Journal of Popular Television, The - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2015

This article analyses the success of a support character in comparison to the stars in the 1970s television series Space: 1999 (1975–1977), in light of the permeation of Greek classical aesthetic codes in on-screen representation of heroes. Although the name of the actor impersonating the chief Eagle pilot Alan Carter was not even in the opening credits of the show and his character, like most support characters of Space: 1999, had but a few lines per episode, this series won actor Nick Tate international attention and his character quickly became among the favourites of the show, especially in the realm of science fiction fandom. While he is in the frame without actually doing any action, Carter oftentimes adopts a posture known as contrapposto, a pose characteristic of the idealized heroic body. This pose had been deliberately used in the early days of Hollywood to enhance the cultic status of some stars, and because of its cultural identification with a heroic type and its erotic potential, Carter was recognized as a hero more than the rest of the support characters on the show. Moreover, Carter’s persona in the scripts is that of an engaging, faithful, trustworthy fellow, which completes the picture of the ideal of manliness in Greek philosophy, that of spiritual goodness (agathon) reflected in physical beauty (kallos), placing Carter among the most popular characters with the audience of Space: 1999.

This article will investigate a form of Scandinavian crime fiction known as Nordic Noir, primarily focusing on examples from Swedish and Danish television. First, it will set out and explain the genre’s major narrative and aesthetic characteristics, offering illustration from serials such as Wallander (2005–2014), Forbrydelsen (2007–2012) and Broen (2011–). It will then explain how these techniques are specifically designed in order to explore a number of moral, social and ‘philosophical’ concerns. Finally, it will reveal how the genre has influenced recent examples of television drama found in Britain and America, focusing on Broadchurch (2013–), The Fall (2013–) and True Detective (2014–). The conclusion will argue that Nordic Noir’s global influence is now helping to reinvent a new breed of miniseries, one that is uniquely suited to the requirements of the new broadcasting age.

The ‘zombie gaze’ of AMC’s The Walking Dead (2010–) signals and elicits the inexorable presence of the ‘vegetative part’ in the human – the uncontrolled organic life that unsettles the very notion of the ‘person’ as well as those political systems founded upon it. Drawing on Roberto Esposito’s Third Person (2012) and late eighteenth-century physiologist Xavier Bichat, both of whom argue that humans have a ‘double life’ – our voluntary will inextricably embedded in an involuntary ‘vegetative part’ – I argue that the characters of Shane Walsh and Merle Dixon exemplify the ‘organic’ life, the automaticity of the biological. But while Esposito and Bichat use ‘vegetative’ metaphorically, in Season 4, The Walking Dead begins to explore the more literal ‘vegetal life’ of and surrounding the human, suggesting humans’ proximity not just to the ‘guts’ that mark the presence of the organic but also to plants that signal the ‘vegetative part’. The series thus asks what it might mean, in the words of philosopher Michael Marder, to think of ‘the constitutive vegetal otherness in ourselves’.

I apply correspondence analysis (CA) to data produced for the British Film Institute’s (BFI) ‘Opening our eyes’ report published in 2011 to discover how age and gender shape the experience of television for audiences in the United Kingdom. Age is an important factor in shaping how audience perceive television, with older viewers describing the medium as ‘informative’, ‘thought provoking’, ‘artistic’, ‘good for people’s self-development’ and ‘escapist’, while younger viewers are more likely to describe television as ‘exciting’, ‘fashionable, and ‘sociable’. Younger respondents are also more likely to describe the effect of television on people/society as negative. Variation in programme choice is highly structured in terms of age and gender, though the extent to which of these factors determine audience choice varies greatly. Gender is the dominant factor in explaining preferences for some programme types with age a secondary factor in several cases, while age is the explanatory factor for other genres for which gender seemingly has little influence. Male audiences prefer sports, factual entertainment, and culture programmes and female audiences reality TV/talent shows, game/quiz/panel shows, chat shows and soap operas. Older audiences prefer news, documentaries, and wildlife/nature programmes, while music shows/concerts and comedy/sitcoms are more popular with younger viewers.

As a comedy, the popular CBS television show The Big Bang Theory (2007–) has made an international commercial success of its portrayal of scientists, complete with equation-laden white boards and an affectionate depiction of nerd culture. Working both with and against the gendered stereotypes of the nerd and the mad scientist – and drawing upon many of the core characteristics of situation comedy as a genre – The Big Bang Theory offers a sympathetic and nuanced depiction of scientists, including a more diverse group of scientists by gender, ethnicity, and scientific subfields than usually seen in either television or movies.

