The Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison seeks applicants for a tenure-track position at the rank of Assistant Professor in Media and Cultural Studies, to begin in August 2012. Candidates will be expected to conduct research, develop and teach courses, and supervise graduate students in the critical, intersectional analysis of identity and representation in contemporary media, including race, ethnicity, gender, and/or sexuality. Those whose work demonstrates a transnational/global/diasporic focus and an ability to combine methodological approaches are especially encouraged to apply. The successful candidate will teach a large undergraduate lecture course in addition to other specialist courses to both undergraduate and graduate students. Ph.D. in a related field and evidence of scholarly excellence and teaching ability are required. See also http://commarts.wisc.edu. Please submit a CV and a letter detailing interests and capabilities, and arrange to have sent three letters of reference, to Professor Jonathan Gray, Media, Identity, and Representation Search, Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 821 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706. Electronic applications will not be accepted. The deadline to assure full consideration is December 29, 2011. EOE/AA. Employment may require a criminal background check. Unless confidentiality is requested in writing, information regarding the applicants must be released upon request. Finalists cannot be guaranteed confidentiality. The Department of Communication Arts is committed to building a culturally diverse intellectual community and strongly encourages applications from women, ethnic minorities, and other underrepresented groups. Questions about the search may be directed to Professor Jonathan Gray at jagray3@wisc.edu

(1) Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Digital Media Production

The Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison seeks outstanding applicants at the rank of Assistant Professor, tenure-track, to begin in fall 2012. Candidates will be expected to conduct creative work and/or research in digital media, as well as to develop and teach courses in the theory and practice of digital media production. The new faculty member will teach a large introductory first-year course that emphasizes the convergence of interactive media, moving image, and audio production under a special initiative from the Chancellor. Candidates should possess broad-based skills in interactive web design and programming with HTML/CSS, high-definition video shooting and editing, sound design, and media compression for broadband delivery. Successful candidate will supervise teaching assistants in the first-year course, as well as teach additional courses in her/his specialized areas of expertise. MFA, Ph.D, or equivalent in Communication or related field required, with a record of significant accomplishment. Previous teaching experience preferred. See also http://commarts.wisc.edu.

Submit CV, letter detailing interests and capabilities, examples of creative work and/or relevant scholarly writing, and three letters of reference to Michele Hilmes, Chair, Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 821 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706. Electronic applications will not be accepted. The deadline to assure full consideration is November 1, 2011. EOE/AA. Employment may require a criminal background check. Unless confidentiality is requested in writing, information regarding the applicants must be released upon request. Finalists cannot be guaranteed confidentiality. The Department of Communication Arts is committed to building a culturally diverse intellectual community and strongly encourages applications from women, ethnic minorities, and other underrepresented groups. Questions about the search may be directed to Professor J. J. Murphy at jjmurphy@wisc.edu.

(2) Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, 2012-2014

Call for Applications
Deadline: November 14, 2011

The University of Wisconsin-Madison invites applications for its postdoctoral fellowship program in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, it will provide three two-year postdoctoral fellowships for recent PhDs starting on August 27, 2012. Fellows will be affiliated with a department in the College of Letters & Science as well as the Institute for Research in the Humanities and the Center for the Humanities. They will teach one undergraduate course per semester in
one of the humanities or humanistic social science departments in the College of Letters & Science.

The theme for 2012-13 “Media: Cuneiform to Digital and Beyond.” From discourse networks to print culture; from semiotics to graphic systems; from codex to video; from radio to radiography; and from data
mining to the culture industry, the interdisciplinary humanities have produced a wide range of theories and histories of media. We invite applications for excellent, cutting-edge work focused on any media (verbal, visual, audial, kinetic); on any forms (oral, print, performance, digital); and on any media systems (local, global, private, mass market). We encourage both a long and broad view of media studies and welcome applications from researchers across the humanities and humanistic social sciences whose work reflects upon or has significant implications for ancient to contemporary conceptions of media and mediation in any region(s) of the world. We seek work that challenges disciplinary or methodological boundaries. Applicants should take care in their proposals to explicate how their research relates to this theme.

The stipend for Mellon postdoctoral fellows is $55,167 per academic year, with a $2,000 per year research allowance, $3,000 per year travel allowance, and a one-time $2,500 computer allowance. Fellows are eligible for health insurance (http://www.uwsa.edu/hr/benefits/gradben.pdf).

In addition to boasting over 50 departments and centers in the humanities, UW-Madison is the home of the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture as well as the locus of new initiatives and projects in the Digital Humanities, Public Humanities, and Visual Culture.

Application Information

Applicants must be scholars who are not yet tenured and who are no more than five years past receiving their PhD. To be eligible for this competition, degree must be received between August 2007 and August
2012. Applicants must hold a PhD in a humanities discipline or in the humanistic social sciences. Applicants who do not yet hold a PhD but expect to have one by August 2012 will be asked to provide a letter from their home institution corroborating the degree award schedule. Application materials must include the following items in this order, submitted as a single MSWord or PDF document:

Application Form: Download an application form from this website: http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/programs/mellon-postdocs/call.html. Proposal of up to 2,000 words that incorporates: an explanation of
completed research (including dissertation); work in progress; research that will be conducted as a Mellon Fellow, including its relation to the Mellon theme; professional goals and plans for publication; possible undergraduate courses to be taught; and other relevant information. Include how you believe you would benefit from being at UW-Madison, including the faculty associations you would like to develop; curriculum vitae; writing sample of up to 25 pages. Optional: Statement of teaching philosophy and/or sample syllabi or descriptions of courses you have taught or would like to teach.

Submit your application materials at this website: https://uwmadison.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_7P7mExdqqhePjow. Arrange to have three letters of reference sent directly to UW-Madison. Reference letters should be submitted electronically as PDF or Word documents sent to fellows@humanities.wisc.edu. Deadline for applications: November 14, 2011.

All materials, including reference letters, must be submitted by this date. Selected recipients may not hold another fellowship simultaneous with this one. Because this fellowship includes teaching, a criminal background check may be required of fellowship recipients.

