Transgressive Television - Politics and Crime in 21st-Century American TV Series-Universitatsverlag Winter (2015)

birgit däwes
alexandra ganser
nicole poppenhagen (Eds.)
poppenhagen (Eds.)
däwes · ganser · poppenhagen (Eds.)
Transgressive Television Transgressive
ince the turn of the 21st century, the landscape of Television Politics and Crime
ganser
däwes
television has decisively changed. Whereas seriality in 21st- Century American TV Series
had been part and parcel of television entertainment
since the 1940s, the past two decades have witnessed
the rise of new technologies and increasingly “complex
and elaborate forms” (Jason Mittell), with HBO and American Studies ★ A Monograph Series
Netflix playing leading roles. Particularly in its mani-
fold transgressions of political, social, and ethical
Volume 264
Transgressive Television
boundaries, the contemporary American TV serial
serves as both a laboratory for and diagnostic platform
of current epistemes and ideological codes.
In fifteen interdisciplinary perspectives from the United
States and Europe, this volume provides a critical
diagnosis of the genre’s politics of gender and ethnicity,
difference, normativity and representational control.
Contesting the popular term “quality TV,” Transgressive
Television provides original work on TV series as
diverse as Twin Peaks, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad,
The Wire, House of Cards, Homeland, and many others.
isbn 978-3-8253-6544-8
american studies – a monograph series
Volume 264
Edited on behalf
of the German Association
for American Studies by
alfred hornung
anke ortlepp
heike paul
birgit däwes
alexandra ganser
nicole poppenhagen (Eds.)
Transgressive
Television
Politics and Crime in 21st-Century
American TV Series
Universitätsverlag
w i n ter
Heidelberg
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Table of Contents
BIRGIT DÄWES, ALEXANDRA GANSER, NICOLE POPPENHAGEN

Season Recap: A Preface……..…………………………………………9
Paving Pathways
BIRGIT DÄWES
Transgressive Television: Preliminary Thoughts….…………………..17
GARY R. EDGERTON
The Countdown to Y2KTV and the Arrival of the New Serialists……33
ALEXANDRA GANSER
Transgressive Serialization and the Serialization of Transgression
at the U.S.-Canadian Border: Twin Peaks…………..…………………55
Representing Power: Formats of Political TV Series
MARJOLAINE BOUTET
The Politics of Time in House of Cards……..…...….....………..…….83
SIMONE PUFF
Another Scandal in Washington: How a Transgressive, Black
Anti-Heroine Makes for New “Quality TV”……………………..…..103
DOROTHEA WILL
The Humane Face of Politics? Political Representations,
Power Structures, and Gender Limitations in
HBO’s Political Comedy Veep..…………………………………...…127
Normative Crossings: Institutions, Gender, and Ethnicity
FABIUS MAYLAND
Institutions and Personal Conceptions of Reality
in HBO’s The Wire: Spatial Transgressions
and Their Consequences………………………..………………….…145
KIMBERLY R. MOFFITT
The Portrayals of Black Motherhood in The Wire..…….……………165
CORNELIA KLECKER
“Symbolic Annihilation” and Drive-By Misogyny:
Women in Contemporary U.S.-American Television Series...………179
RENÉ DIETRICH
Secret Spheres from Breaking Bad to The Americans:
The Politics of Secrecy, Masculinity, and Transgression
in 21st-Century U.S. Television Drama………...…………………....195
STEPHANIE SCHOLZ
Cashing In: The ‘Casino Indian’ on Television...……………………217
Transgression and Control: Serializing Crime
KARIN HOEPKER
No Longer Your Friendly Neighborhood Killer: Crime Shows and
Seriality after Dexter.………………………………………………...247
JANINA ROJEK
Crime, Control, and (Medical) Condition:
The Illness Narratives of The Sopranos, Boss,
and Breaking Bad as Boundary Transgression...…………………..…267
MATTHEW LEROY
Death Art: Representations of Violence in NBC’s Hannibal…....…...287
FELIX BRINKER
NBC’s Hannibal and the Politics of Audience Engagement…………303
CHRISTOPH SCHUBERT
Dexter in Disguise: A Stylistic Approach to
Verbal Camouflage in a Serial Killer Series...…………………….…329
Contributors………………………………………………………..…351
BIRGIT DÄWES, ALEXANDRA GANSER, NICOLE POPPENHAGEN
Season Recap: A Preface
This volume began, like any prototypical scene from an American sit-
com, with a few people sitting casually around a table over coffee and
sodas, vividly discussing recent developments in political U.S.-Ameri-
can TV series. The setting was the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, and if this
text were an episode of one such series, the scene would now flash for-
ward to show the results of that conversation: in October 2014, the
American Studies team of the University of Vienna (the focalizing in-
stance of this visual prolepsis) co-organized, in cooperation with the
U.S. Embassy’s Cultural Affairs Division, an international academic
conference on what we perceived to be a dominant topic in discussions
regarding the development of television at the time: the transformation
of the production and viewing conditions of American TV series. In
between seasons two and three of its most successful original series,
House of Cards, Netflix launched its on-demand streaming services in
France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, and Luxembourg in
September 2014, and as this volume is going into print, Italy, Portugal,
Spain and Iceland are joining the list of countries served by its pro-
grams. In conjunction with such technological and economic develop-
ments, U.S.-American TV series have become increasingly transgressive
in form and content in the twenty-first century. For this reason, the con-
ference in Vienna brought together television experts, journalists, and
scholars from Austria, Germany, France, and the United States under the
heading “Transgressive Television: Politics, Crime, and Citizenship in
Twenty-First-Century American TV Series” in order to discuss new
formats of programming, and to focus on their consequences for the
serial representation of politics, crime, and citizenship on both levels of
production and reception.
***
10 Preface
With a focus on what we term “transgressive television,” the present

volume contributes sixteen essays to the fledgling field of research on
recent American TV serials. Contesting and unmasking the ideological
foundations of the term “quality TV,” the articles collected here—by
authors from different disciplinary backgrounds in the United States,
Australia, and Europe—provide a critical analysis of an increasingly
popular genre by methodically investigating its production-related,
thematic, structural, and formal constellations. The volume is subdivided
into four sections: in a first part, entitled “Paving Pathways,” articles by
Birgit Däwes, Gary Edgerton, and Alexandra Ganser set the theoretical
and historical ground for the case studies. Opening this section,
“Transgressive Television: Preliminary Thoughts” traces some of the
origins, recent transformations, and scholarly reception of twenty-first-
century American serials. While challenging the widespread concept of
“quality TV,” Däwes argues that the criteria commonly applied provide
meaningful points of orientation in a newly politicized landscape of TV
seriality. The keynote contribution to both our conference and this
volume, “The Countdown to Y2KTV and the Arrival of the New
Serialists” by Gary Edgerton, recounts the development of the contem-
porary serial in the context of American television history, emphasizing
the role of The Sopranos as breaking new ground in serial formatting
and the evolution of the crime genre. Looking in more detail at one of
the historical origins of those new serials, Alexandra Ganser’s article
examines how transgressive serializations and a serialization of trans-
gressions make the drama series Twin Peaks, first broadcast in 1990 and
1991, a precursor of contemporary American shows, introducing a play
with seriality that have since become a staple of “quality TV.”
The second section, “Representing Power: Formats of Political TV
Series” pays tribute to the insight that transgressive television is intri-
cately intertwined with politics, not only but quite prominently on its
subject level. Marjolaine Boutet’s contribution on “The Politics of Time
in House of Cards” demonstrates how journalism and politics are altered
in a world defined by social media, connectivity, and immediate access
to news. Focusing on the role of time in House of Cards, Boutet exam-
ines how the viewing experience is changed by Netflix’s policy of
making the series available in its entirety all at once. Like Beau Willi-
mon’s House of Cards, Shonda Rhimes’s Scandal presents audiences
with an image of politics that spin doctors and glossy media usually
Birgit Däwes, Alexandra Ganser, Nicole Poppenhagen 11
overwrite: morally ambivalent politicians bending actual events into

presentable narratives. In “Another Scandal in Washington: How a
Transgressive, Black Anti-Heroine Makes for New ‘Quality TV,’” Simo-
ne Puff not only examines how this serial’s stylistic and narrative
features establish its status as a “quality” show, but also analyzes how
the representation of the Black female protagonist transgresses racial
and gender stereotypes that often still dominate today’s television land-
scape. Finally, in “The Humane Face of Politics? Political Representa-
tions, Power Structures, and Gender Limitations in HBO’s Political
Comedy Veep,” Dorothea Will focuses on linguistic and generic bound-
ary transgressions in the show Veep and argues that the criticism and
commentary offered by political comedy on TV are crucial for democra-
cy at large.
While many contemporary serials—from The West Wing to The
Good Wife—address politics directly, the next section is particularly in-
terested in the implicit political dimensions of transgressive television.
“Normative Crossings: Institutions, Gender, and Ethnicity” testifies to
the fact that questions of identity, ideology, and social control still take
center stage in current cultural production, not only in the United States.
Fabius Mayland’s “Institutions and Personal Conceptions of Reality in
HBO’s The Wire: Spatial Transgressions and their Consequences”
examines The Wire’s institutional critique by focusing on its spatial
politics with particular reference to the outdoor couch in the housing
projects’ court and its role in the serial’s development. Kimberly Moffitt
also addresses The Wire, discussing the portrayal of Black motherhood
in the context of drug crime and violence. She convincingly demon-
strates that even in this much-acclaimed series, the range of images of
motherhood existing for White women remains unavailable to their
Black counterparts, who are reduced to being either flawed and neglect-
ful or entirely invisible. In spite of many critics’ claim that contempo-
rary television serials are largely liberal in their political agendas, this
look at race and gender in one of the most highly praised television
serials shows surprisingly conservative subtexts. A similar claim is made
by Cornelia Klecker, whose chapter “Symbolic Annihilation and Drive-
By Misogyny: Women in Contemporary U.S.-American Television
Series” proves false the assumption that women’s representations in
contemporary formats are progressive. In exemplary analyses of Grey’s
Anatomy, The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, and Sons of Anarchy,
12 Preface
Klecker unmasks various instances of what she terms “drive-by

misogyny” and makes a strong case for the continued relevance of
feminist analysis and awareness. René Dietrich then shifts the perspec-
tive to masculinity, examining, in “Secret Spheres from Breaking Bad to
The Americans: The Politics of Secrecy, Masculinity, and Transgression
in Twenty-First-Century U.S. Television Drama,” the narrative logics
and politics of gendered secrecy underlying such shows as Breaking
Bad, Homeland, and The Americans. Rounding off this section, Stepha-
nie Scholz approaches the question of ethnicity through the lens of
Native American studies. Her contribution examines the perpetual
stereotype of the “Casino Indian,” which is critically engaged—although
not completely undermined—by the Native-produced serial Cashing In.
The volume’s final section honors the fact that more often than not,
transgressive television redraws the boundaries of social normativity
through the genre of crime and its thematic disruption of law, order, and
justice. With an overview of recent tendencies, Karin Hoepker’s “No
Longer Your Friendly Neighborhood Killer: Crime Shows and Seriality
after Dexter” opens this section, analyzing the aesthetic and generic di-
versification of crime series such as Hannibal, The Following, True De-
tective, and Bates Motel. The inherent instability of legal and social
boundaries is often translated into narratives of marital, professional, or
medical crisis in contemporary television, as Janina Rojek shows with
reference to the illness narratives of Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and
Boss. In her “Crime, Control, and (Medical) Condition: The Illness
Narratives of The Sopranos, Boss, and Breaking Bad as Boundary
Transgression,” she shows how the discourse of health often functions
as a trigger for and expression of a wide variety of other transgressions
central to these shows. Both Matthew Leroy and Felix Brinker then
focus on NBC’s Hannibal, a spin-off of Thomas Harris’s novels with
Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter as a central character. In “Death Art:
Representations of Violence in NBC’s Hannibal,” Leroy uses the show
to argue that the notion of violence as both an artistic product and an
artistic performance is central to contemporary television. Brinker’s
essay shifts the attention to viewers’ reactions: focusing on what he calls
the “politics of audience engagement,” he argues that Hannibal not only
relies on complex serial narration and intertextual references, which
demand constant viewer attention, but also profits from fans’ online
engagement with the serial. Rounding off the volume from a linguistic
Birgit Däwes, Alexandra Ganser, Nicole Poppenhagen 13
perspective, Christoph Schubert analyzes the serial killer narrative of

Dexter. In “Dexter in Disguise: A Stylistic Approach to Verbal
Camouflage in a Serial Killer Series,” he investigates the discursive
strategies the protagonist uses in order to conceal his crimes and the
ironies and ambiguities they create.
This volume’s focus on a selection of U.S.-American (and one
Canadian) productions is owed to necessities of scope and does not
carry any implications toward other television programs equally clas-
sifying as “transgressive TV.” European shows such as the British House
of Cards (1990), Sherlock (2010-present), or Downton Abbey (2010-
2016), the Danish Forbrydelsen (2007-2012, adapted as The Killing in
the U.S.) or Borgen (2010-2013), the Danish/Swedish Broen (2011-
present, adapted as The Bridge), the Swedish Äkta människor (2012-
2014, adapted as Humans in the U.S. and the U.K.), and the German
KDD—Kriminaldauerdienst (2007-2010) or Deutschland 83 (2015-
present) doubtlessly deserve equal critical attention and promise to
redirect the discussion of American “transgressive television” into more
transnational contexts in the future.
***
In Hannibal’s second season, Will Graham once says to Hannibal Lecter

that “[g]ratitude has a short half-life.” We are firmly convinced other-
wise when we express our thanks to everyone who has helped us to see
this project come to life. The conference at which this volume originated
would not have taken place without the generous support of the Embas-
sy of the United States of America to Austria, and the editors wish to
express their profound gratitude to H.E., Ambassador Alexa Wesner,
Counselors for Public Affairs Jan Krč, Robert Greenan, and Kellee
Farmer, as well as Harald Lembacher for their continuing kindness and
cooperation. A particular debt of gratitude is owed to Karin Schmid-
Gerlich at the U.S. Embassy, who has accompanied this project all the
way, from its earliest ideas to its publication and beyond, with much
appreciated and highly fruitful conversations and with an outstanding
talent for efficient organization and networking. We also thank Michael
Draxlbauer, Alexandra Hauke, Yvonne Thumpser, Petra Ladinigg, Ste-
phanie Adam and Johanna France for their dedication and assistance; all
contributors to the conference, most prominently Gary R. Edgerton
14 Preface
(Butler University) and the Head of Films and Series at ORF 1 and 2,
Irene Heschl, for their key contributions; as well as Anna-Maria Wallner
and Katrin Hammerschmidt (Die Presse) and Johannes Lau (Der
Standard) for accompanying and adding to our discussions. Finally, the
pathway of turning the conference into a publication would have been a
much rockier road had it not been for the kind support of the series
editors, Alfred Hornung, Anke Ortlepp, and Heike Paul, for the unfail-
ing expertise of Monika Fahrnberger in all format-related matters, and
for the kind assistance of Eléonore Tarla and Ronja Ketterer. Not least, a
major debt of gratitude is owed to Andreas Barth and his team at Uni-
versitätsverlag Winter in Heidelberg for their ceaselessly reliable, effi-
cient, and friendly publishing services.
Birgit Däwes, Alexandra Ganser, and Nicole Poppenhagen

(Flensburg and Vienna, October 2015)
Paving Pathways
BIRGIT DÄWES
Transgressive Television: Preliminary Thoughts
The war was lost

The treaty signed
I was not caught
I crossed the line.
[…]
The story’s told
With facts and lies
I had a name
But never mind.
—Leonard Cohen,
“Nevermind”
In the opening credits to the second season of Nic Pizzolatto’s True

Detective, viewers encounter a style of presentation already familiar
from the highly acclaimed first season.1 Accompanied by the words of
Leonard Cohen’s “Nevermind,” desolate industrial landscapes are
blended into the body contours of people. These double-exposure shots
symbolize the overlay of interior and exterior landscapes, visualizing the
conflicts of the show’s characters, the “neo-noir” atmosphere (Weinreb),
and the various crossings of spatial, social, and moral borders. The par-
tial views of Californian freeway interchanges2 or of the sepia-tinted
1
I would like to thank Christoph Schubert as well as my co-editors, Alexandra
Ganser and Nicole Poppenhagen, for their thoughtful feedback and critical
comments that have immensely helped to develop this chapter.
2
German critic Lars Weisbrod generally diagnoses a shift in True Detective’s
season two from a focus on characters to a focus on space: “hier geht es
überhaupt nicht mehr um die Figuren. Die dienen nur dazu, mit ihnen wie auf
einem Spielbrett die Gegend erkunden zu können. Wofür sich True Detective
18 Transgressive Television
production sites of Louisiana’s petrochemicals, together with the frag-

mented, darkened portraiture, signal a mode of detachment, ambiva-
lence, and multidirectionality that seems to have become typical of
many recent U.S.-American TV serials. These opening credits—and
many transitional scenes in the show proper—focus on road networks,
concurrencies, crossings, and overlaps that may be read as structurally
emblematic of what this volume calls “transgressive television”: a re-
markable blurring of conventional boundaries of genre, of fictional time
and space, of plot patterns and character types, of social and ethical
norms, of language, and of visual representation.
Since the 1990s, television series and serials have become increas-
ingly complex in their narrative patterns and time structures. From the
proliferation of characters and symbols in Twin Peaks (1990-1991) to
the real-time narrative structure of 24 (2001-2010), the techniques of
what Jason Mittell terms “complex TV” have contributed to “a new
paradigm of television storytelling […], redefining the boundary be-
tween episodic and serial forms, with a heightened degree of self-con-
sciousness in storytelling mechanics, and demanding intensified viewer
engagement focused on both diegetic pleasures and formal awareness”
(TV 53). Shows such as The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, House
of Cards, Homeland, Scandal, Dexter, True Detective, or Hannibal all
feature morally ambivalent protagonists, non-conventional narrative
patterns, and a strong emphasis on visual aesthetics. Furthermore, and
this is the driving hypothesis of the current volume, the most successful
serial formats of the recent decade are characterized by their multiple
transgressions of political, social, ethical, generic, structural, and repre-
sentational boundaries.
It has been a long time since Frank Lloyd Wright defined television
in the 1950s derogatorily as “chewing gum for the eyes” (qtd. in Wasko
11). By contrast, it has become almost a commonplace today to empha-
size the artful character of recent television serials. In 1995, New York
diesmal wirklich interessiert, ist das Spielbrett selbst: die Orte und Wege, die
Räume und das, was dazwischen lauert” (50). (“This show is no longer about
the characters, who only serve as a device for navigation, as on a game board.
What True Detective is really interested in this time is the game board itself:
the locations and pathways, the spaces and that which lurks between them”
[translation mine]).
Birgit Däwes 19
Times critic Charles McGrath praised the “considerable degree of origi-

nality” and the “truthfulness, or social seriousness” of shows such as
Chicago Hope, Homicide: Life in the Streets, N.Y.P.D. Blue, Picket
Fences, or My So-Called Life, arguing that they “have grown in depth
and sophistication into what might be thought of as a brand-new genre:
call it the prime-time novel.” In 2013, Christopher Bigsby similarly
argued that TV series had taken on the role previously performed by
political plays on the stages of Broadway, “targeting the kind of audi-
ence that might equally have responded to theatre” (12). Even if Jason
Mittell warns that these descriptions of television as “literary” or “cine-
matic” open distorting analogies, “drawing both prestige and formal
vocabulary from these older, more culturally distinguished media” when
“we can better understand this shift through careful analysis of televi-
sion itself rather than holding onto cross-media metaphors of aspiration
and legitimation” (TV 2), the analogies testify to a rising need for new
terminology. Even if one remains skeptical about Alan Sepinwall’s
thesis of a “revolution” or a “big bang” (3) in recent developments,
something about television seems to have decisively changed.
Whereas seriality has been part and parcel of television entertain-
ment since the 1940s—from The Lone Ranger and I Love Lucy via Days
of Our Lives, Peyton Place, Bonanza, and Dallas to Star Trek: Enter-
prise and Desperate Housewives, and even though many an era—first
from 1947 to 1960, then again in the 1980s (Thompson, Television 11-
12), and yet again from the mid-1990s to the present (Bigsby, n. pag.)—
was adorned (in hindsight, of course) with the label of a “golden age” of
television, the more recent landscape of American television has been
transformed in terms of formats and generic conventions. The series as a
concept is, of course, closely linked to industrial production, as Umberto
Eco reminds us: it means “the correct application of an already known
law to a new case” (83). In the U.S. and Europe, at the same time as
television became a national mass medium ( Edgerton, History 129-37
and Spigel 103), art movements such as Minimalism and Pop Art put
this principle into practice, famously iconized in serial prints, such as
Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) or Marilyn Diptych
(1962). Based on repetition, efficiency, and normative order, seriality
clearly dovetails with modernity at large. In the wider sense of the con-
cept, it is thus no coincidence that serial narration becomes particularly
popular in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from Friedrich
Schiller’s Der Geisterseher ([The Ghost-Seer], 1787/89) to Charles

Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers (1836).3 While these early forms set a
number of lasting standards, including the cliffhanger, the use of a frame
tale, and the proliferation of temporal markers, the format of serial sto-
rytelling was long neglected or even frowned upon by literary and cul-
tural criticism. Horkheimer and Adorno’s influential critique of the
“culture industry,” in which “all mass culture under monopoly is identi-
cal,” amounting to “nothing but business” (95), continued to resound in
European culture studies for decades, and since television was consid-
ered an inferior medium from its beginning, the television series was
met with particular disdain. More recently, however, in addition to
having overcome those hierarchical reservations, analyses of seriality
have largely shifted their emphasis in various ways.
For one, the generic distinction between series (a form of episodic
narration that provides closure within each episode, with a limited cast
of characters being confronted with changing antagonists) and serial (in
which larger, continuing storylines are developed, and a larger number
of characters drive the plot, often with alternating roles of protagonists
and antagonists; Williams 56-57; Oltean 13-18) has become increasingly
blurred, or “hybridized” (Creeber 11). The diversity of the global mar-
ket, the development of DVD and Blu-ray technologies for home view-
ing, and the synergies of television and the Internet through online
streaming services have brought forth new conditions of production and
new patterns of viewing, which transcend the limitations of viewers’
attention spans and render the need for intermediate closure obsolete.
For another, the targets of critical attention have shifted, as well. As
Dominik Maeder suggests, seriality can been seen as a poetic mode
rather than as a mere narrative form (95),4 and Mittell calls for criticism
3
Vincent Fröhlich notes that serial narration begins with the Arabian Nights
collection in the Middle Ages, or even earlier with Homer’s Odyssey (130);
see also Wiles’s classic Serial Narration in England before 1750. For inter-
disciplinary engagements with seriality as a concept, see the volumes edited
by Kelleter and Blättler.
4
“Das Serielle ist damit zu bestimmen als eine epistemologische Form, die
allererst eine spezifische, prozesshafte Ordnung der (Selbst-)Erkenntnis stif-
tet, der einerseits qua Wiederholung ein hoher Grad an Technizität zukommt,
andererseits jedoch gerade mit dem Fokus auf die Möglichkeit der Differenz
in der Repetition eine Kontinuität in der Verkettung, d.h. die Narrativierung
Birgit Däwes 21
that takes into account the poetics of series, i.e., “the specific ways that
texts make meaning, concerned with formal aspects of media more than
issues of content or broader cultural forces” (TV 5). Understanding seri-
ality as a structural concept, Sabine Sielke further reminds us of its
potential to understand processes of thinking and remembering, and of
biological and cultural evolution at large.5
For lack of appropriate terms, many of the television series that
“greatly expand the boundaries of this universe, and the way we viewed
it” (Sepinwall 3) have been categorized as “quality TV,” an uneasy
description in evaluative terms that attests to critics’ struggles with these
recent changes. This highly controversial moniker, first used by Jane
Feuer in 1984 with reference to the economic targeting of young, urban,
affluent viewers (145; Klein and Hißnauer 17), has become highly
popular for the description of those “literary and cinematic ambitions
beyond what we had seen before” (Thompson, “Preface” xix). Often
closely associated with companies such as HBO and Netflix, the term is
used for a variety of different serials from Oz and The Sopranos to Mad
Men and Game of Thrones, with a large number of overlaps but also
with many disputes over its applicability to individual shows. While the
dieser Wiederholungen erlaubt. Serialität wäre daher primär keine Erzähl-

form, sondern ein poetischer Modus, der vor allem durch seine ordnende
Kraft prozesslogische Erkenntnisse darstellbar werden lässt […]” (Maeder
95). (“The serial is to be defined as an epistemological form, which first pro-
vides a specific, processual order of (self-) recognition. On the one hand, by
its repetition, this order is characterized by a high degree of technicality; on
the other hand, through its focus on the possibilities of difference within this
recurrence, it allows for continuity and chain-linking, i.e., for the narrativiza-
tion of these repetitions. Seriality is thus not a narrative form but a poetic
mode, which, by its ordering power, renders processual insights representa-
ble” [translation mine]).
5
Her declared aim is to use seriality as a productive trope for the
conceptualization of fundamentally divergent phenomena of memory. Serial-
ity, she writes, can operate as a principle of understanding both the ways in
which our brains work and the processes of biological and cultural evolution:
“[...] Serialität für die Konzeptualisierung dieser grundsätzlich divergenten
Phänomene von Erinnerung produktiv zu machen. Serialität […] kann als ein
Prinzip operabel werden, mit dem sowohl die Art und Weise, in der unser
Gehirn [...] funktioniert, als auch biologische und kulturelle Evolution erfasst
wird” (384).
term itself suggests highly subjective judgments of taste and sociocul-

tural hierarchy, the criteria associated with it are still useful, if only as
make-shift descriptors of changes and developments that are only be-
ginning to be academically explored. In his seminal Television’s Second
Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER (1996), Robert J. Thompson
outlines twelve criteria for “quality TV,” including (1) its distinction
from conventional formats and habitual patterns; (2) its “quality pedi-
gree” through artists’ reputations in film; (3) its “blue chip demograph-
ics,” i.e., “the upscale, well-educated, urban-dwelling, young viewers
advertisers so desire to reach”; (4) its “struggle against profit-mongering
networks and non-appreciative audiences”; (5) its “large ensemble
cast[s]”; (6) its “memory” through cross-references and character devel-
opments; (7) its creation of “a new genre by mixing old ones”; (8) its
“literary and writer-based” programs; (9) its self-conscious allusions and
self-reflexivity; (10) its liberal political tendencies; (11) its realism; and
(12) its notable critical acclaim (Television 14-15). From shows such as
Hill Street Blues (1981-1987) and Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-
1999) onward, these characteristics become increasingly associated with
the unique legacy of HBO, a “change agent” (Edgerton, “History” 17)
whose original series (including Oz, The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusi-
asm, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Game of Thrones, and True Detective)
have helped secure the company’s reputation as “the prototypical enter-
tainment corporation of the twenty-first century” (Edgerton, “History”
18) or even within “an aristocracy of culture” (Anderson 29).6
Obviously, not all criteria apply to all “quality” shows equally; and
while Thompson finds it “hard to imagine a right-wing ‘quality TV’
series” (15), serials such as 24 or The Walking Dead are usually listed
among critics’ favorites—regardless of their conservative celebrations of
masculinity, xenophobia, patriotic heroism, and their Social Darwinist
6
In their summary of “HBO’s Ongoing Legacy,” Edgerton and Jones identify
seven features that characterize HBO’s success: (1) its breaking of new
ground in four different programming groups—comedy, documentary,
sports, and drama, (2) its impact of “raising the bar” for others (319), (3) the
fruitful cooperation between its producers and artists, (4) its “strongly mas-
culine” programming appeals (322), (6) its excessive use of “profanity, nu-
dity, violence” as part of “an ongoing reformulation of standardized televi-
sion genres” (325), and (7) its fundamental impact on “changing the viewing
expectations of contemporary television audiences” (326).
Birgit Däwes 23
implications. Similarly, Homeland, another example of those serials

widely showered in awards, will not be praised unanimously for its
cultural work when considered from feminist or post-colonial perspec-
tives. As this volume as a whole suggests, “quality TV” is too vague, too
hierarchical, and too ideologically burdened a term to aptly describe the
recent developments of contemporary American television serials. Con-
sidering their forms, structures, characters, and themes, the TV series
addressed in this book—Twin Peaks, The Sopranos, The Wire, House of
Cards, Veep, Scandal, Breaking Bad, Boss, Homeland, The Americans,
Grey’s Anatomy, The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, Sons of Anar-
chy, Dexter, The Following, Bates Motel, Hannibal, and True Detec-
tive—as well as many others are probably better understood in terms of
their transgressive poetics than by their popularity or by the supposed
sophistication of their subjects. My suggestion here is that “transgressive
television” might liberate the debate from its elitist and exceptionalist
implications by effectively replacing the term of “quality TV” as such.
This is not limited to American television, of course, but also involves
European and Asian projects featuring what Mittell calls “storytelling
pyrotechnics” (TV 47), including, for instance, the German KDD:
Kriminaldauerdienst (created by Orkun Ertener, 2007-2009) or Im
Angesicht des Verbrechens (created by Dominik Graf, 2010), next to
many others (see Däwes, Ganser, and Poppenhagen in this volume).
Contemporary television series like these are predominantly character-
ized, as this volume argues, by transgressions of political and moral
codes, of identity and social limitations, and of conventional demarca-
tions of form.
While many critics understand “transgression” in new American TV
series mostly as the violation of visual or linguistic taboos in depictions
of sexuality, violence, death, and blasphemy (Ritzer 31; Jahn-Sudmann
and Starre 104-105), this volume explores the concept’s intersections
with politics, power, and representation as well as its wider theoretical
implications—building on Peter Stallybrass and Allon White’s ac-
knowledgement that the boundaries between commonly held cultural
codes are fluid, and that “cultural categories of high and low, social and
aesthetic, [... and] also those of the physical body and geographical
space, are never entirely separable” (2). Obviously, graphic depictions
of violence, sex, and death have become key elements of these series.
Death had already been the defining core of Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under
(2001-2005), and more recently, all kinds of taboos about visually repre-
senting sex and crime (or even cannibalism) have been violated: in the
first four seasons of Game of Thrones alone, critics have counted 133
violent on-screen deaths (McGeorge), not to mention the show’s candid
sexual and incestual scenes; the bloody stabbing of people’s or zombies’
faces is one of the most habitual sights in The Walking Dead, which also
presents the execution of a child in a favorable light in season four;
Breaking Bad’s antagonist Gustavo Fring walks out of an explosion with
half his face blown off in the fourth season’s finale; in Sons of Anarchy,
Gemma kills Tara with a carving fork (S06E13) and Jax in turn shoots
his mother (S07E12); Hannibal features scenes equally hard to stomach,
not to mention the bloodbaths of Dexter or Fargo. While “body horror”
has been a defining feature of horror fiction and film for the longest
time, as in Kurt Neumann’s (and later David Cronenberg’s) The Fly
(1958; 1986), Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), or Ridley
Scott’s Alien (1979), for example, critics agree that its dominance in
mainstream television is a recent phenomenon. However, these effects
are not the defining feature of transgressive television, nor are they an
end in themselves. Much rather than mere sensationalism, the genre
displays a new politics of the body, which strongly relies on what Julia
Kristeva calls the abject: a casting off of the other by “loathing” (230),
“repugnance,” or “disgust” (238). Abjection is an experience in the face
of “an intrinsically corporeal and already signifying brand, symptom and
sign” in which the boundary between Self and Other is erased:
In a world in which the Other has collapsed, the aesthetic task—a de-
scent into the foundations of the symbolic construct—amounts to re-
tracing the fragile limits of the speaking being, closest to its dawn, to the
bottomless ‘primacy’ constituted by primal repression. Through that ex-
perience, which is nevertheless managed by the Other, ‘subject’ and
‘object’ push each other away, confront each other, collapse, and start
again—inseparable, contaminated, condemned, at the boundary of what
is assimilable, thinkable: abject. […] Great modern literature unfolds
over that terrain. (243)
It is obvious that crime and horror shows have a particular affinity for
such effects of abjection, but similar displays of the fragmented, torn, or
bleeding body are also seen in series belonging to the genres of science
fiction (e.g. Cameron Porsandeh’s Helix [Syfy, 2014-2015]), western
Birgit Däwes 25
(e.g. David Milch’s Deadwood [HBO, 2004-2006]), or historical drama

(e.g. Bruno Heller et al., Rome [HBO, 2005-2007]) and/or hospital
narratives (e.g. Ryan Murphy’s Nip/Tuck [FX, 2003-2010], or Steven
Soderbergh’s The Knick [HBO, 2014- ]).7 Furthermore, transgressions of
the boundary between Self and Other are not limited to corporeality: if,
as Kristeva notes, transgression is one of the modalities of negation,
which—in contrast to desire—“challenges the theory of the
unconscious” (234), it is no coincidence that so many transgressive
television serials conflate the roles of protagonist and antagonist. The
main characters we find ourselves rooting for are highly ambivalent in
their moral and ethical points of view, from Tony Soprano (The
Sopranos) and Walter White (Breaking Bad) to Lester Nygard (Fargo)
and Rustin Cohle (True Detective).
Any attempt at defining transgressive television will have to take
into account the remarkable position of politics in the genre. Francis J.
Underwood, the Macbethian-Machiavellian hero of Netflix’s House of
Cards (2013-present) literally walks over dead bodies on his way to the
presidency, and in Armando Iannucci’s comedy Veep (2012-present),
viewers accompany vain, ruthless, and helpless Vice President Selina
Meyer through an endless number of embarrassing or awkward situa-
tions—not quite along the lines of the public image commonly associ-
ated with the nation’s leading politicians. As the title to this volume
acknowledges, politics is a central anchor of contemporary transgressive
television—in terms of themes, figurative meanings, cultural codes and
norms, as well as reception. On August 3, 2015, the cover of Time
magazine showed George W. Bush and Bill Clinton to advertise a fea-
ture on the presidential nomination campaign for 2016: the headline
underneath the two former Presidents reads, in bold white letters, “Game
of Thrones” to allude to the power struggle between Bush’s brother Jeb
and Clinton’s wife Hillary. Transgressive television has doubtlessly
reached the mainstream, and the junctures between contemporary TV
series and politics are manifest not only in the former’s increasing repre-
sentations of Capitol Hill or The White House (in The West Wing, The
Good Wife, House of Cards, Veep, or Scandal), or in their widespread
7
As Janina Rojek argues in this volume, the diseased body in general is a
prominent feature in contemporary television serials.
function as a “vehicle for social commentary” (Bigsby 19), but also

more generally in these shows’ politics of representation.
In this regard, transgressive television frequently crosses boundaries
between reality and fiction, resulting in highly self-reflexive formats.
The concept of “transgressive television” thus not only incorporates “the
‘modern’ dialectic between order and innovation” (Eco 96) that is at the
heart of all television serials, but it acknowledges, names, and describes
the various acts of border-crossing that keep this dialectic stable in the
first place. To give just one well-known example, references to The
Godfather and Goodfellas are densely scattered across The Sopranos. In
the pilot, inaugurating this central theme, Carmela says to Father Phil
that “Tony watches Godfather II all the time. He says the camerawork
looks just as good as in the movie theater” (S01E01). As much as it
provides comments on the viewing of television and thus on itself,
transgressive television also frequently refuses to stay within the limits
of genre: in addition to the hybridization of series and serials (Creeber
11), many contemporary shows are difficult to place in the subcategories
of either “crime show” (Better Call Saul?), “historical series” (Downton
Abbey?) “fantasy” (Game of Thrones?) or “comedy” (Fargo?). One
criterion they all seem to meet is that of the “family show,” in one way
or another—but those families (whether in ABC’s Modern Family or in
HBO’s Togetherness) are a far cry from those of Little House on the
Prairie or The Cosby Show. And given that many shows expand their
scope across different media and platforms, including video games,
websites, and collages or parodies on Youtube and other platforms, this
elusiveness and the accommodation of “transmedia storytelling” (Mit-
tell, TV 292) have evidently become part of the agenda of contemporary
television shows (see also Edgerton’s and Brinker’s contributions to this
volume).
Boundary transgressions in terms of genre and form are also closely
tied to an increasing tendency of multiplying spaces and time levels.
Narrative complexity is driven by the proliferation of plotlines and char-
acters, but as Mittell emphasizes, “seriality itself is defined by its use of
time” (TV 27) across episodes and seasons. This use of time is often
experimental, featuring flashbacks, foreshadowings, and parallel per-
spectives on a singular event. FOX’s 24, for instance, hides its conser-
vative ideological agenda behind a clever structure suggesting real time,
with clocks ticking through entire seasons; and in both Breaking Bad’s
Birgit Däwes 27
“Seven Thirty Seven” (S02E01) and The Walking Dead’s “What Hap-
pened and What’s Going On” (S05E09), the opening scenes show us
images (of a teddy bear with half its face burned off or a shovel digging
a grave, respectively) that will not be explained until later. In Andy and
Lana Wachowski’s Sense8 (Netflix, 2015-present), this multiplication of
plotlines, characters, spaces, and time levels is taken to an even more
radical level, demanding unusually high amounts of viewers’ trans-epi-
sodic attention. This also affects transgressive television’s relationship to
the viewer: Mittell, for instance, notes that many of these shows en-
courage what he calls “forensic fandom,” which “invites viewers to dig
deeper, probing beneath the surface to understand the complexity of a
story and its telling” (Mittell, “Forensic”). And as Felix Brinker and
Christoph Schubert emphasize in their contributions to this volume,
viewers’ reactions to these shows are clearly a central aspect of their
making, not only through what Gary Edgerton and Jeffrey Jones have
termed “the expectations game” (315).
To come back to the twisted roads and winding byways of True De-
tective, “the line” that Leonard Cohen’s lyrical I “crossed” seems to be
mostly legal or moral, but it alludes to the ways in which a spatial meta-
phor of transgression expands easily into other fields of signification in
contemporary American television serials. In figurative terms, while
much of contemporary transgressive television addresses politics di-
rectly, many shows engage with political issues more implicitly, through
both form and content. This is a playful way of engaging, exposing, and
promoting a specific politics of representation, but it also ties in with
television’s more general role in the cultural production of meaning. As
John Fiske seminally stated in 1987, television “attempts to control and
focus this meaningfulness into a more singular preferred meaning that
performs the work of the dominant ideology” (1). In its contemporary
serial manifestations, therefore, the medium of television, which has
always been “a technology, an industry, an art form, and an institutional
force” (Edgerton, History 414), emerges more than ever as a key agent
in the production and circulation of cultural meanings: we watch these
series not simply for pleasure—even though that, too, is a central part—
but because of their acceptance or dismissal of particular discursive
structures. In this context, transgressive television serves as an ideal
laboratory for the diagnosis of contemporary American epistemes and
cultural codes, much in the sense of Douglas Kellner’s 1990 definition
of television as “a highly conflictual mass medium in which competing

economic, political, social, and cultural forces intersect” (14). In con-
trast to a mere marketing label, a set of sensationalist features, or to
simply representing what Ivo Ritzer discards as the “leaden pathos of
transgression”8 of most contemporary U.S. television series, the multiple
dimensions of transgression in American television thus function as an
operational principle of border-crossing and intersection, in which
space, time, social norms, genre, form, and ethical standards become
fluid and negotiable, and in which concepts of individual or national
identity, of sameness and difference, are understood as profoundly pro-
cessual. It is here that we may hope for the next episode, for the contin-
uation of dialogues into research conversations, for the expansion of plot
lines into open stories, and into new transnational contexts. If television
serials perform cultural work not only in mirroring contemporary
society, but also in envisioning alternatives to common cultural codes,
norms, and values, the political potential of transgressive identities may
well go beyond its poetics. At a time when 60 million refugees move
away from violent homes, when over 10,000 people from Syria,
Afghanistan, Iraq, and across Africa arrive on the borders of the Euro-
pean Union on a daily basis alone, Cohen’s devaluation of a fixed, rec-
ognizable individual status and privilege—“I had a name / But never
mind”—seems timely.
8
Ritzer reads the transgressive elements of shows such as Sex and the City,
True Blood, or Spartacus: Blood and Sand as mere devices of drawing atten-
tion: “Von einer […] Leichtigkeit denkbar weit entfernt sind die neuen US-
Serien mit ihrem oft bleischweren Transgressionspathos, das letztlich immer
auf Seite der Simulationsmacht bleibt. Sie scheinen als Agenten eines Sicht-
barkeitsregimes zu fungieren, das nun mit expliziten Darstellungen von
Nacktheit, Sexualität, Gewalt und Vulgärsprache angereichert wird, ohne den
Zwang zur Visualisierung zu reflektieren” (109-110). (“Far from lightness,
the new U.S.-American series rather feature an often leaden pathos of trans-
gression, which, in the end, remains on the side of the simulational power.
They seem to serve as agents of a regime of visibility, which has been sup-
plemented with explicit depictions of nudity, sexuality, violence, and lin-
guistic vulgarity without reflecting back on the compulsion to visualize”
[translation mine]).
Birgit Däwes 29
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GARY R. EDGERTON
The Countdown to Y2KTV and the Arrival of the

