First thoughts

Popular culture researchers generally agree that all pop culture has an ideology, whether those responsible for the product are conscious of their point of view or not. For example, as I wrote earlier, many think that 24 clearly supported Bush administration ideology on the so-called war on terror, including on torture. But who determines the ideology? An TV show is made up of, in the case of the Equalizer, 88 separate episodes. How does a populate culture product like this communicate a ideology? Is continuity possible?

I believe there are three types of continuity of thought or theme possible in a TV show: continuity within an episode; continuity between/among episodes, i.e. making sure story lines are continued correctly; and continuity of message within the synchronic (i.e. at the time) historical context. I am also going to be talking about a diachronic (i.e. moving into the future) historical context.

When it comes to continuity within an episode, writers must be expected to make no errors.

Continuity among episodes is harder. It would seem that episodes written by the same writers would have greater continuity than those written by different authors. I wonder if writers watched back episodes, or were given cheat sheets or something like that with details from earlier seasons?

Continuity of message, what I am most interested in, can also be affected by different writers. Did they buy into the message? Did they understand the message? Did they think the message might get in the way of the action or entertainment value? For example, there was always a LOT of violence on the show; it is what the show was known for, in many ways, even though there was also a lot of talk about how bad violence was. This would seem contradictory. Did writers think they had to include the violence because it was what was expected by some fans, even if it did contradict the message?

Finally I have to point out that what authors intended and what viewers understand is not necessarily the same. Reader response theory contends that the reader makes her own message from the evidence she finds in the text, no matter what the author intended. Thus if Kiefer Sutherland (who is of course not a writer, but who did respond to this question) believes that 24 is just a TV show (and by implication doesn't matter), reader response theory would say that what doesn't matter is what Kiefer Sutherland thinks. What matters is what tools the show provides consumers to create their own vision of the world. 24 provides some very strong tools. Do people then use the tools to create a vision of the world in which torture and terror are acceptable? Or do they say, it's only a TV show, none of this is real? (Think of what people say when they observe an actual catastrophic event: it looks just like a movie...)

Back to the inauguration....

Introduction (yep, I'm an academic)

I've written a lot over the years about popular culture and its historical context. In writing about the Equalizer, I'm continuing this theme, but also stepping outside my earlier parameters.

As a professor of German culture and literature, I wrote about German-language (i.e. German and Austrian) popular culture, specifically in the era between the two world wars, 1919-1939 (more or less). Almost all leading German-language artists left Germany, then Austria from 1933-38, so I also wrote about the works and life of German artists in exile, mainly in the United States. The works I dealt with were popular literature (serialized novels, mass market literature) and films.

I have never written about contemporary American popular culture, nor have I ever written about a television show. I'm not going to do any research (I don't think), so what I'll put on my blog is simply what I think.

January 20, 2009 -- First Day of the New Era

OK, OK, I know it's not about the Equalizer or agility, but WOW WOW WOW WOW, we have a man named Barack Hussein Obama as president of the United States!!! Thank goodness, we no longer have a man named Bush as president.