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Sarah Cardwell
Television aesthetics is a relatively recent innovation in the broader field of television studies. When I began teaching my television aesthetics course in 2000 I
struggled to compile a recommended reading list. It seemed that very few scholars
were interested in tackling the medium from a primarily aesthetic approach.
Preparing and planning this now-established course for the academic year 20056,
I find there is far greater scope. Without overt collaboration, an increasing number
of voices have contributed to the proliferation of work that fits broadly within television aesthetics. Unsurprisingly, these voices do not sing in unison; they offer very
different arguments in response to key questions. However, there is some agreement about the questions to be asked, and one can pinpoint sufficient commonalities of vocabulary, concerns and methodology to support the view that the field is
becoming established as a stand-alone area of television studies.1 Some of the
commonalities exhibited include:
a) The use of vocabulary that is unusual and distinctive within television studies.
Within television aesthetics, one regularly encounters words previously
shunned by television scholars, such as: evaluation, judgement, criteria,
achievements, accomplishments, discrimination, art and, of course, aesthetics.
b) As this lexicon implies, more frequent and explicit evaluation of programmes,
and a more vocal debate about what good television is.
c) An asserted recognition that the field needs more textual criticism and a
stronger understanding of what close textual analysis means, where the latter
is understood to focus on thematic, formal and stylistic elements rather than
simply on content or representation.
d) A movement away from approaches that use television to study something else
(for example, society, ideology, gender politics) and towards a recognition of
television as a medium of expression first and foremost, and of programmes as
specific artworks.
e) An interest in conceptual and philosophical questions that arise from attention
to specific television texts.
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to the details of texts, a sincere and fulfilling engagement with them. A programme
that inspires powerful responses in us gives rise to the need to understand it more
fully and to understand why it has affected us thus. This need is met by a sustained
and committed investigation of the programmes aesthetic qualities. The need and
the meeting of it should be intertwined in our critical writing.
While making our motivation for textual analysis explicit has historically been
uncommon within television studies, philosophical aesthetics has long understood
its importance. Colin Lyas, an aesthetician whose work on interpretation and evaluation can be valuable when considering television,6 underlines the importance of
encouraging students to apprehend and appreciate a work fully before analysing it.
Otherwise, they are reduced to mumbling about the publicly observable aspects of
a work with no idea how these relate to the value of that with which they are
confronted, and no idea, even, wherein that value may reside.7 Employing the
example of the analysis of poetry, Lyas observes that the place to start is with the
attempt to grasp such things as the expressive quality of the poem: Is it mawkish,
glib, ironic, witty, sad? If sad, is the quality of the expression of the sadness, for
example, too excessive or too commonplace? One may then move from this initial
apprehension to an observation of how formal and stylistic details, the rhyme
scheme, the stress pattern, the vowel sounds, the alliterations contribute to the
achievement of that effect.8 Scholars of television aesthetics would recognise these
tenets of good criticism, which moves beyond the competent, descriptive observation of textual details, towards a personal and powerful response to a programme
and consequent detailed analysis.
Evaluation
David Thorburn, in his article Television as an Aesthetic Medium, argues for the
crucial enterprise of evaluative criticism aiming to disclose the thematic and
formal excellence of particular programs.9 He thus neatly discloses that television
aesthetics is concerned not only with interpretation but also with that rather
more contentious matter: evaluation and with the connection between the two.
