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Dissident Voices

Dissident Voices

Mike Wayne

(1998)

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Abstract

‘Wayne’s study offers an impressive range of readings and critical methodologies within a collection of exceptional coherence... Dissident Voices is consistently compulsive reading and a must for all students and specialists in the field of recent and contemporary television culture.’ Professor Madeleine MacMurraugh-Kavanagh, University of Reading

Two decades of institutional and structural changes in television broadcasting have both informed and reflected profound shifts in British culture. How have programme makers themselves approached the tensions and anxieties of the last twenty years?

Dissident Voices examines the ways in which certain forms and genres have registered a period of cultural upheaval and to what extent they have developed a more reflexive and a more critical television culture. This collection covers a broad range of issues including class, gender and sexuality, the monarchy, identity and nationhood. It examines their representation in a variety of dramas and genres, including police procedurals, documentaries, game shows, sitcoms and satire. The contributors challenge the notion of television as a bland purveyor of the status quo, presenting it as a complex and potentially subversive medium. Television culture is portrayed here as still resistant to the total control of either markets or ideologies. In an age of political consensus, it is an important and popular site where anxiety about and dissent from current social trends frequently surface.









Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Contents iii
Notes on Contributors vii
Introduction 1
Notes 11
1. 'Reality or Nothing'? Dennis Potter's Cold Lazarus (1996) 12
Notes 20
2. Counter-Hegemonic Strategies in Between the Lines 23
Hegemony, Ubermensch, and Gramsci 25
The Context and Process of Production 27
Narrative and the Concept of 'the Hero' 30
Conclusion 37
Notes 38
3. Crisis and Opportunity: Class, Gender and Allegory in The Grand 40
Realism: Some Earlier Debates 41
Allegory 43
Structure and Typology in The Grand 46
The Individual and Society 50
Conclusion 54
Notes 56
4. Bare Necessities and Naked Luxuries: The 1990s Male as Erotic Object 58
Notes 70
5. 'The Fierce Light': The Royal Romance with Television 72
Notes 88
6. 'Progressive' Television Documentary and Northern Ireland - The Films of Michael Grigsby in a 'Postcolonial' Context 91
The Trouble With 'Progressiveness' 91
Putting Method in Perspective 92
Victims and Villains 95
Speaking up for Others 101
Notes 104
7. The Exquisite Corpse of Rab(Elais) C(opernicus) Nesbitt 107
In the Beginning was the Word . . . 107
Is There Such a Thing as Scottish Screen Acting? 111
Where Extremes Meet 113
Glasgow's Miles Better 116
Class and Nation in Rab C Nesbitt 119
A Structuring Absence? 122
Conclusion 124
Notes 125
8. The Politics of Ridicule: Satire and Television 127
What is it and How Does it Work? satire 128
A Question of Balance 133
. . . it's Not Going to Bring Down the Government, is it? 137
Jeremy Hardy 139
Mark Steel 140
Mark Thomas 140
New Labour, New Satire? 140
Notes 144
9. Not a Lot of Laughs: Documentary and Public Service 145
Notes 157
10. Dissidence and Authenticity in Dyke Porn and Actuality TV 159
Notes 173
11. Downloading the Documentary 176
Notes 183
Index 184
Adorno, Theodor, 26 26
Althusser, Louis, 122 122
american TV 147-8 147
Anderson, Benedict 87 87
Bare Necessities, The 5 5
Barker, Martin 23 23
Barthes, Roland 45