of filmmaking that does not have the same
synechdochical attachment to that celebrated district in the northwest corner of Los Angeles.
18
Repeating the technologically deterministic outline of the origins of this movement, Nichols (1991) adds another
name and calls this the observational mode of documentary filmmaking: ―Observational documentary (Leacock-
Pennebaker, Frederick Wiseman) arose from the availability of more mobile, synchronous recording equipment‖ (p.
33).

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its unpredictability and its ambiguity, qualities that scarcely made for comfortable relations with

sponsors‖ (p. 238). Regardless of the desirability of these elements to their contemporary

sponsors, the characteristic unpredictability of the direct cinema aesthetic is part of what gives

this style of filmmaking its unique force. But the questions remain: What exactly is it about the

direct cinema techniques that lend this style of audio and video recording its unpredictable

nature? What is it about this style of filmmaking that provides such a compelling representation

of the real world? To help answer these questions, and to get closer to making insights about the

production techniques employed on Storymakers, we must first continue to trace these elements

as they evolve throughout the history of filmmaking.

In the explanation above, Barnouw (1993) hits on a couple important trends that are

emerging during this period. Most notably, we learn that the increasing mobility made possible

by the new equipment put the tripod into ever increasing disuse, allowing the camera operator to

hold the camera in her hands or on her shoulder, opening the documentary film audience‘s field

of view to any part of the world where a ―handheld‖ camera could go. Along with this

technological advancement came a new aesthetic element: the handheld shot. Not only creating

a fundamental change to the mechanics and efficiency of the filmmaking process, the liberation

of the camera from a stationary location on the tripod to the versatile and unsteady world of the

cameraman‘s hands fundamentally altered the way films looked—and not just documentary

films. As audiences at the time had become more or less used to the sense that everything in a

film should appear stable and persistently visible, the handheld shot brought the viewer a look at

the action that was constantly in motion, shaky, kinetic, bouncing about, sometimes even to the

point of incomprehensibility. This development in filmmaking technology soon worked its way

into fiction films as well, most notably popularized by directors such as Francois Truffaut and

17
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Jean-Luc Godard from the Nouvelle Vague movement—the French New Wave cinema of the

late 1950s and early 1960s. The absorption of these techniques added a new set of inflections to

the language of the cinema.

To gain a clearer picture of what this aesthetic development meant, we can briefly turn

back to Bordwell (2006) who offers this history:

And what of the handheld camera, constantly rediscovered and always declaring itself brand new? Since

the 1920s, handheld shots were usually associated with violence, an optically subjective point of view, or

news reportage, and these functions were locked in place during the 1960s . . . Because of its usage in

cinéma vérité documentary, the handheld camera could imbue intimate confrontations . . . with a

spontaneous edge . . . Filmmakers were coming to believe that virtually any scene could benefit from the

handheld shot‘s immediacy, urgency, and (the inevitable word) energy (144-145).

Further, explaining how and why it might be that this kind of shot has become so commonplace

in the Hollywood style, Bordwell explains that ―the usual explanation is that a mobile framing,

like quick cutting, boosts the scene‘s ‗energy.‘ Camera movement also separates the planes of

the image and creates a more voluminous pictorial space.‖ Bordwell goes on further to cite the

French New Wave and other films that emerged during this period, a trend which eventually

―made handheld shots more acceptable in mainstream American movies‖ (p. 137).19

Nonetheless, the aesthetic produced by this technique, even though it has been absorbed into the

Hollywood style, still confers a sense of realism. When it is used today in contemporary film

and television production, it is still employed to invoke the feel of a documentary aesthetic.

Is Storymakers a Talk Show? Who Cares?

Taking this lineage into account, and looking at the production elements we discussed

earlier, we can begin to see how the Storymakers aesthetic looks more like a Hollywood film

19
It is worth noting that the film Bordwell mentions as an exemplar of the cinéma vérité documentary genre –
Primary from 1960, widely considered to be a masterwork of observational documentary – was produced by the
Drew unit mentioned earlier in this section.

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than a TV program. However, the content of the Storymakers program—the hosted conversation

in the round table interview style—is exclusively the domain of the talk show genre.

