Postmodernity’s cultural database logic and the consequent filmic characteristics of the digital age were fostered by Lev Manovich’s 1999 essay “The Database as Symbolic Form,” whereby Manovich furthered Roland Barthes’ adoption of Saussurrean sign-systems to describe cultural phenomena. In particular, Manovich applied Saussure’s description…[Read more]

Seung-Hui Cho, the mass murderer who called himself Question Mark, left a lot of questions behind him. One of them obviously speaks for itself: what motivated him to kill thirty-three strangers at Virginia Tech? Another question almost goes without saying: why do we seek refuge behind moral explanations? Like ‘the question mark kid’ the adult…[Read more]

El podcast es una de las diversas herramientas colaborativas que se implementan en el Periodismo Digital, siendo un formato de fácil distribución y que puede proporcionar un espacio dinámico y creativo para el profesional de la comunicación social. Esta investigación pretende evaluar los podcasts que se publican en sitios de noticias de la ciud…[Read more]

Aunque fue uno de los grandes taquillazos cinematográficos de la época, Juana la Loca… de vez en cuando (José Ramón Larraz, 1983), recibió unas duras críticas por parte del público especializado, que veían en la cinta una penosa manera de hacer cine. Personajes, ambientación, guion, interpretaciones, etc., nada escapó a la pluma de los críticos, q…[Read more]

A data representation of every incident of sexual violence in American Horror Story, Murder House through Hotel. Broken into 22 metrics, part of an ongoing mapping project. Covers victims/assailant count, genders of both, on screen/off screen representations, nonhuman entities, fatalities, and more.

This paper will consider the continued significance of television seasonality, even in the era of on-demand and timeshifting. It will draw upon my own research into seasonality and genre, as well as the research of other academics, including that from the special issue of the Journal of Popular Television and the subsequent dossier on Christmas…[Read more]

This paper will explore the use of the English landscape as a source of sublime horror, particularly through a shift in perception from idyllic to ominous. Where Peter Hutchings has indicated the importance of the ‘uncanny landscape’ as a fairly stable location for wrestling with modernity, this chapter will investigate those moments of slippage…[Read more]

Discussing the concept of cultural trauma and its role in popular television dramas such as 24 (FOX 2001-10, 2014-), Battlestar Galactica (Syfy 2004-9), Rubicon (AMC 2010) and Person of Interest (CBS 2011-16), this paper sets out to identify three distinct clusters that are part of what Newcomb and Hirsch once termed a “cultural forum”—a discu…[Read more]

A central element of the core folk horror texts (The Wicker Man (1973), Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), Witchfinder General (1968)) is the idea of rural communities as retaining pre-Christian practices and beliefs. When uncovered by a modern outsider who is returning to the countryside, these revelations disrupt their world view. Folk horror texts d…[Read more]

This paper considers the ways in which the television ghost story serves to support understanding and interpretations of history, and particularly an understanding of causality. As Helen Wheatley has identified, the typical detailed period settings of the television Gothic operate as a form of ‘dark heritage’ drama, where, instead of the att…[Read more]

The ghost story typically presents an interaction of the past with the present, often in the form of ‘stone tape’ type repeats of an event from the past. The 2016 BBC series The Living and the Dead went beyond this to show the merging of multiple time streams, so people made choices in the ‘present’ because of influences from past and future,…[Read more]

The ghost story typically presents an interaction of the past with the present, often in the form of ‘stone tape’ type repeats of an event from the past. The 2016 BBC series The Living and the Dead went beyond this to show the merging of multiple time streams, so people made choices in the ‘present’ because of influences from past and future,…[Read more]

When rock star Bono told Oprah Winfrey that America is an ideal that is supposed to be contagious, the talk show host was moved to tears. Such an imagined America, rather than the nation-state USA, is the topic of Fabricating the Absolute Fake. Pop and politics become intertwined, as Hollywood, television, and celebrities spread the American Dream…[Read more]

Anhand der Science-Fiction Animes “Captain Future”, “Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs” und “Cowboy Bebop” wird eine bestimmtes Narrativ innerhalb des Genres des Science-Fiction Anime stichprobenartig über drei Jahrzehnte hinweg betrachtet und die vorzufindenden Geschlechterkonstruktionen beleuchtet: Jede dieser Erzählungen handelt von den A…[Read more]

Beginning with television’s popularization and mass availability in the 1950s, TV has extensively been employed to transport and mediate history. From the early televisual experiments of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek to more recent examples such as Quantum Leap, The X-Files and Continuum, Science Fiction television and its subgenre of A…[Read more]

One of Rod Serling’s favourite topics of exploration in The Twilight Zone (1959–64) is nostalgia, which pervaded many of the episodes of the series. Although Serling himself often looked back upon the past wishing to regain it, he did, however, understand that we often see things looking back that were not there and that the past is often ide…[Read more]

English title: “Transmedia Storytelling in the narrative universe of ‘Game of Thrones'” — This essay’s aim is to briefly introduce the concept of Transmedia Storytelling and to provide a showcase analysis and review of the serial TV narrative of GAME OF THRONES in order to show how a television series’ narrative universe, driven by both producers…[Read more]

Syllabus of BA seminar “Historische Entwicklung US-amerikanischer Fernsehserien von 1950 bis heute” aka. “TV or not TV? Historical Development of US American Serial Television from the 1950s up to today” held during Winter semester 2013/14 at Universität Hamburg, Germany.