New Serialists
Elevating the Showrunner Model
The American showrunner

system has begun to be
adopted even in places
that once strongly resisted
it, like the BBC and other
European public-service
broadcasters dominated by
the single-author limited-
run serial. In TV, story is
king, and the showrunner
makes it so.
—Michele Hilmes
When David Lynch’s Twin Peaks debuted on ABC in April 1990, no

one could have predicted how much scripted television would mature
and advance over the next twenty-five years. Being deeply enmeshed in
prime-time television’s production culture for nearly two decades, David
Chase claims that Twin Peaks “opened his eyes to the medium’s poten-
tial” (qtd. in Stanley 28). “I didn’t really watch much television until the
first season of Twin Peaks in 1990,” concedes Chase. “There’s mystery
in everything David Lynch does. I don’t mean, Who killed Laura
Palmer? There’s a whole other level […] of the poetic that you see in
great painting, that you see in foreign films, that’s way more than the
sum of its parts. I didn’t see that on television. I didn’t see anybody even
trying it” (Biskind 281).
34 The Countdown to Y2KTV
When the abbreviated two-season run of Twin Peaks culminated in June

1991, David Chase had been a journeyman-writer, producer, and director
of such notable prime-time series as The Rockford Files (1974-1980,
NBC), Almost Grown (1988-1989, CBS), or Northern Exposure (1990-
1995, CBS), and he had just participated in preparing for the premiere of
I’ll Fly Away (1991-1993, NBC). At varying times, Chase even func-
tioned as the showrunner on the latter three series, meaning he was res-
ponsible for the daily management and creative directions taken on these
programs. Still, nothing in his résumé up to this point hinted at the possi-
bility that he would ever create and become the executive producer, head
writer, and showrunner on a series as pivotal and influential as The
Sopranos, whose impact was felt across several different but interrelated
contexts, including business and industry, TV aesthetics and generic
transformation, and cultural reach and influence.
There is certainly a ‘before’ and ‘after’ to television both in the
United States and internationally when considering this series. The So-
pranos (HBO, 1999-2007) is among the most celebrated programs in TV
history, having been chosen the fifth “greatest TV show of all time” and
the highest ranking drama by TV Guide in May 2002; the top “television
drama of all time” by the Guardian newspaper in January 2010; and the
“Best Written TV Series” in history by the Writers Guild of America in
2013 (“Editors of TV Guide” 22; “The Guardian’s Top 50”; Brownfield,
“Numbers” 29). Stephen Holden of The New York Times famously wrote
in an early review that “The Sopranos, more than any American televi-
sion in memory, looks, feels, and sounds like real life […] it just may be
the greatest work of American popular culture of the last quarter cen-
tury” (23).
Three months after its finale in early September 2007, Time TV critic
James Poniewozik added: “To get a sense of how The Sopranos changed
TV, get a pen and make a list of the twenty best TV dramas before 1999.
That list will likely include Magnum P.I.” Poniewozik was not so much
dismissing Magnum P.I. (CBS, 1980-1988) as underscoring its conven-
tionality, while also emphasizing that when The Sopranos first appeared
in January 1999, it was a sign of things to come. The Sopranos had all to
itself “a certain tier of television that had been surrendered by the broad-
cast networks,” recalls John Landgraf, former NBC vice president of
prime-time series during that network’s halcyon days where he helped to
develop and oversee programs such as Michael Crichton and John
Gary R. Edgerton 35
Wells’s ER (1994-2009) and Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing (1999-

2006); “[t]here was a two-year span when [The Sopranos] was the only
thing like it on television” (qtd. in Smith).
In January 2004, Landgraf became president of entertainment at FX
(Fox eXtended). The strategy he promoted at this channel was to posi-
tion FX “as the HBO of basic cable,” occupying a “middle ground” be-
tween pay television and the broadcast networks by sponsoring a port-
folio of original programs that featured “Sopranos-style moral am-
biguity,” such as Shawn Ryan’s The Shield (2002-2008), Ryan Murphy’s
Nip/Tuck (2003-2010), Denis Leary and Peter Tolan’s Rescue Me (2004-
2011), and Damages (2007-2010), which was co-created by veteran
Sopranos writer-producer Todd Kessler along with his older brother,
Glenn, and Daniel Zelman (Levin; Hale). David Chase’s more complex,
personal vision as realized through The Sopranos ushered in a new era
of densely plotted, morally ambiguous TV drama, eventually expanding
the range of storytelling and character options even beyond the serial
format.
Chase hardly entertained such improbable fantasies of influence and
success when he began writing a theatrical spec script entitled “The
Sopranos” in 1994, which he later adapted for television in 1995. His
production company, Brillstein-Grey, pitched the property to the broad-
cast networks, being “first turned down by the Fox Network, CBS and
ABC” before submitting the script to HBO for consideration (Brown-
field, “Mob”; Creeber 100). After its debut on this pay cable channel,
The Sopranos emerged as the most innovative and significant drama of
the late 1990s through the early to mid-2000s, often challenging main-
stream TV’s conventional wisdom by spearheading an alternative narra-
tive style at HBO “in opposition to the regular networks” where “the
pacing (was slower), the storytelling (more fragmented) and the struc-
ture (organized around the lack of commercials)” (Weinman 50).
Chase and his creative team first revitalized the televisual aesthetics
of HBO; then the rest of television followed in kind. With The Sopranos,
they incorporated a more cinematic approach to TV storytelling that
dovetailed perfectly with the expansion of the cable-and-satellite sector
of the industry and the seemingly endless invention of ever wider
screens and higher definition receivers of all shapes and sizes. The So-
pranos burst onto the scene as HBO’s biggest hit in terms of audience
numbers, instant profits by way of increased subscriptions, and wide-
spread critical accolades. The show’s unexpected level of success over

six seasons also elevated “the status of showrunners,” starting with Da-
vid Chase, thus “transforming cable television into its own television
universe with its own rules.” Chase’s experience of realizing “his vision
only by going to cable—had now become the model of how cable TV
worked in the post-Sopranos era” (Weinman 49-50).
The Role of The Sopranos in the Rise of Cinematic Television
The engines of [television]

stories are in how the in-
cidents shape characters.
The appeal for an audi-
ence is in developing an
intimate relationship with
the characters as they
grow and change. This is
where television can excel
over film. If film is a
poem, then television is
the serialized novel.
—David Milch
While still editor of The New York Times Book Review in 1995, Charles
McGrath wrote an extended commentary on what he identified as “a
brand-new genre” that he called the “prime-time novel” (53). McGrath
pinpointed its surfacing with Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll’s Hill
Street Blues (for which David Milch was an Emmy award-winning
writer) and Joshua Brand and John Falsey’s St. Elsewhere (1982-1988,
NBC). Both of these series were produced by MTM Enterprises, the
independent production company founded by the then-husband and wife
team of Grant Tinker and Mary Tyler Moore. MTM was started in 1969
to produce the critically acclaimed and popular sitcom The Mary Tyler
Moore Show (CBS, 1970-1977). Tinker left the company after he and
Moore divorced in 1981 to become the chairman and CEO of NBC.
Grant Tinker aptly described MTM in his 1994 memoir as “a writers’
company,” whose staff proved to be a breeding ground for a new gener-
Gary R. Edgerton 37
ation of serialists, some of whom also became successful showrunners,

such as the aforementioned Brand, Bochco, Falsey, Kozoll, and Milch,
along with James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, Glenn Gordon Caron, Tom
Fontana, Gary David Goldberg, Bruce Paltrow, Jay Tarses, Hugh Wil-
son, and Dick Wolf, among others (96).1 Tinker was widely regarded as
the most innovative and enlightened television executive of his era,
famously instructing his colleagues at MTM and later NBC to respect
viewers when creating programs. As simple as this dictum seems today,
it marked a sea change in thinking among the legacy broadcasters—
CBS, NBC, and ABC. These broadcast networks had long operated
under what Paul Klein, NBC vice president for audience measurement
during the 1960s, had coined as the “LOP (Least Objectionable Pro-
gram) theory” in a New York Magazine article at the time, giving it even
wider currency throughout the industry (L. Brown, Encyclopedia 300).
The tacit assumption behind the LOP theory that predated Klein ba-
sically asserted that audience members watch TV no matter what, usu-
ally choosing the least objectionable show available to them. Further-
more, it assumes a limited number of programming choices for audi-
ences to pick from and implies that networks, advertising agencies, and
sponsors care little about quality when producing and distributing
shows. Overall, the typical U.S. household was able to access five chan-
nels on average in 1960; seven channels in 1970; and ten channels in
1
Joshua Brand and John Falsey’s signature series were St. Elsewhere, North-
ern Exposure, and I’ll Fly Away. Besides developing Hill Street Blues with
Michael Kozoll, Steven Bochco also created L.A. Law (1986-1994, NBC),
Doogie Howser, M.D. (1989-1993, ABC) with David E. Kelley, and NYPD
Blue (1993-2005, ABC) with David Milch. Milch also created Deadwood,
among other series; James L. Brooks and Allan Burns The Mary Tyler Moore
Show and Lou Grant (1977-1982, CBS); Brooks Taxi (1978-1983, ABC and
NBC) with Stan Daniels, David Davis, and Ed Weinberger; Glenn Gordon
Caron Moonlighting (1985-1989, ABC); Tom Fontana Homicide: Life on the
Street and Oz; Gary David Goldberg Family Ties (1982-1989, NBC), Brook-
lyn Bridge (1991-1993, CBS), and Spin City (1996-2002, ABC) with Bill
Lawrence; Bruce Paltrow The White Shadow (1978-1981, CBS); Jay Tarses
Buffalo Bill (1983-1984, NBC) with Tom Patchette and The Days and Nights
of Molly Dodd (1987-1991, NBC and Lifetime); Hugh Wilson WKRP in Cin-
cinnati (1978-1982, CBS) and Frank’s Place (1987-1988, CBS); and Dick
Wolf the Law and Order franchise (1990-2011, NBC).
1980 when the first examples of McGrath’s “prime-time novel” started

to appear. During the Network Era (1948-1975), the television industry
in America developed according to a mass market model emphasizing
broadcasting and dominated by CBS, NBC, and ABC, whose sole goal
was to reach as large a viewership as possible.
By 1974/75, at the end of the Network Era, the popularity of CBS,
NBC, and ABC would never be greater; that season, the three-network
oligopoly reached its peak by averaging a 93.6 percent share of the
prime-time viewing audience (Sloane). Each network was highly profit-
able, competing solely against each other in what was essentially a
closed $2.5 billion TV advertising market (L. Brown, “Silverman”).
Within ten short years, though, everything would be different. The strat-
egy that CBS, NBC, and ABC gravitated towards—namely, targeting
specific demographics with their programming—only delivered them
short-term success while sowing the seeds of change where the TV
industry as a whole would eventually move well beyond the mass mar-
ket model. Over the next decade, a wide array of technological, indus-
trial, and programming innovations would usher in an era predicated on
an entirely new niche-market philosophy which essentially turned the
vast majority of broadcasters into narrowcasters.
The Cable Era (1976-1994) developed according to a customized
niche-market model characterized by narrowcasting to specifically de-
fined target audiences. The harbinger of innovation on television as a
technology and industry in the United States was Home Box Office, Inc.
(HBO), delivering its content over communication satellite, Satcom 1,
beginning in the fall of 1975. In one fell swoop, HBO became a national
network, thus ushering in a new era in American television with its first
full year of regularly scheduled satellite-distributed programming in
1976 (featuring uncut theatrical films and specialized sporting events)
soon to be followed by CBN (the Christian Broadcasting Network) and
the USA Network (a broad-based entertainment channel) in 1977;
Showtime (movies) in 1978; ESPN (sports), Nickelodeon (children’s
programming), and C-SPAN (Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network) in
1979; CNN (Cable News Network), BET (Black Entertainment Televi-
sion), and TLC (The Learning Channel) in 1980; MTV (Music Televi-
sion) and FNN (Financial News Network) in 1981; and CNN Headline
News and The Weather Channel in 1982.
Gary R. Edgerton 39
“In stimulating the creation of a wide variety of new satellite networks,”

HBO became “the engine that was pulling cable” (L. Brown,
Encyclopedia 316). HBO’s own subscriber base skyrocketed over the
next decade from a mere 287,199 in 1976 to 14.6 million by 1985, aid-
ing in the adoption of cable-and-satellite programming throughout the
United States (Mair 26, 158). By the beginning of 1995, however, HBO
had stalled at around 19.2 million subscriber households (Stevens).
What was happening at HBO was indicative of the cable-and-satellite
sector in general and the changing reception patterns of American audi-
ences. The typical U.S. television household had gone from averaging
the aforementioned ten channels in 1980 to twenty-seven and rising by
1990 (Papazian 21). More significantly, the one-time captive prime-time
audience of the legacy broadcasters—CBS, NBC, and ABC—dropped
30 percentage points to around 60 percent of the prime-time share by the
early 1990s.
Beginning in 1976, therefore, a customized niche-market model sup-
planted the old way of doing business in television. Made-to-order series
by an emerging younger generation of serialists replaced the two dec-
ade-long dominance of Hollywood’s cookie-cutter mode of telefilm
production. The best and most influential new programs defied easy
classification while attracting young, urban, professional audiences
through their well-targeted quality appeals. The broader economic bene-
fits of consumer segmentation also rendered the mass-market model of
the Network Era obsolete. “Ironically or not, as network television
[drew] smaller and smaller percentages of the total viewing audience,
TV programming [got] better,” observed The Washington Post TV critic
Tom Shales. “Network executives [seemed] inclined to give writers and
producers more leeway to pursue a vision, and slowly, prime time [be-
came] less smothered with standardization than it used to be” (Shales).
By the early 1990s, a “flourishing” of what Charles McGrath chris-
tened the “prime time novel” appeared with such noteworthy examples
as David E. Kelly’s Picket Fences (1992-1996, CBS), Barry Levinson,
Tom Fontana, and David Simon’s Homicide: Life on the Streets (1993-
1999, NBC), Steven Bochco and David Milch’s N.Y.P.D. Blue (1993-
2005, ABC), ER, “and the lamentably canceled My So-Called Life
[1994-1995, ABC],” which was created by Winnie Holzman, one of the
head writers on Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz’s thirtysome-
thing (1987-1991, ABC) (52-55). These and other distinguished TV
dramas from the final years of the Cable Era point to the fact that the
breakthrough nature of The Sopranos was not achieved in an industrial,
aesthetic, or cultural vacuum.
The Sopranos premiered at a time of unprecedented change for the
television industry in the United States. TV has always existed in a state
of transformation, being continually reshaped and occasionally rein-
vented by a wide assortment of technological, commercial, and social
factors. The pivotal innovation in the changeover from the Cable Era to
the Digital Era (1995-present) that shifted viewer interest beyond just
the TV set into cyberspace was the introduction of the first commer-
cially-available graphical browser, Netscape Navigator 1.0, on Decem-
ber 15, 1994, thus making web travel relatively easy for most Ameri-
cans. A “mass digital conversion” was now placing consumers “at the
very heart” of an ever more personalized television business environ-
ment (Chernin).
As a result, HBO set out to intensify its connection to its subscriber
base by reinvesting in original programming to an unprecedented de-
gree. The premium cable-and-satellite network set itself apart from the
competition for the second time in its short history by aggressively in-
creasing the proportion of its original programming from twenty-five to
forty percent of its entire schedule in the half-dozen years between 1996
and 2001 (“Jeffrey L. Bewkes”). HBO transformed TV’s creative land-
scape during the first decade of the Digital Era by pursuing the unusual
and atypical strategy of investing more money in program development
(from $2 million to $4 million per prime-time hour as opposed to $1
million for the broadcast networks), limiting output (thirteen episodes
per series each year instead of the usual twenty-two to twenty-six), and
producing only the highest-quality series, miniseries, made-for-pay-TV
movies, and documentaries. What is forgotten in retrospect is how risky
this strategy was in the mid- to late 1990s. Today these three tactics are
normative for high-end scripted programs throughout the television
industry.
The tipping point for HBO was the unprecedented success of The
Sopranos. Whereas Tom Fontana’s Oz (1997-2003) enjoyed a promising
debut of 2.6 million viewers in July 1997, and Darren Star’s Sex and the
City (1998-2004) garnered 2.75 million in June 1998, Chase’s The So-
pranos pulled in 7.5 million in January 1999 (“Six Feet Above”). These
were robust numbers for any cable-and-satellite network at the time. For
Gary R. Edgerton 41
HBO, however, these audience figures were even more striking in the
context of a subscriber base that then totaled slightly more than twenty-
five percent of all of the television households in the U.S. Moreover,
HBO’s latest spike in popularity and prestige was just beginning. By the
start of its third season in March 2001, The Sopranos attracted 11.3
million viewers, while the premiere of the edgy idiosyncratic Six Feet
Under, created by Alan Ball, followed up three months later with 4.8
million (de Moraes).
In September 2002, HBO set a new audience high-water mark for a
cable-and-satellite network when The Sopranos opened its fourth season
to an audience of 13.4 million, which not only won its time slot, but
placed “sixth for the entire week against all other prime-time programs,
cable and broadcast,” despite HBO’s “built-in numerical disadvantage”
(Castleman and Podrazik 419). Even though HBO was based on an
entirely different economic model than most of the rest of the U.S. TV
industry, it had beaten all of the advertiser-supported networks at their
own game. More significantly, it was also asserting that “the underlying
assumptions that had driven television for six decades were no longer in
effect” (419). The momentum in the industry had shifted unmistakably
and irrevocably away from the traditional broadcast networks and more
towards the cable-and-satellite sector of the business, with The Sopranos
providing HBO with the breakout hit it needed for competition.
The Sopranos had now become HBO’s most identifiable product,
generating unprecedented word of mouth for the corporation, creating
multiple revenue streams, and helping to brand the network’s latest
incarnation like no other program. The popularity of The Sopranos also
stimulated a 50 percent increase in subscriptions to 28.2 million televi-
sion households by the first quarter of 2006 (Umstead). The one time
sacrosanct economic structure for television had now splintered into
several alternative choices instead of just an advertiser-supported option
to include a subscription format pioneered most successfully by HBO,
product placement, domestic and international syndication, DVD sales,
and program downloads. Hit programs such as The Sopranos proved to
be the most essential ingredients needed to allow this newly emerging
multi-dimensional personal-usage market model to flourish (Becker; K.
Brown).
“The Sopranos was the hammer that broke the glass ceiling for us,”
affirms Chris Albrecht (qtd. in Biskind 285). It “showed us as players in
this medium in a way we hadn’t been perceived before. It was a real

turning point and a calling card for other people to come and want to do
business with us” (Levin). In the immediate wake of The Sopranos’
success, Albrecht and his fellow HBO programmers began luring many
talented serialists away from the broadcast networks, beginning with the
just mentioned Alan Ball of Cybill (1995-1998, CBS) and of the Acad-
emy Award-winning American Beauty (1999) for Six Feet Under (2001-
2005); David Simon of Homicide: Life on the Streets for The Wire
(2002-2008); and David Milch of Hill Street Blues and N.Y.P.D. Blue for
Deadwood (2004-2006).
The Sopranos’ aftereffect became widely apparent both in- and out-
side of HBO. For example, Kiefer Sutherland admits, “I would never
have done 24 [2001-2010, FOX] if The Sopranos didn’t make the impact
that it did. Before that, I had no desire to do television” (qtd. in
Deggans). Likewise, creator Shawn Ryan was convinced “The Shield
[2002-2008, FX] would not be on the air without The Sopranos” (qtd. in
Deggans). CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonves explained at the
height of The Sopranos’ popularity that “there is no reason Showtime
won’t become for CBS what HBO is for Time Warner,” meaning a
highly-profitable boutique network (qtd. in Vernadakis). In turn, he
adopted a similar strategy for Showtime in 2004, sponsoring Ilene
Chaiken, Michele Abbot, and Kathy Greenberg’s The L Word (2004-
2009), Bob Lowry’s Huff (2004-2006), and Jenji Kohan’s Weeds (2005-
2012), among other series. Executive producer Ben Silverman similarly
reveals that when he brought The Tudors (2007-2010) to Showtime, “my
original pitch was Henry VIII as Tony Soprano” (qtd. in Deggans).
Soon the USA Network, TNT, and dozens of other basic cable net-
works entered the business of original production, upping the ante for
the broadcast networks HBO, FX, and Showtime. “We showed what was
possible to do on television,” recalled Chris Albrecht. “I think what that
did was bring more people into the category and to spend more money
on original scripted programming. It’s good for everybody when the bar
gets raised” (qtd. in Umstead). Moreover, many key Sopranos’ alumni
later created critically acclaimed television dramas on their own, most
notably Matt Weiner with Mad Men (2007-2015, AMC), Terence Winter
with Boardwalk Empire (2010-2014, HBO), and Robin Green and
Mitchell Burgess with Blue Bloods (2010-present, CBS). Characteristic
of all these serialists, Weiner readily acknowledges that “everything
Gary R. Edgerton 43
about The Sopranos influenced me” (KCRW). “There was such depth
and complexity to the show, and at the same time it was commercially
successful […]. Then of course seeing how the sausage was made”
(NPR).
Chase’s original conception of combining an epic novelistic struc-
ture, a cinematic vocabulary, and a dystopian worldview with the usual
conventions of prime time resulted in a uniquely singular generic and
serial hybrid that inspired the next generation of television serialists. The
86-hour Sopranos narrative is knitted and freewheeling in structure,
alternately intimate and unsentimental in tone. The plotlines are strategi-
cally ambiguous and most of the characters morally compromised.
Chase notably refused to be “a prisoner of dialogue” and pushed his
writing team to “open it up, make it look like a feature every week, try
to do a small movie, which means more than just talking heads” (“Hit
Man”). As writer and director, he also planned the pilot “to be cine-
matic,” intending it to serve as the stylistic template for the rest of the
series (Biskind 281).
As TV scholar Trisha Dunleavy recounts, “The Sopranos was shot on
single-camera film and fully exploited the cinematic regard for visual
style, most evident in its feature-like cinematography, subdued and
textured lighting, and richly detailed sets.” With such prototypes as
Miami Vice (1984-1990, NBC) and Twin Peaks, cinematic television
came of age with the debut of The Sopranos. It had arrived full-blown as
a hybridized style of production that merges the intimacy, immediacy,
and longform narrative complexity of TV with the more controversial
and ambiguous thematics, wider palette of visual techniques, and much
higher production values typically associated with feature films. The
Sopranos synthesized the once separate albeit related aesthetic spheres
of cinema and television into one stylistic whole.
It took a TV journeyman with twenty-five years of experience at the
broadcast networks to pull it off. By all accounts, David Chase was not
an easy boss on The Sopranos; his years in the trenches at the broadcast
networks had made him a demanding taskmaster. “Though he [worked]
with a stable of writers, producers, and directors, it [was] Chase who
[was] the final arbiter of The Sopranos’ casting, editing, and musical
scoring. The cast and crew began calling him “the master cylinder” early
on as their way of describing the extraordinary level of control that he
exerted over every aspect of production (Daly 10). Chase in turn showed
“little patience for learning on the job” (Biskind 284). He tolerated no

improvisation from the actors. “During the first season,” he “fired al-
most every writer on the show when his or her first draft came in” (284).
When all was said and done, “only Robin Green, Mitch Burgess, and
Frank Renzulli were left standing” (284).
The husband-and-wife writing team of Green and Burgess had
worked with Chase before on Northern Exposure. Renzulli was espe-
cially helpful in knowing “various mob haunts” from growing up in
“Boston’s North End” (Lieberman). By the second season, Terence
Winter joined this small cadre of veterans, writing or co-writing twenty-
two episodes throughout the remaining five-plus seasons of The Sopra-
nos, second only to Chase’s twenty-five writing credits. David Chase
summed up his role on The Sopranos as being “the final story editor”
(Longworth 24). “Everything [was] farmed out, but then everything
[came] back to him and then [was] shaped by him,” adds longtime col-
laborator Lawrence Konner. “Every shot, every word of The Sopranos is
David in some way or another” (Biskind 284). According to David
Lavery and Robert Thompson, “Chase’s stewardship […] maximized the
potential of the serial form while protecting his show from becoming a
traditional television narrative” (14-15).
Gary R. Edgerton 45
The Ascendancy of Y2KTV
Hannibal [2013-present,
NBC], Fargo [2014-pre-
sent, FX], True Detective
[2014-present, HBO], The
Knick [2014-present,
Cinemax], and Boardwalk
Empire, to name just five
current dramas, are com-
posed, lit, blocked, and
edited with more
intelligence than all but a
handful of contemporary
Hollywood features.
—Matt Zoller Seitz
More than a half-century after the first stirrings of prime-time drama,

The Sopranos jump-started the aesthetic, narrative, and generic potential
of TV to new and ever greater heights. In 2010, The New York Times
film critic A.O. Scott asked, “[o]ver the past decade, how many films
have approached the moral complexity of The Sopranos?” He further
posited that “the traditional relationship between film and television has
reversed, as American movies have become conservative and cautious,
while scripted series, on both broadcast networks and cable, are often
more daring, topical and willing to risk giving offense” (35). Whether
one agrees with this basic assertion or not, the conventional hierarchy
that always placed motion pictures above TV is no longer a taken-for-
granted assumption in the post-Sopranos media culture.
Likewise, veteran New Yorker film critic David Denby claims that
TV has replaced “movies as our national theater” in his 2012 book-
length lament, Do the Movies Have a Future? (1). Longtime fellow film
critic and historian, David Thomson, suggests a similar fate in The Big
Screen. Concurrently, Denby and Thomson have written swan songs to
the silver screen, while TV counterparts, such as Brett Martin with
Difficult Men and Alan Sepinwall with The Revolution Was Televised,
released books in 2013 that trumpet the latest golden age of TV. These
journalist-critics are all recognizing an especially turbulent and
transitional period in the media environment, even if they might be

overstating a renewed clash between movies and television in the Digital
Era. Instead, an increasing confluence between film and TV has been
taking place since the 1980s as the firewall between the two entertain-
ment sectors has grown increasingly outdated with the industrial
changes brought about by convergence.
Two of the more prominent and successful members of the
Hollywood establishment, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, appeared
on a June 2013 panel devoted to the future of entertainment at USC’s
School of Cinematic Arts. They were joined by Microsoft Xbox
executive Don Mattrick, agreeing on the aesthetic and immersive
potential of gaming as a storytelling format. More unexpectedly, how-
ever, Spielberg and Lucas made news by predicting an inevitable
“meltdown” in the theatrical film sector as a result of the growing
obsession with mega-budget “tentpole movies” that cost up to $250
million or more to produce, market, and distribute where smaller
pictures, such as Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012) and Lucasfilm’s Red Tails
(2012) “barely got into theaters” (Cohen).
Ironies abound with this forecast: Spielberg and Lucas are as
responsible as any filmmakers for the blockbuster mentality that has
grown ever more dominant for theatrical releases since the 1970s, with
such seminal franchised successes as Star Wars and Indiana Jones
paving the way for the latest big-budgeted serials including Batman,
Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Iron Man, Spiderman, Twilight,
Transformers, and X-Men, among others. What Denby, Thomson,
Martin, Sepinwall, Spielberg, and Lucas are reacting to is the wide-
spread migration of screen storytelling from theaters to television, and
then on to an array of smaller, more portable digital devices by way of
the internet. Moreover, the proliferation of movie franchises suggests
how the film industry is finding ways to incorporate the serialized
format that has proven to be so profitable on TV from both a financial
and artistic point of view.
Overall, serial television is a better business model in the digital era
than one-off movies because of the intense interest and loyalty it can
generate among audiences, cutting through the clutter of endless content
choices. There are basically two major types of theatrical movies today:
the giant blockbuster that can be reproduced in multiple-sequeled parts,
resulting in hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in revenues,
Gary R. Edgerton 47
such as Lucas’s nearly four decade-old Star Wars series; and smaller,
prestige, awards-worthy films, which are typically low-cost labors of
love by creative talents, such as Spielberg’s Lincoln. Almost unexpect-
edly, a fertile, dynamic, and ever-expanding third option has emerged in
the TV sector: the high-end character-driven long-form narratives that
have become the forte of scripted television.
From a storytelling perspective, the vast potential of television is
being markedly realized as the in-between option with its roots in the so-
called “prime-time novel” that surfaced in the early 1980s with pro-
grams such as Hill Street Blues and continuing to develop throughout
the 1990s and into the twenty-first century with The Sopranos and its
many TV descendants. Norman Mailer wrote in 2004 that “the Great
American Novel is no longer writable […]. You can’t cover all of
America now. It takes something like The Sopranos, which can loop into
a good many aspects of American culture […]. The notion of a wide
canvas may be moving to television with its possibility of endless hours”
(qtd. in Hammond). The Sopranos raised the unspoken “bar of quality”
for what was creatively possible on TV (Moss). This serial narrative and
the series it subsequently inspired also changed attitudes about this once
vilified medium.
Before its 1999 premiere, there would have been “no way Al Pacino
and Meryl Streep would have considered doing a movie [at HBO],”
explains co-executive producer Cary Brokaw of the miniseries Angels in
America (2003), “but their consistently good shows like The Sopranos
made it possible” (Horn). Today there is little if any stigma for creative
talent to work in television. On the acting front, Jeff Daniels just ended a
three-season run on HBO’s The Newsroom (2012-2014); Halle Berry is
starring in CBS’s Extant (2014-present); Vera Farmiga in A&E’s Bates
Motel (2013-present); and Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright in Netflix’s
House of Cards (2013-present), which was also directed in its first two
episodes by longtime filmmaker David Fincher, who set the stylistic
template for the show.
Furthermore, the case of Netflix emphatically demonstrates that the
transgressive nature of contemporary television goes well beyond the
complex narratives that engage audiences in ever larger numbers all
around the world. The ability of twenty-first-century TV to disrupt the
status quo and transcend the usual small screen formulas are the result of
much deeper and more profound structural changes, as “[t]elevision al-
ways has been a different sort of media product, never one thing (broad-
cast, cable, syndicated, first-run, rerun, VHS, DVD, DVR, etc.) but an
ever transforming protean” (Wolff, “TV” 7). TV in this regard is a
legacy word, much like film, which has moved well beyond its celluloid
roots. Television as a technology is not a static piece of hardware, but a
business model, a set of production practices, and a codified listing of
specific aesthetic choices, as the examples of HBO and The Sopranos
have so aptly illustrated.
Television is also a social process that has grown increasingly
personalized, interactive, mobile, and on demand in the digital era. The
global TV industry is best thought of as a three-legged stool comprised
of broadcasting, cable-and-satellite, and OTT (over-the-top content)
streaming sectors. Encompassing the first two legs, there are one billion
television households worldwide with just a little over eleven percent of
these TV homes situated in the United States. U.S.-American viewership
is just a fraction of the global total, but the U.S. is disproportionally
represented in the production and international distribution of TV
programming. Geography therefore matters. There are currently more
than 650 networks in the American marketplace with the typical
domestic household receiving 189 channels on average (Geuss). With
that much competition, hit series are more important than ever.
In the OTT streaming sector, the transformative impact that Beau
Willimon’s House of Cards and Jenji Kohan’s Orange Is the New Black
(2013-present) has had on Netflix once again underscores the signifi-
cance of popular programming. In addition, “Netflix got into the game
and changed everything again,” explains House of Cards’ creator and
showrunner Willimon: “It put television and film literally in the same
space, to be watched on the same devices [… neither] presented as better
or worse than the other” (38). At present, Netflix is the most successful
company in the newest distribution sector of the television industry,
which also includes Amazon Prime Instant Video, Dramatize, Drama-
Fever, Crackle, Hulu, myTV, NetD, Now TV, Qello, Viewster, Wherever
TV, and most recently, CBS and HBO (Hibberd).
For the first time in 2013, Netflix surpassed HBO in the number of
U.S. subscribers—29.17 million to 28.7 million—although the older and
far more established pay cable-and-satellite network still holds a
substantial 114 million to 36 million subscriber lead around the world
(Wallenstein). Most importantly, the entire television industry is rapidly
Gary R. Edgerton 49
moving to another transitional benchmark where subscription dollars

will soon overtake advertising revenue, underscoring the choice aspect
of the personal-usage market model. Despite all the predictions about
Millennials (i.e., individuals born between 1984 and 2002) ignoring both
broadcast and cable-and-satellite TV, streaming video has instead added
yet another means by which they and all the other generational cohorts
watch more television of all kinds.
In 2013, for instance, only 0.3 percent or 300,000 U.S. households
cut the cable cord or cancelled their satellite delivery service. A recent
TiVo survey similarly found “no significant difference” (McMillan) in
traditional TV consumption between Netflix subscribers and other view-
ers. The global financial consulting firm, Deloitte, likewise found in its
2013 annual “State of the Democracy” survey that “the availability of
more ways to watch content—like laptops, tablets and other mobile
devices—may be raising the amount of television watched overall,
instead of simply replacing one form with another” (McMillan; Deloitte
TMT). If story or content is still king, then distribution is definitely
queen in the digital era. OTT streaming platforms have now joined the
traditional broadcasting and cable-and-satellite networks in becoming
high-end content providers rather than taking the more alternative user-
generated, social media approach to monetizing in the digital spectrum.
Contrary to all the predictions about Netflix supplanting TV, this
OTT service is already part of the global television industry, even to the
point of exploring partnerships with well-established cable-and-satellite
providers to carry it by this means of distribution as well, thus expand-
ing its overall reach even further (Wolff, “Hollywood” 54). Moreover,
House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black have transformed Netflix
into one of the most popular TV destinations, much like The Sopranos
and Sex and the City did for HBO two decades ago. Netflix’s recent
success has also compelled Amazon Prime to sign Woody Allen to write
and direct a television series for this latest outlet in original program
production (Steel). In sum, there are now dozens of channels worldwide
that are together creating an unprecedented proliferation of scripted
programming. If twenty-first-century TV is not necessarily a “golden
age,” it at least marks yet another highly innovative breakout period in
television’s brief history.
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ALEXANDRA GANSER
Transgressive Serialization and the Serialization

of Transgression at the U.S.-Canadian Border:
Twin Peaks1
Introduction
Scholars studying contemporary TV series often mention Twin Peaks