Ultimately, this contextualization begs the question: is Storymakers a talk show? At this point it

is important to remember Mittell‘s (2001) instructions. The point of this genre analysis is not to

lock Storymakers down as a ―bounded and stable objects of analysis,‖ but rather to ―explore the

material ways in which genres are culturally defined, interpreted, and evaluated‖ (p. 9).

By looking at the history of the aesthetic devices used in the Storymakers program, we

have illuminated a cultural logic that explains the impact of the hybrid format that is struck

therein. While the documentary filmmaking techniques employed by the Storymakers

production team replace the norms of the TV talk show genre, they also invoke a mode of

observation that is reminiscent of the experience of seeing a Hollywood film product. That is to

say that we experience Storymakers in a way that is psychically similar to the way we experience

a movie. As a result, managing the cognitive dissonance that occurs as we realize the program

we are watching is not, in fact, a film, but instead bears many of the hallmarks and content that

are germane to a conventional TV talk show, there exists an opportunity for the viewer to be

shocked out of the normal TV viewing mode. At the same time, and perhaps more significantly,

the ―immediacy, urgency and energy‖ that are conjured by these techniques recreate the illusion

of the present tense that would otherwise seem to be lost when Storymakers abandoned the talk

show genre convention of the TV studio. As a result, immersed in the confounding perplexity

of the genre bending, we are also held in a somewhat familiar place by the adopted Hollywood

norms. The comfort that comes with the logic of the formalist Hollywood aesthetic allow us the

time and space to contemplate the significance of these differences, creating a kind of self-taught

lesson in media literacy. Because our expectations for what a TV talk show should look like are

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completely shattered by the program‘s defiance of these conventions, I would argue that the

program creates an opportunity for reflection on the processes of representation.

Reflecting on the Storymakers Aesthetic via the Psychoanalytic Mirror

The psychoanalytical model for media analysis was developed in film studies. Lacan‘s

development of a structural linguistics for the Freudian processes of individuation is largely

responsible for this move (Flitterman-Lewis, 1992, p. 214). In his study of the ―mirror stage,‖

Lacan describes a situation in the development of the human mind that works nicely as metaphor

for thinking about the way media function in modern societies. Lacan points to the earliest

moments in an infant‘s life—a point during which the world of objects and sensory experience is

still so new that the infant has yet to achieve any significant understanding of much of anything.

At some point during these initial phases of life, before the child has even developed enough

motor capacity to recognize its own arms and legs—a time when everything in the world must

seem to flow together as one organic system—Lacan suggests that the infant is nonetheless able

to suddenly develop a recognition of its own mirror image;

This jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the infans stage, still sunk in his motor

incapacity and nursling dependence, would seem to exhibit in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix

in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification

with the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject (p. 62).

In that moment, as the infant recognizes itself—the mirror image of itself—seeing a whole and

idealized being, the jumbled and perplexing world of sensory experience gives way to the

infant‘s identification with its own idealized image. Lacan argues that it is this very moment of

recognition that provides the infant an entrance into the world of language and the cultural logic

that gives it rules and order. Seeing itself (its self) for the first time—and seeing a version of

itself that is whole and complete—the infant is seduced into the fantasy of order and wholeness.

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This process of idealization is what Lacan called the primary identification—the initial

identification that makes all subsequent identifications possible—which functions to ―establish a

relation between the organism and its reality‖ (p. 63). The problem, however, is the falsity of the

ideal of wholeness. Lacan warns:

The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation – and

which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that

extends from the fragmented body-image to a form of its totality . . . to the assumption of the armour of an

alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject‘s entire mental development (p. 64)

In other words, as we move out of infancy and through the rest of our mental development,

because of the peculiar way that the human mind acquires language, we have locked ourselves

into a strict path of identity construction that is based on the symbolic ideals that we perceive in

our earliest experiences. Lacan warns that it is precisely our unreasonable expectation that our

sense of self identity—if not the world in general—should fit together nicely and make whole

and complete sense that leads us to the perpetual existential crises and neuroses that plague the

human mind in the modern world. While we and other scholars might debate whether or not this

is ultimately an optimistic or pessimistic statement about the power of language and identity (that

is, whether it is ultimately a source of oppression or liberation) seems to me to be asking the

wrong sort of question.20 A better question, and a more focused approach to the task at hand,