Questions: Jessica Courtier, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows Coordinator, fellows@humanities.wisc.edu or 608-516-8109. For more information about the program, see http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/programs/mellon-postdocs/

The academic job market pieces, and links:

• Introduction, and a Warning
• A Timeline
• Think Like a Search Committee
• Application Materials
• “Inside” Hires
• Open Rank Hires
• Searching as an Academic Couple
• The Upgrade Search
• The Phone Interview
• The Campus Interview
• The Offer

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As for the series on getting into grad schools:

• Intro & Should You Even Go to Grad School?
• Where Should You Go?
• How Do You Get In?

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After 16 of the new shows have premiered, I thought I’d stop and take count on what if any relationship they have to my DVR.

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Season Recording Set

I should note that I’m open and perhaps likely to cut some of these as time goes on, but for now:

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Free Agents (NBC) has the air of something that will disappear in time, whether due to lousy ratings (1.3/4 for its second week) or disinterest. Mrs. Extratextuals isn’t amused, and even I am probably hanging on more because I like Hank Azaria and have wished him a good leading turn since Huff went under than due to excellence. It’s funny but not greatly so, it risks being 90% jokes about sex and I’m no longer 15 so its appeal will wear out soon if that ratio keeps up, and it seems a little too rudderless. But Azaria and Kathryn Hahn are extremely likeable, Anthony Head is having a lot of fun with his character, and it seems ideally suited to fill the “time for one more thing to watch before I go to sleep, and I might prefer a drama, but I don’t have 45 minutes to invest” slot in my DVR viewing.

The New Girl (FOX) will likely decrease in my estimation the more that it is described as a “breakout” hit. Right now, after all, it’s just passable. I think Zooey Deschanel has a lot of talent, but it also makes me uncomfortable, since, as Alyx Vesey aptly notes in her review of it, it “perpetuates the idea that young women are infantile co-dependents who need nerd glasses, insipid affectations, and male mentors to fashion an identity built entirely around men.” If she doesn’t cease to be painted as pathetic soon, I’m outta here. Also, a little less singing would make me happier with it. It’s okay funny, but really middle of the road. I could see it hanging around the DVR till it’s either that or watching Toddlers and Tiaras live off television.

Person of Interest (CBS) entertained me. It’s definitely guy TV, with lots of ass-kicking, surveillance, espionage, and plots to take people down. But it does it well, with good pacing, strong performances from Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson (I’d expect nothing less, Mr. Linus!), and the prospect for some serial-ish development in interesting ways to complement its reliable CBS meat-and-potatoes procedural elements. Mary Beltrán nails it in her review when she notes that the two lead characters need backstory and quickly if we’re actually meant to care much about them, so JJ Abrams better remember how to do flashbacks or it might wallow in “meh”-ishness. But I began the season hoping for good (if not great) things from this, and I still have those hopes.

Revenge (ABC) is very well done – well-filmed, well-pitched, and well-set up. I don’t know if I’ll actually watch it (it’s on the DVR since Mrs. E had a little more interest in watching it regularly than do I), but I don’t begrudge its existence, and it seems to deserve an audience. Certainly, a lot of more work and effort seemed to go into this than into a lot of the new shows. And it strikes just the right mixture between camp and seriousness.

Ringer (CW) ain’t great TV, but it’s interesting enough for me to keep it around for now. Gellar does a decent enough job, the plot is twisty and unpredictable enough, and though they’ve proven they can never, ever do another scene “on the ocean,” after the horrible green screen mess of the pilot, otherwise it’s realized well enough. So it’s enough. For now.

Up All Night (NBC) is still not as good as I had hoped. It’s kind of meandering around, alas, as though the writers haven’t yet found what they really want to do. I still don’t know enough about the two leads, and without that knowledge, it’s hard to care about them. Yet more confusing is Maya Rudolph upstaging most of their scenes together, forcing me to ask if it even is Arnett and Applegate’s show. But it makes me laugh here and there, and I want to be supportive of a sitcom about new parents, especially since it’s not a saccharine version of that tale. So I’ll keep watching.

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Not on the DVR, but might get watched occasionally

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Secret Circle (CW) would likely have made it onto the DVR, at Mrs. E’s request, because it seems Vampire Diaries-like enough to be fun, if not for the fact that our DVR can only record two things at once, and it’s up against Person of Interest and The Office. Campy, a bit fun, a bit not, it’s just “meh” for me. I’d rather read Facebook feeds, I guess.

Two Broke Girls (CBS) had a disappointing pilot, as noted by Erin Copple Smith in her review. The supporting characters are as trite and talentless as they come (with badge of honor going to the short order cook), but most surprisingly was Kat Dennings’ inability to introduce any flow to her performance: it just feels like she’s reading one-liners. Her co-star’s better, though still no great revelation. So why isn’t it in the below category? I’ve liked Dennings before, so I may give her one more shot, and hey, with the plum spot between HIMYM and Two and a Half Men, it’s likely not going anywhere for a while, blessed by artificially inflated ratings, so I’ll have plenty of chances to check it out again.

X Factor (FOX) right now is just American Idol with LA Reid and Nicole Scherzinger as guest judges. So it feels weird to be reviewing it as anything new. Later on, the new rules will kick in. For now, it’s just more of the same, which for me means it’s “watch if I’m bored and there’s nothing else on” kind of television.

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Quarantined from my DVR for the latter’s health

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Charlie’s Angels (ABC) is laughably bad. To the point that it could be fun to watch occasionally, I’ll admit. But sadly it doesn’t even know it’s bad, and has no tongue in cheek, even though shlock of this level has no business being anything other than camp. The acting is tortuous (the only range in the Angels’ performance being shown by the wide variety of leather they can wear), made worse by a horrible script. With all the talented people who want to break into Hollywood, what gives, when shows like this seem to be stocked with hacks?

