Television with Stanley Cavell in Mind , livre ebook

University of Exeter Press

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

269 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

This collection of new work on the philosophical importance of television starts from a model for reading films proposed by Stanley Cavell, whereby film in its entirety—actors and production included—brings its own intelligence to its realization. In turn, this intelligence educates us as viewers, leading us to recognize and appreciate our individual cinephilic tastes, and to know ourselves and each other better. This reading is even more valid for TV series. Yet, in spite of the progress of film-philosophy, there has been a paucity of concurrent analysis of the ethical stakes, the modes of expressiveness, and the moral education involved in television series. Perhaps most conspicuously, there has been a lack of focus on the experience of the viewer.

Cavell highlighted popular cinema's capacity to create a common culture for millions. This power has become dispersed across other bodies of work and practices, most notably TV series, which have largely appropriated the responsibility of widening the perspectives of their publics, a role once associated with the silver screen. Just as Cavell's reading of films involved moral perfectionism in its intent, this project is also perfectionist, extending a similar aesthetic and ethical method to readings of the small screen. Because TV series are works that are public and thus shared, and often global in reach, they fulfil an educational role—whether intended or not—and one that enables viewers to anchor and appreciate the value of their everyday experiences.

Contributions from: William Rothman, Martin Shuster, Elisabeth Bronfen, Hugo Clémot, David LaRocca, Jeroen Gerrits, Stephen Mulhall, Michelle Devereaux, Thibaut de Saint-Maurice, Hent de Vries, Catherine Wheatley, Byron Davies, Sandra Laugier, Paul Standish, Robert Sinnerbrink.

Acknowledgements

Contributors

Introduction: The Fact and Fiction of Television: Stanley Cavell and the Terms of Television Philosophy DAVID LaROCCA and SANDRA LAUGIER

PART I: NEW TELEVISION

1 Justifying Justified WILLIAM ROTHMAN

2 ‘You Get Paid for Pain’: Kingdom and New Television MARTIN SHUSTER

3 To See and to Stop: The Problem of Abdication in Succession ELISABETH BRONFEN

4 When TV is on TV: Metatelevision and the Art of Watching TV with the Royal Family in The Crown DAVID LaROCCA

PART II: BIG PERFECTIONISM ON THE SMALL SCREEN

5 It’s My Party and I’ll Die Even If I Don’t Want To: Repetition, Acknowledgment, and Cavellian Perfectionism in Russian Doll MICHELLE DEVEREAUX

6 ‘Nobody’s Perfect’: Moral Imperfectionism in Ozark HENT de VRIES

7 A Zigzag of a Hundred Tacks: Narrative Complexity in The Good Place CATHERINE WHEATLEY

8 Im/Moral Perfectionism: On TV’s Two Worlds JEROEN GERRITS

PART III: EVERYDAY EDUCATION

9 The Sublime and the American Dream in Fargo HUGO CLÉMOT

10 TV Time, Recurrence, and the Situation of the Spectator: An Approach via Stanley Cavell, Raúl Ruiz, and Ruiz’s Late Chilean Series Litoral (2008) BYRON DAVIES

