Television

Fargo 1996, Fargo 2014, and the Art of Homage

“Homage”: the deliberate but respectful recreation of one work within another. Think of Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, homage to Ms. Dalloway; the BBC’s Life on Mars and The Sweeney; the stairway shoot-out in The Untouchables and the Odessa Steps scene in Battleship Potemkin. They are all homage, yet all their own.

But contiguous with homage is plagiarism: disrespectful, deceitful, and what one expects prima facie of Noah Hawley’s Fargo.

Designing a Module, Redux: Or, Why We’re Watching Buffy Again This Year

In High Fidelity, Rob (John Cusack) muses on the art of making a mixtape: “The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don’t wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules.” Designing a module is a similar balancing act.

A Relatable Past? Early America on the Small Screen

Do readers need to relate to historical figures in order to understand Early American literature and history? Is it important to connect with the personalities encountered from the past?

Hannah Murray explores these questions in relation to the recent cluster of Early America-inspired television shows. Murray discusses Sleepy Hollow (2013), American Horror Story: Coven (2013), Turn: Washington’s Spies (2014) and Salem (2014).

The War Memorial in Visual Culture – Triumphalism and Repression in The West Wing and The X-Files

Here, I will look at two memorials to major wars in American history and their representations in mainstream television drama – The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in a fourth season episode of The X-Files entitled ‘Unrequited’ (Michael Lange, 1997), and the Korean War Veterans Memorial in a first season episode of The West Wing entitled ‘In Excelsis Deo’ (Alex Graves, 1999). Do they use memorials in a celebratory fashion, or to question and challenge the purpose of the wars to which the monuments are dedicated? Does their representation signal an affirmation of national unity as in the case of The West Wing, or, as in The X-Files, is it indicative of the fracturing and disintegration of this construct?

60 Second Roundup: BAAS Executive Advice for ECRs

Over the last few weeks we have published a series of 60 Second interviews with the BAAS Executive Committee. They gave such brilliant answers that we decided to collect their advice for ECRs in one place.