hot tv formalism and other things like that

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you know how baroqe is commonly thought of to be the end of formalist exprimentation, a sort of fallnig off the cliff into decadence right ?

well i have been thinking that cable television is the same way...all of these genre shows that so mangle the genre conventions they become examples of formalist excess.

(ie the shield and cop shows;nip and tuck medical shows; sex and the city and the single girl in the city. and this continues on the double hits of lost and desperate housewives--with the hour long format, the tragicomic neutered camp, the odd sexual politics and the hardness of both bodies and dialogue.)

― anthony, Sunday, 17 April 2005 09:52 (twenty years ago)

two months pass...

last night's 'the bill' was firmly in the tradition of the bakhtinian 'carnivalesque' and although the spectre of Derridean dissemination was raised at the 38 minute mark, the anti-subjectivity of the concluuding 10 minutes was firmly Althusserian

― pseudo-analytic bullshit, Friday, 1 July 2005 00:27 (twenty years ago)

sometimes this stuff reads like "mad libs meets social text"

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Friday, 1 July 2005 00:48 (twenty years ago)

when?

― g e o f f (gcannon), Friday, 1 July 2005 01:02 (twenty years ago)

lotta lame ass anon baiting bullshit these days.

― g e o f f (gcannon), Friday, 1 July 2005 01:02 (twenty years ago)

it's mostly just me

― threadstarter, Friday, 1 July 2005 01:10 (twenty years ago)

I don't know. Maybe all "specialization" is formalism? Some of those entrenched in careers as Modernist artists seem like formalists to me.

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Friday, 1 July 2005 01:24 (twenty years ago)

I call "jealous sour grapes" on whomever "psuedo-analytic bullshit" is. I mean, c'mon, Anthony E. is a wildly intelligent person and in the first post on this thread, he's provided quite a tasty tidbit of food for thought to chew over. Anyway. Tim Ellison, thanks for providing another tasty tidbit, and g e o f f OTM on the "lame ass anon baiting" tip.

― The Kind and Benevolent Oracle of Dee (Dee the Lurker), Friday, 1 July 2005 01:31 (twenty years ago)

I would add Alias as a gross example of hyper-something. Its meta-narrative logic is subordinated to localized exigencies, often discarded to fulfill an always pervasive MO of instant gratification -- Alias achieves in a pseudo-realist universe the loose discursive fabric of something as avant-mainstream os Aeon Flux, albeit with more evident flaws because of its nature as an hour-long network action/suspense drama.

― Leeeeee (Leee), Friday, 1 July 2005 04:33 (twenty years ago)

anthony do you mean that the tv shows in question derive most of their meaning or interest from their riffs on conventions? as opposed to using those conventions to reference the real world?

i'm trying to understand your post....

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Friday, 1 July 2005 04:52 (twenty years ago)

yes, but a bit less pallid

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 1 July 2005 05:06 (twenty years ago)

yes what? tracer, i've found some of your posts inscrutable lately.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Friday, 1 July 2005 05:11 (twenty years ago)

two months pass...

lots of the shows i was talking about are primally critical essays on their genres, as opposed to works on their own.

thats what i meant

― anthony, Sunday, 4 September 2005 06:41 (twenty years ago)

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