A Gifted Man (CBS) isn’t bad, to be fair. It’s just not my thing. The white crusader myth that it seems keen to run with is regrettable, but mostly it’s just boring. Good enough performances, but when I’ve had a long day, I don’t really come home thinking, “man, I want to see a show about a guy who gives MRIs to tennis players and has a dead ex-wife helping him hack her computer.”

H8R (CW), on the other hand, is bad. For our souls. See my pre-hate here.

Playboy Club (NBC), along with Charlie’s Angels, proves that sexism in 2011 isn’t controversial as much as it’s simply boring. My review of it is here, though don’t feel compelled to follow that link: the less time spent thinking about this show, the better.

Prime Suspect (NBC) is also not horrible TV, though as my review here suggests, its racial depictions are pretty crappy. It’s just yet another cop show in a network television lineup of countless cop shows, and since it doesn’t do anything exciting enough to separate itself from the pack, I have no urge to watch it again.

Unforgettable (CBS) works in the same way, offering little more than yet another wholly mediocre, uninspired, middle-of-the-road show about a super smart cop. If there weren’t two to eight hours of primetime television each night devoted to the same story, I might care more. It’s not bad, it’s just there.

Whitney (NBC) is clearly by the same writer as Two Broke Girls inasmuch as both are written as a series of jokes, not as flowing plot. Both also tried too hard to be risqué in their pilots, Two Broke Girls with jokes about cum on uniforms and an opening joke about Kat Dennings’ breasts, Whitney with drawn out scenes in which Cummings is wearing a sexy nurse’s outfit. I simply didn’t care about the characters, and was too often too aware of how constructed the show was. It’s easily the worst of the new comedies (unless we count Charlie’s Angels as a comedy, in which case there’s a battle).

Paratexts and extratexts play a key role not only in telling us what to expect, but in setting the genre and tone for a show. I’ve looked at this in past posts (duh – that’s kind of the deal with this blog) and work, but usually with longer form or more elaborate paratexts such as posters, trailers, alternate reality games, and such. What about those most seemingly simple and brief of paratexts, titles?

On one hand, titles may appear to have less room to create meaning for a show. And yet they’re way more mobile than other paratexts, and thus their scope is significant. Many audiences may only see a trailer or poster once, if at all, but titles find their way into lists of new and continuing shows, they can be picked out of a conversation in which most other details are confusing to the uninitiated, they often appear on the bottom of a screen while watching another show, and they find their way into all sorts of other odd places. If they’re evocative, they can do a great deal; if not, there’s a lost opportunity, and often a failed show.

Looking at a few of the new shows’ titles:

Once Upon a Time is the most obvious example of a title that tells you its genre, but it’s so obvious as to be worth moving beyond quickly to other examples

ABC’s Revenge would seem to offer two possibilities generically – it’s either going to be hypermasculine and action-packed quest to avenge a child, wife, or village, or lean female and be a soap-ish tale of hidden conniving to ruin someone(s). The concept of revenge is so germane to both action and soap, while rarely the driving emotion in other genres (one may be able to find revenge in quiz shows, sitcom, and medical procedural, but it’s an emotion that’s associated most commonly with action and soaps). So we’re then just left working out which of the two it’ll be – action or soap. As a primetime show, not daytime, it may seem to lean towards the former, and yet being on ABC – given that network’s female programming in recent years – tips it towards the latter. All that’s needed to confirm is a star on the poster, I’d suggest: if it’s a guy, we’re likely talking action, but if it’s a woman, it’s a soap. No wonder, then, that the poster is pretty much just Emily VanCamp.

Speaking of men and women, CBS’s A Gifted Man is interesting for not just being called Gifted. Why the need for the “man” in there, and why not go with the leaner title? “Gifted” already suggests someone who can commune with the dead, or who has some other supernatural power. Add a reference to CBS and a place on the Friday night schedule, and the knowing viewer might think of Medium and Ghost Whisperer, confirming this meaning of the word “gifted.” Indeed, the title gestures towards these shows (which, by the way, have been invoked in other advertising for the show – I saw one ad that framed it as “in the tradition of” those two forerunners) with that addition of “man,” since it suggests that being gifted may be more usually female (just as, for instance, the word “homework” suggests that work is more regularly done outside the home). Part of that suggestion is intertextual, part complimentary and flattering to women, and hence the title delicately suggests that the show may be directed especially at women (perhaps all the more necessary when CBS is usually quite fond of programming shows about great white men solving crimes).

“Man” is popular in titles this year. Witness ABC’s Man Up and Last Man Standing. Both have a burgeoning anti-fandom waiting for them in media and cultural studies, I’d suggest, in large part because of what they imply. Last Man Standing is about a father in a house with women all around him, so it communicates that he’s the only dude around, but “last man standing” suggests that other men have been struck down. And so the show taps in to a discourse of male victimization, and to the idea of this being “a woman’s world” that is hostile to men. Similarly, Man Up suggests a lack of mannishness that is now in need of being rectified by more masculinity. Just as CBS’s Gifted Man might be trying to tell women it’s not regular CBS CSI: Poughkeepsie fare, though, Last Man Standing and Man Up might also be acknowledging their network’s reputation as being a premier site for programming for women. They might, in other words, be declaring that ABC itself is about to “man up” since it’s become a “woman’s world.” Either reading (that life itself belongs to women, or that TV does) is laughably moronic, but therein lies the intended appeal of the shows.

Changing gears, I Hate My Teenage Daughter bears the distinction of being the longest title of the new shows, alongside How to be a Gentleman. It’s kind of fun, since it invites one to identify with the lead character simply in taking on the “I” in the title, or, alternately, if one actually has a teenage daughter, there’s a carnivalesque delight in being invited to repeatedly say the phrase. It clearly sets the tone, too, for a FOX-style sitcom, as the speaker is not behaving like Danny Tanner or Jason Seaver. And yet since hating one’s child is such a no-no, the title immediately provokes the question of whether the speaker is being entirely truthful, and sets up what will presumably be a key tension in the show, of the push and pull between maternal care and outright hate.

