TV Theory Journal, Week 4
The pilot episode of Veronica Mars plays with genre "lines" or "definitions", incorporating the textures of science-fiction, teen drama, and noir to illuminate certain common themes. Fittingly enough for a modern teen drama, the music is varied and carefully selected, but taken song-by-song it is a patchwork of the minimalist electronics common to sci-fi, tense and suspenseful melodies of noir and recognizable pop of teen shows. The settings are split almost 50/50 between teen drama and noir: high school, seedy motel, the beach, courthouse, house party, detective's office. Even the styles of dialog: when at work in the detective office, conversations are curt and sassy (noir/sci-fi); when at the school or the beach they are slower and more casual(teen drama). Images, words, and sets also play a part in this three-way meeting of generic semantics. Very briefly, as a list:
Neptune (the name of the town) - sci-fi (outer space)
Pirates (name of the school's sports team) - sci-fi (the letters evoke the idea of "space pirates", especially when one considers that they are the Neptune High Pirates)
Mars (lead character's last name) - sci-fi (again, outer space)
Mars Investigations Logo (The Illuminati symbol) - sci-fi
a focus on technology (specifically computers and high-end cameras) - sci-fi (technology is one of the most-used plot devices in science fiction)
windows, characters looking out/through - noir (Yes, anyone in any genre can look out a window, but there is a noir-ish way to look through a window, and windows seem to show up more often in noir, or at least become more prominent.)
Voice Over - noir (again, stylistically, not the fact that the voice over exists)
"The Seedy Part Of Town" (motels, gangs, prostitution) - noir
Bright, colourful clothing - teen drama
The faimly drama that would be typical of the teen genre: a squabble between two families is amplified by introducing a noir element (murder mystery) to the feud. Conversely, the usually dismal feeling of noir pieces is offset by the upbeat hopefullness of a teen drama protagonist.
Concerning the papers, I am wondering about self-inflected works again. Like the episode of Angel viewed in class, something which calls some attention to its own construction and place in the overall text of television. Specifically, I had in mind the Aqua Teen Hunger Force (ATHF), and the numerous absurdities it goes through in playing with the fact that it is a televisual text. Two great examples spring to mind: first, when Master Shake and Meatwad are watching a cursed TV, and it appears that Shake is on the TV. Meatwad says, "I didn't know you were on TV", to which Master Shake replies "This is my sitcom" (loosely, ATHF is a sitcom) and the Shake on their TV says "I'm inside your house!", to which the "real" Shake says "with a sci-fi horror twist" (again, ATHF has a sci-fi/horror angle to many of its episodes). Shake then tells Meatwad to be quiet, because he is "trying to learn [his] lines". Another great example of ATHF reaching beyond the diegetic is when Oglethorpe and Emory construct a Fargate, which they explicity explain is not a Stargate, because it is "different from that movie" (Stargate) and that they are not getting sued. There is an interplay between all these different genres (sitcom, sci-fi, horror) as well as the "meta-genre" of self-awareness. Certainly there will be something done concerning genre and representation, perhaps boundaries: where exactly does the "text" end? Perhaps a good question is how does one say that ATHF is a "sitcom", when so much of it is sci-fi/horror? How do we determine which show is a sitcom with a sci-fi twist, and which is a sci-fi show with a sitcom twist? All questions of genre semantics/syntactics.
Neptune (the name of the town) - sci-fi (outer space)
Pirates (name of the school's sports team) - sci-fi (the letters evoke the idea of "space pirates", especially when one considers that they are the Neptune High Pirates)
Mars (lead character's last name) - sci-fi (again, outer space)
Mars Investigations Logo (The Illuminati symbol) - sci-fi
a focus on technology (specifically computers and high-end cameras) - sci-fi (technology is one of the most-used plot devices in science fiction)
windows, characters looking out/through - noir (Yes, anyone in any genre can look out a window, but there is a noir-ish way to look through a window, and windows seem to show up more often in noir, or at least become more prominent.)
Voice Over - noir (again, stylistically, not the fact that the voice over exists)
"The Seedy Part Of Town" (motels, gangs, prostitution) - noir
Bright, colourful clothing - teen drama
The faimly drama that would be typical of the teen genre: a squabble between two families is amplified by introducing a noir element (murder mystery) to the feud. Conversely, the usually dismal feeling of noir pieces is offset by the upbeat hopefullness of a teen drama protagonist.
Concerning the papers, I am wondering about self-inflected works again. Like the episode of Angel viewed in class, something which calls some attention to its own construction and place in the overall text of television. Specifically, I had in mind the Aqua Teen Hunger Force (ATHF), and the numerous absurdities it goes through in playing with the fact that it is a televisual text. Two great examples spring to mind: first, when Master Shake and Meatwad are watching a cursed TV, and it appears that Shake is on the TV. Meatwad says, "I didn't know you were on TV", to which Master Shake replies "This is my sitcom" (loosely, ATHF is a sitcom) and the Shake on their TV says "I'm inside your house!", to which the "real" Shake says "with a sci-fi horror twist" (again, ATHF has a sci-fi/horror angle to many of its episodes). Shake then tells Meatwad to be quiet, because he is "trying to learn [his] lines". Another great example of ATHF reaching beyond the diegetic is when Oglethorpe and Emory construct a Fargate, which they explicity explain is not a Stargate, because it is "different from that movie" (Stargate) and that they are not getting sued. There is an interplay between all these different genres (sitcom, sci-fi, horror) as well as the "meta-genre" of self-awareness. Certainly there will be something done concerning genre and representation, perhaps boundaries: where exactly does the "text" end? Perhaps a good question is how does one say that ATHF is a "sitcom", when so much of it is sci-fi/horror? How do we determine which show is a sitcom with a sci-fi twist, and which is a sci-fi show with a sitcom twist? All questions of genre semantics/syntactics.