20
However, one reason to be optimistic is to remember that Lacan‘s description of these processes, if it is to be
worth anything at all, should hold up to a self-indexical application. If Lacan can conjure the theory in the first
place—he himself having experienced the same developmental processes—something must be said for the mind‘s
ability to master its own domain. As a contemporary scholar notes in his reflection on his participation in the
debates of the psychoanalytical heyday: ―Writing in the early 1990s, I denounced 1970s and 1980s
psychoanalytic/Lacanian film theory for its iconoclasm or image phobia, or for what I called the ‗psychoanalytic
theorist‘s need for control, his or her fear of giving way to the insidious blandishments of visual fascination, and his
or her consequent construction of a theoretical edifice as a defense against a threatening pleasure.‘ What I failed to
see, in writing lines like this—which is, of course, the exact same thing that nearly every polemicist nearly always
fails to see—is that almost precisely the same polemic could be launched, with as much justice, against my own
theoretical edifice‖ (Shaviro, para. 2).

21
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would be to ask how we might take this Lacanian model of psychoanalysis and apply it as a

productive mode of criticism for understanding a hybrid television program.

It is probably best not to take Lacan‘s model in the most literal sense. It is relatively

clear that the mirror stage is a visual figure invented by Lacan to adapt Freud‘s Oedipal model to

the world of symbols—language and culture. Indeed, this description of the mirror stage has

been popular in film studies because it provides a useful metaphor for thinking about the way

images on a screen (the cinematic mirror) and their messages (the idealized text of the self)

trickle out of the movie theater and across the culture broadly. Flitterman-Lewis (1992) makes

this plain enough:

Just as the infant sees in the mirror an ideal image of itself, the film viewer sees on the movie screen larger-

than-life, idealized characters with whom s/he is encouraged to identify. Film theory has been quick to

appreciate the correspondence between the infant in front of the ―mirror‖ and the spectator in front of the

screen, both being fascinated by and identifying with an imaged ideal that is viewed from a distance. This

early process of ego construction, in which the viewing subject finds an identity by absorbing an image in a

mirror, is one of the founding concepts in the psychoanalytic theory of the cinema spectatorship and the

basis for its discussion of primary identification (p. 214).

This passage shows how Lacanian adaptations brought Freudian theories of individuation into

film interpretation. After the linguistic turn, as scholars were looking for ways to connect their

fields of study to language, Lacanian psychoanalysis helped film theorists look at movies as

texts, making them a much more robust object of study. Consequently, it would seem that the

same system of analysis would map well onto television studies—television being another

medium that poses sound and images on a screen. But a brief and informal look at the various

trends in the literature suggests this just is not the case.21 Although plenty of attempts have been

21
Flitterman-Lewis suggests this much is true in 1992, and there does not seem to be much evidence that this trend
has changed since. Psychoanalysis‘ moment in the sun of intellectual fashion seems to have passed. Nonetheless,

22
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made to apply the model to TV, psychoanalysis as a mode of textual interpretation has just not

caught the interest of television scholars in the same way that it transfixed the field of film

theory. Flitterman-Lewis suggests a few reasons why this may be, comparing and contrasting

how psychoanalysis might be applied to TV after film theory, citing the differences between the

two modes of representation, noting that the technology and the context of reception of these

media must shape the way we approach an analysis:

films are seen in large, silent, darkened theaters, where intense light beams are projected from behind

toward luminous surfaces in front . . . In contrast to this cocoonlike, enveloping situation is the

fragmentary, dispersed, and varied nature of television reception . . . Cinema depends on the sustained and

concentrated gaze of the spectator and the continuous, uninterrupted unfolding of its stories on the screen.

Television, on the other hand, merely requires the glance of the viewer (p. 217).

Later, these differences are fleshed out in more detail, where Flitterman-Lewis parses how the

two media present different kinds of texts, suggesting that in cinema the goal is to create an

―illusion of reality‖ that is supported by ―the fluid continuity of seamless editing‖ but that,

contrarily, in television programming, the serial format of shows that tell their stories in

fragments, segment by segment, week by week, ―implies that we will always be frustrated in our

desire for narrative closure‖ (p. 222). And further, Flitterman-Lewis continues,

one of the most important differences between film and television, when analyzed in terms of

psychoanalysis, involves the way that our identification is negotiated through point-of-view and reverse-

shot structures. Historically, it was through editing, the joining of shot to shot in the creation of a fictional

world, that the cinema came to have its own method of constructing not only ―reality‖ but its spectator as

well . . . Hollywood cinema has devised elaborate strategies to ensure that the viewer perceives a

succession of individual shots and looks as a coherent whole . . . Hollywood editing is sometimes called

let me emphasize the informality of my study. This conclusion is not in any way based on a quantitative review, but
strictly via my limited research for this project and previous projects in this department, and according to a perusal
of the approaches that appear in the text books that compile leading essays in the field, it feels safe to say that
psychoanalysis just does not have the same sway in the world of TV studies that it had in other disciplines.