In the era of the ludic turn the cultures of play are in convergence. Although the traditional toy industry is faced with challenges relating to the digitalization and dematerialization of play culture, physical toys are surviving due to unique tactile and manipulable qualities that still cannot be substituted by digital or even hybrid playthings. Contemporary toy characters such as those of My Little Pony (MLP) are given narratives in the form of backstories as represented in products of toy design, toy marketing and licensed toy-related merchandise. In play, these narratives are challenged, creatively cultivated, and finally circulated through social media platforms. Ponies are used in various play activities such as collecting, customizing and creating visual and animated stories, including play patterns such as toy tourism, photoplay and other forms of transmedia-inspired play. Research demonstrates that personalized play content and the documenting and sharing of such practices create both engagement with toys and mimicking of the aforementioned play patterns. In sum, the play practices of adults who use pony toys during leisure time suggest that uses of MLP characters are not only activities carried out in domestic spheres, but in public spaces and social contexts. Thus, it is evident that MLP as contemporary mass-marketed toys are frequently being used as creative, social tools by adult players.

Bronies, the adult male fans of the animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (2010–), have raised controversy in public discussions and on the Internet: male interest in something so obviously non-masculine seems to call for some kind of explanation, for instance, as a sexual subculture or as one more ironic Internet meme. Bronies, however, emphasize their sincere enjoyment of the show and foreground their identification with the characters and stories in the series, as well as the significance of the active fan community. This article discusses the Brony fandom as a site for renegotiating male gender norms and constructing masculine identities. The focus is on the fan discourse that Bronies themselves produce and circulate, i.e. how Bronies talk about being a Brony. The empirical material consists of interviews and observations within the Finnish Brony community, both online and offline. It is argued that the ‘neo-sincere’ attitude of Bronies illustrates the centrality of humour in the construction of gendered identities. Bronies themselves emphasize that Brony fandom offers a kind of joy that is hard to find among more traditional masculine discourses.

‘Creepy and immature’; ‘paedophiles’; ‘a freaking embarrassment’; and ‘pathetic sissies [who] giggle like school girls’ are all phrases which have been used to describe fans of My Little Pony. More specifically, they are all phrases which have been used to describe Bronies, male fans of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (2010–) cartoon. Bronies are often a source of ridicule, both on forums like Reddit and 4chan, where scores of threads dedicated to ‘Brony hate’ have been posted, and within the more mainstream press which fails to understand why grown men might watch and engage with a children’s show. Furthermore, criticisms aimed at Bronies commonly resort to gendered stereotyping: My Little Pony is pink and sparkly, things that men are not supposed to like. That Bronies disrupt traditional notions of gender makes them both objects of ridicule and a means by which the gendered voice of anti-fandom can be complicated. Discussions on anti-fandom and gender often focus on ‘female’ texts like Twilight (Meyer, 2005) and Fifty Shades of Grey (James, 2012). As Matt Hills (2012) points out in his analysis of Twilight anti-fandom, girls’ desires are frequently attacked by cultural commentators and the mainstream media. However, in this article I argue that the realm of Brony fandom, and anti-fandom, is far more complex. I build upon the work of Jonathan Gray (2003) and Cornel Sandvoss (2005) by examining Brony anti-fandom, particularly in relation to its use of social media and its heavily gendered pathologizing of Bronies by both men and women.

The practice of audience segregation, demographic profiling and manufactured viewerships has become common practice in the television industry since the turn towards niche programming and narrowcasting in an increasingly multichannel environment. While much critical scholarship has been devoted to the way that media companies undertake extensive market research to target their products to specific demographic segments, this article concentrates on the way that untargeted and unexpected viewers have coalesced around certain television programmes, and become the ‘accidental audience’. ‘Bronies’ have become the most well-known accidental audience in recent years, and are a perfect case study by which this phenomenon can be examined. The article therefore explores the way that accidental audiences develop, and how they offer both opportunity and threat to the managed selling of media brands. This article will also engage with the issues surrounding identifying and responding to these accidental audiences. Using the ‘Brony’ fandom of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, this article asks how accidental audiences develop and how, in particular, the Internet serves to shape and cultivate them.

This article will look at the successful fantasy cartoon series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (2010–) and its representation of Greco-Roman aesthetics in connection with the pegasi tribe in the depiction of the Pegasus city, Cloudsdale, and in the origins of the Pegasus tribe in the episode ‘Hearth’s Warming Eve’. In this episode, the ponies take part in a performance about the founding of their magical homeland, Equestria. The three tribes of ponies all represent different periods: the Earth ponies are Pioneer settlers, the Unicorns are mediaeval nobility, and the Pegasi are militaristic Greco-Roman. The article will explore the depiction of the Pegasi ponies with Greco-Roman elements and what this tells of the popular perception from cinema of the Greeks and celestial landscapes, and the Romans as a militaristic community. It will trace the evolution of these images within various media and how an association was created between Greco-Roman architecture, astral cities and military prowess, and how Pegasus became associated with this military fortitude and ancient world.

From Downton to Zombies: The guilty pleasures of contemporary television, University of Ulster, Belfast, 27–28 June 2014