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The MelodRama of the UnkNown MaN A Genre of Ethics and Poetics Timna Rauch – 5971942 Research Master Media Studies Final Thesis February 11 2015 Supervisor: G.W. van der Pol Second Reader: J. W. Kooijman Third Reader: W. Staat The Melodrama of the Unknown Man A Genre of Ethics and Poetics Timna Rauch – 5971942 Weberstraat 32 1223 JT Hilversum 06 28 88 99 12 [email protected] February 11 2015 Final Thesis Research Master Media Studies Supervisor: G. W. van der Pol Second Reader: J. W. Kooijman Third Reader: W. Staat University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Table of Contents INTRODUCTION – COOKING GENRE 4 CHAPTER 1 – TOWARDS A POETICS OF SERIAL DRAMA 8 §1 STUDYING SERIAL DRAMA 8 §2 A POETICS BASED APPROACH 11 §3 (NEO-) FORMALISM 14 CHAPTER 2 – GENRE, MELODRAMA AND TV 16 §1 GENRE AND ‘CLASSIC’ MELODRAMA 17 §2 MELODRAMA ON TV 21 CHAPTER 3 – GENRE AS MORAL REGISTER 25 §1 MORAL PERFECTIONISM 26 §2 THE MELODRAMA OF THE UNKNOWN WOMAN 31 § 3 FROM MAN TO WOMAN 33 CHAPTER 4 – BREAKING DOWN BREAKING BAD 35 §1 A STORY OF CHANGE 38 §2 THE TRANSFORMATION OF MR. WHITE 46 §3 FELINA 54 CONCLUSION – THE MELODRAMA OF THE UNKNOWN MAN 59 FINAL THOUGHTS – MY OWN FELINA 62 BIBLIOGRAPHY 64 APPENDIX I 69 APPENDIX II 70 Introduction – Cooking Genre Introduction – Cooking Genre “Some straight like you, giant stick up his ass, all of a sudden at age like what, sixty, he's just gonna break bad?” (‘Breaking Bad’ 1.01 TC: 36:21) When Breaking Bad’s (AMC 2008-2013) creator Vince Gilligan stumbled upon a newspaper article about a man who was caught cooking methamphetamine in the back of his recreational vehicle, he couldn’t stop wondering what happened. What would drive a seemingly sane and normal guy to make such a drastic change in his life? It was this question that motivated the creation of Walter White, the elusive and much discussed protagonist of Breaking Bad. Gilligan described the series as the story of “Mr. Chips gone Scarface” when he first pitched his idea to AMC. In an interview he explains: “I think of Breaking Bad as a bit of a character study. […] We are telling a story of transformation” (Gilligan in The Guardian, 2012). Or as the protagonist himself puts it, at the beginning of a chemistry lecture: “Technically chemistry is the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change” (‘Breaking Bad’ TC: 07:31). The transformation or change of Walter White begins when the fifty-year-old overeducated chemistry teacher is diagnosed with stage-three lung cancer. Walter decides he has nothing to lose and will do anything to ensure his family’s financial future after his inevitable and early death. With the help of former-student and small time drug dealer Jesse, Walter starts up a meth lab in the back of an RV. Walter White breaks bad and over the course of sixty-two episodes, dispersed over five seasons. Walter becomes less and less Walt – the nice, quiet family man and teacher – and more and more Heisenberg – a mysterious and malicious drug lord. A transformation that is in no way unproblematic, as Walter again underlines when telling his students about the beauty of chemistry: “It’s growth, than decay, and than transformation” (ibid. TC: 08:15); which are exactly the stages through which the story of Walter will unfold. In his constant struggle to balance his two personas we see how seemingly good guy Walter slowly decays and/or transforms into bad guy Heisenberg. Series that confront their viewer with a complex and morally challenged protagonist are not entirely new. More and more series have a bad guy – or antagonistic protagonist if you will – at their centre. Think for example of HBO’s The Soprano’s (1999-2007), which revolves around mafia boss Tony Soprano and builds on the gangster movie genre, or Showtime’s Dexter (2008, 2013) about a ferocious serial killer. These series, and others like them, are immensely popular; the three titles mentioned so far are all in the top fifty of ‘IMDb’s Highest Rated TV-Series’ list.1 1 Find full list on IMDb.com < http://www.imdb.com/search/title?num_votes=5000,&sort=user_ 4 Introduction – Cooking Genre However, in the past decade the preferred protagonist is not the only thing that has changed within the television landscape. Like Walter in Breaking Bad the medium has gone through growth, decay and is now in a stage of transformation. Television was long argued to be a medium of consumerism, made for- and enjoyed by passive couch potatoes. A medium, though much critically researched, much less critically accepted. The reputation of the medium arguably started to change with the coming of paid