What’s the worst title this year? For me, it’s Unforgettable. First, it’s almost like a challenge to me, to forget the show – a challenge at which I imagine I’ll do quite well. What’s it trying to say? That the show is unforgettable? The character? I know the premise – of a cop with a perfect memory – so I know that officially it’s the clues that are unforgettable, but that’s not the default assumption when hearing the title. So I’m left thinking the character is meant to be unforgettable. Which either posits her as stunning looking within an ogling discourse, as saint-like and the show as Highway to Heaven or Lassie-like, or perhaps as super-quirky in Psych-like manner. And I’m not sure what the Nat King Cole / Natalie Cole reference is meant to tell me; or, rather, it suggests a romance, and so when I hear this is a procedural, I’m confused. The title creates red herrings, and does little to explain the show itself. If it fails, I blame the title.

What titles do you like and why (continuing shows included)?

It’s not as thought any of them are actively obscuring their origins. The trailer for Free Agents at YouTube, uploaded by NBC, explains below that it’s based off the “cult UK series,” for instance. But none of the three shows’ webpages advertise the fact, nor do any of the trailers themselves. The Brits, in other words, are good enough to copy from, but clearly FOX and NBC don’t feel it’s wise to build the success of the British originals into the promotions for the American shows.

Part of this weird act of hide-and-seek might seem to be motivated by a desire to make their shows look newer and fresher than they are. They may simply not want to look like copies, in other words.

But it also offers messages about Hollywood’s odd relationship with UK TV, and about its perception of its audience’s odd relationship with UK TV. Perhaps there isn’t the faith that enough people would know the originals, granted, but one might think that an audience would be reassured by the shows’ success in their British iterations. They are proven entities that aren’t being sold as such. Is the concern, therefore, that American audiences will see success in England (or anywhere else) as a bad thing? If so, why?

These questions only multiply for me with Prime Suspect, since of the three, it seems the least like its original. Word is that it’s a procedural, not a serial. And with Maria Bello, and with the overplay of her stupid hat in endless promos, NBC’s clearly trying to make Jane Tennison slightly younger and significantly hipper. (The hat does look a bit like a female cop’s hat in the UK, but in the US it reads as a wannabe-hip hat). There’s also that annoying line in the ads, “Cop. An Attitude” that puts the attitude before the performance, rather than letting it come from within the performance, as with Helen Mirren. All that we seem to have remaining from the British show, therefore, is the notion of a woman called Jane trying to get by in “a man’s job.” Did that really require licensing, though?? One would think that the American adaptation would either stick closely to its Brit original since that original did well, or tout the fact that they’re adapting the cult British hit for an American audience and thereby still cash in on the power of the intertext, or not bother and just make a different show about a woman surrounded by men, one that doesn’t require licensing fees. I’m confused by NBC’s fourth option, to buy the rights, keep the name “Jane” and do little else. Mind you, I learned in the Leno years not to seek sense in some of NBC’s decisions.

Clearly, I need to understand what Hollywood thinks of the Brits better, so I’m off to read my colleague Michele Hilmes’ great new book, Network Nations: A Transnational History of British and American Broadcasting. Perhaps there’s a chapter on Maria Bello’s hat.

Four of the new shows’ advertising, promos, and paratexts have been pretty much dedicated to a simple message: our show stars this one person. It’s a risky move, since you’re banking on the audience caring about that star, and you’re going all-in on the hope that he or she is enough enticement for enough people to watch the show. Compare, for instance, with Person of Interest, which mixes Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson, which is a pretty decent pairing – Christ and Ben Linus! – but its publicity has been quite keen to let us know its creator, too, namely Dark Knight’s Jonathan Nolan.

So which are these shows that think they only need the one star, and what can we say about their chances?

Neatly, they divide into two groups of two: the two that are bringing back television stars of yesteryear (even if that yesteryear is just 8 years ago) – Last Man Standing and Ringer – and the two that are working with relatively new talents – The New Girl and Whitney.

Ringer is perhaps the most overloaded in terms of its star, if for no other reason than Sarah Michele Gellar plays TWO characters. Three of the four posters therefore show not one but two images of Gellar, with two showing little more than the Chrysler or Empire State Building as accompaniment.

The buildings suggest power (phallic, and of New York), as does her dress, and the night-time setting suggest intrigue, mystery, or such, but otherwise we know little more than that Sarah Michelle Gellar is in the show. Watch the trailer, too, and note how prominent images of Gellar are, especially in the earlygoing (the scene with two Gellars in a hall of mirrors is especially amusing, as if two weren’t enough for the producers and assumed fans).

The trailer’s also interesting for an early snippet of dialogue exchanged between Gellar’s two characters:

“I was wondering how you’d look after six years”

“Not nearly as good as you”

Granted, Gellar’s actually been off-television for eight years (Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended in 2003), but she’s been absent to the world for about six. The line’s amusing, therefore, since it sees Gellar comment on her own absence from television, while reassuring both herself and us that she still looks good.

And if Ringer’s taking a “she’s back” strategy, it’s certainly worked inasmuch as the press have picked up on this and run with it. Gellar’s face adorned Entertainment Weekly recently, with a feature article about her return and comments from her that suggest her sisters are like her characters from Buffy and Cruel Intentions, and almost all reviews I’ve seen have focused entirely on Gellar being back on television (even when the show also brings back Lost’s Nestor Carbonell.

This seems an especially risky move for The CW, though. Gellar’s return may well be hotly anticipated, but many of these articles have been written by writers in their thirties and forties. The CW has only just eeked out a living in the last couple of years, relying on anemic ratings that stitch together teen girls and slightly older women enjoying teen(ish) fare. That second group might be attracted to Ringer, but Gellar’s star likely means nothing to the average teen. Heck, most of my students don’t know Buffy, and it hasn’t had great play in syndication in the US, so I don’t imagine their younger sisters will. Hence Ringer’s pitch of “she’s back” risks being foolishly broadcast to many audiences who don’t know or care about her in the first place. Put simply, I don’t think that a network whose key audience is this young can wisely afford to use the “s/he’s back” strategy, unless the s/he in question would have been popular with ten year-olds eight years ago.