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‗invisible‘ editing, because we are not supposed to consciously notice the transition from one shot, one

look, to the next. In this way, we are made to believe in the reality of the constructed world (p. 223).

Oddly enough, while the majority of these distinctions seem to float for regular television

programming, considering the hybrid model applied in Storymakers, most of these traits ascribed

to the cinema are also primary aspects of the Storymakers production design. We have already

looked at the production elements of the Storymakers program in an earlier section, and to read

through Flitterman-Lewis‘ list of distinctions is almost like reading through the same list of

Storymakers production aesthetics a second time. While this does not mean that we can apply

the psychoanalysis of film theory to the Storymakers program, because we can not dismiss the

significant distinctions between the contexts of TV and film reception, it does mean that we can

look at the production aesthetics of the Storymakers design with a bit more insight.

What can be gleaned from a synthesis of the original Lacanian mode of analysis and the

modification suggested by Flitterman-Lewis is that the television program can be treated as a

text. In other words, above and beyond a mere reading of the scripts and narrative devices used

in the speaking roles, or the relationships of power that exist between characters or other

television actors, it is possible to actually find meaning in the aesthetic elements of a television

production. In this way, Lacanian psychoanalysis provides its own kind of ―mental bridge‖

between literary criticism and aesthetic theory, creating an opportunity to study the structures of

meaning which are inflected through the visual language of the media. Ironically enough, we

might then be able to call this approach a hybrid form of theory, which works especially well for

our purposes, as we take a look at Storymakers, a hybrid television talk show that has applied the

production elements more commonly found in the cinema.

What we gain from Flitterman-Lewis is that, because of its mixed use of cinema

aesthetics for the TV reception context, we can be certain that Storymakers is an exceptional case

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of television production. The distinctions drawn between the two media can not so easily be

drawn with Storymakers. While it is certainly not a kind of show that is experienced in a movie

theater, it does invoke continuity editing, and it does employ the shot/reverse-shot technique that,

as Flitterman-Lewis notes, provides a ―structure that enables the spectator to become a sort of

invisible mediator of looks, a fictive participant in the fantasy‖ (p. 224). Only in the case of

Storymakers, the fantasy is not fictive; it is defiantly non-fictive, allowing the fantasy that much

more titillation, as if we might actually experience the show as guests in the home of a

Hollywood movie producer, having casual and engaging conversation with actors and directors.

But Flitterman-Lewis is very correct to point out the way TV programming departs from film.

Indeed, Storymakers is intended to be viewed in the comfort of your own home, where you are

free to change the channel, leave your seat, or surf the internet.22 But it is for this exact reason

that we notice the brilliance of a hybrid television program like Storymakers. Because we are so

accustomed to the generic expectations created through the structuration of television viewing,

when a program so blatantly defies these conventions, we are forced to take a second look at the

mirror. Adapting the Lacanian model to television, when we suddenly recognize that the image

in the mirror has changed, we are forced to reevaluate the language we have used for so long to

make sense of the world.

Consequently, we could use Lacan to think of television content as offering a potentially

dangerous symbolic matrix of idealized images and messages that viewers might unwittingly

subscribe to, succumbing to a structure of discourse that ultimately shackles our consciousness to

the armor of an alienating identity. On the other hand, when presented with the genre bending

22
I would argue, however, that this argument is in some ways weak. While it is certainly a different viewing
environment, one‘s inclination to be distracted from the content of a TV program is less a commentary on the
context of television programming reception and more a critique of the quality of television programming. just as
movies hold you captive in your seat at the theater, good television content has always kept viewers entranced in
front of the tube.