(ABC, 1990-1991), created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, in discus-
sions of the development of prime-time television drama since the 1970s
(e.g. Edgerton, Kelleter, Winter).2 Twin Peaks anticipated a plethora of
characteristics of today’s so-called “quality TV” series, both in terms of
narrative and form.3 In this essay, I propose that the series deserves
closer study in order to write the cultural history of television and to
understand the medium’s development since the late 1980s and early
1990s. The show deserves attention for contemporary television drama
studies also because it has experienced a revival when the Twin Peaks
1
This essay is based on a guest lecture at the University of Erlangen-Nurem-
berg in November 2014. I thank Karin Hoepker as well as the audience for
their useful comments and suggestions.
2
Twin Peaks will apparently return to television screens; in early October
2014, it was confirmed that the serial will be continued with a nine-episode
limited serial on Showtime, written entirely by Lynch and Frost and directed
by Lynch. A novel titled The Secret Lives of Twin Peaks, to be written by
Frost, has been announced for publication in late 2015; apparently, it will
detail what happened to characters over the past 25 years (see “Showtime”).
3
Cf. Frizzoni as well as Jahn-Sudmann and Kelleter, who discuss the term’s
purpose of marking a distinction between “Quality” and “Trash TV,”
unmasking this conceptualization of art vs. commercial TV as misleading,
since they always interpenetrate each other (Jahn-Sudmann and Kelleter
222).
56 Transgressive Serialization
Definitive Gold Box Edition DVD set was released in 2007, including
the pilot and the prequel feature film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
(1992). In 2010, the German magazine Spex, on occasion of the show’s
twentieth anniversary, featured agent Cooper on the cover in an issue
devoted to the rise of the contemporary U.S.-American TV series; it also
testifies to the fact that serials with larger narrative arcs than the closed
episode of the traditional series format (such as the sit-com) have not
only been budding in the U.S. but have become popular internationally
in a success story comparable perhaps only to that of Rock’n’Roll in the
1950s and 1960s.
In what follows, I argue that Twin Peaks’s trailblazing innovations
are based on both a serialization of transgression and a transgression of
traditional seriality on multiple levels, both intra- and extradiegetically.
It is in these two aspects that contemporary U.S.-American TV series
can be read as resulting from a development starting with Twin Peaks. In
order to elucidate in what ways the series has shown the way for what
has been called “the second Golden Age” of American television
(Thompson), I will begin by taking a look at the context and conditions
of network television in the United States at the turn from the 1980s to
the 1990s and then explore the show’s construction of a seriality no
longer confined to the level of narration itself but located in-between
and across episodes (Fahle 171).
Twin Peaks and the Development of the Contemporary TV Series
According to Gary Edgerton, editor of the Columbia History of

American Television, there are four key factors responsible for the
development of the contemporary TV series, relating to the conditions
and structural changes in terms of production, viewer behavior, and
distribution.4 First of all, major shifts in the TV industry occurred: up to
the late 1980s, U.S.-American television was ruled by the logic that
audiences lacked weekly consistency to allow for serial narratives with
larger than one-episode narrative arcs; then, the number of channels and
thus competition for established TV syndicates like ABC or CBS grew
4
My overview is based on Edgerton’s opening lecture of the Transgressive
Television conference.
Alexandra Ganser 57
along with the increase of cable and private networks. In addition, the
mid- to late 1980s represented an era of TV fatigue due to the
overabundance of formulaic sameness and to an aesthetic crisis of the
medium (cf. Seeßlen, Lynch 112-13); thus, audience shares for any
single show became much smaller. This led networks and channels to
recognize “that a consistent cult following of a small but dedicated
audience [could] suffice to make a show economically viable” (Mittell
31) as advertisers could now cater to audiences they would otherwise
perhaps not have found in front of the TV at all. Commercial breaks
were used to promote individual TV shows as well: in the case of Twin
Peaks, its own merchandise was advertised during the breaks (Füller
147). All of these factors contributed to the big networks’ investments in
at times risky innovation (144).5
The second key factor concerns the changing perception of TV’s
potential as a medium for the first generation of artists that had actually
grown up watching television. Television appealed to writers and
directors in the motion picture industry who would become so-called
series creators like David Lynch or Barry Levinson (who created
Homicide and Oz; this development continued with Richard Price and
David Simon on The Wire and Treme, among many others). They
embraced the challenges and potentials for creativity in the long-form
series (including extended character depth, ongoing plotting, or episodic
variation as characteristics of narrative complexity; Mittell 30-31). The
impact of artists with singular visions and a recognizable handwriting
such as Lynch’s, leading to a Revolution [that] Was Televised (Sepin-
5
Kelleter (23) mentions Twin Peaks as a prime example of a cult series that
triggered the emergence of the fan who turns the relation between production
and consumption on its head, becoming her-/himself productive, e.g. in early
forms of fan fiction (Twin Peaks fans produced a newsletter, for instance;
Lavery 7). According to Kelleter, this also marks serial aesthetics as different
from a single-work aesthetics: “Eine Serie kann sich, anders als ein abge-
schlossenes Werk, im Lauf der Erzählung auf die eigene Rezeption einstel-
len, was umgekehrt bedeutet, dass Serienrezipienten deutlich größere Spiel-
räume als Werkrezipienten besitzen, um auf laufende Narrationen Einfluss zu
nehmen oder im Prozess fortgesetzten Erzählens selbst aktiv zu werden”
(24). On TV series as cult, see also Winter; on Twin Peaks as a “cult TV ex-
perience” in Umberto Eco’s sense, see Lavery 4-13.
wall), was made possible by network despair as well as courage and

created series of signature style.
Technological transformation is the third important factor in this
context. As better VCR technologies made recording easier and cheaper
from the 1990s onwards,6 the control over audience behavior shifted
from the networks to the viewers themselves, who developed
proactively vis-à-vis the increasing number of viewing options
(Edgerton, “Sky” 314, 300). They now had the possibility to watch
episodes in full or in part and at different or multiple times; the remote
control, “the armchair TV detective’s Holmesian magnifying glass”
(Lavery 6), in addition, facilitated re-watching and rewinding if plot-
lines were confusing, enabling a more complex practice of watching and
interpreting television and arguably anticipating contemporary binge-
viewing practices. Furthermore, stereo TV sets, important for the
creation of atmosphere through sound and music—in Twin Peaks
composed mainly by Angelo Badalamenti and performed by Julee
Cruise, who appears as a live act repeatedly in the show—became
standard in the mid-80s.
Last but not least, television became an international medium, now
also producing for markets beyond the U.S. (in the case of Twin Peaks,
this can be seen in the fact that additional scenes to the pilot, which
closed the story, were created with the intention to sell the series as a
feature film on the international market). European and other audiences
now experienced late-night weekly broadcasting dates with their favorite
U.S.-American series and, via TV, were also familiarized with iconic
Americana (like the roadhouse, the diner, or the high school in Twin
Peaks). The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, authored by Lynch’s
daughter Jennifer, was successful not just in the U.S., where it reached
number five on The New York Times bestseller list (Lavery 7), but also in
its German paperback translation; equally, the soundtrack to the show
sold well internationally.
Examining the cultural history of the “Y2KTV” series and how the
1980s and 1990s paved the way for its success, Gary Edgerton opens his
essay in this volume, based on his lecture of the same title, with Twin
Peaks as a prelude and avant-garde example of the contemporary TV
6
In 1995, Lavery reported that Twin Peaks was “reportedly the most
videotaped in all of television” (11).
Alexandra Ganser 59
series (defining them as “high-end character-driven long-form

narrative[s]” [47] in close alliance with McGrath’s term “Prime-Time
Novels” [McGrath qtd. in Edgerton in this volume, 36]. Edgerton agrees
with many other critics (e.g. Fahle 169) that Twin Peaks was a trailblazer
for television series in and beyond the U.S. and that its impact was
seminal in terms of transgression, both formally and on the content
level. Twin Peaks, like the later The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-2007), he
argues, can be seen as a tipping point in the development of the
American TV series, though it did not come out of the blue but built on
predecessors like Hill Street Blues (NBC, 1981-1987) or St. Elsewhere
(NBC, 1982-1988). Before this, according to Edgerton, the rule for the
major TV networks was encapsulated in the acronym LOP (“Least
Objectionable Program”), leading to reactionary shows that propagated
middle-class morality without a doubt. With and after Twin Peaks,
Edgerton diagnoses that American TV series became more personal,
more aesthetically and formally complex, and more morally ambiguous
on the whole (33-34; 43).
Considering formal innovativeness, Mark Dolan has argued that
Twin Peaks was “neither an episodic series nor a continuous serial, nor
did it fit into […] established hybrid forms of episodic serial and
sequential series, instead layering the episodic serial on top of the
continuous serial” (35).7 Similarly, Jason Mittell, in his much-cited essay
“Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television” (2006),
discusses Twin Peaks as one of the key innovators in the development of
narrative complexity in TV series. Twin Peaks, for Mittell, started the
“era of television complexity” (29) together with St. Elsewhere,
Magnum, P.I. (CBS, 1980-1988), and Miami Vice (NBC, 1984-1989),
showing characteristics of the TV serial as a fledgling genre. It triggered
“a redefinition of episodic forms under the influence of serial
narration—not necessarily a complete merger of episodic and serial
forms but a shifting balance,” rejecting plot closure for each episode
7
Dolan diagnoses that “instead of running the same ‘miniseries’ plot in the
foreground and all the ‘soap opera’ plots in the background, the episodes
pretty much break down into five clearly divided, smaller episodic serials
[episodes 9-13, 14-17, 18-21, 22-24, and 25-30], each of which sustains nar-
rative unity on nearly all levels within the episodic serial but also ties in with
a larger, continuous narrative scheme that stretches across the entirety of the
twenty-two-episode season” (41).
(32) and instead foregrounding ongoing stories across a range of genres,

multi-episode arcs, and continuous relationship dramas. Mittell says
about the impact of Twin Peaks on the series landscape that it
was far more long-lasting than the series itself [. It] triggered a wave of
programs embracing its creative narrative strategies while forgoing its
stylistic excesses and thematic oddities. Effectively a cross between a
mystery, soap opera, and art film, Twin Peaks offered television viewers
and executives a glimpse into the narrative possibilities that the episodic
series would mine in the future […]. [It] opened the door to other
programs that took creative liberties with storytelling form […]. (33)
In addition, Twin Peaks emphasized a sense of medial self-reflexivity

and self-referentiality to an unprecedented extent, highlighting its own
fictionality (e.g. by blurring the borders of sound between the diegetic
and extradiegetic world) and unveiling the construction process of
televisual fiction (Füller 163), thus constituting what one could call anti-
fiction:
In einer fortlaufenden Fernsehserie finden sich Brüche in größerer

Anzahl als in einem Einzelfilm wieder, weil die Handlungsfäden und
Figuren über einen längeren Zeitraum entwickelt werden müssen.
Zudem [wird] eine Fernsehserie […] von einer Episode zur nächsten
(und sogar durch Werbepausen) unterbrochen. […] [D]er Zuschauer
[sic] [erlebt] die Welt einer Fernsehserie weniger geschlossen als jene
eines Kinofilmes […]. Twin Peaks’ Inkonsistenz und Inkohärenz ist so
[…] medien- und formattypisch. […] Daß David Lynch eben das Format
einer Serie mit fortlaufender Geschichte wählte, ist (eingedenk ihrer
Selbstreflexivität) darüber hinaus auch als bewußt eingesetzte Strategie
der Brechung zu verstehen, mittels derer er Twin Peaks als konstruiert
kenntlich macht. Somit tritt diese Serie […] als eine die Künstlichkeit
des dominanten Amerikabildes herausstellende Antifiktion auf. (Füller
163)
Twin Peaks also broke new ground concerning the transgression of

genre convention, one of the hallmarks of recent TV series (Winter 68).
It produced an unlikely combination of mystery thriller, crime series,
and soap opera (especially in romantic scenes marked by a turgid music
Alexandra Ganser 61
sequence), mixed with campy satire.8 Last but not least, the show was
also avant-garde regarding the creation of a cult following through the
use of a series of “commodity intertexts” (Collins qtd. in Lavery 7) and
merchandise, based on a distinct visual aesthetics referencing the 1950s
and retro Americana. In this context, Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle
MacLachlan)’s coffee fetish was another important element, capturing a
late-1980s Northwestern zeitgeist that saw the explosion of coffee
culture, lumberjack-style fashion, and nihilistic grunge rock (originating
in the Seattle and Portland areas). It strategically echoed other cult hits
such as the “Brat Pack” films Breakfast Club (1985, dir. John Hughes)
and St. Elmo’s Fire (1985, dir. Joel Schumacher) and referenced past
teenage cultures (e.g. the rebel bikers of the 50s, with icons like James
Dean and Marlon Brando), mixing past and present aesthetic codes. In
its exuberance of stylistic elements it also drew on the aesthetics of
camp by exaggerating characters and acting as a way of purposely
conveying an overdrawn atmosphere, a style that was just becoming
popular in the late 80s.
The ninety-minute pilot was first broadcast in the spring of 1990 on
ABC, followed by seven more episodes in the first season and a second
season of twenty-two episodes that aired until June 1991. Twin Peaks
was the TV sensation of the year (Füller 144) and became one of the
best-rated shows of 1990, a success with critics and audiences both
nationally and internationally that created a cult fan base. For its first
season, Twin Peaks received fourteen nominations at the Emmy Awards
and won three Golden Globes, among them the award for Best TV
Series—Drama. Within a short time, it was referenced all over the media
landscape: in television shows such as Saturday Night Live (when
MacLachlan hosted the show, he parodically ‘revealed’ that Shelley the
waitress was the killer), in commercials, comic books, video games,
films, and music. Declining viewer ratings led to ABC’s insistence that
the identity of Laura’s murderer be revealed midway through the second
season when the series started tumbling (Hampton 48). As both prologue
and epilogue, the series was followed in 1992 by the feature film Twin
8
Dolan reads the show’s genre transgressions as a marker of quality regarding
media-appropriateness: “To the extent that the series transgressed the rules of
its genre, it was inferior television; but to the extent that it […] reinvented
those rules, it was television at its best” (45).
Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, which centers on the murder of Teresa Banks
(Pamela Gidley), preceding Laura’s, and on the last seven days in
Laura’s life; in addition, the film clarifies Cooper’s fate in the series
finale.
Twin Peaks follows an investigation headed by FBI Special Agent
Cooper into the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl
Lee), as part of a joint interdiction program with the Drug Enforcement
Agency (Lavery 10). Each episode reflects one day in the town of Twin
Peaks; season one focuses on the mystery of how Laura Palmer was
killed after logger Pete Martell (Jack Nance) discovers her corpse; a
badly injured second girl, Ronette Pulaski, is found across the border in
Canada, only five miles away, walking along railroad tracks. Cooper’s
examination of Laura’s body reveals a tiny typed letter R under her
fingernail. He informs the devastated community that this matches the
signature of a murderer who killed another girl in the state and that the
killer might live in Twin Peaks. It soon turns out that Laura led a double
life, using cocaine, cheating on her boyfriend (quarterback Bobby
Briggs, played by Dana Ashbrook) with biker James Hurley (James
Marshall) and prostituting herself across the border in Canada at One-
Eyed Jack’s,9 a brothel and casino owned by Benjamin Horne (Richard
Beymer). Laura’s death sets off a chain of events around town. Her
father, attorney Leland Palmer (Ray Wise), suffers a nervous
breakdown; Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn Boyle), her best friend, begins
a relationship with James and, with the help of Laura’s cousin Maddy
(also played by Sheryl Lee), investigates into Laura’s double life;
Laura’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lawrence Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn), is first in a
series of suspects, each of whom prove innocent. In the meantime,
Horne, the richest man in Twin Peaks, plans to destroy the lumber mill
and murder its owner, Josie Packard (Joan Chen), as well as Josie’s
sister-in-law and his lover, Catherine Martell (Piper Laurie), so that he
can purchase the land for a development project. Horne’s daughter
Audrey (Sherilyn Fenn) becomes infatuated with Cooper and begins
spying around town in an effort to help him solve the crime and gain his
affection. Cooper has a dream in which he is approached by a one-armed
9
The fact that the name references the Western One Eyed Jacks (dir. Marlon
Brando, 1961) supports my point that Twin Peaks draws heavily on fron-
tier/border narratives (see below).
Alexandra Ganser 63
man who calls himself Mike and identifies as an otherworldly being.

Mike tells Cooper that Laura’s killer is a similar entity, Bob, who vows
to keep killing. Cooper then sees himself in a room surrounded by red
curtains; across from him are the dwarfish Man from Another Place
(Michael J. Anderson) and Laura, who whispers into Cooper’s ear. The
next morning, Cooper is certain that if he can decipher this dream, he
will know who killed Laura. The investigators, i.e., Cooper and the local
police—Sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean), Native American
Deputy Tommy “Hawk” Hill (Michael Horse), and Deputy Andy
Brennan (Harry Goaz)—find the one-armed man from the dream, Phillip
Gerard (Al Strobel), who indeed knows a Bob. Cooper suspects that
Laura’s dealer, Jacques Renault (whose last name begins with the letter
R), is the real killer, but upon the attempt to arrest him in the woods of
the Canadian border region, Renault is shot and hospitalized. Laura’s
father sneaks into the hospital and kills him while Cooper is shot by a
masked gunman, ending the season with a cliffhanger.
The second season starts with Cooper injured and semi-lucid,
experiencing a vision in which a giant reveals mysterious clues to him. It
turns out that Gerard is the “host” for Mike, an inhabiting spirit who
used Bob to help him kill and who insists that Bob has possessed
someone in town for decades. Donna, in the meantime, retrieves Laura’s
secret diary, which discloses that Bob (suggested to be a friend of her
father’s) raped her repeatedly as a child and that she used drugs to cope
with the abuse. Cooper believes that the killer is Ben Horne; but when
Laura’s father Leland brutally kills Maddy, it turns out that he is Bob’s
host. Leland confesses to Cooper that Bob has possessed him since
molesting him as a child and begs for forgiveness, dying in the agent’s
arms. Cooper is set to leave Twin Peaks but is held up until Windom
Earle (Kenneth Welsh), his former mentor and FBI partner, comes to
town for revenge: Cooper had an affair with Earle’s wife while she was
under his protection as a witness; apparently Earle went mad, killed his
wife, stabbed Cooper, and was committed to a mental institution, but
escaped into the woods. Cooper, in search of Bob’s origins, learns more
about the mysteries of Ghostwood National Forest, in which a White
Lodge and a Black Lodge are located. These are two extra-dimensional
realms analogous to Heaven and Hell, and home to Bob and Mike, a
giant (Carel Struycken), and a dwarf (the Man From Another Place). The
special agent falls in love with the new girl in town, Annie Blackburn
(Heather Graham), who wins the Miss Twin Peaks contest but is
kidnapped by Earle and taken to the parallel dimension of the Black
Lodge. With the help of the mysterious Log Lady (Catherine E.
Coulson), a woman who constantly cradles a log in her arms whose
mysterious messages she claims to transmit,10 Cooper follows them into
the Lodge, a place he recognizes from his dreams. He is greeted by the
Man From Another Place, by the giant, and by Laura’s spirit, who each
give Cooper prophecies about his future. Searching for Annie and Earle,
Cooper encounters doppelgängers of various dead people, including
Maddy and Leland, and eventually finds Earle, who demands that
Cooper give up his soul in exchange for Annie. Cooper agrees and Earle
kills him, but Bob denies Earle this power and reverses time in the
Lodge, bringing Cooper back to life. The Special Agent flees, pursued
by Bob and a doppelgänger of himself. Cooper and Annie reappear in
the woods and are discovered by Sheriff Truman. Annie is hospitalized;
when Cooper wakes up, he asks about Annie’s condition. Entering the
bathroom to brush his teeth and looking into the mirror, his reflection is
Bob, revealing that Cooper is his new host. He rams his face into the
mirror and, laughing maniacally, mock-repeats his earlier question about
Annie.
Critics usually call Twin Peaks a “postmodern” drama (e.g. Page 43;
Reeves et al. 173) in which the universe has fallen apart and time is out
of joint; all is glued together, at best, by a nostalgia for an alleged lost
unity as Cooper tries to re-establish clear boundaries between good and
evil, between subterranean secrecy and small-town everyday life. The
ending shows that he fails utterly, as a serially conceived evil (Bob
inhabiting a series of hosts) does not respect institutional law and its
representatives, but transgresses right into Cooper’s psyche. While
Cooper tries to locate evil geographically in the Canadian border region,
he is led instead into the mysterious Ghostwood Forest and the Black
Lodge, as well as his own interior abysses. While the special agent thus
tries to construct a signifying system explaining and solving the crime,
he instead gets entangled (and ultimately lost) in different signifying
10
Lynch later added brief introductions to each episode in which the Log Lady,
even before the opening credits, addresses the audience, a move that further
highlights the fictionality of the story as she breaks down the fourth wall,
moving between the world of Twin Peaks and that of the viewers.
Alexandra Ganser 65
systems, multiple dimensions of reality beyond his control and

understanding.
“It is a story of many, but it begins with one”: Serialized Doubles and
the Neo-Gothic Soap
Like Lynch’s Blue Velvet before, Twin Peaks explores the gap between
small-town respectability and the inner darkness of characters who
initially appear innocent. Eventually, they all turn out to lead double
lives and/or to embody double selves. The “one” which the Log Lady
talks about in her introduction to the pilot episode (qtd. above) might
refer to Laura, but she insists that Twin Peaks is also “a story of many.”
Indeed, the series plays excessively with replications (Carrion 241) and
the Gothic-Romantic doppelgänger motif (Birns 277), creating a never-
ending series of doubles whose identities are multiply substituted
(Carrion 242). In contrast to the romantics, however, the show’s focus is
on the “indecisiveness of the uncanny” (Birns 278) rather than on occult
truth, creating a postmodern Neo-romanticism which combines high
romantic pathos and postmodern pastiche. Certainly, much of Twin
Peaks can be read as satire and parody, but its emotional power is
decisively unironical, evoking frightening, terrifying horror as well as
compassion, empathy, and suspense, thus producing a disturbing effect:
“What could have been soothing repetition of formula instead becomes a
disturbing process of transgression and uncertainty” (Ledwon 24).
As Twin Peaks’s character structure reveals, its doppelgängers are
indeed serialized, creating a multiplicity of interrelated doubles that
extend beyond the actual show, infinitely, it seems, and through the
show’s affective dimensions (its horror and romance elements) also to
the audiences’ minds.11 These serializations refer both to the diegetic
world of the characters and the level of media. For instance, the show’s
title and the town name indicate the twoness and schizophrenia both of
the community (torn between good and evil) and of Twin Peaks as a
11
Kuzniar explores the role of doubling in both the physical and metaphysical
sense, analyzing the division and disguise of body parts in relation to Twin
Peaks’s fetishizing of women’s bodies and voices. For feminist readings of
the series, see also George or Davenport.
two-season series, playing also with the Peaks/peeks homonym (for

Telotte, they hint at “both a natural symmetry or order and a disturbing
doubleness,” 161; also Carrion 244). Similarly, Laura owns two diaries
in the show, complemented extradiegetically by Jennifer Lynch’s spin-
off book The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. Laura herself, though
arguably the absent center of the show, is serialized as a victim, most
obviously when her cousin Maddy appears and is impersonated by the
same actress (Reeves et al. 184). Aesthetically, Bobby and James
(Laura’s double romance, Birns 278), Audrey and Donna (who in the
end turn out to be half-sisters), as well as Leland and Ben—to name just
the most prominent and obvious examples—are constructed as serialized
characters.
Serialized pairs are not static pairs in the show, however, as doubles
become serialized both as double and as more than two: more
prospective victims and more prospective ‘killing agents’ inhabited by
Bob. Double lives are serialized as every single pillar of society turns
out as at the same time a dark character, such as local patriarch and
business owner Ben Horne (doubled both by his brother Jerry and his
attorney Leland), whom Birns describes as “the kernel of malice in our
outer world” while “Leland is […] grafted by the show [inside] onto our
own psyches” (280). Since both are established as suspects, they can
also be read as doubling (or double hosts of) Bob and Mike. Bob’s and
Mike’s serial character has been central to most interpretations of Twin
Peaks, which read the show as probing the depths and uncontainability
of evil.
In the context of the crime genre, Twin Peaks takes up the model of
double detectives (the Holmes/Watson model) in the Cooper/Truman
parallel. It serializes the model by a parallel construction of official and
unofficial deputies (Andy/Hawk and Audrey/Donna in the show; as well
as the screenwriters and the viewers outside the show, regarding their
implied televisual contract). In fact, a number of viewer surrogates
serially transgress the border between the living room and the vicarious
home(town) of Twin Peaks: most obviously, Cooper, like the audience,
travels to the town and takes the viewers along as he learns about its
community, structure, and environment. In the scene in which Cooper is
introduced in the pilot, the important structural parallel between the
detective figure and the audience is established by a camera angle that
places the viewer next to him in his car. Like Cooper, the audience
Alexandra Ganser 67
investigates Twin Peaks, which becomes a temporary, vicarious home

for both. This scene, through Cooper and his identificatory potential,
also constructs the illusion of a promised land—not of milk and honey,
but of coffee, majestic firs, and “damn good food” (S01E01). Using a
dictaphone, he tells a mysterious “Diane” (a disembodied secretary who
never materializes):
Entering town of Twin Peaks. […] Never seen so many trees in my life.
As W.C. Fields would say, I’d rather be here than Philadelphia. […]
Lunch was $6.31 at the Lamplighter Inn. […] That was a tuna fish
sandwich on whole wheat, a slice of cherry pie and a cup of coffee.
Damn good food. Diane, if you ever get up this way, that cherry pie is
worth a stop. (S01E01)
If we read the figure of Cooper as reflexive of the medium of the TV

series, or, perhaps more specifically the genre of the soap opera (after
all, the most domestic genre in the TV landscape of the 1980s and
1990s), he insinuates that television generally presents a vicarious
illusion-reality in which the romance of the innocent pastoral and small-
town, middle-class morals prevail. Twin Peaks’s opening credits
sequence likewise invokes the pastoral visually (birds, the
Snoqualmie/Whitetail Falls, and peaceful images of the lush
countryside), then destroys it immediately by introducing industrial
imagery (huge saws cutting ancient firs of enormous dimensions,
echoing Leo Marx’s classic study The Machine in the Garden).12
Subsequently, Cooper and the audience with him realize that these
illusions cover the surface of the American imagination of itself,
masking its repressed, dark side: colonialism (Ghostwood refers just as
well to the ghosts of dead Native Americans, see below), incest, drugs,
violence, corruption, environmental exploitation, even murder.13
12
Allmendiger has followed this trace in his interpretation, reading Twin Peaks
as an ecocritical text in the general context of the New Western; for him, it is
a lament against the exploitation of natural resources (such as America’s
Northern woodlands).
13
Next to Cooper, Lucy represents another viewer surrogate, transgressing into
the viewers’ living rooms with her voiceover commentaries during commer-
cial breaks; notably, we encounter her as a soap opera buff in addition,
watching Invitation to Love (the fictional soap-within-the-soap) as obses-
sively as we are watching Twin Peaks.
The double dimensions of Twin Peaks—the surface and subterranean

worlds—are thus also serialized, transgressing into a meta-medial
engagement with the TV landscape. The fate of a number of Twin Peaks
characters—Laura and Maddy, for instance, central doppelgängers
themselves (Desmet 99), are reflected in Invitation to Love: a fictional
soap-within-the-soap that suggests how TV series can be serialized
endlessly, multiplying into more and more of the same—indeed, a
critical comment Twin Peaks makes about the LOP landscape. Invitation
to Love is Twin Peaks’s even soapier alter ego, while Twin Peaks casts
itself, also through reference to the former, as what I call a Neo-Gothic
soap opera (pace Frost’s description, “Soap Noir”; qtd. in Winter 79),
highlighting the series’ self-referentiality as well as its transgressive
qualities. Its transgression into the viewers’ homes and hearts is
furthermore reinforced by way of its affective dimension, combining
elements of melodrama/soap opera and horror (Ledwon 267), the genres
most geared towards an emotional response not confined spatially and
temporally to the act of watching an episode (e.g. by triggering
nightmares in the audience).
A number of commodity intertexts have further serialized the show’s
transgression of medial borders, leaving the realm of television and
entering the spheres of print publishing, audiotapes, film, and material
culture (Füller 157). Many of these media transgressions are in fact not
mere results of marketing (though they are this, too), but they reveal
constitutive elements of the plot: the Secret Diary, as a case in point,
insinuates the solution of the murder, while the prequel movie Twin
Peaks: Fire, Walk with Me attempted to re-shape interpretation; both can
be read as “interpretive interventions” (Birns 283). Other commodity
intertexts offer a wealth of backstory: Scott Frost (David Frost’s brother)
wrote The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life,
My Tapes, and Kyle MacLachlan recorded Diane: The Secret Tapes of
Agent Dale Cooper, which combined audio tracks from various episodes
with newly recorded monologues. Most quirky perhaps, Welcome to
Twin Peaks: Access Guide to the Town offers information about local
history, flora, fauna, and culture of the fictitious town, bringing it to life
beyond the screen in a genre that is usually obsessed with facts rather
than fiction. In serializing the show beyond the limits of its medium, the
makers of Twin Peaks paved the way for an ever more inventive market
Alexandra Ganser 69
of paraphernalia: collection cards, coffee mugs, fashion, and jewelry, to

name but a few.
Filmic intertexts are referenced by Twin Peaks’s film noir aesthetics
(with black, white, gray, and red as dominant colors), by allusions to
Hitchcock’s Psycho (the stairs to Laura’s room are modeled upon those
leading to Norman Bates’s mummified mother), by the evocation of
1950s movies like Rebel without a Cause or The Wild One and the TV
series Peyton Place (based on Grace Metalious’s 1956 novel, which
similarly focuses on the dark sides of small-town America), but also of
other films from the Lynch universe, especially Blue Velvet (in which
MacLachlan also played a lead investigator, albeit amateur). Such serial
continuity is also present on the level of the score, composed by Lynch’s
long-term collaborator Badalamenti (who also wrote the score for Wild
at Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Lost Highway, Mulholland
Drive, and The Straight Story). It establishes Lynch’s œuvre itself as a
serial, with different narrative and aesthetic arcs transgressing borders of
genre and medium. Last but not least, the series now further serializes
itself by starting a new season, twenty-five years later, taking up a
narrative that generically is geared towards a closure permanently
postponed (Kelleter 27; also Dolan 43, who characterizes it as “designed
[…] as a specifically open-ended story, intended to replicate itself
endlessly”).
As Twin Peaks also revisits a number of U.S.-American master
narratives in terms of both visual-aesthetic and narrative choices, the
show itself can be read as part of a culturally distinct seriality, in which
American myths (or key elements thereof) are playfully rehearsed and
re-articulated; from this perspective, Twin Peaks is always already
preceded and succeeded. These myths relate most prominently to the
American romance of the frontier and the “Errand into the Wilderness”
(see Carroll), hinted at by the special agent’s last name, Cooper (evoking
both James Fenimore and Gary, as Dr. Jacoby jokes in the scene in
which he first meets him). Pollard reflects on the frontier/border town as
a metonymy for America (297); Georg Seeßlen similarly describes the
town as a mythical U.S.-American locale: “Twin Peaks ist die
amerikanische Gesellschaft nach der Reagan-Ära, nach dem
Zusammenbruch aller Optionen; alles, was die Welt verspricht, ist schon
hier, und alles, was sie befürchten lässt, ereignet sich auch [hier]” (Lynch
114).
The double/doppelgänger structure, serialized by Twin Peaks, is of

course a Gothic device. The American Gothic focuses on concealing
dark secrets under a pastoral tableau in the manner of Hawthorne and
Irving and on the family as the central enigma, leading Ledwon to view
American television in general as “a natural venue for the Gothic, the
most disturbed of domestic fictions” (263). From a Gothic perspective,
the Palmer family appears as cursed conquerors whose patriarchs are
destroyed by insanity and their own evil, evocative of such canonical
texts as Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables, Charles Brockden
Brown’s Wieland (echoed in the first name of Leland [Birns 281-82]), or
William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!. In a more post-colonial vein,
the Anglo colonizers, in Twin Peaks, can be read as haunted by the
ghosts of those they have driven from the land, i.e., Native Americans
(which might explain Bob’s long-haired, swarthy phenotype and the
significance of Ghostwood National Forest as well as the ancient Native
caves near the town [cf. Telotte 169]). Leland’s grandfather, Joshua
Palmer, references the Biblical conqueror of Canaan, a pioneer and
settler-imperialist. It is noteworthy in this context that Lynch and Frost
originally titled the series Northwest Passage, which would have further
emphasized the historical dimension of trans-continental exploration and
conquest. Hence the show presents us with “a sense of the […]
dispossession of the Native American population: the haunting residues
left by their memory, albeit dialectically, ‘displaced’ into the psyches of
the current occupants of European descent” (Birns 282). Similarly,
Seeßlen describes Bob as a “Gespenst der Landnahme” (Lynch 115),
explaining that
Twin Peaks ist der Ort unserer Zivilisationsgeschichte an ihrem Ende. Es

ist der Ort, den John Ford in seinen wahrhaft tragischen Western
beschrieb, an dem die neue Heimat der weißen Eindringlinge auf ewig
eine Fremde bleiben muss. Nur der indianische Polizist […] weiß noch
etwas von der Einheit der Natur und der Menschen und von der
Notwendigkeit, dem eigenen bösen Schatten zu begegnen, um Mensch
zu werden, während die Kolonisatoren neuen Zuschnitts in der Natur
zunächst nichts sehen als eine Ressource: Reichtum. […] Und die
Entfremdung geht noch weiter, aus dem Ghostwood Forest, dem […]
natürlichen Reichtum soll ein Vergnügungspark entstehen. (117)
Alexandra Ganser 71
Notably, in the show’s final episode, during Cooper’s transformative

visit to the Black Lodge the word doppelgänger is uttered in a mocking
manner by The Man from Another Place, finally giving the viewer the
main clue to the series’ interpretation. Still, a large number of viewers
and critics were deeply alienated because of this ending, which insists
that Cooper is unable to save the town (or America, for that matter). In
this, the show was perhaps ahead of its time; today, detectives and the
police are no longer expected to function as restorers of order, but have
themselves become criminals, even serial killers (as in Dexter, for
instance; see Hoepker and Schubert in this volume).
In sum, Twin Peaks’s doubles and doppelgängers are serialized in
spatially and temporally transgressive ways: spatially, they leave the
realm of the show and enter the extradiegetic world through both
intertextuality and medial self-reflexivity; and temporally because of the
series’ reversal of the colonization process: past and present are
inseparable as those who once colonized the Other are now themselves
serially ‘colonized,’ ‘inhabited,’ or ‘possessed’ by their ancestors’ sins
that grip past, present, and future. Taken together, the Gothic romance,
the influence of detective fiction, and a number of filmic and televisual
intertexts create, with Twin Peaks, what Ledwon has termed the
“Television Gothic,” the TV set itself a “mysterious box simultaneously
inhabited by spirit images of ourselves and inhabiting our living rooms”
(260). For Ledwon, Twin Peaks was the first series to tap the full
potential of a postmodern television Gothic, a mode that emphasizes the
ordinary rather than the extraordinary (264-65), the everyday rather than
the singular event. As the TV becomes the ghost in our homes, the series
utilizes familiar Gothic themes and devices such as incest, the grotesque,
repetition, interpolated narration, haunted settings, mirrors, doubles, and
supernatural occurrences. But these elements undergo a sea change […].
What could have been a soothing repetition of formula instead becomes
a disturbing process of transgression [into our domestic spaces] and
[epistemic] uncertainty. (260)
“One chants out between two worlds”: The “Seriality of the Uncanny” at
the U.S.-Canadian Border
Dagmar von Hoff has recently called the specific seriality of Twin Peaks
a “seriality of the uncanny” (“Serialität des Unheimlichen”), invoking
Ledwon’s observations that “the Television Gothic is the
uncanny/unheimlich contained within the familiar/heimlich of the
home,” as the Freudian uncanny “is that which ought to remain hidden
and secret, but which has become visible,” “not something new, but
something familiar” (263). The notion of the uncanny, collapsing the
binary difference between inside and outside, the familiar or domestic
and the strange, the natural and the supernatural, perhaps encapsulates
the basic and most significant transgression the series performs. As
Füller observes, “Twin Peaks handelt in erster Linie von Grenzen und
deren Auflösungen—und das nicht nur als Fernsehserie mit
fortlaufender Geschichte, in der der Begriff ‘Ende’ […] bedeutungslos
werden muß” (150).
Twin Peaks serializes its transgressions of borders on many levels: in
terms of stylistic convention and genre, offering a bricolage of horror,
mystery, thriller, crime, soap, comedy, satire, even sitcom and creating a
postmodern drama (Page 43), or, more specifically, what Linda Williams
has aptly termed a “Serial Thriller-Soap”; in terms of intradiegetic and
extradiegetic worlds (Twin Peaks proper and its commodity intertexts,
see above); but also in terms of a scenography that highlights the
interpenetration of inside and outside, of nature and culture. The
abundance of wooden interiors and stuffed animal decoration,
apparently trophies from hunting and fishing (e.g. at the Great Northern
Hotel, the Sheriff’s Department, the sawmill, or the interiors of Twin
Peaks homes) are symbolic of nature tamed; the forces of ‘evil’ that
penetrate both inside and outside further dissolve any distinction
between the two. For its lack of envisioning a stable outside of ‘evil,’ the
show also cannot point to any restorative dimension (Seeßlen, Lynch
115-16) as “evil is not just at home in that last refuge of security, the
Alexandra Ganser 73
family; it has also taken possession of the last bastion of democracy: the
law” (116 [translation mine]).14
On the level of character, what critics have noted as most significant
is that the detective figure in Twin Peaks is a boundary crosser himself,
breaking the dualism of the rational detective and the irrationality of
crime and hence disturbing, as a side effect, the classical gendered
economy of crime. The detective becomes what Martha Nochimson has
called the first “mind-body-detective” (24), who, for instance, uses what
would be considered an irrational, “Tibetan method” (throwing stones
while names of suspects are uttered) as one of his investigative
techniques, or consults the Log Lady’s log. The series itself, as Lorenz
Engell notes, utilizes magical, pre-Enlightenment paradigms of
knowledge based on relations of similarity and seriality (“Wiederkehr”;
“Folgen” 254). In addition, the body-mind-detective opposes the
disavowal of the detective’s body in Hollywood and detective films in
general by integrating mind and body in a way appropriate for TV,
which, as a medium, “deflates the dualism of the orthodox detective
through its unorthodox normalization of shifts and slippage—and thus
its normalization of the vicissitudes of the flesh” (Nochimson 24). The
sensual loses its conventional coding as a distraction for the male
detective-hero, but becomes integral as a method of detection and is
even presented as a source of comic delight:
Cooper is Holmesian only in his predisposition for mystery: he is far too

sensually stimulated by Douglas firs […] to qualify as a man of cerebral
lust […]. The popularity of Dale Cooper is a tacit admission that on a
visceral level the television audience knows how wrong the traditional
detective is in that medium […]. Cooper made us gasp with delight
precisely because he identifies with the vulnerability of his body.
Uniting precision of mind with the flow of body in his pursuit of
mystery, Cooper emerges as the first detective truly appropriate to the
medium of television. (Nochimson 23-24)
Cooper crosses boundaries between lucidity and dreams, and between

life and death in the Red Room (i.e., the Black Lodge), a space of
14
The German original reads: “das Böse ist nicht nur gerade in dem letzten
Refugium der Geborgenheit, in der Familie, beheimatet, es hat auch von der
letzten Bastion der Demokratie, vom Recht, Besitz ergriffen.”
psychoanalytic re-enactment (Page 44), and these dreams and visions

are important in order for him to access another dimension (without
which he could not solve the crime). Compare Mike’s message to
Cooper: “Through the darkness / The future past / The magician longs to
see. / One chants out between two worlds / ‘Fire, walk with me’” (qtd. in
Nochimson 26). The magician is of course Cooper himself, and the core
of his special detection is the magic of boundary crossing: “[…] as a
boundary specialist, Cooper is not the disavower of the body, the purger
of bodily fluctuation through the rigid limits of convention, but a
specialist in crossing boundaries, a quester capable of moving
confidently and productively between the mental clarity of the law and
the intelligent fluidity of the body” (25). Yet he also uncannily shadows
Bob and Mike, who cross the boundary from another dimension and
thus “the limits of the natural world to inhabit it as parasites of human
hosts” (Nochimson 25). Thus Cooper functions as the logical next
habitat for them as he is “usurped by Twin Peaks’/Twin Peaks’ free-
floating signifier” (Lavery 14).
Twin Peaks itself is a town located near the “world’s longest
undefended border” (Sadowski-Smith 119), “five miles south of the
Canadian border, twelve miles east of the state line” (Cooper in episode
one), somewhere in the backwoods of Ghostwood National Forest. The
U.S.-Canadian border is crossed frequently, mainly by the U.S. guests of
One Eyed Jack’s backroom bordello (such as Leland and Ben Horne,
who are also former or prospective hosts to Bob) and those characters
involved in dealing drugs. As Claudia Sadowski-Smith notes, the
increase of undocumented immigrants entering the U.S. since the late
1980s via the Canadian border has led to a discursive shift in images and
narratives of this border: they increasingly tend to construct the
country’s northern border in close similarity to its southern counterpart
(119). While U.S.-Canadian border narratives, since the 1960s, have
traditionally considered the crossing into Canada as a possibility of
sanctuary—for indigenous people, slaves, or political dissenters (120;
see also Roberts and Stirrup 6)—Twin Peaks, in the early 1990s, hardly
distinguishes at all between the Canadian and the American sides. In
this, it participates in more recent narratives which represent the U.S.-
Canadian border as a porous divide, exposing the idea of any national
autonomy guarded at the state line as illusory (121).
Alexandra Ganser 75
All of these boundary-crossings are characteristic of postmodern drama,

as is Twin Peaks’s rejection of historical authenticity—perhaps even a-
historicity, considering its mix of the 50s and the late 80s (Füller 145),
its absurdisms and techniques of alienation, its self-reflexivity and -
referentiality—a growing tendency in American TV series since the
1970s (Booker 97)—, its semiotic excess in both the realm of high
culture and the popular, as well as its tendency to invite alternative,
multiple, and ironic readings (Page 43). Twin Peaks was the first series
to radicalize the postmodern “epistemic re-conception” (“epistemische
Neuverfassung”) of the TV series (Fahle 73), allowing for different
epistemic systems and methods to exist side by side:
Twin Peaks etabliert eine epistemische Ordnung, die auf dem