Contrast with the other returning star, Tim Allen, who stars in Last Man Standing, and we have an entirely different situation. Allen’s returning to a big(ger) tent network after having been on one, and is returning to a sitcom that’s clearly aimed at an older audience anyways. Add some possible post-Home Improvement family fame garnered as Buzz Lightyear, and I don’t worry anywhere near as much about his ability to sell this show. By most accounts, the script is lame, so Ringer may well defeat it in the end, but Ringer’s going to have to move uphill all the way, whereas ABC isn’t stuck with such a young generational cohort as its intended audience, and thus would seem to be on safer ground by using the “he’s back” promotional strategy.

Turning to the shows heralding new-ish stars, Whitney and The New Girl, once again we have an interesting tale of contrasts. Perhaps it’s just that I and everyone I know is dreadfully out of touch, but I’ve yet to hear almost anyone who knows who the heck Whitney Cummings really is. We’re all supposed to know her, so suggest the ads, and their reliance on plastering her and rather tepid one-liners posit her as some comic genius (while proving she isn’t), but I don’t believe many people really do know who she is.

The New Girl plays it safer. On one hand, Zooey Deschanel is likely much better known. She’s been in Weeds, is the sister of Bones’ Emily Deschanel, is in the Cotton ads, starred in the critically successful (500) Days of Summer, played Dorothy in Tin Man, the odd Syfy remake of Wizard of Oz last year, and has been in other films including Yes Man, Elf, and the recent Our Idiot Brother. She’s also got a cool name, let’s face it, and the kind of one you remember.

On the other hand, though, and even if you have no idea who she is, the title of her new show covers its ass here. She’s not just “the new girl” in the apartment on the show, but is also being put forward as the new star for television. And if USA Today is anything to go by, at least some are eating this up. They write:

Let’s hear it for the girl. If New Girl is the season’s most promising new show – and boy, is it – much of the credit goes to the almost irresistibly adorable lady in question, Zooey Deschanel. [….] she’s poised to become something she hasn’t been before: a big, new TV star.

There’s also the issue of how the two shows’ promos are selling Cummings and Deschanel, and to whom. Deschanel is very much being marketed as cute, adorable, and vulnerable. The relationship between her and her three male minders suggests that, yes, she is the new girl, as the promos make an obvious pitch for male protection … while still trying to hold onto her as identificatory character for women and throwing in several, “oh, men!”-style jokes in the trailer. Turning to Whitney, though the promos certainly sexualize Cummings, they also sell her as loud, abrasive, and in charge. She is the new woman therefore, and she’s being sold to women more than men, with almost all of the humor in the trailer being of the “girlfriend, am I right or am I right?” variety. FOX is hedging its bets, in other words, going for men and women. NBC is going mostly for women, all-in on the one star and all-in on one gender as audience.

As with all of the above shows, the script will matter a lot. But at this point, the four shows are making it all about the star. So place your bets on who is more loved – Deschanel, Allen, Cummings, or Gellar, and, especially in the case of the latter two, who knows where to find them on struggling networks. But that’s the other part of the networks going all-in on the star – if any of these shows dies before it hits five episodes, that’s a huge grenade in the star image of the actor or actress in question. Let’s see who is left standing.

The premise appears simple – find someone who “hates on” a celebrity, send Mario Lopez to get the celebrity, then let the celeb confront the “hater” and win them over. See below for a clip, though if you have some of yesterday’s dinner in your mouth when you’re done, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Why my hate about H8R? Well, I thought the show was harmlessly stupid enough till I got to the part of this clip where Kim Kardashian explains that she went to New Orleans and helped people. Just in case Star magazine’s latest fifteen page photo essay on Kardashian getting a latte from Starbucks convinced you that she really is just like us, you’re wrong. Apparently, she’s better than us. She’s a saint. I’m so utterly happy that there is now another television show to let me know such things, because I really don’t think I could forgive myself if I knew that a poor multi-millionaire was out there facing the slings and arrows of a random member of the public unfairly. How could we be so mean when they’re just struggling to get a fifth sports car like the rest of us? Mario Lopez is like the Sister Mary Prejean of The CW, bless him.

By comparison, let’s consider the somewhat similar CBS’s Undercover Boss (the one in which a CEO spends a few days in the life of some of their workers, then plays Santa Claus and gives the 3 or so staff members lucky enough to be featured a raise or money for college or so forth, while their colleagues get little more than a televised promise that things are gonna change ‘round here). In a time of layoffs and corporate evil run rampant, it’s galling that CBS feels the need to have a show whose closing moral is usually that CEOs are actually supremely awesome, caring, brilliant humans who really, really want to do what’s best for each and every one of their BFF workers. It’s not that I want continuous messages to the contrary, with cackling, maniacal Al-Pacino-in-The-Devil’s-Advocate caricatures, but does CBS really need to recuperate the images of CEOs, and is that the best way it can service the public? Apparently so. And yet, to be fair to the show and network, before we get to the moral in Undercover Boss, at least we need to wade through images of unfair work practices and tough working conditions that might encourage us to give a damn about labor. Might. And at least the workers’ complaints and concerns are usually taken seriously, or even accompanied with sad music to boot.

With H8R, The CW is similarly setting its sights on the important tasks of the day, ensuring that no celebrity’s inner awesomeness goes unseen. ‘Cause if one of them has their trip to a private island just off Turks and Caicos ruined because Random Dude in Connecticut thinks they’re lame, wouldn’t we all just feel mortified? What’s different from Undercover Boss, and what’s altogether worse, however, is that H8R seems driven by the need to make the regular people wrong, and to dismiss them as “haters.” Its basic impulse, therefore, appears to be one of berating a regular schmo – and by extension, the rest of us “haters” out here. It’s akin to what I’d expect if Scott Walker took over Undercover Boss and took to telling government workers that they’re whining little turds.