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techniques employed in a program like Storymakers, we can step in and assert that it is precisely

the fact that Storymakers is a hybrid television program that calls the viewers‘ attention to the

language of the medium. In other words, to engage the poetry of the metaphor, because

Storymakers is such a different sort of television program, we could argue that it breaks the

Lacanian mirror, the shards of which become a hyper-mediated vocabulary, each fragment a

sharp piece of burgeoning media literacy, armed with which the individual can begin to

reconstruct an image of himself that fits the needs and wants of his own subjective autonomy.23

A post-Marxist Commentary on the Television Talk Show Genre

Before diving into a conclusion to this project, it is important to contextualize the

intellectual heritage of the scholar (Mittell, 2001, 2003) who provides the framework for the

following discussion. In order to qualify this approach as post-Marxist, a lineage from a credible

analysis of political economy is due. But first, to recast the post-Marxist approach in a

comprehensive light, we should visit a brief summary of the political economy approach to genre

analysis provided in a contemporary media studies textbook by Stadler and McWilliam (2008):

One of the strengths of the political economy approach is that, while film and television scholars often

exaggerate the independence of genre texts by focusing exclusively on the textual (this implying an

inaccurate separation between genres and their economic foundations), the political economy approach

forces us to examine the implications of these foundations. However, this approach is also frequently

criticized, not only because it tends to simplify this very relationship (between text and industry), but also

because it fails to consider the ways audiences consume genre texts (p. 234).

Clearly, the psychoanalytical critique (as well as the earlier formalist deconstruction) explored in

the sections above could be quite easily accused of being much too focused on the text of

aesthetic elements present in the hybrid talk show format that is offered by the Storymakers

23
Or, with which he can write an answer to his culminating examination!

26
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program.24 Yet the latter criticism of political economy (a prominent lack in the objectivist

approach that might explain Mittell‘s work) is the likely reason Marxist cultural criticism has

increasingly, if slowly, moved out of intellectual fashion over the past 50 years. Nonetheless,

mindful not to discard the baby (and its mirror) with the bathwater, a post-Marxist interpellation

of the television genre can still account for the economic foundations of televisual text reception

by looking at the way different individuals invoke their own subjective political economic

frameworks in the process of decoding televisual discourse; and we are most likely to find this

approach in the field of cultural studies. This is where Mittell (2003) sets up camp, posing an

article that instructs our final analysis in the cultural approach to genre studies.

Seeking to build a framework that takes this balancing act to heart, Mittell explains: ―In

examining talk shows, we must consider how taste is formed by—and formative of—definitions

of cultural identity, as defined by multiple axes, and that categories of identity are tied up within

other cultural categories, such as genres‖ (p. 37). In order to anchor this approach, Mittell (2003)

cites Bourdieu‘s (1990) influential social theoretical formulation of the habitus – Bourdieu‘s

conceptual response to the decades long objectivist/subjectivist blowout (whose overindulgences

in the postmodern libations of structuralist/poststructuralist obsession left a hangover) that has,

arguably, paralyzed the humanities and social sciences since the last decades of the 20th

century.25 In the famous chapter, Structures, Habitus, Practices, Bourdieu (1990) offers a

definition in somewhat obscurantist prose:

24
The counterargument is simple enough: the purpose of the psychoanalytical mode is to shed light on the way the
individual interacts with the symbolic matrix of cultural discourse, not, contrarily, to provide a comprehensive and
thorough account of the fundamental ontology of all time and existence!
25
Before diving into Mittell‘s interpretation of habitus for genre studies, it should be noted that a more recent work
by Bourdieu (1996) recasts Marxist criticism in nearly the same terms that are offered in Stadler and McWilliam‘s
(2008) summary of political economy above. Offering a critical interpretation of French TV journalism in the
post-Marxist mode, Bourdieu describes his approach: ―Journalism is a microcosm with its own laws, defined both
by its position in the world at large and by the attractions and repulsions to which it is subject from other such
microcosms. To say that it is independent or autonomous, that it has its own laws, is to say that what happens in it

27
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One has to escape from the realism of the structure, to which objectivism, a necessary stage in breaking

with primary experience and constructing the objective relationships, necessarily leads when it hypostatizes

these relations by treating them as realities already constituted outside of the history of the group – without

falling back into subjectivism, which is quite incapable of giving an account of the necessity of the social

world. To do this, one has to return to practice, the site of the dialectic of the opus operatum and the modus

operandi; of the objectified products and the incorporated products of historical practice; of structures and

habitus (p. 52).