Zusammenspiel rationaler und intuitiver Erkenntnismodi aufbaut,
platziert dabei […] verschiedene ikonische Ebenen nebeneinander und
schafft auf diese Weise Serialisierungsverläufe, die sich über alle
Episoden verstreuen. [Das serielle Prinzip] vervielfältigt sich […] und
kann nicht mehr nur als narratives Organisationsprinzip verstanden
werden. Serien gewinnen dadurch—durchaus im Sinne der
Postmoderne—eine stärkere intertextuelle Form, indem sie sich auf
andere Formate […], Genres […] und andere Serien […] beziehen. (173)
Conclusion
As I have argued, Twin Peaks uses twins and doubles as part and parcel
of a specific seriality of transgression that has led to its characterization
as a “meta-series” (Seeßlen, “Return” 55). But despite its formal and
narrative innovations, the politics of Twin Peaks has been criticized as a
conservative “Cold War Allegory” (Booker), an instance of a
semiotically “excessive Americanism” (Birns 279), and for its middle-
classism (“a paranoid vision where unknown universal powers are out to
get the middle class” [Pollard 303]). Certainly the show can be decried
for its blatant use of stereotypes (especially regarding the token Native
American deputy, or the Orientalist representation of Asian American
Josie Packard) and for propagating a morality of coffee and pie (perhaps
the most serial of food combinations repetitively consumed at certain
times of the day, with similar time spans in between). But while the
nostalgic seriality of coffee and pie creates homeliness, the serial events
to which it is juxtaposed constantly interrupt the habitual by introducing

the uncontainable uncanny in small-town America. Donuts, coffee,
traffic lights, and Douglas fir trees create a magical promise of meaning
and stability they cannot keep (Füller 160). The transgression of borders
between Self and Other, the natural and supernatural, and good and evil
is not something the series condemns morally, but states as a fact to be
mourned (thus the association with the Trauerspiel, with the second
principal emotion next to horror/terror evoked in the viewer being
sadness [Birns 280]). Hence Twin Peaks has also been said to write a
“Secret History of the United States” (Hampton) as a sad and horrible
story. Seeßlen sees Twin Peaks as both “perfection” (“Vollendung”) and
“rejection” (“Verwerfung”) of postmodernism, glancing at a New Age
in which, however, we cannot be salvaged either (Lynch 114). Booker,
among others, eventually likens evaluations of Twin Peaks as
progressive or conservative to the different conclusions that Linda
Hutcheon and Fredric Jameson draw about postmodernism as either
potentially subversive (Hutcheon) or merely the affirmative cultural
logic of late capitalism (Jameson). In any case, Twin Peaks insists that
pastoral and Romantic myths of America are weaker than horrific
American ‘realities’ and highlights the artificiality of both
Lynch’s/Cooper’s, the viewers’, and television’s images of the U.S.
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Representing Power: Formats of Political TV Series
MARJOLAINE BOUTET
The Politics of Time in House of Cards
Much has been written about House of Cards and its cynical depiction
of the political world, but little attention has been given to its representa-
tion of journalism. Yet the complex relations between journalists and
politicians are at the heart of the narrative, especially during its first
season. In particular, the series underlines the increasing importance of
the present in news media coverage and its consequences for democracy.
Still, the most transgressive aspect of House of Cards is not its diegesis,
but the new mode of releasing an original series en masse as introduced
by Netflix. It radically transforms the experience of viewing by leaving
the consumers in charge of their own schedule and transgresses televi-
sion rules and habits per se, challenging the viewer’s relation to time
and the consumption of series.
On February 1, 2013, the American SVOD service Netflix1 made its
first original series available to its subscribers: House of Cards is an
adaptation of a BBC political thriller from 1990 by Andrew Davies,
inspired by Michael Dobbs’s first novel, which had been published a
year earlier. Dobbs was a British conservative politician who most
probably tapped into his own experience as a close advisor to Margaret
Thatcher to paint a savory and dark portrait of British parliamentary
politics.
The thirteen-hour-long adaptation by Beau Willimon transfers the
Richard III-like four-hour drama to the American political context,
preserving the main narrative arch but enriching the secondary charac-
1
Netflix, Inc. is an American company founded in 1997. It was first an online
DVD-renting service and ten years later developed an online video streaming
service of various media, mostly films and TV series.
84 Politics of Time
ters and plots.2 The Chief Whip Francis Urquhart becomes the Majority
Whip Francis “Frank” Underwood, and his Machiavellian plot to be-
come Conservative Party Leader (in Britain) turns into a manipulative
scheme to become Vice-President. Both plans basically follow the same
steps, but the change of geographical context is not the only difference
between the two series.
In an essay recently translated into English, Italian philosopher Mau-
rizio Ferraris shows how smartphones have affected our entire way of
living, communicating, and thinking as they make people, knowledge
and, essentially, the world immediately available to us, wherever we are
(14-15). This has transformed in particular our relation to time and
space. Smartphones record everything and store every call, text mes-
sage, or web update with a time stamp, whereas the exact location of an
individual or an action is more difficult to know with certainty (23).
Instant e-mails, text messages, news alerts and tweets provide a new
sense of urgency, of constant breaking news, but do not allow us to
select the information we receive and assess their relative importance.
House of Cards perfectly illustrates this new connected society.
Instantaneity is a key element of the series, both from an extra- and from
an intra-diegetic perspective. It reveals how our society in general has
changed in the past decade, and more specifically how remarkably
journalism as a profession has been transformed. In September 2009,
President Barack Obama declared: “I am concerned that if the direction
of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-check-
ing, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end
up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot
of mutual understanding” (McChesney and Nichols xxxvii).
Time in House of Cards: Politics vs. Journalism
From a diegetic point of view, House of Cards conforms to what audi-

ences in the 2010s expect from “a typical product of our current golden
age of television—dark, expertly directed and acted, and about five
times better than the average Hollywood film” (Wu). Its narrative is
2
The following seasons cannot be considered adaptations of the British
original series.
Marjolaine Boutet 85
transgressive because it addresses contemporary issues about “our abil-

ity […] to communicate fully and functionally but also democracy it-
self” (McChesney and Nichols ix-x). House of Cards arguably portrays
the new relationship between journalism and politics in the age of Twit-
ter in more detail than other shows.
“The Bigger Picture” (“Chapter 1”):3 The Time of Politics
The leading character of the show is Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey),

a fifty-something Congressman from Georgia who is also the Majority
Whip, i.e., the one in charge of the party’s discipline who has to make
sure the other Democrats in the House of Representatives vote according
to the President’s wishes. From a very early age, Frank has been deter-
mined to climb the political ladder to the top, and he is willing to do
anything to reach this goal. In “Chapter 8,” when Frank returns to his
alma mater for a ceremony in his honor, his former college classmates
remember that he already adopted the persona of a politician as a teen-
ager, and in “Chapter 3,” he criticizes his father’s lack of ambition, mak-
ing quite clear that he has envisioned a higher purpose for himself since
childhood. Therefore, he has constructed a destiny for himself and in-
scribes it in a decades-long time frame. Frank is a chess player and
knows he has several pieces to move before he can win: his marriage to
Claire (Robin Wright), the secrets he keeps, and every decision he takes
are all part of his bigger plan.
The series starts precisely at a moment when something does not go
according to his plan, forcing him to set another one in motion and
enticing the sympathy of the viewers with a Richard III-like monologue
(Crouch). “Chapter 1” begins with Frank suffering an ego-bruising re-
buff: he is denied the post of Secretary of State that he had been prom-
ised by the President whom he helped to get elected. Feeling betrayed,
he masterminds a project of revenge. In this scene from “Chapter 1,” he
3
Each episode of House of Cards is entitled “Chapter […],” the first season
going from Chapter 1 to 13 and the second season from Chapter 14 to 26,
emphasizing the similarity between the series and a book from which the
audience is free to read as many chapters as it likes in the same sitting.
86 Politics of Time
vents his discontent and colludes with his extremely loyal Chief of Staff,
Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly):
FRANK: All of them. I hold all of them accountable.

DOUG: Retribution?
FRANK: No! It’s more than that. Take a step back. Look at the bigger
picture.
DOUG: I think I see what you’re getting at. Kern first?
FRANK: That’s how you devour a whale, Doug. One bite at a time.
(S01E01)
It is clear in this dialogue that Frank Underwood has a comprehensive

approach to time: he will patiently set his plan in motion (“one bite at a
time”), at first moving his pieces on the chessboard carefully, but
accelerating in the end when checkmate is near. In this first episode, the
Congressman has “a hundred days” (S01E01) to pass an Education Re-
form Bill, the first step of his plan. But in “Chapter 12,” he only has one
week to subjugate the billionaire Raymond Tusk, and in “Chapter 13”
his fate is decided in “thirteen minutes.”
FRANK: [To the camera] Everything hinges on the next few minutes.
All my months of planning. Every move I made. (S01E13)
By the end of the first season, in “Chapter 13,” his full plan is in motion,
and the politician is in his office at night, eagerly waiting to know if his
scheme has succeeded. The clock starts ticking loudly, as it has been
doing from time to time since “Chapter 10,” when Underwood’s goal of
becoming Vice-President appeared clearly to the viewer for the first
time.
FRANK: [To himself] Thirteen minutes from now, Tusk will meet
with the President, if he isn’t there already. [To the clock]
You’ve never been an ally, have you? Pressing on with your
slow, incisive march. [To the audience] Time would have
killed Russo if I hadn’t. Just as it will kill me someday. Kill
us all. (S01E13)
In his lust for more power, Frank is frustrated with his inability to make
the clock move faster. Because the clock would not bend to his will, in a
very George W. Bushian stance,4 he considers it to be an enemy, or at

least an opponent.
Still, Underwood believes he has accelerated time in perpetrating the
cold-blooded murder of an alcoholic fellow Congressman whom he
mercilessly manipulated in order to achieve his goal. This belief can be
compared to that of a hunter who kills his prey before another predator
does. This comparison applies in a very literal sense to Frank Under-
wood, who observes his prey patiently but shows neither hesitation nor
mercy when the time to kill has come.
In House of Cards, Underwood’s character is of course closer to a
satirical cliché of the corrupt politician than to reality (Serisier), yet his
broad apprehension of time seems to point to a distinctive feature of
politics: the length and hazardous nature of politicians’ careers. Still, it is
only when we compare the time of politics to the time of journalism 2.0
that we can fully understand its dramatic value, as well as its relevance
for contemporary issues in democratic societies.
Trapped in the “Now”: The time of Journalism 2.0
In the first episode, Frank meets a young and very ambitious journalist,
Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara), who proposes leaking any information he
wishes in exchange for exclusivity (“Chapter 1”). Born in the late 1980s,
Zoe belongs to the “Generation Me” (Twenge 5-7) and has developed a
strong sense of entitlement and narcissistic character traits. She did not
become a journalist for any altruistic motive, such as informing other
people or improving democracy and citizenship; she only craves per-
sonal recognition, e.g., in the following scene from “Chapter 1”:
[As always, in a hurry, Zoe has bumped into her Editor in Chief, Tom
Hammerschmidt, on her way to see Lucas Goodwin, the deputy editor.]
ZOE: Sorry! Sorry Mr. Hammerschmidt. Zoe [Hammerschmidt
stays silent]… Barnes! [To Lucas] Did it take him a year to
remember your name?
LUCAS: Still on it…
ZOE: (with a fake smile) Good morning, Lucas!
4
See his speech at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington,
D.C. on October 6, 2005.
88 Politics of Time
LUCAS: What can I do for you, Zoe?

ZOE: I am sick of the Fairfax City Council.
LUCAS: You tell me every day.
ZOE: Move me online! My own blog. First person. Subjective.
Five hundred words.
LUCAS: Not gonna happen.
ZOE: I’ll go underground: the backrooms, the urinals! I’ll win over
staff members on the Hill, they need a place to vent!
LUCAS: A gossip column.
ZOE: No! We lift the veil. Say what’s really going on.
LUCAS: This is The Washington Herald, Zoe. This is not… TMZ.
ZOE: Do you know how many people watch TMZ?
LUCAS: I couldn’t care less.
ZOE: Which is why print journalism is dying.
LUCAS: Then it’ll die with dignity. At least in this paper.
ZOE: You’re stuck in the twentieth century, Lucas. You lack imagi-
nation.
LUCAS: Maybe so. But right now I don’t need imagination. I need
copy. (S01E01)
In this conversation, Zoe advocates digital journalism while Lucas

champions twentieth century’s traditional journalism. Their work ethics
are radically different, even if they were probably born less than a dec-
ade apart. Lucas does not question the way he has learnt to be a journal-
ist and how slowly he has climbed the ladder inside The Washington
Herald (modeled after the Washington Post). He has grown up admiring
this paper and intends to keep it as admirable and sound as he knows it.
To the contrary, Zoe resents to be forced to learn her job by covering
a local City Council before she is considered capable of covering na-
tional politics. As Ron Alsop states in a Wall Street Journal article from
2008, the “Generation Y” members (which he calls the “trophy kids”)
have great expectations of their job, in terms of personal development
and reward, which makes them quit easily if another position seems
more attractive (see “Chapter 6”). Zoe wants to succeed quickly and has
no patience, as becomes clear in this scene from “Chapter 4”:
ZOE: The White House is where news go to die. Everything’s

canned. Those perfectly prepared statements…
LUCAS: It’s a prestigious job, Zoe.
ZOE It used to be. When I was in ninth grade. Now it’s a grave-
yard! The only halfway interesting thing they do is throw a

big dinner party once a year where they can pat themselves
on the back and rub shoulders with movie stars. Who needs
that?
LUCAS: Every day since you started here you begged me to move
you up and now, suddenly…
ZOE: The goal of life is not to climb up The Herald’s ladder one
rung at a time until I got my own stationery!
LUCAS: [offended] Some of us value a career in a paper like this.
ZOE: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to come off as…
LUCAS: Well, it did. And you skipped a few rungs, by the way. Do
what you want to do Zoe. But if you want me to be your
cheerleader and say “yeah, turn it down,” I won’t. I would
have killed for that job when I first started here. (S01E04)
As a child of the digital age, Zoe does not believe in “official news”
anymore; she is instead deeply conscious of the hollow talk of press
conferences and neatly doctored official statements, as well as of the
growing role of PR executives (McChesney and Nichols xii-xiii). As a
member of the “Generation Me,” she is much more interested in sub-
jectivity than objectivity, in feelings than facts. Raised with tabloids and
reality TV, Zoe has completely embraced the breakdown of borders
between public and private lives. Her ultimate goal is to become famous,
preferably while she is still young and sexy. In “Chapter 12,” when she
tries to convince an exotic dancer to testify publicly about the Kern
scandal, her ultimate argument is: “But you could be famous overnight:
talk shows, TV, the whole country… […]. You wouldn’t have to dance
anymore! You could do whatever you want” S01E12). To her, fame,
albeit instant and transient, is synonymous with wealth, freedom, and
success. In “Chapter 3,” after being interviewed on television about her
career, The Herald as a workplace, and her vision of journalism, she has
a heated argument with her editor-in-chief, Tom Hammerschmidt:
TOM: Your job is to report the news, not be the news.

ZOE: I was promoting the paper.
TOM: You were promoting Zoe Barnes.
ZOE: Is it about when I said we called you the Hammer? Because
if that upset you, I apologize.
TOM: You’re missing the point. I don’t want you talking about any-
thing that happens here. Not nicknames, not how progressive
90 Politics of Time
we are, not whether we’re adapting to the Internet. Any

thoughts you have about this paper, you keep them to
yourself or you bring them to me. You don’t get on national
television and…
ZOE: I’m sorry, I was trying…
TOM: Don’t interrupt while I’m talking.
ZOE: You can speak to me like an adult, Tom. You don’t have to
lecture me like a little girl.
TOM: You haven’t earned the right to be treated as an adult. You
think that a few front-page articles and a few minutes on TV
make you the next Judy Miller? You still have a long way to
go. Don’t be so arrogant! (S01E03)
This dialogue stresses Zoe’s clear sense of “personal branding” (Lair,

Sullivan, and Cheney 307), i.e., the fact that she “promotes herself” in
televised interviews and numerous tweets in “Chapter 2” and “Chapter
3” in order to project an image of success and get promoted (Twenge
71-74). She appears as the prodigal child of the “Internet age,” an
expression used by the TV anchor who interviews her in “Chapter 3.”
To her, media equals social media, and print is dead. When, at the end of
their heated argument in “Chapter 4,” Hammerschmidt insults her, she
replies with a studied composure and a slightly triumphant smile: “Call
me whatever you want, Tom. But you should remember: these days,
when you’re talking to one person, you’re actually talking to a thou-
sand,” referring to the numbers of her followers, whom she tells every-
thing she does or thinks instantly and to whom she will repeat Tom’s
insult.
In “Chapter 1,” a colleague calls her “tweeter-twat,” and it appears
that she considers her smartphone as a mere extension of herself: in
“Chapter 5,” she is startled and shouts as if she were hurt when Under-
wood, who has become her lover, destroys it to delete all traces of their
adulterous relationship. And she is relieved when he promises her to buy
two new ones (a burner for their private exchanges and an official one
for work). The consequence of living in a permanently connected world
is that Zoe seems to have no sense of time, of duration. She does not
have any distance from, nor any overview of, what is happening. At the
end of “Chapter 1,” when she receives her first leak from Frank Under-
wood, her excitement is palpable:
LUCAS: [reading through the project of Education Bill] Where did

you get this?
ZOE: Wrong question. The right question is how quickly can we
get it up on the site?
LUCAS: I have to run this past Tom. […]
ZOE: How long do you think that will take? We should get this
online right away. (S01E01)
Patience is not Zoe’s strong suit. She lives in a constant hurry, always
arriving out of breath at her secret meetings with Francis Underwood. In
the first episodes, she also harasses him, insisting on new information as
she is eagerly waiting for the next scoop that will help her steal the lime-
light. In “Chapter 2,” a dialogue between Frank and Zoe underlines the
different temporalities they live in: Zoe is very much in the “now,”
whereas Frank is already preparing for his next moves. During this en-
tire scene, as well as for the first ten episodes of this first season of
House of Cards, Frank is in control of Zoe’s agenda: he plans their
meetings, tells her what to write about and even when to get on the sub-
way. She has willingly become a “puppet,” and he clearly enjoys play-
ing with her:
[Frank and Zoe meet in a Metro station. Zoe runs to join Frank, who is
calmly sitting on a bench.]
FRANK: Kern is out.
ZOE: They’re tossing him?
FRANK: Technically he withdraws himself, but yes…
ZOE: Can I say a source close to the White House…
FRANK: No! You let this story play out on its own time. They’ll an-
nounce in the morning.
ZOE: I’m sorry. If it’s not that, then what exactly are we talking
about?
FRANK: Catherine Durant. As soon as Kern withdraws, you say she’ll
be the replacement.
ZOE: Is that true?
FRANK: It will be after you write it. […] Say that name: Catherine
Durant. Say it over and over. Tomorrow afternoon, write it
down. And watch that name come out of the mouth of the
President of the United States. This is where we get to cre-
ate. [Frank gets up.] Don’t miss your train, Miss Barnes. It’s
the last one tonight. (S01E02)
92 Politics of Time
The dialogue underlines the fact that media coverage of politics is made
of shorter and shorter news sequences (McChesney and Nichols 3):
Kern’s nomination as Secretary of State has not even been officially re-
jected by the White House when Underwood already suggests the name
of his replacement, initiating a new media sequence. This constant nur-
turing, and hence control, of the news coverage is what he is interested
in and what allows him to push forward his political agenda. McChes-
ney and Nichols write that in 2011, “a staggering 86 percent of the sto-
ries originated with official sources and press releases pushing stories to
the news media, saying, hey, this is the news you should be covering. In
other words, those with power are getting the stories told that they want
to have told” (xii). They see it as a great danger for democracy (xiii-xv).
As early as 1922, Walter Lippmann underlined the danger of a press
losing perspective: “The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like
the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one epi-
sode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the
work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by
episodes, incidents, and eruptions” (197). Yet, that is exactly the feeling
the media, and especially television, are conveying to the citizens: poli-
tics seems to be made of episodes, of emotional narratives repeated
again and again until they become true. Controlling the news cycles is
what worries today’s politicians to a rising degree (Gerstlé 47): here, the
Kern/Durant news cycle is entirely made of gossip, of fabricated truths.
Still, it destroys one political career, and makes another.
The second part of the scene also shows the truth-distorting function
of television, when a rumor is believed because it is repeated over and
over again until it becomes impossible to question. There is no time for
fact-checking here. The “good story” becomes the true story (Salmon).
This media frenzy, this refusal of waiting, makes journalists more
permeable to manipulation by politicians and PR experts (McChesney
and Nichols xiii). In contemporary society, it is the job of spin-doctors to
influence media coverage and blur the lines between “political commu-
nication” (interviews, public speeches, photo ops) and “background
news” (events, reports) to improve the image of the politician they work
for (Gerstlé 49) while in House of Cards Underwood acts as his own
spin-doctor, which is more efficient on a dramatic level.
“Take a Step Back”: The Time of Investigative Journalism
Journalism 2.0 is not the only type of journalism displayed in House of

Cards. Since the beginning, Zoe has had a rival in the newsroom: Janine
Skorsky (Constance Zimmer), the chief political analyst and White
House correspondent of The Herald, a single woman in her late thirties
or early forties who devotes long hours to checking facts and untying the
knots of political decisions and statements, in a Woodwardian style. It is
very clear that Janine has sacrificed her personal life to succeed in a
man’s world, but her character also embodies traditional journalism.
Indeed, the fictional Washington Herald is clearly inspired by the
Washington Post, the newspaper for which Bob Woodward and Carl
Bernstein worked when they brought to light the Watergate scandal in
1974. Those two reporters have become legends of investigative journal-
ism: holding on to information, protecting their sources in spite of pres-
sure over extended periods of time, and connecting the dots of otherwise
isolated facts, ultimately forcing the most powerful man of the time to
resign.
Thirty years later, Zoe finds this type of journalism (long stories with
verified facts and deep analysis) very ‘old school,’ and instead explains
her views on TV. After addressing sexism in the press, she talks about
her editor-in-chief and the editorial line of The Herald:
TV ANCHOR: That’s Tom Hammerschmidt, the Executive Edi-

tor?
ZOE: Yes! We actually call him “The Hammer.”
TV ANCHOR: The Hammer? Why?
ZOE: Because he’s tough.
TV ANCHOR: How tough?
ZOE: He’s… uh… he has very high standards. I love him
[she blows a kiss]. I love him. He’s a great mentor.
Er… It can be frustrating at times. Er… He makes
you double and triple check things and you want to
get the news out the moment you have it and he
makes you rewrite until it’s perfect, but that’s what

makes The Herald The Herald.
TV ANCHOR: Is that a workable model in the Internet age?
ZOE: Our readers think it is.
TV ANCHOR: You have a declining readership.
94 Politics of Time
ZOE: But I don’t lay it at Tom’s feet, I think that’s the

times we live in, right?
TV ANCHOR: Should newspapers adapt to the times we live in?
ZOE: It’s not that The Herald refuses to adapt, we have
an online presence.
TV ANCHOR: Is that maybe not adapting fast enough?
ZOE: I wouldn’t argue with that statement. We could do
more. (S01E03)
After this interview, it is very clear (for her and Tom Hammerschmidt)
that Zoe does not believe in the printing press and old-fashioned journal-
ism: she considers checking facts, or any kind of delay between the
moment she knows something and the minute she can bring it to the
public, “frustrating.” That is why in “Chapter 4” she quits her job at The
Herald to work for a pure play news website, i.e., a newspaper only
available online, entitled Slugline, the fictional successor of Politico,
where deadlines do not exist anymore and everything is posted online
instantly. Its creator Carly Heath (Tawny Cypress) does not aim at
gaining credibility or building a solid reputation over decades like the
Grahams did with The Washington Post. Heath wants to generate traffic,
revenue, and a quick turn-around of articles on the site’s main page,
exactly like AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong, according to McChesney and
Nichols (xviii). In “Chapter 6,” Carly tells Zoe that she intends to sell
the website “like Arianna,”5 as soon as it will be “big enough,” and
move on to another adventure. She puts her own personal and
professional fulfillment above everything else, and says bluntly that Zoe
should not expect to work for Slugline for more than two years.
Heath’s opportunist attitude contrasts strongly with the one of
Margaret Tilden (Kathleen Chalfant), the sixty-something strong-willed
and clever lady who owns The Herald. In contrast to Heath, Tilden ap-
pears deeply concerned about the future of her company and employees
and ready to do anything, including firing Tom Hammerschmidt, in
order to allow the journal to exist for another century (“Chapter 5”). She
is obviously a “builder” (Abraham 51-66)6 characterized by a much
5
Arianna Huffington, the creator of The Huffington Post who sold her business
for $315 million to AOL after 6 years of existence.
6
In a book published in 2011, Joe Abraham identifies four types of
entrepreneurs: builders, opportunists, specialists, and inventors.
broader and more long-term view of her work and legacy than
opportunistic entrepreneur Carly Heath (Abraham 8-15).
Tilden’s character seems based on the real-life owner of The
Washington Post Katharine Graham (1917-2001), the daughter and
widow of the two previous publishers, who held the reins of the com-
pany from 1963 to 1979. Graham remained Chairwoman of the Board
until 1991 before letting her son Douglas take over.7 Under her leader-
ship, The Washington Post published The Pentagon Papers and revealed
the Watergate scandal. At the time, Graham was the only woman to hold
such power in the media, and she was the first female to enter Fortune
500’s best CEOs in 1972. Her memoirs, Personal History (1997), won
the Pulitzer Prize.
Even if the first six episodes of House of Cards’ first season empha-
size the crisis of journalism in the twenty-first century, the overall narra-
tive shows that investigative journalism is still relevant and a “fourth
power” necessary for the good of democracy (McChesney and Nichols
2). It is made very clear that Zoe’s arrogance and obsession with the
present make her the perfect tool in Underwood’s Machiavellian
scheme. As McChesney and Nichols write:
A world without journalism is not a world without political information.

Instead it is a world where what passes for news is largely spin and self-
interested propaganda—some astonishingly sophisticated and some
bellicose, but the lion’s share of dubious value. It is an environment that
spawns cynicism, ignorance, demoralization, and apathy. The only ‘win-
ners’ are those that benefit from a quiescent and malleable people who
will ‘be governed,’ rather than govern themselves. (xxxviii)
This applies perfectly to the House of Cards narrative.

In “Chapter 12,” Zoe finally decides to unite with Janine and Lucas
and starts doing serious journalism, checking information and re-
interviewing people in order to unveil the truth rather than merely jump-
ing on the juiciest piece of gossip. Under Janine’s guidance, she leaves
her permanent present to acknowledge the passing of time and the im-
portance of the chronology of events:
7
Even if The Washington Post was sold to Jeff Bezos in 2013 for $250
million, the Meyer-Graham-Weymouths remain a very influential family in
the U.S. media world.
96 Politics of Time
JANINE: Underwood’s Education Bill went to the floor just three days
after Womack became majority leader. You leaked the
Education Bill, and then there was the Kern article.
ZOE: Those were two completely different stories!
JANINE: [following her thoughts] Wait. Who was that guy? What was
his name? He is the one who told you that Kern wrote the
article for the school paper…
ZOE: Roy Kapeniak.
JANINE: You should go talk to him.
ZOE: There’s no link!
JANINE: Except you! [pause] Underwood has been using you, Zoe.
Don’t you want to know why? (S01E12)
Unlike Zoe, Janine never seems in a hurry. She takes her time, does not
show off her hand, and carefully reconstitutes a timeline, digging deep
into other people’s lives to discover their hidden agendas. She embodies
the rest of Walter Lippmann’s quote: “It is only when they work by a
steady light of their own, that the press […] reveals a situation intelligi-
ble enough for a popular decision” (197). Journalistic independence is
indeed one of the guarantees of democracy ever since Thomas Carlyle’s
widely accepted theory (1840). McChesney and Nichols also underline
the importance of “a division of labor” to do great journalism (xviii).
Janine neither tweets nor does she speak on TV; she has almost no
life outside her job, no friends, no lover, and that is why Frank Under-
wood and Douglas Stamper fear her. She offers no leverage and is only
interested in the big picture. She shares the politician’s sense of time, but
unlike him and most of the other characters on the show, she has no
interest in personal gain or fame. Her patient checking of facts, away
from the spotlight, makes her an invisible and elusive threat to Under-
wood’s political rise in season two, but her character disappears after
three episodes, and the narrative explores other plots. In season three,
another experienced and strong-willed journalist, Kate Baldwin (Kim
Dickens) tries to uncover Underwood’s secrets but is successfully kept
in the dark by the President’s staff.
Even if journalists are shown as unavoidable players of the political
game, the series’ emphasis is clearly put on Frank Underwood and his
diverse endeavors, especially in season two and three where the different
timelines of both worlds are not key elements of the narrative anymore.
However, time appears a central element in the viewers’ experience of

House of Cards.
The Time of Viewing House of Cards: Transgressing Television
From an extra-diegetic point of view, Netflix’s House of Cards is a

singular cultural object: it is called a series yet it is released, and can be
watched, as a thirteen-hour-long film. It mimics the best cable TV series
yet is not broadcast on television. With an extraordinary budget of 100
million dollars for the first two seasons, a Hollywood cast (A-listers
Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright in the leading roles) and a renowned
director (David Fincher directed the first two episodes), it is the first
series in history that was made entirely available solely on the Internet,
rather than being first broadcast on a television channel. Also, its
thirteen episodes were made available on the same day, February 1,
2013.
This unprecedented move by the American SVOD service Netflix
obliterated one of the constitutive aspects of TV series: the weekly meet-
ing with the viewers at a specific day and time, the longing and the wait-
ing of hard-core fans between two episodes, and, on the day after, water-
cooler conversations about what they saw. On February 1, 2013, Netflix
subscribers were the masters of their viewing schedule—as was already
the case with the rest of the Netflix library (consisting of non-original
films and TV series)—free to binge-watch or slow-savor this thirteen-
hour long original series.
The first two episodes were made available a few weeks in advance
to professionals during private screenings at venues like the MIPCOM
or MIPTV,8 but on February 1, TV bloggers felt the urge to watch the
whole series as fast as possible to be the first to give their opinion on it.
Some based their reviews only on the first two episodes rather than on
the entire season. They acted as if it was any other show, when only the
pilot, or the first two episodes, are released by the broadcaster. The point
8
MIPCOM and MIPTV are two international markets for television programs
annually held in Cannes (in October and April, respectively), where buyers
and accredited journalists from all over the world can discover upcoming
programs.
98 Politics of Time
was not to be as exhaustive and relevant as possible, and to assess the

quality of the whole season, but to post something rapidly online, in
order to nourish the buzz around the series and create a space for view-
ers to comment and express their opinions.
For example, on the New York Magazine’s website Vulture, Matt
Zoller Seitz published an article on the first two episodes on February 1,
but announced a full review for “next week, after [he’s] had time to feast
and digest” (Seitz). Ken Tucker from Entertainment Weekly argued
along the same lines: “I should say that all 13 episodes are available as
of today but that I’m basing this review on the first two that Netflix
made available to critics. You can bet I’ll be consuming the rest as soon
as I can” (Tucker). The first full reviews of the series—all of them
favorable—appeared on February 4 on The New Yorker’s (“in the same
league as the best shows”) and Le Monde’s website (“une plongée
unique dans le monde du pouvoir”), and on February 5, on the The
Guardian’s (“a pitch-perfect political drama”). This immediately shows
the international outreach of Netflix9 and of TV criticism in general
since the late 2000s.
The actors’ performances and the sophisticated visual styling set by
Academy Award winner David Fincher were acclaimed, and Netflix
succeeded in channeling most of the critics and comments not to the
quality of the series itself (Grandoni), but to the new economic model it
offered and to the pros and cons of binge-watching.10 With this ground-
breaking move, Netflix put itself at the center of attention and with its
first original program proved that it could compete with premium cable
channels such as HBO or Showtime in terms of cast, crew, visual style,
and provocative themes.
Most reviews stressed how viewers were affected in their consump-
tion of the series. Indeed, since the 2000s, especially since the broadcast
of Lost (ABC, 2004-2010), and with the advent of Web 2.0, participa-
9
Between 2010 and 2011, Netflix became available to most of the American
continent and islands. In 2012, it started its conquest of European markets
with the UK and Scandinavian countries. It must be noticed that at the time
of the release of House of Cards, Netflix was not available in France. Yet the
series was intensely discussed and quickly bought by the premium cable
channel Canal Plus.
10
The idiom was selected “Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2013”
(“Oxford Dictionaries”).
tory viewership developed on a global scale, creating interactions, blog

posts, discussion forum threads, hashtagged social media messages,
online fanpedias,11 alternate narrative writing (“fanfictions”) or vid-
ding,12 which enriched the viewers’ experience of television programs
(Chiang 161-67).
The fact that House of Cards was not broadcast on a television net-
work and did not obey the rules of episode-by-episode scheduling radi-
cally transformed the online conversations about the series: most of it
was about avoiding spoilers, and the hashtag #watchresponsibly was
attached to a lot of tweets (Kolker). It is not the least of paradoxes that
House of Cards, while turning viewers into schedulers and giving them
an unprecedented power and liberty on their viewing experience, de-
prived them of the recently developed practice of participatory viewer-
ship (Mittell 41). According to Jason Mittell, this foregoing of the “gap-
filled serial broadcast experience altogether” raises the question whether
House of Cards is a series at all. Therefore, it can be argued that House
of Cards, by initiating an entirely new relation between time and view-
ing, is not only transgressing the rules of television itself but also ques-
tions the very definition of TV series.
In conclusion, House of Cards portrays old-school investigative journal-

ists as threats to corrupt politicians, confirming Lippmann’s metaphor of
“the beam of a searchlight” guaranteeing the democratic nature of politi-
cal institutions. Investigative journalists are shown as far less prone to
manipulation than 2.0 journalists because they take their time and are
not obsessed with the present and the urgency to express themselves
constantly on social media. Yet in the first three seasons, none of them
succeeded in unveiling Frank Underwood’s dark secrets. McChesney
and Nichols explore this recent loss of journalistic efficiency, stating
that “journalistic attention to all levels of governance has declined to a
fraction of what was understood as necessary just a generation ago. […]
Already much of governmental activity is conducted in the dark.
Investigative journalism is on the endangered species list” (xxxviii).
11
These are online encyclopedias collectively written by fans, most of the time
mimicking Wikipedia.
12
Vidding refers to fans creating music videos from the footage of one or more
visual media sources, thereby exploring the source itself in a new way.
100 Politics of Time
Zoe’s transgression of traditional journalistic ethics is severely punished

in “Chapter 15,” when Frank Underwood pushes her in front of a
subway train. His planning of the murder also confirms that he is in
control of time since he pushes her exactly at the right moment for her to
die instantly without anyone noticing anything before it is too late. In
contrast to Zoe, Underwood’s numerous transgressions of political ethics
and humanistic morals have not been sanctioned over the course of three
seasons. It is too early to tell if and how the anti-hero will fall, but it is
already very clear that he belongs to this much-appreciated category of
trangressive television’s leading characters.
Yet the real transgression lies in the nature of House of Cards as a
fiction: it adopts quite brilliantly the narrative codes of a premium cable
TV series of the twenty-first century, yet it was not produced by or re-
leased on a TV channel. Moreover, its serial form is really—as under-
lined by the fact that the episodes are entitled “chapters”—more of a
literary convention than of a televisual one. That is probably why Jason
Mittell only devotes one page to House of Cards in his book about Com-
plex TV, stating that “although the broadcast schedule is ultimately arbi-
trary and artificial, it is also productive, creating the structure for collec-
tive synchronous consumption and providing the time to reflect on the
unfolding narrative world” (41).
So time is definitively essential in TV series in general and a real is-
sue when it comes to new forms of series such as House of Cards. Since
its first launch in 2013, several other episodic audiovisual fictions have
followed its model and were also released en masse, on Netflix, but also
on Amazon, and most of them (Orange is the New Black, Transparent,
Bloodline) have received awards and reviewers’ praise. This adds to the
ever-increasing diversity of serial narratives in the twenty-first century
and shows that no rule, code, or convention is immune to transgression.
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SIMONE PUFF
Another Scandal in Washington:

How a Transgressive, Black Anti-Heroine Makes
for New “Quality TV”
Cool, composed, and in control: this is how ABC’s prime-time heroine

in heels and professional ‘fixer’ Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) ap-
pears in the political drama series Scandal (2012-present).1 Working on
at least one scandal per episode, with some complex story arcs being
unfolded over entire seasons, the tough public relations and crisis con-
sultant manages people, politics, and power in the heart of America’s
capital city, Washington, D.C. At the same time, the Black female pro-
tagonist is involved in several scandals herself, which sometimes make
her lose her trademark cool, albeit ever so briefly. By entangling herself
in both public and private scandals, Pope engages in a series of trans-
gressions that are of moral, social, and legal nature, making her charac-
ter that of a truly ambivalent and transgressive anti-heroine.2 Perhaps the
most prominent and enduring example of such transgressions is her
interracial affair with the married, White, Republican President Fitz-
gerald Grant III (Tony Goldwyn). Likely even more transgressive, how-
ever, is the complex multi-episodic plot progression, in which her shady
1
The established difference between the terms “series” and “serial” (see, for
example, Oltean 1993) is blurred in practice, and the program is consistently
labeled as a “series” in public. However, while Scandal does have different
episodic plots in most weeks, speaking to the definition of a classic “series,”
it also features serialized plot strands that span several episodes and seasons,
which justifies the label “serial.” For practical reasons, I use the terms “se-
ries” and “serial drama” interchangeably throughout this article, because—
effectively—the television show is both.
2
I take my cue for calling Olivia Pope an anti-heroine from Shonda Rhimes,
who once called her an “antihero” in an interview (Porter).
104 Another Scandal in Washington
political games are slowly uncovered. This includes vote rigging in the
presidential elections as well as covering up a murder, all in the name of
protecting the American republic. On a meta-level, the show engages in
a transgression of genres, as the ratings success of creator and producer
Shonda Rhimes is much more than just a gendered social melodrama,
even though Scandal’s fan community is predominantly female. Finally,
the show features the portrayal of a three-dimensional, successful, and
attractive Black woman, almost devoid of allusions to age-old and often
prevailing stereotypes, such as the Mammy, Jezebel, or Matriarch,
which Patricia Hill Collins has termed “controlling images.”3 This repre-
sents a positive transgression of representational boundaries on the story
level, as Olivia Pope’s very body is that of Kerry Washington, a brown-
skinned African American woman, thus making her the first Black fe-
male lead on a prime-time network TV drama since Teresa Graves in
ABC’s Get Christie Love! in 1974.4 This major step in representational
equality portrays the intersection of gender and race on a Black
woman’s body in an era that is far from being “post-racial” despite nu-
merous claims to the contrary.5 The fact that the show’s protagonist is “a
non-mixed-race, or non-fairskinned, black woman” (Everett 37) is par-
ticularly relevant here, because Black women cast on television and in
the movies have often reflected (and still reflect) an existing bias for
light skin and a narrowly-defined Eurocentric beauty ideal in the film
3
See, for example, Collins’s chapter “Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other
Controlling Images” in Black Feminist Thought.
4
Get Christie Love! (1974-1975) only ran for twenty-three episodes of one
season. More popular and successful was the situation comedy Julia (NBC,
1968-1971), which starred Diahann Carroll in the lead role (Vega). Julia is
widely credited with being the first television series that featured a Black
woman in a non-stereotypical role on television (Smith). For an overview on
Black women in prime-time television, see Wright (15-32).
5
This is not to say that the show is not flawed regarding the representation of
Black womanhood. Critics have, for example, pointed out that the protagonist
is still embedded in White heteropatriarchy, particularly with regards to the
powerful White men with whom Olivia Pope associates. For more scholarly
criticism as well as appraisal of the show, see the special issue of The Black
Scholar titled “Scandalous” (published in March 2015), and the forthcoming
collection of essays titled Gladiators in Suits: Race, Gender, and the Politics
of Representation in Scandal (edited by Kimberly R. Moffitt, Simone Puff,
and Ronald L. Jackson II).
Simone Puff 105
and entertainment industry and in American society in general (Puff).

Mia Mask nods to this bias when she points out that “[w]e’ve got to see
proportional representation—particularly for darker brown-skinned
women. Roles are scare [sic] for black women and even scarcer for our
browner sisters” (7).
Because of such transgressions, both on the levels of story and dis-
course, Scandal can and should be read through the prism of what many
television scholars have called “quality TV”6 (see, for example, Thomp-
son; McCabe and Akass). While the term as such is disputed (see be-
low), it is a useful concept for the analysis of this prime-time serial
drama, although I argue that it is in need of some revision. My reading
of the show will demonstrate that aspects of “quality TV” are not only
visible in the show’s mixing of genres, its many and complex plot
strands, lavish montage sequences, or other creative visual and aural
aesthetics, but also in the very fact that the prime-time Beltway drama
features a “quality” portrayal of a Black female character in the lead
role. This, however, calls for an expansive definition of what we under-
stand by “quality TV” in a twenty-first-century context. After a brief
section on the genealogy and success story of Scandal and a concise
overview of the ensemble cast, I will proceed to provide some context
for the discourse on “quality TV” and then take a look at selected the-
matic and aesthetic features of the show that warrant the label “quality
TV.” Lastly, I will present Olivia Pope as an embodiment of a morally
ambivalent—thus transgressive—Black female anti-heroine and com-
ment on the significance of Kerry Washington’s transgression of repre-
sentational boundaries by embodying this powerful Black woman on
screen.
Real-Life Role Models, the (Digital) Rise of Scandal, and a Spotlight on

the Characters
The inspiration for the protagonist of the show is the crisis manager and
former deputy press secretary of George H. W. Bush, Judy Smith. After
her stint at the White House, Smith founded her own crisis management
6
I place this term within quotation marks in order to draw attention to its
contested usage in academia and its highly constructed nature.
firm. Among her clients are prominent public figures such as former
White House intern Monica Lewinsky, actor Wesley Snipes, former
Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho), and companies like SONY Pictures
Entertainment, which hired Smith in late 2014 after a damaging cyber-
attack (see Newman; Shaw). For the television show, Smith, who, like
executive producer Shonda Rhimes, is African American, signed on as
co-executive producer. During the first and second seasons, Smith also
had her own blog as part of the show’s fan page on Abc.com. On this
blog, called “What Would Judy Do?” she gave insight into the life of a
crisis management consultant, even though the fictional world of Olivia
Pope is obviously only loosely modeled after Smith’s actual life.
Scandal first aired on the network channel ABC in April 2012 and,
despite moderate viewership numbers at its start, has turned into a veri-
table ratings hit. Due to the constant growth in viewership, as of Sep-
tember 2014 and the start of season four, the network placed the show in
the channel’s most popular prime-time slot on Thursday evenings at 9
p.m. (8 p.m. CST).7 The premiere of season four had 12.2 million view-
ers according to the Nielsen ratings (Mitovich), as compared to 7.3
viewers for the premiere of season one in April 2012 (Bibel).8 Beyond
being consistently popular in the key demographic of American adults
between the ages of eighteen and forty-nine regardless of race, Scandal
was the most popular scripted prime-time TV series in 2013 among
African Americans of the same age cohort (Nielsen Company, “Report”
7
In 2014, Thursday nights on ABC became “Shondaland Thursdays” (Ausi-
ello) with three shows produced by Shonda Rhimes airing in a row: the
medical drama Grey’s Anatomy at 8 p.m. (7 p.m. CST), followed by Scandal
at 9 p.m. (8 p.m. CST), and the new legal drama How to Get Away with Mur-
der at 10 p.m. (9 p.m. CST). Due to the popularity of all three shows, the
network uses the branding tagline TGIT (Thank God It’s Thursday), in an
allusion to the classic moniker TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday).
8
While data for 2014 are still missing at the time this article goes to press,
comparative figures from 2013 list the most popular prime time drama series
in 2013 as CBS’s police procedural drama NCIS, which averaged 14.7 mil-
lion viewers and ranks number four in the “Top 10 Primetime TV Programs
of 2013” that were regularly scheduled (Nielsen Social Guide).
Simone Puff 107
17).9 Furthermore, Scandal is a prime example of how different forms of

media can work together to create not just a large but also an enor-
mously active and engaged fan community connected through social
media, particularly on Twitter. The finale of season three, for example,
set an online networking service record of 697,000 tweets, vaulting the
series into second place in Nielsen’s weekly Twitter TV ratings and
reaching almost 3.4 million Twitter users (Pucci).10 When season four
premiered on September 25, 2014, the show generated 718,000 tweets
and reached an audience of almost 4.2 million Twitter accounts, thus
advancing to number one in Nielsen’s Twitter TV ratings during that
week (Mann).11 Los Angeles Times television critic Mary McNamara
went so far as to call the political drama “the show that Twitter built,”
claiming that the social media platform was a major reason for Scandal
receiving such a surge in viewers (“‘Must-Tweet’ TV”).
Every week these viewers tune in to see the fast-talking, no-non-
sense, go-getter Olivia Pope, founder and head of the crisis management
firm Olivia Pope and Associates. Her team consists of fiercely loyal
employees, among them lawyers, litigators, and a former CIA spy and
secret black ops assassin, turned professional hacker (Darby Stanchfield
as Abby Whelan, Columbus Short as Harrison Wright, Katie Lowes as
Quinn Perkins, and Guillermo Diaz as Huck).12 All of these “gladiators
in suits,” as they call themselves, help Olivia to “fix” things; in other
words, they save reputations and make other people’s problems disap-
pear, no matter what it takes. While they clean up other people’s messes,
they often have to “fix” their own lives, too, as the “gladiators” all have
9
When including reality television in this ranking, the VH1 show Love and
Hip Hop Atlanta 2 actually topped the list of prime-time programs (Nielsen
Company, “Report” 17).
10
The number of tweets, close to 700,000, is almost as high as the number of
tweets for the next four series in the rating together. Number one in the
rankings that week was the ESPN sports documentary 30 for 30: Bad Boys
(Pucci).
11
Overall in 2014, the series ranked number seven in Nielsen’s “2014 Top 10
Series on Twitter” (Nielsen Company, “Tops”).
12
Season one also featured Henry Ian Cusick, who starred in ABC’s Lost
(2004-2010), as lawyer and ladies’ man Stephen Finch. Columbus Short as
Harrison Wright was a loyal alpha “gladiator” for three seasons, but was then
made to leave the show, following allegations of domestic violence (Lang).
more or less scandalous and secret back stories, which are revealed one
by one.
Opposite Pope and her team are the morally flawed and adulterous
President of the United States, Fitzgerald “Fitz” Grant III (Tony
Goldwyn), whose greatest weakness is his love for Pope, and his con-
niving wife and First Lady Melody “Mellie” Grant (Bellamy Young),
whose back story, revealed later in the show, leaves viewers sympa-
thizing with her. Other prominent members of the ensemble cast include
the power-hungry, openly gay Chief of Staff Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry),
and the Assistant U.S. Attorney David Rosen (Joshua Malina), who tries,
sometimes in vain, to uphold the moral standards of the American
judicial system in Washington, D.C. During seasons one and two, Rosen
becomes Olivia Pope’s semi-friendly antagonist, and both battle over the
right to wear the “white hat,” arguably an allusion to the genre of the
Western (see, for example, “Dirty Little Secrets,” “White Hat’s Off,” or
“White Hat’s Back On”). In the end, of course, both are unable to
maintain a clean slate, and neither deserves the label hero(ine).
Season three introduces characters from Pope’s family, such as her
uber-patriarchal father Rowan “Eli” Pope (Joe Morton), who won an
Emmy Award for his stellar performance in 2014. “Daddy Pope,” whose
cover is that he works for the Smithsonian Institution, actually is
“Command” of the super-secret spy agency B613, which operates out-
side the realm of the U.S. government and is running covert operations
to protect the republic. Finally, there is Jake Ballard (Scott Foley), who
worked for the Pentagon as well as B613, and later becomes Pope’s
second love interest, to the dismay of her father and the President.
Viewers see all of these characters as both political actors and as private
individuals. The solving of clients’ cases and managing of (political)
crises by Pope and her team of gladiators is thus as important as the
emotional gratification viewers get from watching the characters’ inter-
personal relationships unfold on the screen.
Overall, Scandal portrays a complex image of a contemporary fic-
tional America, one in which the boundaries between good and bad,
right and wrong, as well as virtue and vice are entirely fluid. No charac-
ter on the show can boast of a clean record, morally or otherwise. This
includes Olivia Pope, who is not only stylized with a white hat but also
repeatedly in white clothes, obviously an attempt to enforce the idea that
she is morally on the right side. Ultimately, Scandal assembles a crowd
Simone Puff 109
of anti-heroes and anti-heroines, often doing bad things, albeit typically

to preserve “the greatest country on earth,” a phrase repeatedly used on
the show.
The History of “Quality TV,” Contested Meanings, and Gender Biases
In the preface to the edited collection Quality TV: Contemporary Ameri-

can Television and Beyond, television scholar Robert J. Thompson
summarizes the history of the term “quality TV,” he made popular in his
1996 book Television’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to
ER:
The precise definition of ‘quality TV’ was elusive right from the start,
though we knew it when we saw it. These shows were generic mongrels,
often scrambling and recombining traditional TV formulas in unex-
pected ways; they had literary and cinematic ambitions beyond what we
had seen before, and they employed complex and sophisticated serialised
narratives and inter-series ‘mythologies.’ Back in the 1980s we breath-
lessly celebrated these new aesthetic approaches and challenges being
taken on by a medium that had changed very little since the 1950s. But
by the century’s end, these innovations had become formulas. (“Preface”
xix-xx)
While Thompson established a set of twelve distinct criteria which

largely came to define “quality TV” among television scholars, he ad-
mits to a historical vagueness around a term that is ultimately based on
more or less subjective forms of aesthetic judgment. Initially, the goal
was to distinguish “quality TV” from “regular TV” (Thompson, Age
13). Thompson’s criteria can, of course, be read as inherently exclusion-
ary because they reflect viewers’ own preconceptions, which constitutes
part of the criticism of the term.13
Some scholars have readily embraced the term despite its contested
character; others—like Jason Mittell—attempt to eschew the “discursive
13
For a detailed list of the twelve criteria which include that “quality TV” has a
memory, creates new genres by blending old ones, and is self-reflexive, see
Thompson (Age). Acknowledging the changed landscape of contemporary
television, however, Thompson now calls for a critical evaluation of its con-
temporary usefulness as a concept (“Preface”).
trap of quality” (“Qualities”). Of course, as Raymond Williams already

reminds us in his 1974 book Television: Technology and Cultural Form,
quality means different things in different cultural contexts, as the latter
are changing over time and are characterized by different intentions
(130). In addition, in her essay “Is Quality Television Any Good?” Sarah
Cardwell echoes a useful distinction made by several other television
studies scholars. This distinction is between “quality” television, a label
that merely often denotes a “generic classification” (Cardwell 21) and
not necessarily indicates audience pleasure upon consumption, and
“good” television, which is entirely defined by the viewer’s relationship
to the program. As Cardwell states, “[g]ood television is rich, riveting,
moving, provocative and frequently contemporary (in some sense); it is
relevant to and valued by us. It speaks to us, and it endures for us” (21).
This claim is reminiscent of one made by producer Peter Dunne, who
asserts that the quality of television series “must be measured by their
impact on, and contribution to, society” (99). When taking these two
definitions of “good” television and applying them to the reception of
Scandal among its viewers, particularly the viewer demographic of
Black women, the relevance and impact of a three-dimensional complex
Black woman as the lead character become instantly clear. Scandal can
thus be seen as “good quality TV” precisely because of its significance
for its Black female viewers and the relative absence of “quality” roles
for Black actresses elsewhere on TV.
When it comes to the more traditional history of “quality TV” as a
form of classification based on a set of distinct criteria, television series
that attract a predominantly female audience have been consistently
undervalued, both among critics and in the scholarly discourse among
academics. Looking at the canon of “quality TV” series, we can observe,
as Brigitte Frizzoni did in her German essay “Zwischen Trash-TV und
Quality-TV” (“Between Trash-TV and Quality-TV”), that television
series with a “female connotation,” such as Desperate Housewives,
Grey’s Anatomy, and Sex and the City, are more rarely featured in the
discourse on “quality TV” than those which are regarded as “mascu-
line.”14 Frizzoni continues her treatise by stating that there is a long-
14
In the German original the quote reads, “Es fällt auf, dass eher weiblich
konnotierte TV-Serien wie Desperate Housewives […], Grey’s Anatomy [...]
und Sex and the City deutlich seltener [im Diskurs der Qualitätsserien] er-
Simone Puff 111
standing dichotomy between “masculine” high culture, in which she

includes “quality TV” series, and “feminine” popular culture (346).15 In
other words, TV dramas with a predominantly female audience,
which—to a certain extent—may be the result of perceived ‘feminine’
content, such as a focus on romantic love and relationships, or content
that has been linked to certain gendered ideologies, are not as often
included in the discourse on “quality TV.” They are thus less likely to be
seen as part of what is considered “high culture.”16 Scandal, whose
female viewership outnumbers its male audience by three to one (Cum-
mings), often encounters the same gender bias. At times derided as “ri-
diculous” and a “guilty pleasure” by critics and fans alike, the show is
occasionally dismissed as one just for women, as if that were to make it
a priori inferior (Paskin, “Network TV”). Shonda Rhimes herself com-
mented on this sexist attitude prevailing in society and in Hollywood
alike: “It’s superinsulting that because Olivia is a woman, and the girl
who wrote ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ wrote this, it must be for chicks […] Like
if it’s geared for women, it’s somehow not as serious as if it’s geared for
men” (qtd. in Paskin, “Network TV”). But, as Willa Paskin continues in
her New York Times profile on the showrunner: “‘Scandal’ may not look
or feel like TV’s other prestige dramas, in which (usually male) antihe-
roes mix it up under the oversight of an (almost always male) auteur
who has complex feelings about entertaining his audience. […] Rhimes
is making a different kind of quality television” (“Network TV”). The
unfamiliarity with a high-powered Black female producer who puts an
otherwise marginalized and underrepresented character (read: a success-
wähnt werden” (Frizzoni 346). Notable exceptions of television programs

with female leads which are usually included in the “quality TV” discourse
are the cable series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (WB 1997-2001; UPN 2001-
2003, see Lavery and Wilcox); and Ally McBeal (FOX 1997-2002, see Jan-
covich).
15
In the German original the quote reads: “Die Besetzung von Elitekultur
(‚high‘)—hier die Qualitätsserien—als männlich und Populärkultur (‚low‘)—
dort die übrigen Serien—als weiblich hat ebenfalls eine lange Tradition”
(Frizzoni 346).
16
Obviously, this distinction between “high” and “low” culture is quite
problematic. Frizzoni’s point, however, seems to reflect lingering value
judgments and a rank order within popular culture, even though scholars in
this field have long resisted such constructed hierarchies.
ful Black female professional) into the limelight of her production set,
placing her against the backdrop of a fictional contemporary political
canvas, thus seems to lead to premature dismissals of Scandal as being
the audiovisual counterpart of “chick lit.”
Evidently, female anti-heroines were a quasi non-existent species on
American television at the time when the discourse on “quality TV” was
initiated about twenty-five years ago. Although this has changed, show-
casing a Black woman in a well-developed, non-stereotypical lead role
as Rhimes does in Scandal is nothing short of revolutionary. Female
television showrunners are obviously more common today, with promi-
nent examples such as Tina Fey with 30 Rock (NBC, 2006-2013), Eliza-
beth Meriwether with New Girl (FOX, 2011-present), Lena Dunham
with Girls (HBO, 2012-present), Mindy Kaling with The Mindy Project
(FOX, 2012-present), Jenji Kohan with Weeds (Showtime, 2005-2012)
and the Netflix original Orange Is the New Black (2013-present), or Jill
Soloway with the new comedy-drama Transparent, produced by Ama-
zon (2014-present).17 While all of these women have earned accolades
for their work in American television, none have yet received the status
of “auteur extraordinaire” (Everett 34) that Shonda Rhimes can now
claim for herself. Robert Thompson already called her the “Aaron
Spelling of the new century” (qtd. in T. L. Stanley).
Although it is true that the agglomeration of jaw-dropping plot twists
in Scandal, which are inflicted with dysfunctional love triangles and
trysts, not to mention weekly scandals that have to be “fixed,” make—in
part—for soap-operesque television melodrama, Scandal is more than
that. Despite the fact that Rhimes has been known as the “queen of
drama” on ABC, a reputation which she earned with her Golden Globe-
winning medical drama Grey’s Anatomy (ABC, 2005-present) and its
spin-off Private Practice (ABC, 2007-2013), several critics point out
that Scandal is not the typical “women’s show” many make it out to be.
As Dodai Stewart from the women’s blog Jezebel puts it:
Shonda Rhimes is known for creating lady-centric shows Grey’s Anat-

omy and Private Practice [sic]. But while […] Scandal […] has a woman
(Kerry Washington) in the lead role, it doesn’t feel like a show just for
chicks. Quick-paced, with Sorkin-esque rapid-fire dialog, smash cuts,
17
I would like to thank Cornelia Klecker (University of Innsbruck) for advice
on this—admittedly selective—list.
Simone Puff 113
tight shots and dynamic camera movements that make you feel like
you’re eavesdropping or engaging in surveillance on these characters,
it’s not about soapy navel-gazing as much as it is procedural with a
twist. CSI: DC, with more money, power, and high heels.
The reference to Aaron Sorkin, an Academy Award-winning screen-

writer and producer of such “quality TV” shows like The West Wing
(NBC, 1999-2006), which is seen as a precursor to Scandal in many
ways, is just one case in point here. Television critic Emily Nussbaum
goes a step further in her analysis of the series and describes Scandal in
The New Yorker as follows:
Popping with colorful villains, vote-rigging conspiracies, waterboarding,

assassinations, montages set to R. & B. songs, and the best gay couple
on television (the President’s chief of staff, Cyrus, and his husband,
James, an investigative reporter), the series has become a giddy, para-
noid fever dream, like “24” crossed with “The West Wing,” lit up in
neon pink.
By comparing Scandal with not just one but two shows that have often
been heralded as “quality TV,” Nussbaum points to thematic and aes-
thetic aspects of the series that signify a “new quality” in television. In
the following section, I will thus take a closer look at four narrative and
stylistic features which have been defined as part of the repertoire of
“quality TV” in Thompson’s well-known list of characteristics: the
creation of a new genre; the existence of complex serial narratives and a
series memory; the addressing of contemporary, often controversial,
issues and aspiration to “reality”; and distinct production aesthetics.18
My fifth argument for “quality” in Scandal is an expansion of Thomp-
son’s catalog and addresses the implications of the show’s success in
largely breaking free from portraying dominant stereotypes of Black
women, and instead showcasing the Black female lead as a truly three-
dimensional character.
18
The series evidently features more of Thompson’s criteria, but these four
seem to be related most distinctly to the unique characteristics of the show.
Of Hyperdramas, “Scandal Pace,” and “Quality” Portrayals
Thompson’s catalog of characteristics can be considered as a basis for

demonstrating why Scandal constitutes “quality TV.” First, when
watching the series one notices a clear blending of genres: while Scan-
dal is officially labeled a political drama, its cold-blooded murder plots,
conniving conspiracies, and elements of espionage simultaneously turn
it into a thriller; its meticulous forensics makes it resemble a crime se-
ries; and its melodramatic love triangle is reminiscent of a romantic
comedy. All this transforms Scandal into a TV show that successfully
blends existing genres, thus creating something new. In an article on
Salon.com, television critic Willa Paskin labels Scandal a “hyperdrama,”
and although the term may sound negative at first glance, the attribu-
tions Paskin gives it, are, for all intents and purposes, positive:
Scandal is a genuinely unique show, one that out-melodramas melodra-

mas—it’s a hyperdrama—with an audacious, cynical perspective, a cast
of endlessly ethically challenged but captivating characters, a sprinting
plot, and a White House setting: a heady, completely addictive concoc-
tion. (“Hyperdrama”)
Characterized by hyperbole and hybridity alike, the series succeeds in

introducing novelties to distinguish itself from other television dramas,
which Thompson identified as one hallmark for his definition of “quality
TV” (Age 15).
Second, Scandal contains multiple and complex plot strands and a
series memory, two characteristics which are, by now, standard for tele-
vision shows that are not sitcoms. Many of these plot strands on Scandal
revolve around political power plays in Washington, D.C. Contrary to
the political drama series House of Cards (2013-present), an in-house
production of the on-demand Internet streaming platform Netflix, where
politics is made mostly by politicians, in the world of Scandal politics is
shaped by those who are usually behind the scenes. Concurrently, the
series follows the interplay between what Umberto Eco calls repetition
and variability in its aesthetics of seriality (see Eco’s “Interpreting Seri-
als”; Jahn-Sudmann and Kelleter 206). During the first season, for ex-
ample, every episode features its own variation of a “scandal,” a client’s
case that needs to be “fixed” by Olivia Pope and her team, much like a
murder case that has to be solved. Similar to a crime drama, evidence is
Simone Puff 115
collected, fabricated, and sometimes destroyed. Pope and her associates

act as stand-in detectives, alternating between uncovering and covering
up, which points to the moral transgressions of the individual characters.
The end of each episode is always marked by the presentation of a strat-
egy on how to best “fix” the scandal of the week. This includes working
with as well as exploiting and manipulating the media to spin the narra-
tive in a way that satisfies the client and wins Pope the case. Scandal,
therefore, also allegedly allows insight into how the media machine of
Washington, D.C. works and what it takes to control it. Alongside the
procedural story lines of each episode, in the course of each season,
several longer story arcs on the individual characters are unfolded and
turned into their own scandals in need of fixing. These longer and multi-
episodic story arcs rely on the viewers’ watching the series in chrono-
logical order week after week. Through the existence of such a series
memory, viewers can identify and sympathize with the characters who
become more and more complex individuals as the series progresses.
Third, Scandal often deals with contemporary, sometimes controver-
sial, political issues and thus tries to reflect the political reality in the
United States. Thompson identifies this as the aspiration towards realism
(Age 15). The pilot episode, for example, opens with a White male war
veteran who is wrongly accused of having murdered his White fiancée.
At first, he would rather go to prison than have his White male love
interest go public as his alibi. He is convinced that his coming out of the
closet would taint his status as a war hero, despite Pope reminding him
of the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy for gays and lesbians in the U.S.
military being rescinded (“Sweet Baby”).19 When Pope takes the vet-
eran’s case, she convinces him that being gay and being a war hero are
not mutually exclusive, and she spins the story in such a way as to pro-
mote gay and lesbian equality in the U.S. armed forces. Same-sex rela-
tionships and same-sex marriage are recurring themes on the show, as
the President’s Chief of Staff, Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry), is openly gay
and—in the course of four seasons—gets married twice.20 This happens
19
The policy was repealed in the United States in September 2011, less than a
year prior to the airdate of the episode in April 2012.
20
The wedding to his first husband, reporter James Novak (Dan Bucatinsky), is
shown in flashbacks in several episodes of season three. The wedding to his
second husband, former sex worker Michael (Matthew Del Negro), takes
in the fictional America of Scandal; in real life the U.S. Supreme Court
has only recently decided that same-sex marriage should be considered a
constitutional right on a federal basis. Other political references in the
series are made, for example, by introducing a fictional equivalent to the
legislative proposal called the “DREAM Act,” which would pave the
way for undocumented immigrants to obtain legal U.S. residency, and
which President Grant is pushing in episode five of season one (“Crash
and Burn”). The series also makes frequent allusions to historically
significant events such as Watergate in episode two of season one and
the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in the series’ pilot (“Dirty Little Secrets”;
“Sweet Baby”). Interestingly, a few months before whistleblower Ed-
ward Snowden leaked classified NSA documents that led to the biggest
government surveillance scandal in U.S. history in June 2013, Scandal
featured its own whistleblower who discovers a secret government spy
program called “Thorngate” in the third episode of season two (“Hunt-
ing Season”). This story arc unintentionally predicted—in quite uncanny
ways—a similar scenario to what happened in the United States only a
few months after the episode aired. Obviously just a strange coincidence
of life imitating art, this is another example of how close the show
sometimes gets to real life events. Shonda Rhimes’s most political
statement so far, however, has been the Ferguson-inspired episode four-
teen of season four (“The Lawn Chair”). In this episode an unarmed
Black male teenager named Brandon Parker is shot and killed in the
street by a White male police officer, a scenario that poignantly recalls
the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014.
When the Black community on Scandal starts protesting against racial
profiling and police brutality, Pope—in a rare moment of openly ex-
pressed consciousness of her own Blackness—stands in solidarity with
the other, mostly African American, protesters. Pope and her team then
work tirelessly to uncover the truth about the shooting, which is, indeed,
racially charged and unjustified. While the ‘happy end’ of the episode in
which justice is served and the police officer is indicted for what turns
out was an unlawful killing, was criticized by some, Shonda Rhimes
herself weighs in on the implications of commenting on the political
reality of America with her show: “In the end,” she writes on Twitter,
place at the White House in episode seventeen of season four (“Put a Ring on
It”).
Simone Puff 117
“we went with showing what fulfilling the dream SHOULD mean. The
idea of possibility. And [NOT] the despair we feel now” (Rhimes, “In
the end”).21 Whereas this episode of Scandal may portray a fictional
America which does not reflect the reality of White police officers rarely
being indicted, let alone convicted, for the killing of Black people,
Rhimes’s attempt to take on this timely issue is an example of how the
show aspires towards realism. In the final episode of season four (“You
Can’t Take Command”), Olivia Pope and President Grant discuss the
signing of the “Brandon Bill,” a fictional piece of legislation initially
introduced in episode nineteen of the same season (“I’m Just a Bill”),
which entails major reforms in law enforcement, particularly regarding
the policing of African Americans. It is politically significant that this
episode aired in May 2015 as the United States saw the “Black Lives
Matter” movement gaining momentum after twenty-five-year-old Afri-
can American Freddie Gray died from injuries he sustained while in
police custody in Baltimore, Maryland, in April 2015.22 The passing of
the fictional “Brandon Bill” in the world of Scandal therefore needs to
be seen as Shonda Rhimes’s open call for reforms to put an end to sys-
temic racism in the criminal justice system of the United States and to
highlight the importance of the “Black Lives Matter” movement overall.
Fourth, several aspects of the artistic production, both visual and au-
ral, inform the unique aesthetics of the show. If Scandal had to be de-
scribed with one adjective, it would probably be ‘fast.’ The television
series is characterized by narrative velocity, fast-paced dialogue that the
actors on the show call “Scandal Pace,” often in the form of Shake-
21
The reference to the dream is obviously one to the American Dream. Also,
Rhimes immediately added an addendum to this tweet, which was, as she
then points out, missing a “not” in the original: “Oops. And NOT the despair
we feel now” (Rhimes, “Oops”).
22
Apart from Freddie Gray, the most-high profile cases of police brutality in
recent history include the afore-mentioned shooting of Michael Brown in
Ferguson, Missouri; Eric Garner’s death by chokehold in Staten Island, New
York; the shooting of twelve-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio; and
the shooting of Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina. As is well
known, grand juries decided not to indict the officers involved in the deaths
of Brown, Garner, and Rice. The officers involved in the killings of Scott and
Gray were indicted and their cases are being brought to court as this article
goes to press.
spearean monologues (Goldberg), fast camera movements, and fast

cutting. All of this is paired with the acoustic trademark of the show, a
fast camera shutter sound that is repeated several times in a row, and
multiple times per episode. In the absence of a theme song at the begin-
ning, the title of the series and Shonda Rhimes’s role as executive pro-
ducer are also introduced with this fast camera shutter sound at the start
of each episode. This distinctive sound effect can be seen as an editing
technique used as a transition between two shots. Hearing the repeated
camera shutter sound, the viewer thus often feels like a voyeur or papa-
razzo who is allowed a secret insight into the scandals taking place be-
hind closed doors in America’s capital city. Often, the shutter sound is
paired with visual effects. One such effect is the overlay of historic
landmarks of Washington, D.C., such as monuments of presidents, war
memorials, or iconic buildings like the White House and the Capitol. Of
course, all these images contribute in their iconography to the shaping of
a very particular American identity that symbolizes democracy, freedom,
and patriotism. The images are, however, in stark contrast with the
deceptive scheming of the Washingtonian political elite, first and fore-
most of those working in and for the fictional White House.
Among other significant stylistic features are the show’s montage
sequences, which are accompanied by disco, funk, or soul hits of the
1960s, 70s, and 80s. As some critics noted, these sonic articulations have
become a veritable trademark of Scandal (see, for example, Ayers) and
create “racial commentary through […] reference to past sociopolitical
conditions associated with black culture in America” (Monk-Payton 23).
In the final episode of season one, the 1972 song “The Jungle” by the
funk band Black Heat is prominently heard, while a 90-second montage
sequence shows the media frenzy when a secret sex-audiotape with the
President’s voice is leaked to the press (“Grant: For the People”). As the
President’s extramarital affair is a continuing scandal on the show, this
theme is picked up again in another iconic montage sequence in the first
episode of season three (“It’s Handled”). This montage addresses the
events that unfold after Pope’s name surfaces in the media as the alleged
mistress and her “gladiators” go behind her back to successfully
convince the public with fabricated evidence that someone else is the
President’s lover. The audio track of the two-minute, fast-paced
montage, which includes dialogue as well as special optical effects, such
as fast-forward scenes and black and white shots with zoom sequences,
Simone Puff 119
features Rick James’s funk hit “Superfreak,” first released in 1981 (“It’s
Handled”).
Last but not least, much has been said about Olivia Pope’s signifi-
cance as a successful, though fictional, Black woman on television at the
very time when a Black family, in fact, occupies the White House, all
while the country is still rife with racial tensions. As TV scholar Jason
Mittell writes in Television and American Culture, “no single character
or program can represent an entire race” (327), but when there is still a
lack of diversity in televisual representation of African Americans, those
who are featured on the small screen receive all the more attention:
“When a group is less visible on television, each representation must
carry more cultural weight, standing in for an entire group” (Television
327). With the exception of commercial network successes by Shonda
Rhimes, including Scandal and her latest creation How to Get Away with
Murder (2014-present),23 both featuring powerful Black women as
leads, the images of Black women that seem to dominate television in
the twenty-first century are those depicted on reality TV. Such portrayals
are often still characterized by racial stereotypes,24 as a study published
in the November 2013 issue of Essence magazine shows. More than
1,200 respondents came to the conclusion that mediated images of Black
women—whether on television, in music videos, or on social media—
are still largely negative. According to this study the dominant
categories respondents saw in the media were “Gold Diggers, Modern
Jezebels, Baby Mamas, Uneducated Sisters, Ratchet Women, Angry
Black Women, Mean Black Girls, Unhealthy Black Women, and Black
Barbies” (Walton). In a world in which even First Lady Michelle Obama
23
The creator and showrunner of How to Get Away with Murder is James
Nowalk, but Rhimes is in charge at ShondaLand Productions, serving as ex-
ecutive producer of the show (Rosenberg).
24
There are exceptions to these negative, and often derogatory, portrayals on
reality TV, of course. In her article “Meet the Braxtons and the Marys,”
Adria Y. Goldman studies the celebrity docusoaps Braxton Family Values
(WE TV, 2011-present) about the lives of R&B artist Toni Braxton and her
sisters, and the reality show Mary Mary (WE TV, 2012-present), about the
gospel duo of the same name comprised of Erica and Trecina “Tina” Atkins-
Campbell. Goldman concludes that the women featured on these shows are
“multifaceted,” showcasing the lives of women who balance their family and
careers without resorting to reductionist stereotypes (48-49).
has been repeatedly branded as an “Angry Black Woman” (Nelson) and

reality TV shows like Bad Girls Club (Oxygen, 2006-present), the
docusoap The Real Housewives of Atlanta (Bravo, 2008-present), or the
Love & Hip Hop franchise (VH1, 2011-present) are consistently popular,
the study’s findings are hardly surprising.25 Olivia Pope, however,
embodies no such derogatory stereotypes. While her professional and
private choices are sometimes deeply flawed, and she is—by defini-
tion—a veritable anti-heroine, the complexity of her on-screen character
makes for a “quality” representation. Brittney Cooper of the blog Crunk
Feminist Collective highlights the importance of showcasing Pope as a
dynamic character with multiple layers of humanity: “The few black
women we’ve seen in prime-time roles in scripted shows, they have to
be morally above scrutiny, and she’s not. […] You’re not getting an
archetype, you’re not getting a stereotype, you’re getting a fully fledged
human being” (qtd. in Vega). Thus, as the Black Cuban American writer
Damarys Ocaña Perez asserts, Scandal features “a powerful black fe-
male lead character on prime-time, at a time when there were (and still
are) few quality TV roles for women who look like me” (qtd. in Gior-
gis). Despite the fact that some critics lament the relative absence of
direct references to race on the show, particularly in the first two sea-
sons, the Ferguson-inspired episode in season four demonstrates that
Shonda Rhimes as showrunner and television powerhouse is also capa-
ble of being political by aspiring towards realism and providing social
commentary.26 Apart from that, the mere fact that Olivia Pope is a
25
The prevalence of the “angry Black woman” stereotype in the public
consciousness became once again clear when The New York Times TV critic
Alessandra Stanley published racially insensitive and prejudicial remarks that
labeled both Shonda Rhimes and her female characters with the stereotype.
The article, which many found overly offensive, caused an uproar and led
The New York Times to apologize (Sullivan).
26
Another widely-discussed reference to race is made in a flashback scene in
episode eight of season two, when Pope makes a comparison between her af-
fair with President Grant and the relationship of President Thomas Jefferson
and his Black slave Sally Hemings (“Happy Birthday, Mr. President”). This
scene openly draws attention to a similarity in the power imbalance of both
extra-marital affairs, nothing short of considering Olivia Pope a modern-day
Sally Hemings (see the forthcoming volume Gladiators in Suits: Race, Gen-
Simone Puff 121
powerful Black female professional in a complex lead role sets an ex-

ample for what I would label “new quality TV.” Following in Olivia
Pope’s footsteps and treading new paths as Black female anti-heroines,
Mary Jane Paul (Gabrielle Union) on Being Mary Jane (BET, 2013-
present), Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) on How to Get Away with
Murder (ABC, 2014-present), and Cookie Lyon (Taraji P. Henson) on
Empire (Fox, 2015-present) are but three examples of what the future of
“quality TV” may look like.
Conclusion
Upon close analysis, many arguments exist for the claim that ABC’s
Scandal is more than what some critics have derisively called a soapy
melodrama along the lines of Rhimes’s previous television successes.
For one, the political drama series exhibits several criteria that scholars
have traditionally labeled as “quality TV.” This includes the creation of
the new genre Paskin calls “hyperdrama” and an emphasis on specific
narrative and aesthetic features, such as serial memory and artistic visual
and sound effects. An equally important “quality” criterion is the show’s
recurring attempt to provide current social commentary, whether with
storylines in favor of same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage, or
with references to institutionalized racism and police brutality against
African Americans. As contested as the term “quality TV” may be, it
allows for serious scholarly discussions of television, a genre that has
initially been ridiculed as a medium of “low quality.” Once scholars go
beyond the historic gender bias that labels male-centered shows more
often as “quality TV” than the shows that seem to cater more to a female
audience, the term is also in need of expansion with regard to represen-
tations of racial diversity. Due to the dearth of “quality” roles for women
of color and a continued dominance of stereotypical images in the me-
dia, the presence of a well-developed, multi-dimensional Black female
character on prime-time network television needs to be seen as demon-
strating “quality” through representation. Olivia Pope on Scandal em-
bodies one such “quality” role, being given numerous chances to trans-
der, and the Politics of Representation in Scandal, edited by Kimberly R.