Charlotte Brunsdons 1990 groundbreaking work on quality television threw down
the gauntlet with a powerful argument that most academics involved in television
studies are using qualitative criteria, however expressed or repressed, and that the
constitution of the criteria involved should be the subject of explicit debate.10 It was
only towards the end of the twentieth century that a handful of fellow television
scholars took up her challenge, and argued for greater reflection upon evaluation
in both scholarship and teaching.11
Christine Geraghty is one of those who consider that television studies
would, I think, benefit from academics being more explicit about the evaluative
judgements that we inevitably make.12 Importantly, Geraghty adds that while
recognizing the social dimensions of any discussion of evaluation, I want to argue
the importance of a textual dimension to this question.13 Thus evaluation is
understood as inextricably linked to (arising from) interpretation, something she
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underscores when she asks for an approach that emphasizes analytic description
and evaluative discussion across a range of programmes.14
While to any outside observer this may seem uncontentious, it is the case within
television studies that, historically, programmes have been evaluated more often
on the basis of their representations and effects, their ideological and social implications, rather than their artistic achievements. Yet developing a more comprehensive and astute awareness of television programmes aesthetic qualities, and a
greater willingness to make critical discriminations, is vital. As Thorburn notes, a
scholar must understand the literary or aesthetic dimensions of a programme for
the basic work of historical and cultural interpretation;15 he demonstrates how one
particular scholar radically misreads these texts [1960s American spy series]
because he does not grant sufficient weight to their aesthetic qualities, especially
their tone and atmosphere.16
Furthermore, Geraghty foresees wider consequences if evaluation continues to
be sidelined within television studies: in much teaching of television in higher
education questions of aesthetics are being neglected in ways that can only be
detrimental to future programming and audiences.17 Television is one of the
primary sources of artworks in Western societies today, and television aesthetics
opens up to the television audience valuable skills of discrimination and evaluation that are ultimately empowering. To avoid critical judgement, to deny it to our
students, is to deny them an essential critical education; it finally impoverishes the
capacity of human beings to perceive the value-qualities of works and so deprives
them of sources of joy.18
One of the most common objections mounted against increasing the role of
evaluation within television studies is that it will lead to a narrow canon of good
television, eliminating too many programmes as unworthy of study. Within television aesthetics, this understandable and legitimate concern is recognised as an
important focus for ongoing debate; views on the matter are diverse. Brunsdon and
Geraghty maintain that programmes usually considered popular or mass television need not be excluded from analysis: both have undertaken extensive work on
soap operas, for example. Importantly, though, they argue that discriminations can
be made within such genres both between quality and non-quality television, and
between good and not-so-good television. They argue then for a pluralistic, but not
relativistic, approach.
Others offer different perspectives. Robin Nelson, in his analytical account of the
difficulties of critical judgement within contemporary television studies, tentatively suggests a basis for future evaluation which recognises diversity but also
prioritises common meaningfulness.19 John Caughie goes further, defending his
decision to delineate a category of serious drama, which both delimits the genre
in question and then makes further discriminations within it, maintaining the
capacity of some programmes over others for sustained analysis.20 Jacobs recognises the different aspirations of different kinds of television,21 and notes that we
may regard any programme as a pleasant casual distraction but that some
instances of television elicit strong engagement, intense viewer proximity and
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concentrated attention, and many will be able to withstand the kinds of critical
pressure that we normally apply to other artworks.22 He thus cautiously implies
that some programmes are likely to reward sustained analysis better than others;
some are richer, more complex and more enduring.
Television aesthetics does not assume any particular hierarchy of texts or agreed
canon, but it does address questions of value, critical judgement and the selection
of criteria for evaluation. There is a healthy diversity of perspectives on evaluative
criticism within television aesthetics (as a forthcoming special issue of the Journal
of British Cinema and Television, Good Television? will reveal).23
Television as an art
Despite their differences, these writers share a belief that some television is worthy
of sustained scrutiny and critical attention for its aesthetic qualities. And this view
has become increasingly popular.24 This is a marked shift in the way in which
television is regarded. Thorburn asserted the validity of an aesthetic approach to
television back in 1987, arguing that such an approach recognises that television
programmes are comparable with other arts, sharing with them representational
or artistic and often fictive or imaginative qualities.25 Yet it is only since the late
1990s that a significant number of scholars have expressed similar views. Jacobs
puts it concisely when he describes television as a medium for artistic expression.26
The implication of this view is that one of the main roles of the television scholar
is to explore and assess the artistic accomplishments exhibited in various
programmes. For too long, television has been considered primarily in terms of
its communicative, not artistic, functions. Television aesthetics recognises that
television is an art, and examines it accordingly.
Of course, television is a distinctive art. It has a specific history, and particular
and unique forms. Recognising these specificities is by no means incompatible
with recognising its identity (and status) as an art form alongside others. Indeed,
the exploration of medium-specific traits is the final area of television aesthetics
that I wish to outline here.