We can take the concept of the habitus, then, to express a kind of statement about the

idiosyncratic fate of the individual subject. While not conferring all of the (anti)ideological

baggage that comes with the usual Marxist approach—but also acknowledging the limitations of

agency and autonomy in a world that forces us to live according to basic social rules, laws, law

enforcers, economic realities and established grammars/vocabularies—Bourdieu builds the

concept of the habitus as a mitigating field of individuation that considers and balances all sides

of the human story.26 Mittell (2003) latches onto this formulation in order to offer a model of

generic interpretation, and it seems that he has skirted the obscurantist bent by translating this

term habitus with the word ―taste‖:

Bourdieu argues that taste distinctions are also fully dependent on their contexts, as a given cultural object

might be located differently within hierarchies of value in various historical moments and situations of

audience‘s social location and way of life, or what he terms the habitus (p. 37).27

cannot be understood by looking only at external factors. That is why I did not want to explain what happens in
journalism as a function of economic factors. What happens on TF1 cannot be explained simply by the fact that it is
owned by the Bouygues holding company. Any explanation that didn‘t take this fact into account would obviously
be inadequate, but an explanation based solely on it would be just as inadequate—more inadequate still, perhaps,
precisely because it would seem adequate. This half-baked version of materialism, associated with Marxism,
condemns without shedding light anywhere and ultimately explains nothing‖ (p. 39).
26
Having already been through this with Lacan, it should be noted how the invention of clever solutions to broad
philosophical problems with odd bits of random and obscure terminology is clearly an underappreciated contribution
of the French intellectual class.
27
At first glance, this translation can seem problematic. We tend to think of taste with the connotation of agency—
that we define our tastes. But it is equally plausible that we would concede that some of our tastes are shaped by our
various political economic predispositions.

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Mittell goes on to trace how the talk show is a prime genre for discovering linkages between

taste and identity. Conducting a qualitative survey of talk show viewers, Mittell explains that his

approach is distinct in its Bourdieuian mold because it combats

the assumption among most media reception studies that viewing is the only site of genre audiences—

media audiences utilize and circulate generic categories outside the practice of television watching,

drawing on genres in various facets of everyday life, not just in specific reference to viewing a particular

text. In addition and most important, discourses linking genres and taste are often mobilized by people who

actively do not watch relevant programs (p. 38).

The bulk of Mittell‘s article is a recounting of the various responses he received from the

qualitative survey on the talk show genre. What is interesting to note is that, in this regurgitation

of the various respondents‘ appraisals of the talk show genre—and their favorite talk shows, and

other people‘s favorite talk shows, and about the kinds of people who watch all of these talk

shows in general—the essay reads much like a sociologically dysfunctional chant that confirms

all of Lacan‘s warnings from the drama of the mirror stage and the dangers we confront from our

ingestion of the cultural kaleidoscope it presents .28 With unflinching confidence in their

assessments, respondent after anonymous respondent confidently characterizes the type of

people who might be identified with watching various versions of talk show programming –

types that exist (one would guess) more in their imaginations than in their experience . Asked by

Mittell to talk openly about aspects of the genre, the respondents presented a wide range of

commentary; a sampling of the greatest hits reads as follows. First, in regards to Letterman:

―‗It‘s intellectual humor that I feel would turn off minorities‘‖ (as cited in Mittell, 2003, p. 41).

Then, on Regis and Kathie Lee: ―‗two of the most irritating people in the world‘‖ (as cited in

Mittell, 2003, p. 42). Later, on Jerry Springer, ―‗redneck trailer park trash from Arkansas‘‖ and
28
It should again be noted that Mittell‘s work was designed to address the various controversies that emerged out of
the daytime talk shows, a group which scholarship reveals has arrogated to itself the status of exemplar of the format
(Mittell, 2003).