The title’s highly relevant here, too, as “hater” is most commonly used to dismiss people who jealously criticize instead of do. “Haters gonna hate,” goes the phrase, implying that this is all haters do when they fall flat of the mark themselves. The title suggests, in other words, that the celebs are the doers, and we’re the sniveling, whining, annoying do-nothing losers who should just shut the fuck up. I wonder if the producers were debating between this title and calling it You Suck (which would at least be a little more playful).

Don’t get me wrong – I have no inner hatred of celebrities as a whole that leads me to wish for a show that gives them public lashings. But do they really need yet another site that aims to stroke their egos? Isn’t it time … wait, I hear a knocking on my door …

Mario Lopez: Hi Jonathan, I hear that you don’t like my new show.

Me: It looks more painful than sitting in an iron maiden with a full stomach, Mario.

Mario: But you haven’t even seen it. You’re saying this based on a trailer alone. I think you’re a H8R.

Me: Yes, my hate is to the power of eight. I will watch an episode, I think, but I fully expect that I will never have felt as much like watching television was a job, and something I had to do, rather than something I like doing as well, as when I watch it.

Mario: Well, we’d like to give you more than an hour. We’d like to send you to Warner Bros Amusement Park with a new DVD player with all the episodes we’ve filmed so that you can get to know it better. Did you know, for instance, that this show has promised to donate 100% of its profits to orphanages for Shaker children?

Me: Wait, they don’t ex…

Mario: … and that we honored the victims of Hurrican Irene in Vermont by putting maple syrup on our waffles on the catering cart? We’re also selling this show to Israel, Sudan, China, and British Columbia with full confidence that it will pattern better behaviors and solve international crises. Now that you know this, do you still hate us?

Yes, I do still hate the show. Because I’m betting that the “h8rs” always need quotation marks around them not just because it’s a silly spelling, but because you’re going to keep the kiddie gloves on all the time. Find me a highly intelligent hater who you will give adequate time to really set out the case against not only the celeb, but also their promoters and network backers, introduce some political economy, and have substance behind the dislike – not just “she thinks this is what a butt looks like. I’ll show her what a real butt looks like” or “she’s not really Italian” – and maybe we’ll talk. Take anti-fandom seriously, in other words, and take the exclusions, alienations, and legitimate political complaints behind some forms of anti-fandom seriously, and we’ll talk.

Or you can just do an episode about someone who thinks Rihanna is “soooo last year” and work up to the exciting revelation that Rihanna once gave a homeless guy one. whole. dollar. note. ‘Cause the latter sounds like great television.

In my last post, I noted that the only truly interesting and innovative website for the new network shows this Fall belongs to Terra Nova. Why?

Well, first, let me offer a quick qualifier to the previous statement. Grimm’s website, while largely uneventful and de rigeur, includes what could become a neat little Production Blog, in which various production staff are offered a small amount of space to explain what they do in general and how that works on Grimm. It could provide yet another example of how paratexts teach production literacy, and are invested in a process of multiplying the number of supposed authorial geniuses working on any show … but they have three posts in one month, so perhaps they ran out of geniuses already? Anyways, go see it here.

Back to Terra Nova, though, while not wholly stepping (yet?) into the realm of being an alternate reality game, it does do a good job of setting up the alternate reality in which the show will be set. Almost buried away on the official webpage is a link to become part of the Eleventh Pilgrimage, and by clicking through, one is situated in the futuristic society from which our Terra Novans will depart. The show follows a “pilgrimage” of people from the future who are escaping that hostile future to try and reestablish the past and make better decisions in order to refashion the future (imagine if Wall-E won over the Terminator and the two started hatching ideas).

As the embedded widget above shows (btw, kudos to them for creating an embeddable widget, not just single videos – they’re clearly keen to design the frame, not just the core, and this blogger appreciates those who realize the importance of frames), the production team clearly have a schedule for the slow yet constant and continuing release of posters and videos. These combine to give us the sense of a world in which population is controlled through rigidly enforced laws about how many children families can have, and in which the environment as a whole seems to be collapsing. Elsewhere on the page, one can find weather reports for various American cities, only to see a mix of what we would see as uncharacteristically cold weather (36 degrees in Helena in early September?), and volatile weather. Amusingly, too, they’ve created new icons for weather, giving the idea of wholly new types of weather that changes daily.

Another link advertises the Rebreather 6000, thereby suggesting that citizens of the future now need extra help just to breathe. And one of the Top Stories on the website further suggests the dismal future, as it notes that “Experts predict that the Sun and Moon are visible in Terra Nova,” implying that they are no longer visible in the future. I’m especially amused by this process of showing without showing – we’re told a lot about the world, yet rarely shown it. Undoubtedly, the small budget of the web designers is largely responsible, but they work with it, to help create a world that the imagination must co-create, and which sounds quite horrible. I imagine that anything a TV (ie: LOW) budget CGI team could design, moreover, would be worse that what I can imagine.

Ostensibly, though, much of the website apparatus directed one to “enter the lottery” to join the Eleventh Pilgrimage to Terra Nova (I use the past tense, since they just changed it, and I find it hard to find this link now. Points off for that). And thus we’re invited to think of ourselves as voyaging to this new land alongside the other newbies. A series of quizzes promise to be released, of which only one was up when I checked the site last. There, its questions are mostly drawn from the Aptitude Test or Psychological Evaluation Test variety, not much like the quizzes discussed in my previous post. They don’t tell us much about the world of Terra Nova at all, nor even about the tone of the show (as does the Secret Circle quiz, by contrast, for instance). But they look a lot like the sorts of questions that Lost’s Dharma Initiative online quiz asked when that ARG was up and running, and hence they posit the futuristic government of Terra Nova as similarly mysterious, ominous, and controlling.

