Television Goes to the Movies PDF
Preview Television Goes to the Movies
TELEVISION GOES TO THE MOVIES Television and film have always been connected, but recent years have seen them overlapping, collaborating, and moving towards each other in ever more ways. Set amidst this moment of unprecedented synergy, this book examines how television and film culture interact in the 21st century. Both media appear side by side in many platforms or venues, stories and storytellers cross between them, they regularly have common owners, and they discuss each other constantly. Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson examine what happens at these points of interaction, studying the imaginary border- lands between each medium, the boundary maintenance that quickly envel- ops much discussion of interaction, and ultimately what we allow or require television and film to be. Offering separate chapters on television exhibition at movie theaters, cinematic representations of television, television-to-film and film-to-television adaptations, and television producers crossing over to film, the book explores how each zone of interaction invokes fervid debate of the roles that producers, audiences, and critics want and need each medium to play. From Game of Thrones to The TV Set, Bewitched to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hundreds of TV shows and films are discussed. Television Goes to the Movies will be of interest to students and scholars of tele- vision studies, film studies, media studies, popular culture, adaptation studies, production studies, and media industries. Jonathan Gray is Hamel Family Distinguished Chair in Communication Arts at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is author of Dislike-Minded: Media, Audiences, and the Dynamics of Taste, Television Studies (with Amanda D. Lotz), Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts, Television Enter- tainment, and Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality, and co-editor of numerous books including Keywords for Media Studies (with Laurie Ouellette) and A Companion to Media Authorship (with Derek Johnson). Derek Johnson is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies in the Commu- nication Arts Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Transgenerational Media Industries: Adults, Children and the Reproduction of Culture and Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the C ulture Industries. He has also edited or co-edited several books, including most recently From Networks to Netflix: A Guide to Changing Channels and Point of Sale: Analyz- ing Media Retail (with Daniel Herbert). TELEVISION GOES TO THE MOVIES Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-47643-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-47644-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-10597-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by codeMantra CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1 Television Programs Go to the Movies: Crossing Boundaries in Exhibition Spaces 20 2 Television’s Detractors Go to the Movies: Cinematic Representations of Television 44 3 Television Stories Go to the Movies: Strategies of Adaptation 72 4 Television Producers Go to the Movies: Transforming Professional Identities 101 Coda: Let It Go? 131 Works Cited 135 Index 147 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We’d both like to begin by thanking the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foun- dation and the University of Wisconsin-Madison for supporting some of the research behind this book through an H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship and a Vilas Mid-Career Investigator’s Award. We are also grateful to the Hamel family for their generous support of our research. The funds from these sources allowed us to hire three superb research assis- tants. Jennifer Smith and Nicholas Benson each logged two summers worth of watching media about media and adaptations, respectively, and their brilliant notes and observations undergird Chapters 2 and 3. Laura Schumacher also contributed by seeking out other touchpoints where film and television clash or are at least imagined to clash. We offer our profuse thanks to all three. Much of this book was written, though, while locked down during the COVID-19 pandemic, so we’d like to direct most of our remaining thanks to those who kept us company (and only a little insane) during hard times. For Jonathan, that means Monica Grant and Abigail Gray; for Derek it means Colleen, Dahlia, and Annika Johnson, as well as stalwart, socially distanced running buddy Jeremy Morris; while for both of us it means the wonderful porch pals and cocktail connoisseurs Jason Kido Lopez, Lori Kido Lopez, and Mimsy. Knowing that Eric Hoyt was only a message away helped too. New puppy Captain did very little to speed this book to its conclusion, but he was appreciated nonetheless. Together we’d like to dedicate the book to Michele Hilmes, someone we wish we could’ve spent our lockdown with (even if that would’ve constituted a flagrant violation of Bruce’s “three hour” rule). Michele has been our teacher, mentor, colleague, friend, ace bartender, confidante, and role model, and though we know that we could never balance our ledger of thanks with her, we’ll try here nonetheless. INTRODUCTION On May 19, 2019, the final episode of Game of Thrones (2011–2019), “The Iron Throne,” aired on HBO. Over its eight-year run, Game of Thrones had regularly been called “cinematic” or even “the most cinematic television show ever made” (Epstein 2016), a sentiment echoed when HBO Chairman and CEO Richard Plepler spoke of the final season as much more like “six movies” (Littleton 2019), and when showrunner David Benioff shared that the produc- tion team had always considered the show like a “73 hour movie” (Hibberd 2017). Game of Thrones was not the only major finale that week in the United States, though, as Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame (2019) was still in cinemas ev- erywhere. For all its $2.8 billion command of the box office and for all the sweeping effects that its $356 million budget bought it, though, in structure and style Endgame felt very much like a television series finale, complete with the tour through past episodes, return of past characters, and sad diegetic good- byes standing in for presumed sad real-life goodbyes. That week in May thus focused how loosely the labels of “film” or “television” may sit on their wearers, and focuses a feeling many of us have probably had of late, that television and film might be a lot more alike than we have been told was the case. Television and film critics—and television and film professors—can prove overfond of pitting the two media against each other as if rival sports teams, with each new major achievement in either medium being read as a step closer to winning a bowl, cup, or medal. Especially as critics, academics, and the public at large have increasingly noted a “Second Golden Age” of television, an era of “peak TV” in which television has finally begun to shake off its identity as the “idiot box” or the “boob tube,” there is a sense of zero-sum competition in which the plaudits enjoyed by one medium might come at the expense of another. But they still have a lot in common, and the pathways between the media are both well-traveled and multiplying.
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