Moffitt, Simone Puff, and Ronald L. Jackson II).
gress on all levels. She is hero and villain simultaneously, while being
portrayed largely free of stereotypes that otherwise continue to be seen
in mediated representations of Black womanhood. As the genre of tele-
vision becomes more and more inclusive of diverse casts of all shades,
sizes, and sexual identities, there is yet more room to expand the defini-
tion what a “new quality” on television constitutes in contemporary
America. For now, Olivia Pope has it “handled”—as she would say—
and viewers seem to enjoy this new kind of “quality” on TV.
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DOROTHEA WILL
The Humane Face of Politics? Political Represen-

tations, Power Structures, and Gender Limitations
in HBO’s Political Comedy Veep
HBO’s political comedy Veep, conceived, written, and produced by

Great Britain’s foremost television satirist Armando Iannucci, assured
the independent network once more of its position as one of the main
driving forces behind the reformation of the American televisual land-
scape. Although the portrayal of Washington as “populated only by
fools and knaves” involved some risks as “Americans tend to idealise
their democracy” (Rawnsley), the political comedy turned out to be yet
another success story for HBO and the program’s star Julia Louis-Drey-
fus, who garnered several awards for her portrayal of “the Veep,” Vice
President Selina Meyer.
Veep’s opening theme illustrates in only ten seconds the political
hopes of Selina Meyer laid against a musical backdrop reminiscent of a
news broadcast, as we learn from the headline montage flashing over the
screen how “Magic Meyer hopes to be President” but suffers a “Melt-
down” on her “un-super Tuesday.” The rising and then plunging line of
her approval rating combined with the celebratory and then derisive
headlines indicate that with the vice presidency, Selina’s political suc-
cess story has hit rock bottom. This public perception of the tragic exis-
tence of Vice Presidents is not new since former incumbents have fa-
mously described the office as not being “worth a bucket of warm piss”
(John Nance Garner) or “as useful as a cow’s fifth teat” (Harry Truman,
both qtd. in Mak). Consequently, the vice presidency with its “contrast
between the outward pomp and the inner reality” (Rawnsley) qualifies
perfectly as political satire.
Over the period of (currently) three seasons, we see Selina Meyer—
whom Stuart Jeffries describes as the “pint-sized, foul-mouthed, policy
128 The Humane Face of Politics?
vacuum of a maladroit Machiavellian”—struggle and suffer in the least

attractive office in Washington before she rises to presidential power in
the last episode of the third season. As Vice President she is trapped in a
limiting web of structural disempowerment, torn between her team of
aides, the states’ and federal interests, lobbyists and the President. Her
bleak outlook is further emphasized by the fact that as a female politi-
cian she is not accepted on equal footing in male-dominated Washing-
ton. Disillusionment about the United States’ most redundant political
post is palpable, and any political ambitions are only upheld by Selina’s
and her team’s capital thirst for power. When she finally succeeds the
resigning President into “the West Womb” to place “ovaries in the oval
office” (“Running,” S02E09)—foreshadowing, of course, the possibility
of “Hillary 2016”—it appears that what matters in this portrayal of
Washington is the presentation of content rather than content itself. By
ridiculing politicians and political advisors, Veep not only de-idealizes
their strategic work but also mocks those that unreflectingly consume
their counterfeit, beautified representations.
The layout of each episode of Veep resembles the traditional sitcom
formula, consisting of and developing from equilibrium over disequilib-
rium to resolution/equilibrium (Attallah 104-105). However, unlike
other comedies in which the initial and final situations are most often
well-balanced, peaceful even, the equilibrium in Veep is much more
brittle: it is the calm before the next political storm. The Vice President’s
hopeless struggle for recognition and power manifests itself in her
(always negated) signature phrase: “Did the President call?” The unsta-
ble equilibrium is easily disrupted as Selina’s ambitions are set back by
blunders committed either by her or her team out of incompetence, an
overestimation of their own competences, or simply bad luck. Instead of
doing politics, Selina and her team are busy covering up the blunders
and trying to avert any damage. Progress is impossible in this self-in-
duced cycle of spin that only reinforces the Vice President’s insignifi-
cance.
While political dramas like The West Wing (1999-2006) or House of
Cards (1990, U.K.; 2013-present, U.S.) work to convey a powerful
(though not necessarily positive) image of politics, political comedies
like Veep offer their audiences comic relief and subversive moments of
laughter about the failures of politics. In the following, I will explore
how HBO “provides a forum for transgression” (Leverette 125) for
Dorothea Will 129
Veep. Not only does the subscription network enable the makers of this
political comedy to test linguistic and generic boundaries, but it also
allows them to violate political representations through ridicule. By
ultimately confirming the audience’s prejudices and preconceptions
about the mechanisms of state politics in Washington, the viewer ac-
knowledges the comedy’s realism and awards it with credibility and the
impression of authenticity. Since the comedian ridiculing the political
system is readily accepted as a truth-teller (Wagg 271), Veep’s blatant
confrontation of its audience with their long-conceived suspicion about
Washington’s incompetence and fatuity is as convincing in its realism as
it is consoling in our joint laughter. It is then not only the authenticating
filming style that Veep offers but also the comedic purpose and layout of
the program that emphasizes its credibility. From an optimistic stand-
point we could further assume that the comic portrayal of Washington’s
political landscape is also able to trigger a democratic process as it calls
into question the audience’s understanding of politics and engages the
viewers in a discussion about the powers of manipulation and spin, lob-
byism and networking. The audience is left to contemplate whether the
foibles and failings of U.S. representatives are ultimately repugnant or
comprehensible as we conceive of them as a product of human(e) cor-
ruptibility.
“It’s not TV, it’s HBO”: Political Comedy and the Possibilities of Sub-
scription Networks
Already with its first success mockumentary Tanner ’88 (directed by

Robert Altman), HBO provided a hospitable environment for the pro-
duction of political comedy. As has frequently been observed, if HBO
served what everyone else was serving, it could certainly not hold its
subscription numbers. The network is forced to take risks and continu-
ously develop new ideas that are different than the run-of-the-mill pro-
gramming of broadcasting and cable networks. HBO’s counterpro-
gramming strategy (Auster 245), in consequence, is to eschew formulaic
and generic convention (Leverette, Ott, and Buckley 8). With this strat-
egy HBO addresses an educated clientele: media and political literates
who, as an elite group, engage with television and want to be intellectu-
ally challenged by it. As Avi Santo argues, “HBO must continuously
promote discourses of ‘quality’ and ‘exclusivity’” to sell “cultural capi-

tal to its subscribers” (20). It is, after all “not TV, it’s HBO,” as the
network’s slogan has been stating since 1996. HBO hence excels in
original programming and in reinventing genre conventions by continu-
ously challenging them.
Veep benefits strongly from the freedoms the pay-TV network HBO
can offer—even more so, it can probably only thrive in an economic
system like HBO’s. In 2007, for example, ABC attempted an American
version of Veep’s British template The Thick of It (2005-2012) which
never made it past a pilot episode, as the exclusively American writing
and producing team failed in setting the right tone. In an unusual move
for American TV, HBO, however, invited Armando Iannucci, the British
mastermind behind The Thick of It, and his writing and production team
to create Veep.1 Generally speaking, HBO’s institutional specifics as a
subscription network facilitate its production and programming proc-
esses. Firstly, due to the lack of pressure from advertisers and sponsors
and the independence from the regulatory demands of the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC), HBO has ample freedom to pre-
sent tabooed language, problematic positions, offensive topics, nudity
and obscenity. Secondly, as a cable network it does not have to finance
expensive news operations and can invest this money elsewhere, for
instance in the development and production of proprietary television
programs. Thirdly, the network’s commitment to present shows that are
essentially “not TV” implies that its writers and producers are endowed
with more generous funding and greater freedom for experimentation; in
consequence, HBO’s formats exhibit greater innovative and creative
potential. And lastly, the absence of advertisements allows writers to
develop different narrative patterns for their programs, since they do not
have to create plots to match a pre-commercial climax and have extra
broadcasting time available to them (Haggins and Lotz 165). The HBO
system then allows transgressions from traditional productions on sev-
1
The Thick of It was produced by and for the BBC. In Britain, the established
networks work as challengers and innovators of broadcasting, while in the
U.S. HBO, Netflix, and other new forces in the televisual landscape take on
this role. HBO is lauded for aspects that Brett Mills would assign to “the
British model” (Sitcom 55) of television production: it is an auteur-celebrat-
ing network that relies on the creative input and experimenting force of the
writer and rejects the more common producer-based model.
Dorothea Will 131
eral levels. Thanks to its independence from advertisers, who might not
want to be associated with the positions expressed in the program, Veep
can cover (and ridicule) such controversially discussed topics as gun
possession or abortion laws. However, while addressing these issues,
Veep never takes a political stand. When it comes to abortion, for exam-
ple, Selina never clearly spells out whether she is pro-life or pro-choice
as she is too afraid to scare away voters—or worse, to lose the support
of interest groups and jeopardize her political success. Moreover, we are
never really told which political party Selina is associated with, which
allows the program to appeal to a broader audience. The Vice President’s
incompetence is funny because it can be pinned on either side of the
political spectrum as her non-association is a deliberate instrument to
mock and critique the colorless sponginess of politicians.
Furthermore, HBO’s independence from FCC regulations explains
the overabundant use of swear words in all flavors highlighting the mor-
ally flawed behavior of politicians and their strategists and denying them
role model qualities. The show’s frequent use of Nazi comparisons often
oversteps the boundaries of good taste (and sense) but mirrors the recent
cases of similar rhetoric misconducts by real politicians and therefore
provides the show with sad authenticity.2 Chief of Staff Amy (Anna
Chlumsky), for example, evaluates the success at a midterm rally as “a
happy Nuremberg” (“Midterms,” S02E01), while Selina airs her disap-
pointment at unsatisfactory election results with “I came in third, Amy.
Okay? Even the Nazis came in second” (“New Hampshire,” S03E10) or
comments on her new lipstick that “when it hits, my eyes will say Holo-
caust, my mouth will say Carnival” (“Midterms,” S02E01). Humor here
is derived from the stark incongruity between the situation at hand and
the compared image that is so nonchalantly provided. These morally
questionable transgressions raise questions about what is permissible in
politics as well as in humor and hence not only comment on real-life
examples of rhetoric misconduct but also self-consciously play with the
limits of comedy.
2
We are, for example, immediately reminded of inappropriate Nazi compari-
sons in the debates revolving around Obamacare in which the sign-ups for the
healthcare program were likened to death trains or the obligation of defund-
ing it compared to overcoming the Third Reich. In fact, it seems that, as one
critic argues, the Nazis have become an “all-purpose metaphor” in modern-
day America (Bruni).
Further verbally transgressive behavior relies on demeaning insults,

often based on the defamation of minorities,3 but always enriched with
ribald and lewd innuendoes. Congressman Furlong, for example, ver-
bally abuses his aide Will with the following words:
FURLONG: Stop trying to polish my dick, you fucking four-

eyed failure. […] You know, you’re about as an-
noying as a condom filled with fire-ants. How’s
that for a fucking metaphor?
WILL: That’s a simile, sir.
FURLONG: Shut your mouth, you fat girl. (“Signals,” S02E02)
Here—and this is characteristic of Veep—the insulting conversation

caters to comedic tastes on several levels. Its effects range from the
audience’s primitive joy about insults that are creative and surprising to
the discrepancy between education, knowledge, and power. It is Will’s
knowledgeable and dry answer which provides the situation with the
necessary comic relief and targets a cultural elite audience. The uneven
distribution of power and knowledge between the Congressman and his
aide is visually supported by having the camera capture Will’s ingenu-
ous look and his submissive bearing of the politician’s biting comments.
The aide’s subservient demeanor reveals how all authority granted to the
Congressman is a result of his powerful position alone. Will’s maso-
chistic endurance, however, highlights his unhealthy ambitions as his
career depends completely on the Congressman. Selina herself is in no
way inferior to her antagonist Furlong in the raunchiness of her remarks.
In the episode “Nicknames,” Selina comments on her White House
liaison’s missing qualities:
DAN: I was trying to use Jonah for intelligence.

SELINA: That’s like trying to use a croissant as a fucking dildo. […]
Let me be more clear. It doesn’t do the job and it makes a
fucking mess! (“Nicknames,” S01E05)
3
The minority groups usually called on for the purpose of ridicule relate to
race, gender, and sexual orientation. Two out of the three categories hardly
figure in the show: unsurprisingly, Veep showcases a bias towards white, het-
erosexual males. The absence of diversity conveys an image of the detach-
ment of Washington staffers from ‘real’ America.
Dorothea Will 133
It is this kind of vulgar, yet creative, swearing that attracts and stimu-
lates even a culturally educated audience and maintains the program’s
position as something not to be obtained elsewhere. As Mark Leverette
remarks, “aestheticizing the taboo” (141) is HBO’s dominant philoso-
phy. The network is, as Janet McCabe and Kim Akass add, constantly
“pushing the limits of representation” (63) to elevate its status as a pro-
ducer of quality television. These linguistic transgressions then add to
the credibility of Veep as a likely portrayal of Washington just as any
kind of sugarcoated language would let it appear less realistic. Assuming
that transgressive behavior also reflects the role of the culture “that has
defined it in its otherness” (Jervis qtd. in Leverette 125), the overabun-
dant use of tabooed language can also be assessed as a commentary on
American hypocrisy between the ideals expected to be presented on TV
and the language believed to be actually used. By equipping the charac-
ters with a vulgar linguistic code, the political players are ultimately
knocked off their pedestal. The effect depends on the audience’s indi-
vidual perception: this version of politics can be experienced as mali-
cious and destabilizing, confirming our worst expectations about the
political landscape, or be appreciated as an honest and, although hard to
digest, humane portrayal of it.
The Visual and Textual Authenticating Measures of Veep
While HBO has been at the forefront of remodeling sitcom conventions

with shows such as The Larry Sanders Show (1992-1998) or Curb Your
Enthusiasm (2000-present) which refrained from traditional aspects like
fixed settings or high-key lighting, Veep partly returns to these conven-
tions whilst being anything but conventional. Iannucci’s British project
The Thick of It makes use of the mockumentary style to the extreme:
shaky, hand-held cameras, fly-on-the-wall impressions, covert filming,
muted colors, and a low-key atmosphere all imply the adoption of the
visual aesthetics of documentaries. These authenticating measures pro-
voke the audience first to take seriously what they see, then to unravel
and dissect its fictionality, and ultimately to challenge their own as-
sumptions about objectivity in politics and the media. Veep’s cinema-
tography is less extreme, particularly in lighting and atmosphere, but the
effect remains the same. The shaky, single camera appears to roam the
room, and sometimes even fails to capture changing dialog partners or a

shifting focus in time. The angle is not always ideal and the audience is
made aware of the camera’s otherwise unobtrusive existence when the
view is partially blocked by one of the characters. The action is trans-
mitted by a camera which is clearly integrated into the set-up; the series
thus “acknowledges its mediation” (Mills 70). Brett Mills has termed
this adoption of the visual aesthetics of the documentary style for come-
dic purposes “comedy verité” (74-75). The presence of the camera is not
directly acknowledged nor is the camera directly addressed by the char-
acters as in other mockumentaries that take the idea further. Its presence,
however, is always implied by its behind-the-scenes access. Veep’s
characters hardly ever share a private moment and it is clear from the
beginning that working in politics means performing on stage, being in
the limelight, and being observed at all times.4 The camera is just one
more cast member besides members of the Secret Service, political
competitors, and the media that follow the Vice President and her team.
This diegetic audience is not favorable as it just waits to observe or
overhear something that can be leaked, something that can be used
against Selina and her team. The constant awareness of everything being
staged in this artificial environment is palpable. As acting is mandatory
either way, the series can abandon some of the signals of mockumentary
television.
Furthermore, we find these authenticating measures in Veep not only
with regard to form but also content. While topical political issues such
as child care, fracking, or abortion become the backdrop against which
4
For the characters, intimacy is only to be found in places that do not exist in
the ordinary realm of comedy settings, like cramped storage rooms (“D.C.,”
S02E10) or sordid-looking toilets. It is here that the characters can freely vent
their emotions. With no diegetic audience present, the extradiegetic viewers
become confidants when they are exclusively allowed to share in these pri-
vate moments. In “Crate,” the third season’s penultimate episode, for exam-
ple, Selina and her personal aide Gary (Tony Hale) celebrate the imminent
succession to the presidency in a run-down toilet at a homeless center in
Maryland. The setting stands in stark contrast to the honor she is about to be
granted but fits perfectly as we find Selina at the culmination point of her
corruption. She is high on power as she sinks junkie-like onto the floor and
for an instance seems to lose all decency and control over her body as she
announces “I’m gonna be president!” (S03E09).
Dorothea Will 135
the various episodes are set, minor details and allusions are added that
integrate the series into the contemporary political circus. These refer-
ences make the viewing experience entertaining for an audience who is
able to unravel the allusions and link them to stories and images stored
in their collective political memory. We find Selina performing a song at
the fictional counterpart to the Gridiron Club Dinner (“The Vic Allen
Dinner,” S02E04), Selina’s competitor Danny Chung’s place of birth
being heavily debated (e.g. “Chung,” S01E04), or Selina pulling a pint
on a visit to Great Britain (“Special Relationship,” S03E07), as so many
non-fictional guests of state before her have. To be sure, references to
real political events emphasize the program’s actual fictionality as they
highlight the distinction between fact and fiction. But, while ridiculing
the political landscape they also add to the realism and plausibility of the
comedy when viewers make these real-life connections that ultimately
celebrate the incidents’ absurdity. The impression of “real Washington”
(Parker) is further increased as the show’s production team names insid-
ers of this supposedly real Washington as their sources and inspiration in
interviews and additional material.
Contesting “the Axis of Dick”: Gender and Power Struggles in Veep
While the politically literate viewer easily links the fictional Vice Presi-
dent Selina Meyer to female politicians equally struggling with male-
dominated political hierarchies, Selina’s “professional failings, personal
foibles and conventionally feminine attractiveness” (Wessels) bring her
particularly close to Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann. Creating a fe-
male character as Vice President both underlines the very limited politi-
cal influence of the office and, at the same time, criticizes the still highly
prejudiced and stereotyped representative role women are expected to
fulfil in public office, always depending on and being overshadowed by
the “real” work of a superior man or group of men. Washington’s hy-
pocrisy and double standards are frequently the object of ridicule. When
Jonah comments bluntly on the death of a senator and notorious sexual
harasser that “[w]hen a sexual harasser dies, we sign his wife’s card.
Okay? That’s how Washington works” (“Fundraiser,” S01E01), the lack
of sarcasm in his matter-of-fact tone of delivery points to the corrupted
perceptions in the capital where sexual harassment seems to belong to
the essence of (male) political power. Selina, however, enjoys rising

approval ratings after a televised meltdown in which she publicly be-
moans having devoted too much of her time to politics instead of her
daughter (“Tears,” S01E08). She is rewarded by the public for a moment
of weakness, not strength, and regains the voters’ trust and recognition
not for her political accomplishments but for her realization that her
work has made her to neglect her duties as a mother.
Halfway into the first season, Selina accidently learns about the
nicknames she has been given by the press. Most of these are based on
her gender, insult her appearance, and question her femininity and sex-
ual appeal. She is named “Tawdry Hepburn,” “Wicked Witch of the
West Wing,” “Veep Throat,” “Dickless Van Dyke,” or “Viagra Pro-
hibitor” (“Nicknames,” S01E05). The fact that Selina seems oddly
pleased with her being nicknamed “Viagra Prohibitor”—as long as she
assumes that it is “because when a guy’s with me he doesn’t need Via-
gra” (“Nicknames,” S01E05)—visualizes the state of her adaptation to
and acceptance of the patriarchal hierarchies and their sexist denigra-
tions. She appears hungry for recognition, uncritical, and shallow as she
embraces the insult as a compliment regardless of her own objectifica-
tion. The nicknames feed into the category of dirty humor, which “by
demeaning women, helps to perpetuate the status quo, the status quo of
patriarchy” as it is “an act of aggression whose purpose is to continue
male dominance” (Palmer 13). In their creative and humorous disguise,
the sexist and derogatory nicknames are perceived as “less discrimina-
tory, and more acceptable,” “harmless and innocent” (Bill and Naus qtd.
in Horlacher 18), while at the same time their conservative purpose is
emphasized. The inherent danger is humor’s ability “to hide patriarchal,
sexist, and even misogynist tendencies” (Horlacher 18).
The characters’ compliance with the patriarchal structures of politics
is further demonstrated in the show’s portrayal of Selina’s unwanted
pregnancy and miscarriage in the first season. The situation of “an un-
wed mother one aneurism away from the presidency” (“Baseball,”
S01E06) quickly develops into a political nightmare. Unlike male politi-
cians fathering children out of wedlock, it is clear how Selina would
have to deal with her pregnancy on stage. The masculinized world she
exists in would endanger her professional position as soon as her preg-
nant body were to become visible. As she readily uses her body as capi-
tal to gain advantages, a pregnancy would not only be a threat to her
Dorothea Will 137
slim figure but also suggest a morally flawed character. The pregnancy
becomes de-personalized when Selina’s miscarriage is not perceived as a
physically and emotionally painful act but as a comfortable solution to a
political problem.
In the third season, the Vice President has to adopt a stance on abor-
tion. Her inability to form a decision depicts the impossibility of a solu-
tion that would pacify interest groups and earn her voters. Similar to the
nicknames affair, her own female body is used against her. Conse-
quently, Selina is resolved to avoid a personalized discussion of abortion
since the identification as a gendered subject would be detrimental to
political success, as she paradoxically argues:
MIKE: Well, The Post actually wants to know if you’ve

changed your stance on abortion […]. So you
could say, “As a woman I believe.”
SELINA: No, no, no! No, no, no! I can’t identify myself as a
woman. People can’t know that. Men hate that.
And women who hate women hate that. Which I
believe is most women, don’t you agree with that,
Amy? (“The Choice,” S03E02)
Again, the show targets Washington’s hypocrisy by commenting on the

irony that, on the one hand, Selina is clearly identifiable as a woman
(and in such episodes as “Nicknames” even more so reduced to a sexual
object) but, on the other hand, vehemently opposes the idea of including
this biological fact in her argument. She has learned that taking a stand
“as a woman” by identifying oneself “as a woman” on a controversial
topic is damaging to both the cause and her popularity.
On a state visit to Finland, Selina is sexually harassed by the hus-
band of the Finnish Prime Minister: during a conversation he gropes first
her breast, then her bottom. Her personal aide Gary chastizes this viola-
tion as an “attack on America” and a “sexual 9/11,” identifying it as a
situation of war and terror, an event of national scale and importance.
The team’s opportunities of action are, however, limited:
AMY: It’s not like we can go public about the grope. It

would define you. […] Your tit being fondled by a
Finn would be all you’re remembered for. […]
You can’t build a statue on that.
SELINA: That’s right. Nobody can know about this. All

right? Especially Kent. […] And why is that? Be-
cause he’s gonna use it against me.
AMY: A grope matrix.
SELINA: Right. Because he’s a man. Because this is a man’s
world that we live in. Because of the axis of dick.
(“Helsinki,” S02E05)
During this sarcastic discussion, we find Selina half-lying on a bed,

smoking a cigarette and fashioning herself as a femme fatale. The cam-
era joins in to objectify her by putting her revealing cleavage into the
focus of the frame. Amy and Selina are playing a boys’ game and,
though desperate, accept all of its rules in a postfeminist twist. Speaking
out and publicly denouncing the violation would “identify her as a
woman” and outcast her. While we laugh about such wonderful crea-
tions like “the axis of dick,” the ridicule exposes the corruption of a
political system in which the Vice President’s thirst for power makes her
accept that neither her voice nor her body are her own.
American Political Culture and Television Comedy
Considering the popularity of all forms of political comedy and satire

with their biting social commentary, it is not surprising that the come-
dian ridiculing the system is readily accepted as the “truth-teller and
iconoclast” by the audience (Wagg 271). Consequently, politicians use
the information provided by these comedies for their own benefit and
embrace them as an important learning tool, analyzing and then working
on the elements of ridicule: Al Gore, for example, worked on his debat-
ing style after it had been mocked on Saturday Night Live (Jones 6).
Political comedy hence fulfills an important feedback function since it
works as a blunt, though often exaggerated, barometer of public opinion.
The comedian acts as an interpreter and the audience—by tuning in and
returning to the program—legitimizes this interpretation. Naturally,
satire and parody have always been powerful instruments to issue criti-
cism and to assert upsetting truths:
Satire’s lessons often enable people—as an audience, a community, a

polity—to recognize the naked emperor and, through their laughter,
Dorothea Will 139
begin to see realities that have been obscured. In that regard, satire pro-
vides a valuable means through which citizens can analyse and interro-
gate power and the realm of politics rather than remain simple subjects
of it. (Gray, Jones, and Thompson 16-17)
Steven Fielding argues that satirical portrayals of politics feed into what
he terms the citizens’ “imagined political capital” (16), a repertoire of
ideas on how the democratic system is approached and how one’s own
role in it is understood. Whilst political comedy is an important vehicle
for pointing out flaws in our political systems, for making politics more
easily approachable, for creating a more critical audience, for attacking
political orders and norms, and for consoling us in our joint laughter,
what comedy certainly cannot do is solve the problem it exposes. Schol-
ars hence argue whether political comedy’s main impact is one that
trivializes and subverts sanctions or whether it is a healthy, necessary,
and enlightening interpretation of politics. Matthew Flinders, for exam-
ple, condemns the currently observable shift from satire to “snark” in
political comedy. He finds the latest developments “aggressive, cynical,
anti-political” and criticizes them as an “ultimately destructive mode of
democratic engagement” (146, 155). Nick Randall, on the contrary,
warns that the creation of “an omnipotent Bartlett-like Prime Minister
may […] create an unattainable standard by which we come to judge
[…] politicians” rather than “encourage us to be suspicious and sceptical
about political actors and institutions” (277). From this perspective, a
thriving democracy needs a thriving political comedy scene. The humor
of political comedies like Veep is not meant to trivialize (Morreall 78),
and it surely does not have the subversive power to completely under-
mine political processes and politicians’ respectability and trustworthi-
ness. Yet it can add to the level of critical engagement with politics and
challenge propaganda as well as uncover the flaws of democracy. The
point here is that, as the political landscape has changed and the power
of spin has much increased, political comedy needs to adapt. An edu-
cated audience is aware that political representations are about story-
telling not least because resources deciphering media and voter manip-
ulation have multiplied. Veep thus performs important political work by
showing the messed-up world behind the high-gloss pictures and catchy
slogans.
Works Cited
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Critiquing the Sitcom: A Reader. Ed. Joanne Morreale. Syracuse: Syracuse
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Outside the Box: A Contemporary Television Genre Reader. Ed. Gary
Edgerton and Brian G. Rose. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2005. 226-46.
Print.
Bruni, Frank. “Nazis, Lynching and Obamacare.” The New York Times. 7 Oct.
2013. Web. 1 May 2015.
Flinders, Matthew. Defending Politics: Why Democracy Matters in the Twenty-
First Century. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. Print.
Gray, Jonathan, Jeffrey P. Jones, and Ethan Thompson. “The State of Satire: The
Satire of State.” Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era.
Ed. Jonathan Gray, Jeffrey P. Jones, and Ethan Thompson. New York:
NYUP, 2009. 3-36. Print.
Haggins, Bambi, and Amanda D. Lotz. “At Home on the Cutting Edge.” The
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tucky: UP of Kentucky, 2009. 151-71. Print.
Horlacher, Stefan. “A Short Introduction to Theories of Humour, the Comic, and
Laughter.” Gender and Laughter: Comic Affirmation and Subversion in
Traditional and Modern Media. Ed. Gaby Pailer, Andreas Böhm, Stefan
Horlacher, and Ulrich Scheck. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009. 17-47. Print.
Jeffries, Stuart. “Veep: The Washington Political Comedy That’s as Delightfully
Vicious as The Thick of It.” The Guardian. 19 June 2014. Web. 25 June
2014.
Jones, Jeffrey. Entertaining Politics: New Political Television and Civic Culture.
Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. Print.
Leverette, Marc. “‘Cocksucker, Motherfucker, Tits.’” It’s Not TV: Watching
HBO in the Post-Television Era. Ed. Marc Leverette, Brian L. Ott, and Cara
Louise Buckley. New York: Routledge, 2008. 123-51. Print.
—, Brian L. Ott, and Cara Louise Buckley. “Introduction.” It’s Not TV: Watch-
ing HBO in the Post-Television Era. Ed. Marc Leverette, Brian L. Ott, and
Cara Louise Buckley. New York: Routledge, 2008. 1-10. Print.
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Dorothea Will 141
McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass. “Sex, Swearing and Respectability: Courting
Controversy, HBO’s Original Programming and Producing Quality TV.”
Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond. Ed. Janet
McCabe and Kim Akass. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007. 62-76. Print.
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63-78. Oxfordjournals.co.uk. Web. 10 Aug. 2014.
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stoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 63-78. Print.
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don: BFI, 1987. Print.
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Veep.” The New Yorker. 26 Mar. 2012. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.
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nacular Theories of British Politics.” Parliamentary Affairs 64.2 (2011):
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Sep. 2012. Web. 28 Dec. 2014.
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duction at HBO.” It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era.
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Routledge, 2008. 19-45. Print.
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Normative Crossings:
Institutions, Gender, and Ethnicity
FABIUS MAYLAND
Institutions and Personal Conceptions of Reality in

