Author Archives: ngladys

In Kinder’s article, “Re-Wiring Baltimore: The Emotive Power of Systemics, Seriality, and the City,” discusses how The Wire’s systemic analysis strengthens the emotional effect it has, creating a great television series. Essentially, Kinder argues that systemic analysis is the best way to fully use the narrative power in television and deliver the most emotionally compelling performance. Although I agree with Kinder’s statement, I wonder whether an emotionally gripping piece is really enough to enact change in Baltimore and other cities.

A systemic analysis paired with an emotionally driving force does cause the audience to react, but does it effect the change Simon wants? I feel that Simon evokes emotion, but because it is driven by deep pessimism, I would argue that the audience is left feeling there is nothing they can do to fight this. Simon delivers truth, but not enough hope to drive the audience to enact change. I question whether this is the most effective way to compel viewers to help eliminate this corruption that affects Baltimore and many other cities across the country.

In Wollen’s “Signs and Meaning in the Cinema,” he explores the auteur theory. At the end of the added pages from 1969 he states that “a valuable work, a powerful work at least, is one which challenges codes, overthrows established ways of reading or looking, not simply to establish new ones, but to compel an unending dialogue, not at random but productively…” This idea is particularly interesting because it explains why authorship is important – why it matters whose idea it is. Unlike film where an auteur is easier to assign, in television, it is harder to decide who deserves the credit to the collective authorship that occurs.

One usually associates creativity with individualism. In television that becomes less of the case because of the great collectivity involved. Creativity becomes less of a mental process and more of a social process. It is hard to deem one person as the prime creator, when there are so many forces involved in the creative process. Is it the writer, director, producer that ultimately makes a work valuable? Who is that single person on the creative team that comes up with the idea that challenges the established codes? Does that person even exist? The individualistic approach to the idea of creativity is in a sense defeated when considering the television creative process because there are so many people involved.

In John Hartley’s essay “From Republic of Letters to Television Republic? Citizen Readers in the Era of Broadcast Television”, he states that “Watching television needed to be thought of more as literacy than as a behavior” (Hartley, p. 402). Throughout the essay, he introduces many ideas about television studies that I had never even considered. However, this specific point really hit me. I have always looked at television as a type of activity – a form of entertainment for me. To see it as something beyond that, but more the writing behind that is a very interesting concept to me. Whenever hearing the word screenwriting, I always associated it with film, rather than television. As Hartley discussed in the essay, I was one of the many people guilty of relating television with minimal quality. If the word television came up, I would automatically think of trashy (yet absolutely addicting) shows like the reality series The Hills and the drama Gossip Girl.

Reading about television in a more intellectual and academic way was so fascinating because it instantly got my mind racing. It jumpstarted my brain to start thinking about television in a completely new way and it makes me even more excited for this class.