11 Education about Trust in Homeland THIBAUT de SAINT MAURICE

12 Small Acts PAUL STANDISH

PART IV: POPULAR TV AND ITS GENRES

13 The Event of Television: Sitcoms, Superheroes, and WandaVision STEPHEN MULHALL

14 Love, Remarriage, and The Americans SANDRA LAUGIER

15 True Detective: Existential Scepticism and Television Crime Drama ROBERT SINNERBRINK

Index

Sujets

Philosophie

Éthique et morale

Moral Philosophy

Genres

PHILOSOPHY

Philosophie et théologie

Película fotográfica

General officer

Television

History of film

Ethics

General

Drama

Film

Informations

Publié par	University of Exeter Press
Date de parution	30 mai 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781804130193
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0005€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Television with Stanley Cavell in Mind
TV-Philosophy
Series Editors:
Sandra Laugier, Martin Shuster, Robert Sinnerbrink
Television with Stanley Cavell in Mind
edited by David LaRocca and Sandra Laugier (2023)
TV-Philosophy: How TV Series Change our Thinking
Sandra Laugier (2023)
TV-Philosophy in Action: The Ethics and Politics of TV Series
Sandra Laugier (2023)
Television with Stanley Cavell in Mind
edited by
DAVID L a ROCCA and SANDRA LAUGIER
First published in 2023 by
University of Exeter Press
Reed Hall, Streatham Drive
Exeter EX4 4QR, UK
www.exeterpress.co.uk
2023 David LaRocca, Sandra Laugier, and the individual contributors
The right of David LaRocca, Sandra Laugier, and the individual contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Television with Stanley Cavell in Mind
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format, for non-commercial purposes only. If others remix, adapt, or build upon the material, they may not distribute the modified material.
https://doi.org/10.47788/BMYM9359
Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
Any third-party material in this book is published under the book s Creative Commons licence unless indicated otherwise in the credit line to the material. If you would like to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain permission to reproduce the material included in this book. Please get in touch with any enquiries or information relating to an image or the rights holder.
This Open Access publication was made possible by funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 834759).
ISBN 978-1-80413-018-6 Hardback
ISBN 978-1-80413-019-3 ePub
ISBN 978-1-80413-020-9 PDF
Cover image: Stanley Cavell 2023 David LaRocca
Typeset in Adobe Caslon Pro by S4Carlisle Publishing Services
Contents
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Introduction: The Fact and Fiction of Television: Stanley Cavell and the Terms of Television Philosophy
DAVID L a ROCCA and SANDRA LAUGIER
PART I: NEW TELEVISION
1 Justifying Justified
WILLIAM ROTHMAN
2 You Get Paid for Pain : Kingdom and New Television
MARTIN SHUSTER
3 To See and to Stop: The Problem of Abdication in Succession
ELISABETH BRONFEN
4 When TV is on TV: Metatelevision and the Art of Watching TV with the Royal Family in The Crown
DAVID L a ROCCA
PART II: BIG PERFECTIONISM ON THE SMALL SCREEN
5 It s My Party and I ll Die Even If I Don t Want To: Repetition, Acknowledgement, and Cavellian Perfectionism in Russian Doll
MICHELLE DEVEREAUX
6 Nobody s Perfect : Moral Imperfectionism in Ozark
HENT de VRIES
7 A Zigzag of a Hundred Tacks: Narrative Complexity in The Good Place
CATHERINE WHEATLEY
8 Im/Moral Perfectionism: On TV s Two Worlds
JEROEN GERRITS
PART III: EVERYDAY EDUCATION
9 The Sublime and the American Dream in Fargo
HUGO CL MOT
10 TV Time, Recurrence, and the Situation of the Spectator: An Approach via Stanley Cavell, Ra l Ruiz, and Ruiz s Late Chilean Series Litoral
BYRON DAVIES
11 Homeland : An Education in Trust
THIBAUT DE SAINT MAURICE
12 Small Acts
PAUL STANDISH
PART IV: POPULAR TV AND ITS GENRES
13 The Event of Television: Sitcoms, Superheroes, and WandaVision
STEPHEN MULHALL
14 Love, Remarriage, and The Americans
SANDRA LAUGIER
15 True Detective : Existential Scepticism and Television Crime Drama
ROBERT SINNERBRINK
Index
Acknowledgements
O ur first and deepest thanks are extended to the roster of contributors without whom this ample and artful book would be but a faint sketch. Their wide and penetrating experience writing on and teaching television, film, and media studies-in a philosophical cast of mind-provides this volume with special purchase on the pertinence of Stanley Cavell for the study of TV. More than providing a much-needed, never-before-attempted retrospective assessment of Cavell s contribution to television studies, this gifted band also managed to supply a sense of Cavell s prospective relevance to ongoing and future considerations of TV as streaming, as broadcast, as viewing and re-viewing, and as an essential feature of our private and public lives.
