It Was TV: Teaching HBO\u27s The Wire as a Television Series

Unlike most courses dedicated to The Wire that have examined race, class, criminal justice, urban studies, or education, Sodano foregrounds The Wire as a work of television and examines how it was taught to media majors and non-majors from aesthetic, cultural, technological, economic, and sociological perspectives. It is crucial to recognize The Wire as a piece of television because the circumstances surrounding its appearance on HBO provide context for how it was produced, distributed, and received

It Was TV: Teaching HBO\u27s The Wire as a Television Series

Unlike most courses dedicated to The Wire that have examined race, class, criminal justice, urban studies, or education, Sodano foregrounds The Wire as a work of television and examines how it was taught to media majors and non-majors from aesthetic, cultural, technological, economic, and sociological perspectives. It is crucial to recognize The Wire as a piece of television because the circumstances surrounding its appearance on HBO provide context for how it was produced, distributed, and received

Say It Again: Aaron Sorkin and Dialogue Repetition on The West Wing

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who recently won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for The Social Network and earned nominations for co-writing Moneyball, premiered his new television series, The Newsroom, on HBO at the end of June 2012. However, the series for which he is most widely known is The West Wing (NBC, 1999-2006), which debuted less than one year after U.S. President Bill Clinton was impeached on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice and four years after the release of the successful film. The American President, for which Sorkin wrote the screenplay. The West Wing (TWW) presented an idealistic, sometimes-glamorous look at public service by the fictional president’s executive staff. Defying the tradition that political series on television are anathema, TWW won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series its first four years on the air—not coincidentally, the four years that Sorkin wrote for the show—and ultimately earned 26 Emmys, the eighth most in TV history. The series joined pressing and complicated political issues with compelling stories and believable characters. Since the turn of the new century, serialized television programs have grown in number and in sophistication. Some of these “narratively complex” series (Mittell, 2006), which include The West Wing, The Sopranos, The Wire, Lost, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones, have rarely used what Steven Johnson calls “flashing arrows” to “help the audience keep track of what’s going on” across episodes and seasons (Johnson, 2005, p. 73). Johnson, who contends that these complex forms of popular culture (television, film, video games, etc.) have made us smarter in recent years, attributes the “murkiness” of TWW to Sorkin’s “cunning refusal” to include these aids (Ibid., p. 77). This paper, however, challenges Johnson’s claim about flashing arrows. Through a close reading of Emmy-winning and Emmy-nominated episodes of TWW written by Sorkin, I examine how the creator stealthily embraces yet subverts this traditional narrative device through his own unconventional yet familiar technique. More specifically, this essay looks at how dialogue repetition complicates the notion that TWW was narratively complex. Following an initial discussion of narrative complexity, this paper will then detail various functions of repetition in television (and film) and how they are used in TWW. For instance, through dialogue repetition, Sorkin obviates the need for exposition that often dumbs down stories and their potential for authenticity. He sometimes reveals expository dialogue, though, by having one character repeat important information to another. Sorkin’s characters deliver rapid-fire dialogue, whose meanings often are not understood by the viewer until later in a scene or episode. Such moments maintain momentum that suits the fast-paced workplace cultivated aurally by Sorkin and visually by director Thomas Schlamme’s famous “walk-and-talks,” in which characters converse while they walk and are sometimes joined—or replaced—by another along the way to a different location. They also demonstrate the frenetic pace of working inside the executive branch of the U.S. government. Conversely—and perhaps surprisingly—these moments of repetition can, to borrow a phrase that Sarah Cardwell used in a similar context, “stall the narrative” (2005, 191); that is, the characters who repeat the same lines (usually verbatim) to each other and who contribute to the excitement and tension in these scenes tend not to advance the plot or overload the viewer with much new information. Sometimes Sorkin tantalizes the viewer with ambiguous, repeated lines that open dialogue-heavy scenes, and so she or he must pay closer attention to what characters are discussing. However, because these moments do not include much new dialogue, the repetition serves as an aural transition between the last scene and the next one, which gives the viewer time to catch up and to pay attention. These dialogues often accentuate themes within story lines that traverse episodes and seasons as well as develop characters further. Sorkin’s use of repetition often produces great comedy, as in the case of one character repeatedly admonishing another to “avert [his] eyes” after she falls into her swimming pool and steps out with her clothes unflatteringly stuck to her body. It can also stir emotions, as in the case of one character who, in describing how her young sons were killed in the Vietnam War, begins and ends her story with the same phrase, “I miss my boys.” Finally, this essay examines plant and payoff, a popular literary device that Sorkin uses masterfully to foreshadow and call back critical moments in TWW’s diegesis. This technique can “increase the audience’s feeling of involvement in the story, for we have special, inside information, we know secrets and have discovered new or hidden meanings in the very fabric of the story” (Howard & Mabley, 1993, p. 73). Plant and payoff serves as a microcosm for what Sorkin does so effectively with repetition: he increases audience involvement in the story, allows them to uncover new meanings, accentuates what is most important, but does not insult viewer intelligence. The West Wing is justly recognized as one of the most well-crafted series in television history. This paper briefly acknowledges that TWW exemplified narrative complexity, but it will describe in detail how creator Aaron Sorkin developed a unique writing technique by modifying an old-fashioned trope often used to minimize it. Cardwell, S. (2005). “Television aesthetics and close analysis: Style, mood and engagement in Perfect Strangers (Stephen Poliakoff, 2001).” Style and meaning: Studies in the detailed analysis of film. Gibbs, J. & D. Pye (Eds.). Manchester University Press. Howard, D. & E. Mabley. (1993). The tools of screenwriting. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Johnson, S. (2005). Everything bad is good for you. New York: Riverhead Books. Mittell, J. (Fall 2006). Narrative complexity in contemporary American television. The velvet light trap, 58, 29-40