So here’s what intrigues me the most about this: it all sets up rich territory for extratexts, since presumably the series itself (at least, if the previews are to be believed) will be set largely in the past … yet knowing more about the future will help contextualize and explain what’s going on, and that might be largely the province of the extratexts. This strikes me as a wonderful way to create a product that will invite and encourage extratextual engagement, since it gives the showrunners one world to play with, and the website designers and others their own world to create and mould. Thus, I’ll be interested to see whether the division between web (with future) and TV show (with past) holds, and if so, whether this provides an innovative way forward for alternate reality and transmedia storytelling that lets the extratexts “count” without “messing” with the story in the show.

I really need to blog more often. What better excuse than the imminent start of a new television season, complete with lots of yummy paratexts to analyze and criticize?

So, without further ado, let me start by discussing the websites for the new network shows.

Overall, they’re a pretty boring lot. You have the standard elements – cast information, character profiles, “sneak peaks” and “exclusive” video that actually seems to be everywhere online, and encouragements to “Friend us now on Facebook!” (when, sorry, Last Man Standing, I don’t want to be your friend) or to follow some or other cast member on Twitter. Most of the sites look like they were put together at speed, too, with little interest in doing anything other than saying, “Hi, look, there’s a show. Wanna watch?” So, overall there’s not too much to discuss.

Terra Nova proves the only true exception, and I’ll get to that in a future post. But in the meantime, I’ve been fascinated by the quizzes and polls that a few lone sites have (The Secret Circle, Playboy Club, Whitney, Prime Suspect, and Up All Night) in addition to the other elements. The quizzes and polls interest me, since they’re subtle ways of suggesting what the show is all about, disciplining our understanding and (since they’re quizzes) “knowledge” about the shows before they hit the air. What do they say?

Sub-dividing, Secret Circle has a “Which Type of Witch Are You?” quiz, in which your answers determine which character you’re most like; Playboy Club and Up All Night have quizzes with actual correct or incorrect answers; and Whitney and Prime Suspect have polls on favorite past shows and characters. Let’s take each in turn.

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What Kind of Witch Are “You”? Secret Circle

Secret Circle’s quiz makes it absolutely clear what kinds of issues the show will cover, and who should or should not be watching. It makes it clear, first, that the intended audience is female and straight, or at least someone adopting that viewing position. While some of the questions use gender neutral language (asking about your “significant other” and “their” issues), all of a sudden, you’re then hit with “Your friend’s boyfriend has a crush on you, what do you do?” with the first possible answer being to “Tell your friend and convince her to dump him” (emphasis added). The once gender-neutral responder is now assumed to be female and straight.

As the above question suggests, moreover, many of the questions concern themselves with one’s dating life and with managing friendships. Indeed, there’s an interesting irony that a quiz about what kind of witch you are includes only one question that might seem witch-ish (“My favorite insect is …” alludes, to me at least, to possible familiars), as instead it redefines a witch’s life, and witch types as being determined by how one responds to a partner’s infidelity (where turning him into a newt isn’t offered as a possibility), deals with the new girl in town, gets home from a party when one’s ride has disappeared (no, broomsticking it isn’t an option), and interacts with one’s friends.

On one hand, this prepares the audience for the show. If you thought Secret Circle would really be about cauldrons and such, you’re given a quick wake up call that at its heart it will be about dating, being a good friend, and whether you’re being totally rude to your peers. On the other hand, though, the questions therefore subtly start the process of redefining what a witch is. After all, the quiz doesn’t ask what kind of witch you would be – it asks what kind of witch you are. When juxtaposed to the poster campaign’s tag line of “What’s your power?”, powers are redefined as social, and relationship-based, not about changing the weather or so forth. “You” (as the young straight female or presumed young straight female wannabe) are already presumed to be a witch – both a statement about your own powers as young woman, and a welcoming in to the secret circle of playing witch on which the show is about to embark.

And one more thing about you – apparently, “you” are white. All of the witches who you might be are white. Me, I’m a white woman called Diana. I have a strong moral compass. Glad we got that sorted out.

Finally, I have to note with amusement that one of the questions seems there wholly for audience research purposes:

Now that we’ve all agreed it’s D, let’s move on …

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“No, Honey, I Watch it for the History. Honestly”: Playboy Club

Both Playboy Club and Up All Night, by comparison, offer quizzes at their sites with actual correct and incorrect answers. About 15 questions are fired your way, with extra points awarded for speedy answers, and since you’re also not told the correct answer, you’re left needing to take the quiz over and over again if you want to know the answers.

Playboy Club’s quiz is all about the history of Playboy, asking questions such as what Hugh Hefner wanted to call his personal jet (The Big Bunny, for those of you playing at home), when the magazine started (1953), where the first Playboy Club outside of America was (The Philippines), and what animal Hef had wanted to use as mascot at first (a stag).

Its purpose seems to be to frame Playboy Club as Historical (yes, there is a capital H there), while also building up the mythology of Playboy as corporation. I imagine that anyone playing this quiz will have never written a quiz on Playboy before, but that’s sort of the point – there’s something of an act of defiance against Playboy’s detractors here, to turn Playboy into a legitimate, interesting entity worthy of questions, and about which one should know some trivia. This would seem to be one of the hurdles the show faces as a whole – Playboy on network TV? Tsk, tsk, tsk. But the quiz plays its part – small and probably quite inconsequential though it might be – to render Playboy an object of interest. Judgment is neither passed on the company nor called for by the quiz, which instead models a position of curious engagement. If generations of men have excused their interest in the magazine by insisting that it has “great interviews,” the quiz here tries to give a little veneer of intellectual, historical interest to a show that is otherwise selling itself with bunny tails and curvy blondes.

Meanwhile, since all the questions are about history, and none about the seemingly fictional world in which the show is set, we’re encouraged to elide the two, and to see the show as entirely historical, and as interested in documenting a part of American history and culture. It stakes a firm claim of realism.