Not far behind, we continue with ready thanks to Anna Henderson, our capable and clever editor, who helped guide this volume from first conception through final realization. We re very grateful for her sense of the book s ambitions and also of its role in a new series on TV-Philosophy at the University of Exeter Press. Two anonymous referees for the press provided much guidance for refining and clarifying the expression of the project, and we remain appreciative for the time and attention demanded of their labors. During production, we have David Hawkins to thank for capable assistance with project management and Sara Magness for informed and impressive copyediting.
The incubation of the volume goes back years, but first took initial and deliberate shape during a pre-pandemic conference hosted by Sandra at the Universite Paris 1 Panthe on-Sorbonne, in June 2019, a year after Cavell s death, entitled La pense e du cinema: En hommage a Stanley Cavell . Just a few months later, the world was sent into lockdown-and while the coronavirus disaster unfolded, TV queues were loaded and a global binge was underway. The phase illustrated something fundamental about the contemporary role of television in our lives. Given a palpable shift to the digital stream, we felt it time to take stock of Cavell s once and ongoing insights into this groundbreaking subfield of his multiple, expansive interests. Bonding over our shared love of TV (and film), and of course, our long-standing dedication to the life s work and legacy of Stanley Cavell, we hit upon several overlapping magisteria suited to our shared attention.
Benjamin Cavell s ambitious and accomplished work in television, covering a diversity of genres in popular TV, has been taken by us-from first thoughts about this book and throughout its development-as a propitious sign of the creative power and intellectual value of the topic, and of its promising future life.
David would like to acknowledge the gratifying influence of conversations and correspondence with Garrett Stewart, Robert Pippin, Hent de Vries, Emily Apter, Paul Cronin, Haaris Naqvi, Oscar Jansson, Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso, John Opera, Rita Mullaney, and Alessandro Subrizi. For spells of memorable intensity in Montr al and precious duration in Cortona, mille grazie Diana Allan and Curtis Brown. In addition to the elastic and motley pleasures of diurnal life together, I m lucky also to find company for discovering the salutary effects of TV with my insightful wife, K.L. Evans, and our savvy daughters, Ruby and Star.
Sandra wishes also to thank her children, Marie, Simon, and Ulysse, for having introduced her to great shows, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Game of Thrones , and Jocelyn Benoist for all the time discovering and watching TV series together. She owes thanks to all those on both sides of the Atlantic who have shared with her the long-term project of acknowledging the philosophical importance of TV series in the tradition of Cavell s work on cinema: Martin Shuster, Paola Marrati, William Rothman, Jeroen Gerrits, Arnaud Desplechin, Sylvie Allouche, Hugo Cl mot, and Thibaut de Saint Maurice. Many thanks to Tatsiana Zhurauliova for her wonderful editing work and advice, and to Anastasia Krutikova for her support and friendship.
Lastly, we wish to express our gratitude to Stanley Cavell, including but also beyond his work on film and television. His writings-an infinite resource for thinking seriously about almost anything that draws one s interest, coupled with his boldness in opening and defending new topics for exploration-have encouraged and inspired us in pursuing a series philosophy.
This publication has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement N 834759).
Contributors
David LaRocca is the author or contributing editor of more than a dozen books, including Emerson s English Traits and the Natural History of Metaphor (2013). Recipient of a teaching commendation from Harvard Extension School, he served as Harvard University s Sinclair Kennedy Traveling Fellow in the United Kingdom and has held visiting research or teaching positions in the United States at Binghamton, Cornell, Cortland, Harvard, Ithaca College, the School of Visual Arts, and Vanderbilt. Advised by Stanley Cavell during doctoral research, he later edited Cavell s Emerson s Transcendental Etudes (2003, published under his bachelor name, David Justin Hodge, as was On Emerson , also 2003) and worked as Cavell s research assistant during the time he was completing Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life (2004) and Philosophy the Day after Tomorrow (2005), and beginning Little Did I Know: Excerpts from Memory (2010). A recipient of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society Distinguished Achievement Award, LaRocca has edited additional books featuring Cavell s work, including Estimating Emerson: An Anthology of Criticism from Carlyle to Cavell (2013) and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Transcendental Thought: From Antiquity to the Anthropocene (2017), and contributed chapters