network channels like HBO – which is ironically famous for its slogan ‘It’s not TV, it’s HBO’. These networks started to raise production budgets and began to produce series that moved away from the classic tradition of soap opera and the occasional cop- and hospital series. Series that broke free from television’s storytelling traditions and were different from all we had seen thus far – with some exceptions like Twin Peaks (Lynch/Frost Productions, 1990-1991) and X-Files (20th Century Fox Television, 1998-2002) off course. Shows that not only demanded a more active, arguably intelligent, audience due to its more complex narration, but also shows that instigated the notion of ‘quality TV’, suggesting that TV before that had no quality. Not only are the rules for televised drama expanding, also the viewing experience itself rapidly transforms. Due to the many digital media platforms and possibilities, watching TV is no longer an in-house experience. One can take ‘television’ on the road via devices like smartphones and tablets. Also access to the material has changed via downloading, DVD’s and online streaming, and thus viewers are no longer restricted to a channel’s programming schedule. In many ways the rules have changed, both for viewers and producers and thus also for scholarly research one might assume. However, it appears that the academic field in some way is falling behind on this fast changing medium, in particular the form that appears to be the most important to these changes: serial drama 2. The changing landscape of television has been extensively researched over the past decade, but in most works serial drama is not considered as a mode or art form in and of itself. With this project I want to take on the second transformation – of the medium – via the first – that of the protagonist. Because first of all I strongly feel that the complex morality that became more and more popular over the past decade and has arguably reach its pinnacle – thus far – with Breaking Bad, lies at the heart of understanding the transformation of the medium. Secondly I have found that most research regarding the changes of television is often too restricted to scholarly traditions related to television studies; traditions in which context is 2 I prefer the term serial drama instead of terms like ‘quality TV’, television series etc. Because this form is no longer restricted to the singular medium of television. This not only goes for the changed viewing practices, but also for the academic focus as shall become clear in this project. 5 Introduction – Cooking Genre preferred over content. With this project I want to demonstrate how serial drama should be understood as an art form of its own right and show how such an understanding can shed a light on the moral struggles many shows confront us with nowadays. For this I will develop the melodrama of the unknown man as a genre; a genre that is by no means a set list of generic features. The melodrama of the unknown man should rather be understood as a mode, an outlook. It is a means by which method and theory guide questions for analytic and interpretational goals and via which the morality in series that could be defined by this genre can be better understood. Creating a genre is not an easy endeavour – and as genre is depended on many factors, perhaps impossible – and I am well aware of this. Also I must already note here that this project is a first step towards a new understanding of serial drama via genre, rather than a full circle development of a new genre. However, by the following steps I will demonstrate both the need for a new understanding as well as demonstrate how the specific recipe that I propose can bring us towards a new understanding, or could be part of this. In the first chapter I will address the way in which I find the dominant academic perspectives on serial drama too restricted. Also in this chapter an alternative to those perspectives will be presented: a poetics based approach. This approach, that is borrowed from David Bordwell and reworked for television by Jason Mittell does not disregard context – being it historical, productional or other. However, within poetics the object itself forms the centre of the research because it is a means to discern the storytelling mode of an object; hence its content. As I do not mean to develop a full genre in this project I am also not interested in further developing the poetics approach of Mittell. Rather I want join the idea of a general poetics with a specific mode of analysis. The idea of genre as part of poetics will be the end point of the first chapter and the starting point of the second.