All the pieces matter: A critical analysis of HBO\u27s The Wire

Unlike much scholarship on television that studies the medium\u27s effects on viewers or looks at one piece of the production-distribution-consumption model, this qualitative study on The Wire tackles the three folds of the cultural studies project - the TV series as text, the political economy of its distribution (premium cable channel HBO), and the reception of the text (by TV critics). The Wire was a critically adored, award-ignored series that aired on HBO from 2002 to 2008. In order to tell a story of these three interconnected folds, I conducted interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis. I also collected supplemental documents that provided valuable information and perspectives from The Wire and HBO insiders who were inaccessible. The Wire had low viewership numbers but managed to achieve the five-season plan its creator David Simon outlined midway through the show\u27s tenure. Following the HBO slogan, It\u27s Not TV. It\u27s HBO, The Wire offered numerous not TV characteristics that contributed to its low ratings. Simon\u27s socially relevant series, which he calls a visual novel, also boasted an enormous ensemble cast mostly of black actors and examined bleak themes such as the failure of the War on Drugs and the death of work in America. The role played by the once unassailable but now vulnerable HBO during the years of The Wire further complicates this story. Nevertheless, without the support of HBO and TV critics\u27 effusive praise of the series, The Wire might have been prematurely canceled. The influence of TV critics, who called The Wire Dickensian, genius TV, and surely the best TV show ever broadcast in America, was unmistakable when HBO renewed The Wire for its fourth and fifth seasons, which allowed Simon to complete his vision. Recently, though, the future for many TV critics has grown bleak, in light of the struggles that print newspapers have endured. Furthermore, The Wire \u27s inability to win any Emmy Awards might hurt its actors and actresses, who could have used the recognition to land more prominent roles, and television writers, who might wish to tell socially relevant stories using similarly unconventional methods. This study embraces and recommends the three-fold cultural studies project in understanding individual television series, for the researcher can learn as much about the medium as about the series

Integrating lecture capture as a teaching strategy to improve student presentation skills through self-assessment

As digital natives from the ‘wired’ Net Generation permeate today’s classrooms, and educators adapt to students’ digital expectations, exploring the pedagogical use of educational technology is essential for today’s faculty. Student competency in oral communication and presentation skills transcends disciplines in higher education, as does the need for students to self-assess their performance for self-regulated learning. This study compared the self-perceptions of undergraduate communication/journalism and nursing students who used lecture capture technology for critiquing and analyzing their presentation skills with self-perceptions of students who did not use lecture capture technology. Findings revealed students in both groups lacked self-confidence and competence in presentation skills. Of significance, students using lecture capture technology were more likely to apply what they learned from the self-assessment when developing future presentations. It is suggested that faculty focus on presentation skill delivery, in addition to presentation content, to assist students in developing presentation competencies

A new ichthyotoxic diacylglycerol from the nudibranch Archidoris pseudoargus

Abstract A new ichthyotoxic 1,2-sn-diacylglycerol having tiglic and clerodane acid-derived acyl moieties has been isolated from the mantle of the dorid nudibranch Archidoris pseudoargus and its structure established by spectroscopic and chemical means