29
BECA 896 | Graduate Culminating Examination General Question 4 | TRAVIS SIMPSON

―‗idiots‘‖ (as cited in Mittell, 2003, p. 43). And finally, regarding Oprah, responses such as,

―‗the non-scummy daytime talk show‘ and ‗a breath of fresh air in the talk show circuit,‘‖ were

paired with ―‗[Oprah] seems to have some sort of brainwashing ability on . . . fat old women‘‖

(as cited in Mittell, 2003, p. 44).29

While admitting that the various cultural practices demonstrated in the responses to the

survey ―‘prove‘ nothing on their own,‖ Mittell makes the claim that ―such a survey points to the

diversity of audience voices, considering how people use broad generic categories, as well as

subsets of a genre, to makes sense of media texts, their assumed audiences, and perceived social

impacts‖ (Mittell, p. 45). It is unclear whether or not he means to imply in the subtext of this

claim that people use generic categories of people (as opposed to generic categories of TV

programming) to make sense of the other, the people who comprise their own and other

communities, but the responses would seem to indicate that this much is the case.30

Frankly, looking back on Mittell‘s approach, the scholarly value of this research becomes

increasingly dubious. The attempt to parse the function of the genre (or the media, in general)

through an analysis of ―how it operates within people‘s lives‖ seems to reveal more about the

obsessions of the scholar than the objects of study (Mittell, 2003, p. 45). And while this may be

an unavoidable part of the representational process—whether it comes in the form of scholarly

writing, television program production, or responding to surveys—the measure of the success of

a text should be measured by its luminance, its advance of the pursuit of knowledge and literacy,

29
To make a quick flashback to the world of postmodern critique, it is further striking that what might be most
interesting about this essay when taken as a whole is how it presents itself as a kind of daytime talk show content for
the scholarly class. Mittell does make some interesting observations about the popular reception of the talk show
genre, but in its broad peacocking glee, Mittell seems also to relish in the parade of lascivious descriptions offered
by his respondents. One gathers the sneaking suspicion that the article reformulates the daytime talk genre appeal
for the academic who might seek the cover of intellectual legitimacy offered by a scholarly reviewed publication.
30
It is interesting to note that the other in psychoanalytical theory, specifically as discussed by Lacan, is originally
the specular image of the self.

30
BECA 896 | Graduate Culminating Examination General Question 4 | TRAVIS SIMPSON

its autonomizing force, its mastery of the locutionary code.31 Because it strikes me as being a

worthy project, I have attempted to heed Mittell‘s (2001) instructions and work in this review to

―explore the material ways in which genres are culturally defined, interpreted, and evaluated‖ (p.

9). In doing so, I have attempted to present a series of different approaches to genre analysis in

this review. Having started in basic genre theory, I moved on to explore a formalist code of the

talk show aesthetic and traced the historical origins of the various elements involved in its

construction. Later, we reflected on this apparatus through the psychoanalytic lens, attempting to

reconcile the hybrid television program with the existing modes of film and televisual aesthetic

theory. And finally, we looked at how a post-Marxist cultural studies critique offers insights into

the way members of the talk show audience make sense of the genre and its interpretive

communities. But in comparative conclusion, appraising the depths of critique—and the

liberating moments of insight—offered by the headier models explored earlier in this analysis, it

is clear that the cultural approach to genre studies still needs much work.

Further, looking at Storymakers as an exemplary model of innovation for all cultural

discourse, it is unequivocally clear that neither television programming nor TV program analysis

have to be rigidly contained by the conventions and mandates of genre. While, at the same time,

it is important to note how effective genre studies can be as a structural model that, in its

establishment of an analytical template, yields insights about the way television programs (and

television program studies) can be understood and, it seems more important that we leave this

review with a sense for how much all of these various cultural modes can be improved.

31
Perhaps I have been a bit unfair in my characterization of the research, but it is difficult to see how Mittell meets
these standards. While it may not have been the best example of the cultural approach, Mittell‘s work is quite
prominent in the recent literature on genre studies. But what stands out from his report is less an insight into the
function of genre and more a long list of name calling that takes place under the cover of anonymity.

31
BECA 896 | Graduate Culminating Examination General Question 4 | TRAVIS SIMPSON

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 APPENDIX A

Table Talk with Helen Sioussat

http://www.lib.umd.edu/LAB/exhibits/leadingrole/hs-images/HS-photo2.jpg

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APPENDIX B

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APPENDIX B

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APPENDIX B

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APPENDIX B

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APPENDIX C

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APPENDIX C

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APPENDIX C

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APPENDIX D

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