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“Starring the Straight Star of Arrested Development”: Up All Night

Up All Night uses the same question engine and style (versus the next two NBC shows, which both use another engine), but here to test the player’s knowledge about three of the central cast members, Will Arnett, Christina Applegate, and Maya Rudolph. Up All Night goes all-in on making its cast its selling point. Questions test our knowledge of their comedy chops. Tellingly, Arrested Development features in two questions, while the soon-cancelled Running Wilde is conspicuously absent. We’re also invited to see Rudolph as multi-talented, with questions about her famous musician mother, and her own musical abilities. These are three pretty special people, the quiz tells us.

Interestingly, too, the quiz asks us if we know Arnett’s famous spouse (Amy Poehler) and how many children they have together (2). Presumably, these questions are designed to help set up his authenticity as father of a newborn in the show. I do find myself wondering, though, if they’re also there in part to counter a more recent role of his (which is not asked about), as the gay executive Devon Banks in (NBC’s own!) 30 Rock, and in general to counter his rather camp style as a comedian, to give him straight credentials in time for a role as father.

A final thought on this one: why doesn’t Nick Cannon rank as worthy of even a single question in the quiz? Insert your own answer here.

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“Wow: All the Best Shows Ever Are from NBC and the US!”: Prime Suspect and Whitney

The final type of quiz is actually a poll. Prime Suspect has one of these, asking viewers about their favorite “Leading Ladies of the Law,” while Whitney offers two, one that posits the comeback of the sitcom, then asking readers about their favorite sitcom, the other that asks about favorite television couples.

All three polls attempt a not so subtle move of muscling in on the category in question. After all, why would Whitney ask what your favorite television couple is if it honestly believed you’d show no interest in the couple that stars in this show? In this respect, they’re all pretty forward in pretending that Whitney is already “a classic sitcom” with a fantastic small screen couple, and that Prime Suspect has already provided us with one of television’s “leading ladies of the law.”

On that last note, I’m personally ired by the choices on offer, and those not on offer. Because, you know, I’m actually quite keen to agree with the poll that Prime Suspect has indeed offered us one of the very best female detectives (can I not use the lingo of “ladies of the law,” please?). That is, the British version did. Amusingly, though, Jane Tennyson is nowhere to be seen in the list of possible picks! Is it any wonder that some of our students just don’t get how and when to cite things when cases like this work as their models?

That leads to a larger issue, though, of what selections are offered. First, let’s switch over to the Whitney polls, where the desire to fly the network flag is obvious. All of the options for both questions are NBC shows, leading to what to many television fans would seem the blasphemy of listing, for instance, Just Shoot Me! and Third Rock from the Sun as possible classic sitcoms, while leaving The Simpsons, Roseanne, All in the Family, and I Love Lucy off the list. And yet the preamble for this particular poll – “The sitcom is making a comeback!” – tells us what’s going on here: namely, that NBC is insisting that it is the top location for truly fantastic, “classic” sitcoms, and that it’s “back” with another one.

There’s an amusing tension between the two Whitney polls, at the same time, however. See, many of the suggested favorite couples are from recent or contemporary NBC shows, including The Office, Chuck, Community, 30 Rock (more on that later), Friday Night Lights, Parks and Recreation, and Parenthood. Yet its slate of current sitcoms is wholly absent from the suggested list of “classics.” Especially when the sitcom poll announces that the sitcom is making a comeback, this poses the question of where NBC posits its current shows. Do they not rank highly enough? Perhaps Whitney is a different style of sitcom (“classic”), to be distinguished from 30 Rock and co., and hence we’re being warned of the fact … yet then why are those other shows invoked so readily in the other poll? A little bit of muddiness in the marketing message here, methinks.

Trying to gauge intended audience by the picks on offer works slightly differently with the Prime Suspect poll, which offers Cagney and Lacey, Kono Kalakaua (from Hawaii Five-O), Shakima Greegs (The Wire), Julie Barnes (The Mod Squad), Stacy Sheridan (TJ Hooker), Tina Russo (Hill Street Blues), Olivia Benson (Law and Order: SVU), Anita Van Buren (Law and Order), and Suzanne “Pepper” Anderson (Police Woman). First, I’d note that NBC is willing to acknowledge non-NBC greats here (all hail Kima Greggs!). But it’s also quite an interesting group, mixed in time period and (to a small degree) ethnicity in a way that contrasts quite loudly with Whitney’s all-white, mostly contemporary favorite TV couples. The assumed viewer here seems to be a fair bit older than Whitney’s (s/he knows Police Woman and The Mod Squad, not just Saved by the Bell and Facts of Life), and there’s an explicit pitch to the “quality drama” viewer through references to The Wire and Hill Street Blues. As with Secret Circle, then, the quiz works overtime to summon a specific audience.

To get back to my earlier ire, though, note that all three polls restrict the choices to American shows. Jane Tennyson may be missing, but so is any other acknowledgment of a TV world outside the US, even when an appeal to high cultural quality drama viewers is being made, and even when some options have traveled the Atlantic anyways (if Jim and Pam from the US Office make the cut, why don’t Tim and Dawn from the UK original? How about Basil and Sybil Fawlty?). This is yet more evidence of the American television industry just simply not getting what it means to be international or to address anything but an American audience (or to imagine its American audience as anything but painfully unaware of the rest of the world).

And if our analysis of the Secret Circle quizzes began by noting the gendering and heteronormativity there, it’s still here and going strong. Leading “ladies”? Really? And how telling that all of the “favorite couples” are opposite-gender pairings. Will from Will and Grace makes the list … yet not with any of his gay partners, as he’s disciplined into being straight for the purposes of the list (though, to be fair, that’s kind of the vibe the show went for). And the only slightly non-straight couple on the list – Jenna and her cross-dressing boyfriend Paul from 30 Rock – are tucked away neatly in the very last available spot.

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Conclusion

The great thing with writing a blog entry instead of an essay is that it doesn’t need a stirring, brilliant conclusion. So I don’t have one here. But I hope to have shown how these most banal of extras — quizzes and polls — do quite a lot of work to hail a specific audience, and to assign preferable race, gender, and sexuality to them.