Theorising: Conceptual and philosophical questions
At the start of this article, I mentioned those conceptual or philosophical questions that are raised by our critical engagement with television texts. If one is
engaged in the close, evaluative study of ER (Constant Productions/ Amblin Entertainment/NBC, 1994 ), for example, then one is likely to be drawn to consider the
importance of genre and episodic structure to the programme. These are concerns
that arise from the aesthetic qualities of the text itself (rather than the pre-existing
preoccupations of the scholar).27
These two issues (genre and episodic structure) are often addressed within television aesthetics, arising as they do fairly frequently from the object of study.28
Notably, television aesthetics scholars are usually concerned to reveal how their
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Metallinos considers that if one begins with the study of the arts, and then engages
in the study of criticism, the result is the establishment of the field of aesthetics,
which sustains strong connections between its constituent parts. Applied to television, if one begins with the study of television art, as outlined above, and then
adds a reflective consideration of criticism (metacriticism), one ends up with the
field of television aesthetics. Crucial to this enterprise is the kind of work being
undertaken by television scholars such as those cited in this article. In addition,
further development is needed to take advantage of potentially useful work in
philosophical aesthetics. Aestheticians such as Nol Carroll have already shown
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2 Sarah Cardwell, Television Aesthetics and Close Analysis: Style and Mood in Perfect
Strangers (Stephen Poliakoff, 2001), in Douglas Pye and John Gibbs, eds, Style and
Meaning, Manchester University Press, 2005, p. 180.
3 Ibid.
4 Jason Jacobs,Issues of Judgement and Value in Television Studies, International Journal
of Cultural Studies, 4:4, December 2001, 431.
5 Ibid.
6 Lyas did not intend that his work be applied to television, but I have found it valuable
both in teaching and in my critical work such as my latest book on Andrew Davies;
Sarah Cardwell, Andrew Davies, Manchester University Press, 2005.
7 Colin Lyas, The Evaluation of Art, in Oswald Hanfling, ed., Philosophical Aesthetics: An
Introduction, Blackwell Publishers, 1992, 361.
8 Ibid.
9 David Thorburn, Television as an Aesthetic Medium, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 4:2, June 1987, 163.
10 Charlotte Brunsdon,Television: Aesthetics and Audiences, in Patricia Mellencamp, ed.,
Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism, Indiana University Press, 1990, p. 69.
11 Brunsdon also proposed a valuable distinction between quality and good television, which
encouraged further work on quality television (see for example Simon Frith, The Black
Box: The Value of Television and the Future of Television Research, Screen, 41:1, Spring
2000, and a forthcoming edited collection from I.B. Tauris on defining contemporary
quality television, edited by Janet McCabe and Kim Akass, which follows their conference
on Quality American Television, held at Trinity College, Dublin in April 2004).
12 Christine Geraghty, Aesthetics and Quality in Popular Television Drama, International
Journal of Cultural Studies, 6, 2003, 40.
13 Ibid., 26.
14 Ibid., 4142.
15 David Thorburn, Television as an Aesthetic Medium, p. 163.
16 Ibid., p. 164.
17 Geraghty, Aesthetics and Quality in Popular Television Drama, p. 26.
18 Lyas, The Evaluation of Art, p. 361.
19 Robin Nelson, TV Drama in Transition, Macmillan, 1997, p. 228.
20 John Caughie, Television Drama: Realism, Modernism and British Culture, Oxford
University Press, 2000.
21 Jacobs, Issues of Judgement and Value in Television Studies, p. 430.
22 Ibid., p. 431; Jacobs notes that at this time such programmes are likely to be dramas and
documentaries, although the viewer may choose to watch other programmes with this
level of concentrated attention.
23 Issue 6 of the Journal of British Cinema and Television, forthcoming in 2006, is co-edited
by Steven Peacock and myself.
24 Jacobs suggests that this recent interest in close analysis might be in response to recent
trends within the medium itself: The continued sense that the television text is mostly
inferior to the film text and cannot withstand concentrated critical pressure because it
lacks symbolic density, rich mise-en-scne, and the promotion of identification as a
means of securing audience proximity, has to be revised in the light of contemporary
television; Jacobs, Issues of Judgement and Value in Television Studies, p. 433. I would
add that this shift in emphasis is just as likely to be indicative of the changing interests
of scholars as of changes in the programmes they study.
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