HBO’s The Wire: Spatial Transgressions and Their
Consequences
MCNULTY:
I gotta ask ya: If every
time Snotboogie would
grab the money and run
away, why’d you even let
him in the game?
WITNESS ON STOOP:
What?
MCNULTY:
If Snotboogie always stole
the money, why’d you let
him play?
WITNESS ON STOOP:
Got to. This America,
man.
—The Wire
HBO’s The Wire is perhaps one of the most celebrated drama series ever
created, often noted for the level of commitment with which the series
constructs an expansive image of the city of Baltimore, as well as its
sweeping social realism, elucidating and drawing parallel lines between
the lives of police officers, drug dealers, politicians, stevedores, and
various other members of society. Due to its highly transgressive themes
such as crime, drugs, or homosexuality, and its reflections on the future
of the American city, the serial has proven a productive source text for
academics; the journal Criticism has published a double feature devoted
146 Institutions and Personal Conceptions of Reality
entirely to the serial in August 2011, and leading film scholar Linda
Williams released her monograph On The Wire in 2014.
One of the basic tenets of the series is that institutions of any kind
are solely interested in maintaining reality exactly as it is. As Alan
Sepinwall describes it: “The America of The Wire is broken, in a fun-
damental, probably irreparable way. It is an interconnected network of
ossified institutions, all of them so committed to perpetuating their own
business-as-usual approach, that they keep letting their own equivalents
of Snotboogie into the game, simply because that’s how it’s always been
done” (“Season 1”). Things are being done the way they have always
been done because they have always been done this way.
What I would like to sketch out within the confines of this essay is in
how far these institutions create spatial psychological pressure on their
constituencies, and to what extent this pressure has markedly more del-
eterious effects for those on the ‘wrong’ side of the law than for those on
the ‘right’ side. To do so, I will compare and contrast two spatial con-
figurations: a couch held dear by a group of drug dealers and an office
used by a group of police officers. First, however I will briefly consider
what an institution is in the first place, as well as define spatial psycho-
logical pressure.
Institutions and Their Originary Purpose
The five seasons of The Wire are largely demarcated along the lines of
the institutions that they focus on (the drug trade and the police; the
stevedore union; the political caste; the school system; and a newspaper,
respectively), all of which are large-scale institutions. While these kinds
of institutions are indeed the most important ones to keep in mind, for
the present discussion I will use a much broader definition of the term.
As such, Berger and Luckmann’s sociological treatise The Social Con-
struction of Reality may prove useful, as it defines the term very
broadly: “Institutionalization occurs when habitualized actions are recip-
rocally standardized; standardization that is being done in this way is an
institution” (58 [translation mine]). One term used by Berger and Luck-
mann that is crucial for my argument on The Wire is “types” (58); in the
act of reciprocally habitualizing actions, individuals become inter-
changeable types. In the words of Berger and Luckmann, “institutions
Fabius Mayland 147
postulate that actions of the type X are carried out by actors of the type
X” (58 [emphasis and translation mine]). In a sense, then, institutions are
akin to interpersonal habits. Any kind of habitualized interpersonal
action may become an institution of sorts. The critical aspect of institu-
tions is that the habitualized actions work between types and not be-
tween individuals, as this is what ensures the stability of institutions: if
we imagine, for instance, a fraternity to have come up with a unique way
of greeting one another, we will find that in this particular case, the
unique greeting method may very well stay alive indefinitely. As new
members join the fraternity, they too are introduced to this greeting. A
few years later, even with all of the originators of the habitualized
greeting having left, the institutionalized greeting would nevertheless
remain within the institution. Provided that the rotation of members is
slow enough, the micro-institutions of which the institution at large is
composed of (their unique method of greeting or other rituals) will con-
tinue to be transmitted. The cohesion of an institution of a larger scale,
then, is ensured by micro-institutions, that is to say, by particular habits
and rituals; and the continued survival of an institution is ensured by
transmitting these habits and rituals to new members of an institution.
These two facets are important because they relate to the parallel story
of the psychological burden institutions put on the characters of The
Wire.
On the basis of institutionalization as reciprocal and social habitual-
ization, we may take institutions to grant the same advantages as habits
do: “Habitualization in this sense implies that the action in question can
be repeated in the future in the same way, saving energy [...] for certain
[other] occasions […]. Through the background of habitualized action
[...] innovation is made possible” (Berger and Luckmann 56-57 [transla-
tion mine]). This is to say that institutions, in the first place, are designed
to be accelerators of innovation by freeing us from the necessity of
‘reinventing the wheel’ every time.
This evokes insights from evolutionary biology: it is a critical feature
of evolutionary processes that they are short-sighted (De Landa 139).
What this means is that every minuscule change from generation to
generation results in some kind of improvement. The development from
simple photoreceptor cells to the complex mechanics of eyes found in
contemporary species may have taken millions of years, but it was im-
portant that there were improvements at each stage. In a very real sense
then, the feat that institutionalization has originally accomplished is to

withstand evolutionary pressure for a time, in order to circumvent the
short-sightedness of evolution. With this preliminary sketch of the na-
ture of institutions completed, I am defining, in what follows, what I
alluded to earlier as psychological, spatial pressure.
“The radio in Philly is different?” Perceiving and Transgressing Reali-

ties
In the first chapter of their work, Berger and Luckmann note that “[con-
sciousness] has the ability to move from one reality to another,” and
that, furthermore, “[in moving from one to another reality,] the transition
produces […] a kind of shock” (24 [translation mine]). Though transi-
tion results in “a kind of shock,” Berger and Luckmann acknowledge the
ability to move from one reality to another within the “everyman,”
within consciousness itself. Yet I would argue that this kind of internal
ability does not simply come into being sui generis but rather is some-
thing that has to be learned and transmitted. It is the chance to learn this,
this transmission of knowledge, that appears to have been blocked for
almost every character in The Wire. In some circumstances, as Berger
and Luckmann later say, “[a problem may] transcend the boundaries of
everyday-reality and [point] towards a completely different reality” (27).
Yet within the series, there is an entire array of characters who seem to
be almost entirely unable to move from one reality to another. As Wil-
liams observes: “Ignorance abounds in Baltimore; cops, corner kids,
dockworkers and city politicians all desperately need to learn. Some-
times this ignorance [...] is painful, as when the corner kids [...] go to a
fancy restaurant and don’t know that the desserts trotted out to be cho-
sen are not also to eat right now” (153), to which she adds in her conclu-
sion: “Old Face Andre thinks he can escape the wrath of Marlo by
moving from the East Side of Baltimore to the West Side rather than
leaving town altogether [and] Bodie Broadus loses his local radio sta-
tion, unaware that ‘radio in Philly is different’” (213-14). It is significant
that all of the examples that Williams uses are spatial in nature: for al-
most everyone in The Wire, any other kind of spatial reality always
seems entirely absurd to them. Whether it is entering a restaurant where
the rules of conduct are entirely different or leaving Baltimore alto-
Fabius Mayland 149
gether, the characters are always overwhelmed (and often ultimately

punished) when passing from one space to another. Williams uses a
specific set of terms to denote this perceiving and transgressing of reali-
ties: single- versus multi-sitedness and soft eyes. The former term is one
that stems from ethnography, as she explains at some length:
Ethnographer George Marcus argues that there is an inherent problem

with the ethnographic method when it concentrates solely on a specific
location of studies. How do you indicate the existence of the larger sys-
tem that affects the micro-level of the community studied? To do so [...]
ethnographers of a “single site” inevitably have recourse to a larger
whole that has not yet been studied [... the whole] is often more assumed
than observed [...]. Thus Marcus and others have developed the ambition
to undertake a “multi-sited” ethnography—one that can approach the
system as a whole by studying more of the sites that compose it [... The
multi-sited method] maps a more complex thread of interconnected cul-
tural processes in a related world system [...]. [T]he ethnographer at-
tempts to “bring these multiple sites into the same frame of study.” (14-
15)
Williams uses these terms first of all to explain the nature of The Wire
itself as a show, arguing that the series is engaging in multi-sited ethnog-
raphy, “thus [solving] the problem of single-sited ethnography by
building larger multisited worlds” (18). Through its extensive multi-
sitedness, according to Williams, the series “approaches [...] a multi-
sited ethnographic imaginary that no longer needs to depend on allu-
sions of abstract ideas of ‘the state,’ ‘the economy,’ or ‘capitalism’ as its
‘fiction of the whole’” (18)—yet the ability (or lack thereof) of multi-
sited comprehension can also be ascribed to characters in terms of how
much psychological potential for mobility they display. Most of the
characters of The Wire are not able to view anything outside of their
own limited circle—their site—as a reality. And perhaps their single-
sitedness is even more radical—for them, there is not even a “fiction of
the whole,” there is no understanding that the single site they have ac-
cess to is not the whole: “The radio in Philly is different?” as Broadie
wonders in “Ebb Tide” (S02E01) when he leaves Baltimore for the first
time, unaware of the limited range of FM broadcasting.
The term of “soft eyes” is one that Williams takes up from dialogues
in the series itself: in the fourth season, Roland Pryzbylewski is told that
to be a good teacher one must have “soft eyes” (S04E02); in a later

episode, detective Kima Greggs is given the same advice when can-
vassing a crime scene, and more generally as a prerequisite to become
“good police” (S04E04). What exactly are soft eyes? Kima, having just
joined the Homicide Department, is told by a more experienced detec-
tive that “[with soft eyes] you can see the whole thing. If you got hard
eyes—you staring at the same tree missing the forest.” Williams directly
relates the idea of soft eyes to that of multi-sitedness: “Like the multi-
sited ethnography [...] soft eyes can take in multiple forms of infor-
mation about an interconnected whole situation and its contexts of sig-
nificance” (161). Crucially, she also notes that
[t]he value of soft eyes proves non-commensurate in the otherwise so

frequently parallel worlds of police and gangsters. A cop or a school-
teacher can become a better cop or teacher by learning to have soft eyes
[... but to] have soft eyes for those on the street is to comprehend too
much. It is to see a whole picture of the matrix of institutions that im-
pede growth and development [... but] this is a luxury the black under-
class cannot afford. (160-62)
A Tattered Orange Couch
One of the most iconic, “highly condensed and evocative” (Williams

216) images of the series is the couch in the middle of the low-rises. It is
not coincidental that Williams uses a still frame of the couch for her
book’s front cover and ends On The Wire by calling the series “a mas-
terpiece of serial television whose most potent symbol is a tattered or-
ange couch” (221). The image of a household object usually nested so
deeply in one’s home in the midst of a run-down housing project is a
powerful symbol of urban decay.1 This image of the couch in the hous-
ing project’s yard may be interpreted in a myriad of differing, but related
ways.
First, I will analyze how The Wire’s sustained critique of institutions
is supported by the image of the couch. It is located amidst the low-rises,
1
As Erlend Lavik notes in his video essay Style in The Wire: “As a piece of
furniture customarily associated with domesticity, [the couch] stands alone in
a barren landscape.”
Fabius Mayland 151
which consist of a number of houses, arranged as a square. In the middle

of that square is the courtyard, at the center of which the couch is situ-
ated. The low-rises themselves are one of two housing projects that are,
in terms of the drug trade—and there seems to be little other trade in The
Wire—under control of the Barksdale organization, the other housing
projects being high-rise buildings, or “the towers,” as the characters
sometimes call them. In this context it is helpful to once again remember
that institutions are formed by a plethora of micro-institutions; the crews
dealing drugs in the low-rises form one half of the Barksdale drug em-
pire, separated from those selling in the high-rises—and to sell drugs in
the high-rises is seen as more prestigious: at the outset of the first sea-
son, D’Angelo Barksdale is demoted to overseeing the low-rises.2
At the conclusion of season one, most of the characters are dis-
placed—Wallace is dead, D’Angelo in prison, and Bodie ‘promoted’ to
the high-rises—, and so is the couch itself, replaced by a black one. Poot
is the only one of our four original characters left, and indeed there is a
shot of Poot sitting alone on the new couch. Only a few seconds later,
we see him giving a lecture to a young dealer about how to properly
handle the exchange of drugs to avoid surveillance, recalling, word-for-
word, a conversation between D’Angelo and Wallace from the first
episode. The position of ‘overseer’ of the low-rises has, in essence, been
handed over to Poot. The correct mode of conduct—in this case, the
correct way of serving customers and taking their money—has been
ritualized, as has the teaching of this mode of conduct. Poot has assumed
the throne of the low-rises, metaphorically as well as literally, for the
couch itself literally is the seat of power in the courtyard, which is why
D’Angelo, Poot, Bodie, and Wallace are the only ones sitting on it; the
couch perfectly encapsulates the usual properties of an organization’s
center of power. As is generally the case, there is very little actual busi-
ness—drug dealing, in this instance—occurring in the vicinity of “man-
agement”; the bus(y/i)ness of the drug trade occurs not at the center of
this space but at the edges of it, its periphery, the drug dealers and the
addicts leaning against the house walls. D’Angelo is, in essence, the
2
Everyone—Stringer when telling D’Angelo, D’Angelo upon hearing it, and
even Wallace and Bodie in the low-rises—knows that D’Angelo is essentially
being punished: “Yo, wasn’t you in the towers?”—“Yeah”— “Why’d they
put you down here, yo, you messed with the count or something?” (S01E01).
local lord, but vassal to Avon Barksdale; and Bodie, Wallace and Poot in
turn are vassals to D’Angelo but superior to those handling the dope
itself, the members lowest in the chain of command. That kind of work,
the actual trade of drugs is something performed at a distance from the
seat of power, as all physical labor usually is. The micro-institutions of
the drug trade, the hierarchy that the Barksdale institution demands,
then, is literally inscribed in this space.
Furthermore, as mentioned above, institutions give people roles to be
performed, and such roles are designed and demarcated in such a way
that the individuals inhabiting them are easily replaceable; they are
‘typified.’ These roles—micro-institutions, more or less—transcend the
person occupying the position at any given moment; the institution is
made to survive rotation of personnel. The couch comes to embody the
entire structure of command, the entire flow of power within the low-
rises. It is important here that, despite my use of vassal and lord earlier,
this power structure is not aristocratic or monarchic: for while kingdoms
may often be defined by a single king or dynasty, modern institutions are
not dependent on any particular person as much as on the abstract
existence of roles and positions in general, to be filled by no particular
person or object. D’Angelo and Poot, as people, are replaceable parts
within the machinery, as is the orange couch, replaced by a black one;
but the institution, as abstractly depicted by any given couch, seems to
come out unscathed from all of the turmoil of season one of the series.3
The Wire is also a show that extensively plays with the conventions
of television series, and couches are certainly a veritable object within
TV series. The couch and the living room are, in any number of sitcoms,
a safe harbor, a private and protected space in the exact center of one’s
home—psychologically, if not physically. Couches usually form the
3
The final montage of the fifth season details just how little has changed in
Baltimore; in this context, the serial is slightly unconvincing regarding the
characters’ development: Michael becomes ‘the new Omar,’ Dukie becomes
‘the new Bubbles,’ Carver becomes ‘the new Daniels,’ and Sydnor, for little
apparent reason, becomes ‘the new McNulty.’ The unchanging nature of the
flows is much more aptly shown by the credit sequences, which, as Williams
notes, “avoid showing faces of any major characters and [... concentrate] in-
stead on typical gestures [of dealers and cops]” (59). Qua Berger and Luck-
mann, habitualized gestures are practically the smallest units of institutionali-
zation.
Fabius Mayland 153
center of the living room in TV homes, as they do in The Simpsons

(1989-present) or King of Queens (1998-2007). It is no coincidence that
there is always a television set in front of the couch; the safety of the
living room is characterized by the TV set as a virtual window through
which one peeks into a comfortingly distant outside. But if the couch as
an object is intrinsically linked (at least within the aesthetics of televi-
sion serials) to the safe interior of a home and to the comforting virtual
window of a television set, what are we to make of the couch in the low-
rises? As already mentioned, the couch is certainly the center of power
in the court: in addition, it is also to a large degree a private, a personal
space. Two scenes in particular stand out. The first one, from the second
episode of the series (“The Detail”), subverts the idea of the American
family eating on the couch;4 here it is Wallace and Poot eating Chicken
McNuggets, D’Angelo somewhat absently looking into the distance. As
Wallace and Poot ponder on how wealthy the inventor of Chicken
McNuggets must be, D’Angelo enters the conversation, explaining to
Wallace and Poot some of the grim facets of corporate capitalism:
WALLACE: Man, whoever invented these, yo, he off the hook. [...]
POOT: You think the man got paid? [...]
WALLACE: Shit, he richer than a motherfucker.
D’ANGELO: Why? You think he get a percentage? [...] Nigga, please,
the man who invented them things, just some sad-ass
down at the basement of McDonald’s, thinkin’ up some
shit to make some money for the real players.
POOT: Naw, man, that ain’t right.
D’ANGELO: Fuck ‘right.’ It ain’t about right, it’s about money. [...]
Man, the nigga who invented them things still workin’ in
that basement for regular wage, thinkin’ up some shit to
make the fries taste better, some shit like that. Believe.
(S01E02)
In The Wire, instead of a family, the couch hosts Poot, Wallace, and
D’Angelo (fathers are mostly absent in the serial);5 and D’Angelo—like
4
This is satirized in The Simpsons: “Marge, can’t we get some clear plates? I
can’t see the TV!” (S08E06).
5
Mothers are not quite as absent in the serial, but are instead usually depicted
as actively hurting their children, to the point where it indulges in the racist
stereotype of the neglectful black mother (see Moffitt in this volume). As
The Wire itself—does not hand out quasi-fatherly, reassuring advice

about the United States (as television dads have done since the days of
Leave it to Beaver [1957-1963] and Father Knows Best [1954−1960]),
but rather teaches Wallace and Poot (as well as the viewer) something
that is more meaningful and profound (in this instance that capitalism
does not necessarily reward the ingenuity of individuals). This scene
represents the couch as an object of great psychological importance to
those sitting on it—a place of frank conversation, of social bonding. In a
traditional sitcom it is usually the television set in front of the couch that
is the important object (especially in The Simpsons), but in The Wire,
only the couch itself remains.
In another scene the couch is more traditionally used as the space of
a personal heart-to-heart conversation. After seeing one of the most
viscerally brutal consequences of ‘the Game’ that is being played around
him—the mutilated corpse of Brandon, someone he tipped off to his
superiors, being displayed on the hood of a car, in the direct vicinity of
his home—Wallace wants to turn his back on the drug trade and, trusting
D’Angelo, decides to talk to him about it. The conversation takes place
late in the evening, in the darkness (as opposed to a living room, where
artificial light serves to ward off the darkness). The living-room is a
space at the center of one’s home, safe by virtue of its distance to the
outside world. By contrast, the couch in the courtyard is out in the
open—yet for Wallace, who shares an apartment with Poot and a num-
ber of young children, the couch is still the closest thing to a home; their
apartment, ‘contaminated’ by violence (especially the quasi-crucified
body of Brandon), does not lend itself to such a private conversation,
unlike the couch (which is, due to its visibility, at a certain distance from
the actual drug business). It is this couch that signifies safety and secu-
rity for Wallace more than any other space.
Yet if the couch allows Wallace to speak frankly to D’Angelo about
his desire to quit “the game,” it is also the couch that inevitably pulls
him back to the drug trade. After a few days at his grandmother’s house,
outside the city, being driven there by Lieutenant Daniels, he returns
once more to the low-rises, where his friends are—and the couch, and
Williams puts it: “That The Wire needs to blame villainous mothers so much
for the suffering of their sons is certainly a deeply sexist failure in a series
with more than one monstrous mother” (166).
Fabius Mayland 155
the drug dealing. Wallace wants to get “away” from the drug culture, but
when that abstract “away” turns into a concrete everyday-reality, Wal-
lace is overwhelmed: “I don’t think I’m cut out to be no country-ass
nigga, man.” No matter how much the image of Brandon’s mutilated
corpse initially gets to him, its psychological effect wears off soon
enough, and the only image left is the couch. “The couch [is] sat on,
lounged on, stood on, and slept on. It serves for all intents and purposes
as home” (Williams 217). At his grandmother’s house, by contrast,
Wallace hears the sound of crickets for the first time. The violence of the
drug trade is certainly shocking for Wallace, yet it does not seem nearly
as new as the sound of crickets in a field, something genuinely unknown
to him; the country is a completely different reality that Wallace cannot
perceive as a real space for himself. A few episodes later, indeed, in a
conversation with D’Angelo, who asks him if he knows a certain food
shop up on 29th Street, Wallace simply says: “Shit, if it ain’t up on the
Westside, I don’t know shit. ‘Cause this shit, this is me, yo, right here”
(S01E12). That utterance of “[t]his is me, yo, right here” points towards
the fact that Wallace constructs his own identity primarily spatially, and
therefore feels alienated from himself when he is made to live in the
countryside. He thus returns to the low-rises, only to be gunned down by
his friends Bodie and Poot. For Wallace, the couch—a symbol that is as
heavily drenched in meaning for the viewer (who is familiar with intra-
and extradiegetic sitcom conventions and aesthetics) as much as for
Wallace (for whom it symbolizes a home and a sense of self)—and the
drug trade are the only realities out there; his vision is thus single-sited.
Wallace is sent to his grandmother’s house in rural Maryland, but in
the chaos that ensues after a cop is shot in an undercover operation,
nobody in the detail remembers to check up on Wallace. It is because
there is no pressure for him to stay away (and a great deal of internal
psychological pressure to come back to the city) that Wallace inevitably
returns. The Wire is dependent on the great amount of time that the show
is granted (sixty episodes) to develop multi-sitedness, to “transform a
social type into a human being” (Lorrie Moore qtd. in Williams 29), i.e.,
to produce three-dimensional characters. Similarly, it would be neces-
sary for Wallace to spend a great amount of time at his grandmother’s
house to come to terms with the country as a reality, a space that is not a
“type” but a “being,” so to speak. Without any immediate incentive to
do so, it is little wonder that he returns instead to the orange couch.
The Detail’s Office
The second episode of the first season introduces us to the so called

“detail,” a task-force that is supposed to investigate Avon Barksdale. It
comes into existence purely to appease Judge Phelan: it is politically
necessary to create and then sustain the detail for a month or so, but
none of the people in charge really expect it to perform genuine police
work6—and, as soon as Judge Phelan forgets about the affair, the detec-
tives assigned to the detail can quietly be pulled back into their own
departments. As is befitting for a detail whose existence nobody really
cares about, the office that they are given consists out of a few run-down
rooms, hidden away in a cellar, the noise from construction workers
interrupting the detail’s first meeting (S01E02). The message sent to the
detectives—above all, to Lieutenant Daniels—is clear: do not even think
about making yourself at home. The police is trained and habituated to
do their job in one very specific way, and anything outside of this para-
digm is castigated as untenable. That one specific way is the “buy-[and]-
bust tactic,” a mantra repeated throughout the series by those in com-
mand: “Buy-bust, lieutenant. It’s what I asked you for months ago. It’s
what we do successfully time and again to make these cases,” the Dep-
uty of Operations Burrell tells Daniels. Here, it is worthwhile to explain
the logic underlying the “buy—bust”: what this tactic accomplishes is
that, in the first step, low-level dealers and addicts are taken into custody
and serve a prison sentence, thereby deprived of whatever slim chance
of a legal occupation they might have had; this in turn will inevitably
bring them back to the drug trade, while getting the police in no way
closer to solving the problem on a larger scale. The police is therefore
literally ensuring its own survival as an institution by perpetuating the
problem.7
6
As Daniels puts it in season one, episode two (well before McNulty comes to
see him as “good police”): “[The Deputy] sent me a message on this: don’t
dig in. Don’t get fancy [...]. He sends me good police, I might get it into my
head to do good police work.”
7
Williams notes that “[we] thus quickly perceive what legal scholar Susan
Bandes calls the ‘happy symbiosis’ between the two institutions [… Both] in-
stitutions endure and are determined by each other. The war on drugs is what
keeps them both in business” (145).
Fabius Mayland 157
Paradoxically, then, it is the literal distance from the usual police offices
that enables the detail to do good police work in the first place. Daniels
clearly starts out as “a company men [sic; …] willing to take explicit
and limiting orders from [his superiors]” (Sepinwall, “Season 1”), but as
soon as he leaves the orbit of his department he comes around to agree
with the viewpoint of Jimmy McNulty and Lester Freamon with regard
to what the case requires: “McNulty says this case needs a wire,”
Daniels tells Burrell. “You think he’s right?”—“It needs something.” It
seems clear that Daniels is capable and willing to do good police work,
but he is too content to follow whatever mode of conduct is in place
until McNulty and Lester thrust upon him the necessity of more than
buy-busts; and that must by necessity happen in the dank, forgotten
office given to the detail, physically and ideologically far away from the
other offices. Consider the significant amount of screen time devoted to
the offices of the Homicide Department; in spite of its prominence as a
location, little actual work seems to ever get done within its tiny cubi-
cles. Within the detail’s office, by contrast, the detectives slowly assem-
ble a full picture of the Barksdale organization on a cork board. As a tool
of narrative, such cork boards are a staple of TV serials, and they are
often used to highlight the obsessive nature of a character more than
anything else, as with Carrie Mathison in Homeland or Rust Cohle in the
seventh episode of True Detective. Here however, the cork board is used
specifically to represent the good police work that the detail is doing:
where buy-busts are barely concerned with hierarchies and flows, with
“seeing the whole thing,” such cork boards are practically made to draw
these connections. And like all attempts at understanding a radically
different reality or a different “site,” what assembling these cork boards
requires above all is a large amount of time. The difference between
buy-busts on the one side and good police work on the other is that the
latter wants to understand another space, another reality in a more com-
plete fashion. As such, the cork board is something that would literally
not fit into the tiny cubicles of the Homicide office—there would be no
room for it, just as there is no room within the mode of conduct of the
Homicide Department to create “ideas of the whole.” The point here,
however, is not that the characters need more space, but simply that they
need a different space. It is by being forced to work in this new space
that the detectives develop new ideas and new methods; it is by remov-
ing Daniels from the orbit of his superiors that he is able to develop
“soft eyes.”
In the second season, the detail is eventually revived and relocated to
a new building in the southeast of Baltimore, in direct proximity to the
docks—and even farther away from the usual offices. One might expect
it to become even more multi-sited, more soft-eyed. Yet more im-
portantly, Daniels requests from Commissioner Burrell that the detail be
made into a permanent unit, the “Major Crimes Unit.” This space at the
fringe, once it is made into a permanent, durable structure, into the Ma-
jor Crimes Unit, is now itself in danger of becoming an ossified institu-
tion. In his essay “Dramatizing Individuation: Institutions, Assemblages,
and The Wire,” Alasdair McMillan extensively uses the concept of as-
semblages as put forward by Deleuze and Guattari (and taken up by De
Landa): assemblages can be either more rigid, hierarchical and territori-
alized, or more informal, heterogeneous and deterritorialized (46-49).8
McMillan concentrates on the fact that organizations within the drug
trade are, on the whole, more informal and deterritorialized, in contrast
to the “massive, rule-bound institutions of the State Apparatus” (47).
The various institutions (which, in our broad definition, may also be
assemblages) of The Wire, then, are situated somewhere between these
two extremes. The detail certainly at first seems to be a less hierarchical,
less rigid place compared to the other legal institutions and their modes
of conduct that we bear witness to. Indeed, the very fact that the detail is
relocated between the first and the second season shows this. But in the
same manner, the fact that it becomes the permanent Major Crimes Unit
turns it into an institution that has been reterritorialized; and with reter-
ritorialization comes institutional ossification. Every case needs “some-
thing,” but the call for that “something” automatically becomes a call by
McNulty and Freamon for more wiretaps. That is to say, instead of
showing flexibility, the Major Crimes Unit itself now has a rigid, fixed
mode of conduct. “Getting up on a wire becomes the ritual quest of each
season,” as Williams puts it (145). Lester Freamon, a police officer who
is adamant about following the money in the first season, comes to share
8
See De Landa as well as the jointly written works of Deleuze and Guattari,
specifically A Thousand Plateaus (1987). The idea of deterritorialization is
applicable to much of what I have said so far, although its meaning is, as with
many terms by Deleuze and Guattari, practically left to the recipient.
Fabius Mayland 159
McNulty’s unhealthy compulsion to catch the gangster Marlo Stanfield,

to bring in “one last, worthy case”9 in the final season. In all reality,
catching Marlo does not matter one bit—the flow of drugs is never af-
fected by individuals (or couches) being exchanged; “[surveillance]
never makes a serious dent in the drug trade” (Williams 145). Lester
would have done well to heed his own advice: “You follow drugs, you
get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and
you don’t know where the fuck it’s gonna take you” (S01E09). Yet as
the Major Crimes Unit coalesces into a more stable institution, its mode
of conduct becomes a mere reflexive call for more wires, which never
amount to convictions outside of the drug gangs themselves.
McMillan notes that an “arms race” ensues between the police and
Marlo Stanfield’s drug gang, within which “[the gang’s] code in turn is
cracked by [the] police in the course of an illegal wiretap” (43). His
metaphor of the arms race is interesting in its proximity to evolutionary
arms races. As I already noted, evolutionary processes such as arms
races are intrinsically short-sighted; in this context that is to say that
they operate under the principle of hard, not soft eyes. Evolutionary
adaptation requires improvement for every single generation—it cannot
plan long-term changes, it cannot “see the whole thing.” As such, it is
telling that Lester does not think of a new method of getting to Marlo
(let alone to the flows of money); he simply devises a new (illegal) way
of setting up a wire. As the Major Crimes Unit becomes more rigid, it no
longer develops qualitatively new methods and ideas, as it did in season
one (when setting up a wire was novel); it merely finds new ways (in
this case, leaving behind legality) of forcibly incorporating its by-now
old ways. McNulty and Freamon no longer see the problem as a whole,
as a complete being, but rather merely as a type. Much like the dreaded
buy-busts favored by Burrell, Lester Freamon too comes, as soon as the
Major Crimes Unit is reterritorialized, to irrationally believe in some-
thing that will “work time and time again to make these cases,” some-
thing that ought to be “the way we do business” (S01E10).
9
Quoted from the back of the season five DVD box.
Conclusion
The Wire, in its conscious focus on Baltimore,10 is an obvious choice for

the kind of spatial readings that have become so commonplace in the
past twenty years. Nevertheless, I do believe that the spatial interpreta-
tion offered here is valuable in uncovering what exactly The Wire tells
the viewer about the workings of institutions. Firstly, I have looked at
the orange couch of the low-rises as a space of contradiction: it has
shown us—through its own replaceability—that an institution turns
objects (and above all, people) into types that it can easily replace in
order to survive; yet we have also seen that the couch—the orange
couch specifically—simultaneously functions as a highly important
space, as the only reality, the only site where Wallace feels like himself.
As such, it seems that institutions make people and objects expendable
while simultaneously, in prescribing tightly demarcated modes of con-
ducts and tightly defined spaces, they often deprive individuals of cop-
ing with any other kind of reality, and therefore with a potential life after
these people have been deemed expendable. Thus Wallace returns,
oblivious to the fact that the system does not need him and, in fact, will
turn his best friends against him. The detail and its office, meanwhile,
seemed at first to be a space within the police department that had great
potential to generate change. Yet, while it is encouraging that the “com-
pany man” Daniels turns into a good police officer permanently (he
successfully juggles the demands of institutions and his own desire to
not just target street-level dealers throughout the rest of the series), the
space of the detail and the detail itself slowly begin to corrode at the
exact point in time at which the detail is made permanent. As such, “soft
eyes” might be possible to develop for individuals; institutions, however
have regressed to the very evolutionary short-sightedness that they once
attempted to circumvent.
Perhaps the more tragic conclusion, however, is that acquiring “soft
eyes” does not seem possible for Wallace, and for the African American
lower classes in general. It is here that the lives of the police officers and
the gangsters, which so often unfold in parallel, diverge drastically.
Lester Freamon, for example, conducting police work in a manner that
10
For David Simon, Baltimore was “the ultimate star of the narrative” (Sepin-
wall, “Simon”).
Fabius Mayland 161
the institution of law enforcement does not endorse, is banished into the
“pawn-shop unit,” where he remains for thirteen years and four months.
Here, he takes up the hobby of constructing dollhouse furniture—reali-
ties (or sites) that he can take with him at all times. As such, he learns to
develop multi-sitedness at least on a personal level, even if, within the
ossified structure of the Major Crimes Unit, he comes to temporarily
exhibit a “hard-eyed” approach to policing in the fifth season. Wallace,
by contrast, is not given such a chance. As Williams puts it, to stray
away from a single-sited vision “[is] not available or even advisable to
those who must survive on the street” (170). As a detective wryly notes
in the finale of season one, the difference between the institutions of the
law and those caught up in the world of drugs is that “[when] they fuck
up, they get beat. We fuck up, they give us pensions” (S01E13). For the
detective, this is the reason why the police cannot win the war on drugs;
the drug gangs are being disciplined more and therefore are more disci-
plined. Yet this is also, I argue, the reason why some individuals on the
side of the law can develop “soft eyes,” while no such flexibility exists
for those on the other side. It should be a precondition that one is al-
lowed to fail—and to learn from those failures—if there is to be a
chance to develop “soft eyes.” When Lester Freamon is punished for his
(perceived) failures by the institution he is part of, he is sent to the
pawn-shop unit. He does not “get beat [for] fuck[ing] up” (S01E13).
Wallace, by contrast, is simply shot dead by his friends.
The first and foremost reason for this is a fact that is repeatedly criti-
cized by the serial: that the drug trade is illegal. Why, after all, does the
drug trade demand “reacting with [immediate] defensive violence”
(Williams 161)? The answer is hidden in another question, posed by
Detective McNulty to D’Angelo Barksdale: “Why can’t you sell the shit
and walk the fuck away? You know what I mean? Everything else in this
country gets sold without people shooting each other behind it”
(S01E02). The answer here is simple: every other business “in this
country” is controlled by the violence of the state. In the words of Kōjin
Karatani, who takes up a notion of Max Weber: “[The monopoly on
violence] does not simply mean that the state is founded on violence.
The state protects its constituent peoples by prohibiting non-state actors
from engaging in violence. In other words, the establishment of the state
represents a kind of exchange in that the ruled are granted peace and
order in return for their obedience” (6). By making the drug trade illegal,
however, the government ensures that drug cartels and gangs have to
find their own, extra-legal methods of creating peace and order. But the
drug dealers must not only establish peace and order amongst them-
selves; they must do so while also evading the police, the force of the
state. To do so requires “soldiers” (little more than pawns on the chess-
board, as D’Angelo tries to explain to Bodie and Wallace at one point)
that are well-disciplined; yet the word (well-)disciplined encompasses
both being trained or prepared as well as to be punished.11 We therefore
return to the notion that “they fuck up, they get beat” (S01E13). Caught
between a double bind, the drug trade must use excessive internal vio-
lence to discipline its troops, so as to ensure that they continue to elude
the police: “The criminal assemblages of The Wire, bereft of the assur-
ances offered by legality, must enforce their discipline with far greater
violence” (McMillan 47). It is thus a continuous escalation between the
drug trade and the police that enforces, on the individual level, the kind
of evolutionary short-sightedness for those on the wrong side of the law;
due to the necessary discipline required, they are never given a chance to
“make the gamble of softness” (in the words of Williams, 161). All of
their resources must be pooled to ensure immediate advantages over
state violence. Institutions on either side of the law seem to lose their
purpose of transcending short-sighted evolution and become short-
sighted themselves—yet while this does not entirely preclude the chance
of becoming soft-eyed, of becoming able to access more than one site
for those individuals acting within the legal institutions, the illegality of
the drug trade blocks off any chance of doing so for those who are
caught up in ‘the game.’ For them, it is as Avon Barksdale says: “You
only got to fuck up once. Be a little slow, be a little late—just once. And
how you ain’t gonna never be slow, never be late?” (S01E05).
11
Williams mostly eschews Foucault, finding that the panopticon of the titular
wire is less effective than the police would like it to be, but notes correctly
that “[attempts to thwart the police surveillance lead] to a way of life that is
itself shaped by the discipline of the resistance to surveillance” (150). Fou-
cault’s concept of docile bodies remains highly important within the series.
Fabius Mayland 163
Works Cited
Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. Die gesellschaftliche Konstruktion der
Wirklichkeit. Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, 1969. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Mas-
sumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987. Print.
De Landa, Manuel. A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History. Cambridge: MIT
P, 1997. Print.
Homeland. Created by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa. Showtime, 2011-pre-
sent. Television.
Karatani, Kōjin. The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to
Modes of Exchange. Trans. Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham: Duke UP,
2014. Print.
Lavik, Erlend. “Style in The Wire.” 2012. Web. 2 Apr. 2015.
McMillan, Alasdair. “Dramatizing Individuation: Institutions, Assemblages, and
The Wire.” Cinephile 4 (2008): 41-49. Print.
Sepinwall, Alan. “The Wire, Season 1, Episode 1: ‘The Target’ (Newbies Edi-
tion).” What’s Alan Watching? 30 May 2008. Web. 2 Apr. 2015.
—. “The Wire: David Simon Q&A.” What’s Alan Watching? 9 Mar. 2008. Web.
5 Apr. 2015.
Talbot, Margaret. “Stealing Life.” The New Yorker. 22 Oct. 2007. Web. 2 Apr.
2015.
The Simpsons. Created by Matt Groening. FOX, 1989-present. Television.
The Wire. Created by David Simon. HBO, 2002-2008. DVD.
True Detective. Created by Nic Pizzolatto. HBO, 2014-present. Television.
Williams, Linda. On The Wire. Durham: Duke UP, 2014. Print.
KIMBERLY R. MOFFITT
The Portrayals of Black Motherhood in The Wire
Representations of motherhood on primetime television often essential-

ize the experience of mothering and present the characters either as
complete nurturing entities, as women who want to “have it all” but fail
miserably (Hunter 320), or as complex and problematic (i.e., bad) moth-
ers. In fact, most of these television representations reinforce the
hegemonic notion of women primarily as mothers, while also exhibiting
how to mother. One need only consider contemporary U.S.-American
examples such as Modern Family, The Good Wife, or even Mom to elu-
cidate this point, but these representations are largely applicable to only
one segment of American society: White women. As a result, women of
color, particularly Black women who are mothers, are represented as the
anti-thesis of White women as well as the converse of the mother (read:
the good mother). To illustrate this point, I use season four of the highly
acclaimed HBO series The Wire as a case study in which several Black
female characters are, in fact, mothers. What is revealed is that the tele-
vision series’ storytelling exhibits for us a continued manifestation of
Black motherhood as dysfunction that simultaneously serves to maintain
hegemonic notions of motherhood and protect the space of White femi-
ninity.
Understanding White Femininity
White femininity, for the purposes of this chapter, is not to reference

only a specific physical body, but rather the “construction through which
meanings about White women and their place in the social order are
naturalized” (Shome, “Femininity” 323). Ruth Frankenberg noted that
White femininity becomes a space in which White women are both
privileged and confined as a result of the “contract” (231) maintained
166 Black Motherhood in The Wire
with White masculinity. This “contract” bestows the position of ideal

beauty, deference, and perceived social power upon White women while
garnering greater dominance and control for White men over (White)
women and others. Yet, this social power comes at the expense of con-
forming to the “regimes of Whiteness, heterosexuality, and gender”
(Carrillo Rowe and Lindsey 187). Audre Lorde surmised that “it is eas-
ier […] for White women to believe the dangerous fantasy that if you
are good enough, pretty enough, sweet enough, quiet enough, teach the
children to behave, hate the right people, and marry the right men, then
you will be allowed to co-exist with patriarchy in relative peace” (119).
To that end, Chow argued that “the White woman is what the White
man produces […]. If her body is, in filmic language, the place of su-
ture, what it sews together—what it coheres—are the White man’s pro-
duction [sic]” (84). As a result, (White female) bodies are constructed as
perfect markers of beauty, representations of good mothers, purveyors of
national unity, and classic signifiers of heterosexuality.
These perfect constructions often feature “young women with milky
White skin, long blond hair, and slim figures” of a middle-class back-
ground and heterosexual orientation (Collins, Politics 194), the same
image affirmed on primetime television and film as (ideal) mothers.
Dubrofsky and Ryalls affirm such claims in their discussion of the lead
character, Katniss, of the 2012 filmic release of The Hunger Games.
Although the character dons auburn-colored hair, she naturally and ef-
fortlessly embodies the notions of White feminine beauty. “At all times,
Katniss’s skin is free of blemishes, her lips naturally red and slightly
bee-stung, cheekbones high and usually flushed, hair lustrous and shiny,
teeth White and straight,” even though she spends most of the film under
duress because of the Hunger Games’ “to the death” competition (400).
Katniss’s is presented as a counter-narrative to (ideal) White femininity
because of her physical strength and prowess; however, she is still
plagued by the expectations of mothering. Seemingly adverse to ro-
mance and children, Katniss is consistently linked to the notion of ma-
ternal instinct, even though she is not a mother in the biological sense. In
every scene with Katniss and her sister, Prim, however, we are given
indications of her desire to mother and care for those in need of protec-
tion. This is most evident in Katniss’s willingness to take her sister’s
place in the Games.
Kimberly R. Moffitt 167
Shome extends this work on White femininity by capturing the idea of

global motherhood as illustrated by celebrities like the late Princess
Diana, Angelina Jolie, and Madonna (“Motherhood”). She suggests that
their media representations highlighted the notion of a good mother
along the lines of familial domesticity and nationhood. For example, the
media often memorialized Diana in her death through images of her
royal wedding to Prince Charles. Visual images of her elaborate bridal
gown and train, the newlyweds in the Royal carriage waving to the
crowds, and their tender kiss shared on the balcony of Buckingham
Palace serve as “norms of ideal domesticity such as romantic love, mar-
riage, and motherhood” (Shome, “Femininity” 327). This domesticity
reiterates White patriarchy for it offers an understanding of what (White)
men expect of their (White) women. Princess Diana embodied these
notions of domesticity for an entire nation that revered her virginal
image and demure personality. The images of Jolie, Madonna, and even
Mia Farrow as ambassadors of the world, caring for all children through
aid, adoption, or emotional support further reinforces this notion. Often
the women are photographed holding a child in the likeness of the iconic
Madonna/Child image that conveys both what a mother looks like and
how a mother mothers. Such a position is only possible “by erasing the
non-White maternal body from visions of global domesticity. The White
mother’s subject position is thus ironically dependent on the necessary
failure of the non-White native mother” (Shome, “Motherhood” 399).
Black Motherhood in Popular Culture
White femininity is seen mostly as an institution in the service of patri-

