Cultural significance
Cultural significance
TV in American Life
February 8, 2019
Viewing Project
Details:
Due Date: Our Exam Session during Final Exam Week
Length: Five sections of 2-3 pages each, double-spaced, with standard margins and point sizes
Value: 200 points + 50 points for a brief presentation on one section of your project
Description:
For the Viewing Project assignment, you will be examining a single season of a specific television series.
(One exception: for a season that only has a few episodes, especially half-hour sitcoms, you should
watch two seasons so that you have enough material to write about.) After watching the entire season,
you will analyze the series from five different perspectives, writing a 2-3 page essay for each one. The
possible perspectives are:
• Evaluation/Aesthetics: Why does the show work? Why do people like it? Is it good? Why or
why not?
o This section is mandatory; you will then choose your other four sections from the list
below
• Audience: Who is watching the show, and why? Does it appeal to a specific demographic? How
does the show define its audience? To what extent does the series have a fan following? If this is
an important aspect of the series and its audience, what are the fans like and how to they
demonstrate their fandom?
• Genre: How does the series fit into a category of similar stories, with specific conventions to
define its scope and themes? To what extent does the series bend or break the genre rules?
Does it cross genre boundaries? If so, how and to what end?
• Cultural significance: How does the series connect to its original context? How does it
reflect historical, economic, and social trends of its time? To what extent did the show reflect
or even shape cultural changes or controversies?
• TV history: Where does the show fit into the larger narrative of television history? What
shows influenced your series? What shows were influenced by your series? How was your
series innovative? Look at The Platinum Age of Television for models of how particular series fit
into their genres’ history.
• Structure: How does the narrative work structurally? Is it serial, episodic, or something
different? Do the storylines continue over the course of the season? Do they continue into
other seasons? How is an individual episode structured? Are there multiple storylines, or just
one linear plot in a single episode?
• Ideology: To what extent does the series have a political position or “ax to grind”? To what
extent does the show unintentionally reinforce traditional notions of American “ways of
thinking”: the American dream, nationalism, capitalism, “truth, justice, and the American way”?
Does it challenge or reinforce those ideas? Is the show liberal or conservative? Why?
• Gender: How does the show portray traditional gender roles and norms? How does it address
issues of sexuality and sexual identity? Are men and women portrayed equally, or does the show
privilege the experiences of one gender over the other? Is the show feminist? Why or why not?
Is one gender objectified? If so, how?
• Race: How does the show portray racial difference? What kinds of roles are non-white people
allowed to fill on the series? To what extent does the show define what it means to African-
American, Asian American, Latinx, or white? Does it rely upon stereotypes, or are racially
defined characters thoroughly developed?
The questions here are just some ideas to get you started thinking about each one of these topics.
Don’t think that you have to answer all of these questions – you don’t need to and, in fact, you
shouldn’t try to answer all of the questions in a single section. You want to make sure that each one of
your five essays is focused, well-developed, and thorough. Obviously, not every series to going to
prompt ideas and interpretations for all of the possible approaches; just use the ones that seem most
relevant to your project/series.
A few other limitations or notes:
• You should write about an American TV series or a TV series that is widely available in the
United States (like Downton Abbey). You also want to make sure that you’re writing about a
television series and not movies. Avoid series that were originally created as movies and then
cut up into a series format.
• Reality TV is fine to write about, as is narrative TV (i.e. fictional series). A news or sports
program isn’t really going to work for this project, unfortunately, as it is not practical to write
about a whole “season.”
• Animated series like The Simpsons or Bob’s Burgers are fine to use.
• You might prefer to use something that’s roughly contemporary, but historical series can also be
interesting to research and write about.
• In your five essays, you must use at least 2 different quality sources: books, academic journal
articles, or more journalistic articles from quality, respected outlets, including magazines and
websites. Check with me if you’re not sure if what you’re using is “quality.” Obviously, this
means that you’ll need to include a Works Cited page with your essays. References need to be
cited within the text itself also.
• At the beginning of your set of documents, you should give some basic information about your
series and the specific season you’re writing about. In other words, you should tell us when it
was shown, who the important characters were, who created it, and what network/streaming
service it was originally on. Also, provide a brief summary or description of the series.
• I will be posting a sample Viewing Project on our Blackboard page. You can take a look at that
to get a sense of how something like this should look.
• At the end of the semester, when you turn in your project, you will also be giving a brief
presentation based on a single section of your work. I’ll provide more directions about the
presentation later on in the course.
Evaluation:
A high quality project will have the following ingredients:
• Clearly focused, unified arguments in each section
• Thorough analysis and well-developed answers to important questions
• Specific references to the show; use of at least 2 quality secondary sources
• Insights into your show and how TV in general works; evidence that you’ve really thought about your series and how it functions as an extended narrative
• Engaging writing that is free of mistakes. Proof-read; I don’t want to see mistakes that could be easily caught if you had just read the paper over once. (Like, for example, homonyms: words
that sound the same but are spelled differently.) Organize each section into paragraphs, and
avoid run-ons and fragments.
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