archy and nationhood. For most women of color the opportunity to em-
body this form of femininity becomes unattainable. Black women, spe-
cifically, are presented as the antithesis of this ideal (White) femininity
which only White women of a certain class are entitled to achieve. In-
stead, they exist to further confirm the space occupied by White women.
The Super Bowl Pepsi Max commercial (“Love hurts,” 2011) exempli-
fies this point further. The commercial features a Black woman/wife
seen harassing her spouse over his poor health choices of food and bev-
erage. She is aggressive, obnoxious, and unloving toward him. Yet,
when they share a Pepsi Max soda on a park bench together, the couple
seems content and satisfied until a young, slender, attractive White

woman comes to sit on the bench next to the man. The young woman
smiles and waves demurely at him; he, in turn, smiles sheepishly at her
while his wife resorts to violence at the gesture and throws the soda can
at his head. Her throw misses and hits the White woman on the head
instead, who is then left on the ground unconscious. Although presented
as entertaining, in a brief moment we are given the opportunity to visu-
ally engage the spectrum of femininity. These two women sit on oppo-
site ends of the park bench, juxtaposed as extremes, with the White
woman embodying classic (White) femininity.
In many popular culture representations, Black women’s representa-
tions range from “bitches” and “bad (Black) mothers” to “modern mam-
mies,” “Black ladies,” and “educated bitches” (Collins, Politics 123,
138). Although each trope can be found in contemporary television
programs, the “bitch” and “bad (Black) mother” are most commonly
portrayed in reality TV shows and sitcoms. The “bitch,” understood as a
working-class Black woman, is “aggressive, loud, rude, and pushy”
(123). This offensive label is designed to “defeminize and demonize”
Black women, attempting to punish them for not conforming to their
rightful place in contrast to White women’s femininity. Even in those
instances the term is used to celebrate Black women as “super-tough,
super-strong” (124), they are still relegated to a subordinate position,
one not seen as comparable to White women.
The physically unattractive “bad (Black) mother” possesses an over-
sexed body and manifests an angry disposition that counters the genteel
expectations placed upon (White) women. This single mother often
“maintains her family with the support of social programs, may utilize
drugs, be seen as lazy because she does not work for pay, and rarely
establishes a positive love relationship with a man or the father of her
child(ren)” (Moffitt 234). She is a “baby mama” or a “black matriarch,”
a label “echoing the 1965 Patrick Moynihan report that pathologized
black families” (Ulysse 175). The “black matriarch” trope is another
iteration of the “bad (Black) mother.” She is the “overbearing head of
her household who ‘violates’ the appropriate gender behaviors set by the
White patriarchal America” (Tyree 53). This woman’s unfeminine and
aggressive behavior is said to explain why she is without a husband or
mate. And without emotional and financial support, the “black matri-
arch’s” children suffer because she does not (or is unable to) commit to
their psychological development, which may hinder their achievements

as young adults. Although this trope disregards the “unequal political or
economic factors affecting Black mothers or children,” this representa-
tion in popular culture reinforces the notion of Black women as unfit,
neglectful, or invisible mothers (Collins, Thought 74).
Such women can never occupy the role of familial domesticity and
nationhood. In the few instances when Black women are put forth as
significant to the national citizenship, we are compelled to highlight
their “perceived disruption of, instead of integration into, the nation”
(Shome, “Femininity” 325). We only need to consider Anita Hill, Lana
Guinier, and Shirley Sherrod to exemplify this point. All three of these
Black women were considered problematic for their unwillingness to
adhere to the tenets of White patriarchy; thus, they were not seen as
purveyors of national unity, but in fact, as further confirmation as to why
such women could never represent nationhood fully, nor be highlighted
as good mothers.1
Black Mothers of The Wire
How then might we represent women who do not occupy this space of
White femininity? Season four of The Wire was acknowledged for its
character-driven script in which no one character steered the series, yet
we found ourselves drawn to the backstory of every character. The se-
ries featured character complexity while also allowing its viewers to
experience the highly flawed, yet somewhat noble status of each of the
characters. I argue in this chapter, however, that for the Black mothers
of the show, there appear to be numerous flaws but no redeeming
qualities.2 I conducted a thematic textual analysis of the thirteen
episodes of season four that explores and elucidates the representations
of Black mothers in the television series. Textual analysis “is a means of
1
Both Lana Guinier and Shirley Sherrod have children, but Anita Hill does
not.
2
In a casual conversation with actor Clarke Peters, who played Detective
Lester Freamon on The Wire, I asked him about character development of the
show. He agreed that the writers relied on stories shared about many of the
characters, including these Black mothers, because it was not an area they
were familiar with.
trying to learn something about people by examining what they produce

on television” (Berger 23). We can then “assume that behavioral
patterns, values, and attitudes found in this material reflect and affect the
behaviors, attitudes and values of the people who create the material.”
Season four focuses on the public school education system of Balti-
more and follows the last year of middle school, or eighth grade, for four
young Black males (Namond Brice, Randy Wagstaff, Michael Lee, and
Duquan “Dukie” Weems). All young boys have potential, yet their cir-
cumstances and/or environment prevents their success, for they live in a
world of drugs, poverty, crime, and violence. Also during this season,
Black women as mothers occupy more significant screen time in com-
parison to other seasons, providing an opportunity for me to reflect on
their particular representations in the series. There are five Black moth-
ers featured or referenced, biological or parental guardians of the four
young boys—De’Londa Brice, Anna Jeffries, Raylene Lee, and Dukie’s
mom—as well as Detective Shakima “Kima” Greggs, a parent with her
lesbian partner, who gives birth to a son.
A textual analysis of this season and a close reading that marks every
instance a mother appears on screen discerns two major portrayals: the
neglectful/unfit mother and the peripheral/invisible mother. The former
is exemplified best by De’Londa Brice, Namond’s mom. She is the
partner of Wee-Bey Brice, Namond’s father and an incarcerated member
of the Barksdale drug family in the series.3 Now that Namond’s father is
unable to provide for the family, De’Londa requires her son to become
the ‘man of the house’ (“Soft Eyes,” S04E02). That expectation is ex-
plicitly placed upon this fourteen-year-old child, whom she encourages
to enter the drug trade as a seller/runner in order to help maintain the
lifestyle to which they are both accustomed. In several scenes, including
her first appearance in the season, De’Londa is seen scolding Namond
for not being a better businessman regarding his drug money. Her con-
cern is never for her son’s future, but for their present lifestyle; he is to
serve as a provider, regardless of the potential for violence, incarcera-
tion, or even death facing him.
In episode ten (“Misgivings”), De’Londa exhibits a hostile and over-
bearing demeanor when Namond is detained for questioning by the
3
De’Londa Brice has adopted the Brice family name, even though Namond’s
parents are not legally married.
police after being caught on a corner known for drug dealing. The young
man must be released to his parent/guardian, but on this occasion,
De’Londa is two states away in Atlantic City, New Jersey, unable to care
for her child. As a result, Namond is required to spend an evening in jail.
Even after Major Howard “Bunny” Colvin returns Namond to his
mother’s care, she insistently berates them both, telling Colvin to “leave
my son the fuck alone” and then, in disgust, asks Namond, “and you…
you afraid to go to baby booking? What the fuck is wrong with you,
boy? Get in the damn house” (“Misgivings,” S04E10). De’Londa exhib-
its little concern for her son’s well-being; in fact, she is more concerned
that her teenage son does not embody the qualities she associates with
manhood. The juvenile detention center (also referred to as “baby
booking”) is a place Namond should be able to navigate effortlessly as
the ‘man of the house.’
In episode twelve (“That’s Got His Own”), De’Londa again equates
the physical space of “baby booking” to her son’s manhood. When Na-
mond reports to Detective Ellis Carver and Dennis “Cutty” Wise, a
reformed drug dealer who runs a boxing gym for the neighborhood
youth, that he cannot return home because his mother has shunned him
for his unwillingness to be like his father, Carver calls “Bunny” Colvin
for assistance:
CARVER: His mother…

COLVIN: Lovely lady. What she say?
CARVER: Put that bitch in baby booking where he belong so he can
learn something.
De’Londa questions her son’s ability to be their provider since he resists

her pressure to engage in a life of crime. Whether he refuses her orders
to cut his hair (to avoid being pegged by the police) or to bring harm to
Kenard (another young runner/seller who has stolen from Namond),
De’Londa believes her harsh tactics toward her son are her way of car-
ing for him while also teaching him how to be a man like his father,
Wee-Bey.
Except for the material goods she provides him with, De’Londa of-
fers no other expression of love toward Namond. Even though she
threatens not to buy new school clothes for him because of his lack of
business ethos, she still is certain to shower him with new clothes piled
high on the center of his bed, stating that “there’s no way I’d let you go
back to school not looking ‘right’” (“Soft Eyes,” S04E02). Throughout

the season, Namond and his mom are adorned in name brand clothing,
fine cars, and a well-kept home. However, when his lackadaisical
demeanor about the drug trade continues, she uses those material
possessions against him. In an explosive scene between the two of them,
De’Londa proclaims: “This how you pay me back for all the love I
showed? I been kept you in Nikes since you were in diapers” (“That’s
Got His Own,” S04E12). She appears to correlate these items and the
money spent for them as the love she has for her son, while also
expecting him to return that love by providing for them. Namond’s pre-
sent, never his future is discussed throughout the season.
Colvin, on the other hand, believes in Namond’s future and requests
Wee-Bey, not De’Londa, to give him (and his wife) custody of Namond.
By the end of season four, De’Londa is confirmed as an unfit mother
because Wee-Bey informs her that “[m]an came down here to say my
son can be anything he damn please [… so] you gonna let go of that boy.
Bet that” (“Final Grades,” S04E13). Even in her attempt to balk at the
idea (“Oh, no you’re not! You ain’t gonna take my son away from me”),
she is never given the opportunity to make that decision, for it has
already been made for her. The environment she created for her son was
not seen as one of potential with regard to his future education, or aspi-
rations, which ultimately renders her a ‘bad’ mother.
The remaining mothers appearing in this season of The Wire reflect
the peripheral or invisible mother. These mothers are physically present,
but may not be instrumental in the care-taking responsibilities of their
sons. For example, Anna Jeffries, the most viable character regarding the
mother role, is the foster mother of Randy Wagstaff, only temporarily
caring for him in her home. Her limited screen time is unfortunate, for
she serves as a potential good mother or “Black Lady” (Collins, Politics
139) and a law-abiding citizen and homeowner with a professional
occupation. “Miss Anna,” as Randy dubs her, is a single woman who has
chosen to care for Randy, who is without a biological family of his own.
Throughout the season, “Miss Anna” provides Randy with a stable
home environment and life lessons that ensure his potential. She is the
first mother to appear in this season when she meets Randy outside on
the stoop of her row home, hands on her hips, proclaiming: “Don’t make
me tell you again. It’s nine sharp, boy” (“Boys of Summer,” S04E01).
Although her tone is brash, she is comforted by Randy’s presence and
demonstrates her sincere concern for the child and his well-being. Not
until episode six (“Margin of Error”) do we see “Miss Anna” again
mothering Randy. The two are seen walking to a polling location where
Anna will vote in the local election. While waiting for her, Randy is
recruited to distribute election materials on behalf of mayoral candidate
Thomas “Tommy” Carcetti. Randy is excited about the work prospect as
the campaigner hands him money for his day’s service. “Miss Anna”
informs Randy that he is due home immediately upon completing the
task because “[y]ou ain’t in these streets no more.” In fact, she works
hard to keep Randy away from negative influences; instead, we see
scenes of everyday life with the two of them eating dinner or folding
clothes together or mulling over Randy’s homework at the dining room
table. These positive aspects of Randy’s environment change drastically
when “Miss Anna’s” home is firebombed in retaliation against Randy,
who informs the police about those involved in an alleged rape of a
female classmate and the murder of a local drug dealer. “Miss Anna” is
injured and no longer able to care for Randy; he is now relocated to a
group home in which the other boys refer to him as a “snitch bitch”
(“Final Grades,” S04E13). “Miss Anna,” even from her peripheral legal
status, is significant to Randy’s well-being, but is now rendered
invisible, no longer a mother, leaving Randy to care for himself.
While Michael Lee’s mother Raylene and “Dukie’s” mom (who is
never seen on screen) are obviously neglectful/unfit mothers, they best
exemplify the peripheral or invisible mother because of their limited
presence in their sons’ lives. Raylene, who is a struggling drug addict,
lives in one home with Michael and his younger brother, Bug, but it is
clear that Michael is the primary caretaker of the family. Scenes high-
light Michael’s adult behavior often as he maintains the home, assumes
responsibility of the Independence Card (used for food assistance), and
ensures the completion of homework each day. He is another “man of
the house” attempting to provide a sense of normalcy for his younger
brother. In episode eight, “Corner Boys,” Michael chastises his mother
for giving a young boy a box of Rice-a-Roni, allegedly because he was
hungry. Recognizing the flaw in his mother’s story, he simply asks:
“How much did you sell the groceries for?” After a terse yet brief ex-
change she looks at Michael, pleading to give her additional cash be-
cause “I gotta go out.” He knows what that statement means and gives
her $10.00 as she walks out the door, ignoring his continued rants.
Raylene does not conform to the expectations placed upon mothers

regarding care for their children. In fact, she relinquishes that task to
almost anyone. When Bug’s dad returns home from prison, she instructs
Michael to give him the Independence Card because he now is responsi-
ble for that particular household task. It is apparent that Michael strug-
gles with his presence, offering viewers an opportunity to suspect that
Bug’s father may be a sexual predator, abusing Michael and/or his
brother. By episode ten (“Misgivings”), Bug’s father has “disappeared”
with the help of Marlo Stanfield’s henchmen, who lead a Baltimore drug
organization; Michael is now working for Marlo. In the remaining three
episodes of the season, Raylene appears on screen only to ask for a drug
fix from Namond while he works a corner and to speak with “Cutty,”
who stops by her home looking for Michael. As she opens the door,
clearly in a bad shape without drugs and the support of either Bug’s
father or Michael, she says: “He booked on out of here. Got his own
spot. Took his little brother with him. You find the boy—let him know I
need some help around here. I popped him and Bug out my ass and now
they forgot where they come from” (“That’s Got His Own,” S04E12).
Raylene’s focus is not on her children nor their whereabouts; she is
exclusively concerned with herself. Thus, at the age of fourteen, Michael
assumes the role of nurturer and replaces her, rendering her invisible.
Dukie’s mother, who only exists because Dukie says so, is never ref-
erenced by name during this season. We only know she exists because of
reference to her actions, not her physical presence. She is the epitome of
the invisible mother. Dukie attends school each day, but he does not
reflect a home in which he is well cared for. The first day of school he
appears disheveled in clothes that reek of musk with unkempt hair. No
one questions his living conditions; they are simply understood. His
mother is also a casualty of drug abuse, and because she is unable to
care for her child, he relies upon the graciousness of others to ensure
that his basic needs are met. For example, recognizing his abject
poverty, Mr. Roland “Prez” Pryzbylewski, a police officer-turned-
teacher, offers Dukie a place to shower at school as well as several new
school uniforms. The gesture is short-lived, however, because his
mother and the other adults living in his home soon sell the uniforms for
drugs and alcohol. By episode twelve (“That’s Got His Own”), Dukie is
without a family, returning home (with Michael) to an eviction notice
and the belongings of the house strewn about the sidewalk. His mother
does not communicate a forwarding address nor seek to ensure her son’s
safety; she remains invisible.
Another form of invisibility is articulated through Kima Gregg, the
only female detective in the Major Case Unit. In previous seasons we
learn of Gregg’s lesbian relationship with Cheryl, who works in the
television news industry. By season two, Cheryl is pregnant through
artificial insemination, and in season three, she gives birth to a baby boy.
By the end of that season, Kima has realized that she does not want to be
a parent, and the couple has parted ways. Cheryl, shown as the primary
caretaker of the home and their child, has created a home with a new
partner, but Kima still recognizes, in part, her responsibility for the
child. In episode nine (“Know Your Place”), we briefly see her interact
with Cheryl and her son, Elijah. She delivers a check for delinquent
child support payments saying, “[t]his ain’t ‘please take me back.’ But a
deal’s a deal.” In the two-minute scene, Kima only interacts with Elijah
once. Cheryl says, “Elijah, say bye to Aunt Kima.” She acknowledges
his response and then leaves, never touching and barely making eye
contact with the toddler. This is the only scene we see her in an almost
maternal role; this scene becomes significant because it is juxtaposed
with that of Beatrice “Beadie” Russell, a White female officer and single
mother. In season two, Kima, who loves the excitement of her job,
learns about the limitations coming with motherhood when Beadie
informs her that there are times when “I must stay home for the sake of
my children” (“Storm Warnings,” S04E10). While neither woman is
judgmental of the other, they clearly represent opposing views regarding
motherhood and their priorities. Even in an attempt to ‘have it all,’ it is
obvious that a woman can either be successful as a professional or as a
mother, but ultimately neither can do both. Kima and Beadie take
different paths: the former’s leads to the dissolution of Kima’s
relationship with Cheryl, while the latter is able to find love and
partnership with the highly flawed, yet committed detective Jimmy
McNulty. Similar to the Pepsi Max commercial discussed earlier, we are
offered a spectrum of motherhood that reinforces White femininity.
Kima is a ‘bad’ mother—uninterested, non-committal, and lacking the
ability to nurture—while Beadie illustrates the epitome of a ‘good’
mother who, even without the presence of her absent husband, is able to
provide and care for her children fully and modestly.
Conclusion
David Simon has offered unique and insightful views into the social
brokenness of major cities in the U.S. HBO’s The Wire is one television
series scholars continue to reference for its realistic narratives4 and com-
plexity of characters whom audiences love to support on the road to
their demise. Season four is no different, and many fans of The Wire
acknowledge it as the best season because it is the “most definitive,
complete arc the show ever accomplished. It informs everything else the
show is talking about […] and it lands the biggest emotional punch”
(Reid and Sims). While this quote does capture the overall response to a
well-written season, my essay highlights a limitation of the television
series by solely representing Black mothers as neglectful/unfit or pe-
ripheral/invisible.
These two types of representation reveal a perpetuation of Collins’s
tropes of “bitches,” “Bad (Black) Mothers,” or “Black Matriarchs”
(Politics). Throughout season four, we are reminded that Black mothers
do exist, but because of their flawed or dysfunctional role as a caretaker,
they are rendered incapable of mothering or are absent altogether.
Whether the mothers are loud and obnoxious or simply aggressive and
unbearable “baby mamas,” their attributes align well with how Black
women are often portrayed in popular culture. De’Londa Brice, in par-
ticular, is a neglectful/unfit mother, but she embodies aspects of all three
of the controlling images Collins addresses. She reflects the worst of
those mothers who are unable to care for their children but instead place
that “adult” burden upon their young offspring. In the end, she is pegged
unfit by many, including her partner and son’s father, Wee-Bey, no
longer worthy of caring for her son’s well-being. The other mothers,
because of their peripheral or invisible status, are also not “good” moth-
ers; however, because of structural inequities, classism, racism, and drug
abuse, speculations about their status are at least implied. The Wire
presents in-depth discussions that offer implicit messages regarding the
conditions of the various Baltimore neighborhoods shown throughout
the series. As viewers, we walk away pondering how it is possible for
4
Many of the plots of the series’ episodes were based on news stories or
experiences of David Simon as a journalist and Ed Burns in his roles as a
police detective and public school teacher.
anyone to prevail with numerous markers of defeat surrounding them.

This is certainly one of Simon’s attempts at commentary regarding
urban spaces, but at the same time it reinforces an image of the good
mother; and in this series, she is not a Black woman.
It is evident that Black women are not given enough space to portray
the range of images of motherhood that exists for White mothers. In-
stead, they are often placed as the anti-thesis of White mothers, who are
embraced as markers of beauty and national unity. In The Wire, this
notion of White femininity is reaffirmed and reinforced through the lone
body of officer Beadie Russell. She is not as ideal as representations of
Princess Diana (Shome, “Motherhood”), but remains the best example
of a mother who privileges the care of her children in spite of her sur-
roundings. To that end, viewers find it implausible to embrace a charac-
ter like Claire Huxtable of The Cosby Show as a viable model of Black
motherhood or struggle to incorporate representations beyond existing
tropes into the realm of Black motherhood, as in the case of Michelle
Obama; instead, we continue to situate Black mothers in those familiar
tropes that leave no space for the mothers of Baltimore, including the
author of this essay.
Works Cited
Berger, Arthur Asa. Media Research Techniques. 2nd ed. Newbury Park: Sage,
1998. Print.
Carrillo Rowe, Aimee, and Samantha Lindsey. “Reckoning Loyalties: White
Femininity as ‘Crisis.’” Feminist Media Studies 3.2 (2003): 173-91. Web.
Chow, Rey. “Violence in the Other Country: China as Crisis, Spectacle, and
Woman.” Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Ed. Chandra
Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres. Bloomington: Indiana
UP, 1990. 81-100. Print.
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the
New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.
—. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of
Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 1991. Print.
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ing Whiteness and Femininity under Surveillance.” Critical Studies in Me-
dia Communication 31 (2014): 395-409. Web.
Frankenberg, Ruth. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of

Whiteness. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993. Print.
Hunter, Latham. “Motherhood, Prime-time TV, and Grey’s Anatomy.” Mediat-
ing Moms: Mothers in Popular Culture. Ed. Elizabeth Podnieks. Montreal:
McGill-Queen UP, 2012. 320-38. Print.
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Freedom:
The Crossing, 1984. Print.
Moffitt, Kimberly R. “Framing a First Lady: Media Coverage of Michelle
Obama’s Role in the 2008 Presidential Election.” The Obama Effect:
Multidisciplinary Renderings of the 2008 Presidential Election. Ed. Heather
E. Harris, Kimberly R. Moffitt, and Catherine E. Squires. Albany: SUNY P,
2010. 233-49. Print.
Reid, Joe, and David Sims. “A Definitive Ranking of Every Season of Every TV
Show That Mattered.” The Wire: News from the Atlantic. 29 May 2014.
Web. 14 Mar. 2015.
Shome, Raka. “‘Global Motherhood’: The Transnational Intimacies of White
Femininity.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 28.5 (2011): 388-
406. Web.
—. “White Femininity and the Discourse of the Nation: Re/membering Princess
Diana.” Feminist Media Studies 1 (2001): 323-42. Print.
Tyree, Tia C. M. “Lovin’ Momma and Hatin’ on Baby Mama: A Comparison of
Misogynistic and Stereotypical Representations in Songs about Rappers’
Mothers and Baby Mamas.” Women and Language 32 (2009): 50-58. Print.
Ulysse, Gina Athena. “She Ain’t Oprah, Angela, or Your Baby Mama: The
Michelle O Enigma.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 9.1
(2008): 174-76. Web.
The Wire. Created by David Simon. HBO, 2002-2008. DVD.
CORNELIA KLECKER
“Symbolic Annihilation” and Drive-By Misogyny:

Women in Contemporary U.S.-American Televi-
sion Series
In 2011, PBS aired a four-part documentary series called America in

Primetime, which provided a diachronic view of scripted American
television (sitcoms and drama series). Through a number of interviews
with notable actors and producers as well as clips from significant tele-
vision programs from the past and the present, the creators of this docu-
mentary explored how television shows and particularly character de-
pictions have changed throughout the decades while drawing parallels to
changes in American culture. The first installment, entitled “Independ-
ent Woman,” focuses on the development of female characters from the
perfect mother and homemaker to much more independent and complex
women, showcasing programs such as I Love Lucy in the 1950s, The
Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1970s, Roseanne in the 1980s, to the
post-2000s with its abundance of programs featuring independent
women: Grey’s Anatomy, The Good Wife, Mad Men, Weeds, Desperate
Housewives, and Nurse Jackie, to name only a few. This part of the
documentary series ends on a very optimistic note with a montage se-
quence of several famous and successful women in the American televi-
sion industry, expressing positive views about the portrayal of women in
recent television:
SHONDA RHIMES [creator of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get

Away with Murder]:
Women don’t have to be any one thing on television anymore. They can
be anything. And I think what makes that interesting for us is that we no
longer have to turn on the television and see an image that feels like ‘no
woman would behave like that.’
180 Women in Contemporary U.S.-American Television Series
EDIE FALCO [The Sopranos, Nurse Jackie]:

What is off limits at this point? It doesn’t seem like—if it’s in the realm
of experience that I’ve had, that people I know have had, that the writers
have had or known people, then it’s all game.
MARY TYLER MOORE [The Mary Tyler Moore Show]:
Women, by and large, over the ages have needed to be liked and ap-
proved because that’s all they had. They weren’t offered jobs. It was
‘hey, am I cute enough for you, darling?’
FELICITY HUFFMAN [Desperate Housewives]:
The women on television now are in pursuit of other things. Yes, it
would be nice if people liked them but it’s not their ultimate goal.
JULIANNA MARGULIES [The Good Wife]:
We’re so lucky as actors that television has embraced women so fully.
EDIE FALCO:
There’s so much more freedom to really be all the things that are human,
even the ones that are sort of ugly.
SHONDA RHIMES:
You can find somebody who reflects you on television right now.
EDIE FALCO:
That hasn’t always been the case.
EVA LONGORIA [Desperate Housewives]:
Not only is that more liberating but it’s way more creative and way more
fun to play as an artist.
LINDA WALLEM [co-creator of Nurse Jackie]:
I think the key to making great TV is to reflect, to really reflect real hu-
man behavior, our hopes and dreams and struggles. (“Independent
Woman”)
Inspired by CBS’s 2014 fall launch of the drama series Madame Secre-
tary with Téa Leoni as Secretary of State at the center of the show, Ales-
sandra Stanley observed a similar development in The New York Times
stating that “[t]elevision is suddenly full of women in power.” This she
attributes equally to the success of Shonda Rhimes’s Scandal, real-life
Hillary Clinton (who seems to be the obvious inspiration for Madame
Secretary and to a lesser extent The Good Wife), and Claire Danes’s
character in Homeland.
Cornelia Klecker 181
There is no doubt that, when it comes to the portrayal of women in

American television, progress has been made since shows such as I
Dream of Jeannie and Father Knows Best were broadcast. However,
there is the legitimate concern that by singling out a handful of programs
with female lead characters, this progress is largely overestimated. In
their article “Constructing Gender Stereotypes through Social Roles in
Prime-Time Television,” Martha M. Lauzen, David M. Dozier, and Nora
Horan share this concern: “Such media reports focusing on high-profile
series and actors distort one’s understanding of the realities of gender
representation in prime time. Ongoing research tracking portrayals of
women provides checks on these enthusiastic though oftentimes
misguided musings” (203). Lauzen and others have pursued a different
approach to evaluate the state of women in television: representation by
sheer numbers. This quantitative analysis is led by the basic question of
what percentage of speaking roles is given to women as compared to
men and has been undertaken rather frequently in recent decades. Most
studies, of course, also try to identify the frequency of certain properties
(such as age and hair color), characteristics (such as goal-orientedness
and determination), as well as the characters’ professions and relations—
always women in comparison to men. The consensus of these studies is
that, while there is an upward trend, the situation for women in
television is still dire.
The following will provide a brief overview of some of these studies
from the last three decades. Leah R. Vande Berg and Diane Streckfuss,
for instance, sampled 116 primetime episodes that were aired within two
weeks (in 1986 and 1987, respectively) on the network channels CBS,
NBC, and ABC. They found that male characters outnumber female
characters by about two to one (64.9% to 35.1%) and that the latter are
far more likely to perform interpersonal and relational actions than deci-
sional, political, and operational actions (Vande Berg and Streckfuss). A
study on primetime network programming of the 1992-1993 season
found that 61.2% of speaking characters were male and only 38.8%
were female (Elasmar, Hasegawa, and Brain 27). Another telling result
in the same study revealed that only 17.7% of the major characters were
female (a steep decline from roughly 30% in previous studies) and
69.2% of these were featured in domestic comedies (Elasmar, Hase-
gawa, and Brain 31). In the season of 1995-1996, women were still
largely underrepresented with only about 37% of all characters being
female. On the bright side, women portrayed 43% of major characters,

which indicates a rather dramatic increase from studies of previous years
(Lauzen and Dozier, “Difference” 9). Lauzen and Dozier’s study of the
2002-2003 season focused on the gender difference in the presentation
of power and goals. They found that more than twice as many men as
women played leadership roles and that 70% of the male characters
exerted power over others while only 52% of the female characters did.
Interestingly, though, there was little difference in goal-directedness and
the achievement of those goals (Lauzen and Dozier, “Score” 493). The
same team conducted yet another study for the 2005-2006 season and
found that women were still far more often cast in interpersonal roles
centered on family, friends, and romance, while men held the clear ma-
jority of work roles (Lauzen, Dozier, and Horan 208-209).
Finally, in the current season of 2013-2014, two reports show that
the situation has not changed very much. The Center for the Study of
Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University discovered
in a study that also includes cable and Netflix programs (unlike the
studies mentioned previously, which only included broadcast channels)
that still only 40% of all speaking roles as well as 40% of all major roles
are female. Furthermore, men outnumber women 66% to 41% in terms
of work-related roles while women outnumber men 43% to 24% re-
garding interpersonal roles (Lauzen 4-5). Lauzen voices her concern
about this apparent stagnation in a statement to Time Magazine: “For
many years, women have experienced slow but incremental growth both
as characters on screen and working in key positions behind the scenes
[…]. However, that progress, small though it was, now appears to have
stalled” (qtd. in Gibson).
The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media additionally found
(about the spring season of 2012) that only 22% of primetime programs
on broadcast channels featured a gender-balanced cast. Moreover, there
is also a clear imbalance when it comes to the sexualization of gender.
36.2% of the women and only 8.4% of the men were shown wearing
sexy attire, 34.6% of the women but only 11% of the men exposed their
skin, and 11.6% of the female characters versus 3.5% of the male char-
acters were referenced as attractive (Smith et al.).
This persistent underrepresentation of women in television,1 combined

with their overrepresentation in stereotypically feminine roles and
functions, matters—and not just for actresses. It matters culturally. An
abundance of studies have been published that acknowledge the influ-
ence television has on its viewers’ worldview:
Television, like all forms of social discourse, helps to shape not only be-
liefs, values, and attitudes, but also subjectivities, people’s sense of
themselves and their place in the world. Television portrays ‘appropri-
ate’ and ‘inappropriate’ social relations, defines norms and conventions,
provides ‘common sense’ understandings, and articulates the preoccupa-
tions and concerns that define particular historical moments. (Morreale
xi; also qtd. in Scheunemann 105-106)
This means that the perpetual underrepresentation of women and their

confinement to certain roles in television has a negative impact on our
social reality. Some scholars even call it a “symbolic annihilation” of
women (see, for instance, Tuchman 533 and Morgan 947), using the
concept first coined by George Gerbner and Larry Gross: “Representa-
tion in the fictional world signifies social existence; absence means
symbolic annihilation” (182). Furthermore, this underrepresentation of
women reinforces the notion that (white, straight) men are by default
human, and women are therefore a deviation from the norm. As Lauzen,
Dozier, and Horan explain:
Traditional gender stereotypes posit that men represent the ideal or norm
against which women are judged. As such, women become the perpetual
other, valued primarily in their relations to others, men in particular […].
When multiple programs across the broadcast and cable spectrum repeat
these gendered roles, they assume the air of truth and credibility […].
(201)
This symbolic annihilation of women is still a problem in twenty-first-

century American television, and so is what in the present article I am
calling ‘drive-by misogyny.’ As mentioned earlier, the representation of
1
Similar observations (in some of the studies mentioned above) have been
made about film, and the situation of women in behind-the-scenes functions
(writers, directors, producers, etc.) in film as well as television is even direr.
Unfortunately, this discussion is beyond the scope of the present article.
women and gender relations in television has definitely improved over

the past decades. The sheer numbers are up (even though they seem to
be stuck at around 40%), and women can now also inhabit roles and
professions on-screen that were previously unimaginable. This has also
changed the ways in which many scholars interpret contemporary televi-
sion shows. Amanda D. Lotz, for instance, explains in Redesigning
Women: Television after the Network Era that the question whether a
fictional character is a good role model is not really applicable any
longer (19). So rather than call entire shows either feminist or anti-femi-
nist, we need to acknowledge this new complexity (22-23). In this spirit,
however, what remains rather worrisome is the number of shows, and
often critically acclaimed shows at that, that feature underlying misogy-
nist patterns. I call this phenomenon drive-by misogyny because of the
way it appears to the viewer: it is gone before you even realize it hit you.
A prime example can be found in the episode “Crash into Me: Part
1” from the fourth season of Grey’s Anatomy, a medical drama series,
which, while being incredibly formulaic and quite focused on romantic
relationships, centers around highly competitive career women (sur-
geons). This specific episode features a white male paramedic who has
been injured in an accident right outside the hospital doors. Dr. Miranda
Bailey, played by African-American actress Chandra Wilson, tries to
examine him since he shows pain in his upper abdomen while still being
outside, but the victim asks for a “guy doctor” (“Crash into Me: Part 1,”
S04E09). We briefly see Dr. Bailey wrinkle her nose at that request as
the patient is brought into the hospital. A few minutes later, now inside
the hospital, Dr. Bailey once again tries to examine this patient and he
refuses:
PATIENT: No!
DR. BAILEY: You have to let me examine you!
PATIENT: I can wait. I’ll wait for a guy.
DR. BAILEY: You’re shy, okay, I get that. But this is no time for
shy. And my hands may be smaller than a man’s
but my brain is much larger, I assure you. Now,
you’re just going to have to let me examine you.
PATIENT: Do not touch me!
Then Dr. Richard Webber (played by African-American actor James

Pickens Jr.) arrives and Dr. Bailey explains to him that the patient does
not want to be treated by a woman. Dr. Webber tries to examine him but
the patient asks for yet another doctor. Now it dawns on Dr. Webber: the
patient’s problem was not Dr. Bailey’s gender but her (and then his)
race. Completely appalled, Dr. Webber tells Dr. Bailey and asks her if
she can handle the situation. Later it is revealed that the patient has a big
swastika tattoo on his abdomen, and much of this and the following
episode focuses on Dr. Bailey forcing herself not to let his racism nega-
tively impact her medical care.
While the outrage caused by this neo-Nazi patient and his request for
a white doctor is obviously more than justified, what this episode com-
pletely lacks is the same level of anger about his demanding a male
doctor. Instead, Dr. Bailey feels she needs to assure the patient that she
is just as competent as her male counterpart, and the show does not even
imply that there is something wrong with this (I am also not aware of
any public criticism in this regard, online or elsewhere). This illustrates
how deeply ingrained these gender stereotypes still are.
Another example of drive-by misogyny can be found in an episode
of The Big Bang Theory. A lot can be justifiably criticized about this
show. While being always quite ‘PG’ (it is Network television after all),
this sitcom, circling around four highly intelligent yet socially awkward
and nerdy male scientists (three physicists and one engineer), is not at all
‘PC.’ Nothing seems to be an off-limit or inappropriate topic for a quick
laugh. The characters make fun of nerds, scientists, Jews, Indians, short
people, speech impediments, and physical disabilities (as in the case of
Stephen Hawking), among others. From a feminist point of view it is not
so differentiating, either. In the initial seasons, Kaley Cuoco plays the
only notable female character, Penny (who to this day—season eight—
does not have a last name), who seems to fit all the criteria of the pretty
dumb blonde stereotype. The Big Bang Theory could (and should) be
criticized for all these and many more reasons, but its depiction of
stereotypes is so obviously hyperbolic and their approach of making fun
of everything and anything so ‘democratic’ that it ceases to be harmful.
In other words, everyone (male or female) is equally the ‘butt of the
joke.’ As Brett Mills remarked about the television genre sitcom, “the
ways in which comedy is signaled to audiences, conventionally through
performance excess, means that such a camp performance has a different
meaning in a comic context from that which it might have in a serious
drama” (Mills 109; also qtd. in Scheunemann 109). Similarly in the The
Big Bang Theory, one can assume that its exaggeration prevents the
audience from considering the characters and their actions as any kind of
norm. In other words, it can be expected that as many (or, rather, few)
viewers consider Penny a representative woman as they believe the male
characters to be typical physicists.
However, even in this rather tongue-in-cheek environment, drive-by
misogyny occurs in semi-serious storylines. A case in point occurs in the
episode “The Killer Robot Instability” (S02E12). The engineer Howard
Wolowitz, played by Simon Helberg, is depicted as rather disturbing
when it comes to women. He constantly flirts and talks in terrible sexual
innuendos. Penny is a frequent victim of his unwanted attention and
keeps turning him down and telling him to leave her alone. After almost
two years, Penny finally has enough after yet another distressing en-
counter:
PENNY: I’m saying that it is not a compliment to call me

‘doable.’ It is not sexy to stare at my ass and say
‘Oooh, it must be jelly ‘cause jam don’t shake like
that.’ And most importantly, we are not dancing a
tango. We are not toing and froing. Nothing is ever
gonna happen between us. Ever.
HOWARD: Wait a minute. This isn’t flirting. You’re serious.
PENNY: Flirting? You think I’m flirting with you? I am not
flirting with you! No woman is ever gonna flirt
with you! You’re just gonna grow old and die
alone.
Finally, Penny’s words seem to have resonated and Howard leaves. The
fact that the very likable Penny (as opposed to a stereotypical ‘bitchy’
woman) puts Howard in his place, telling him very clearly that his be-
havior is not acceptable, is positive. Unfortunately, the way this whole
incident is subsequently spun is that Penny greatly hurt Howard’s feel-
ings. He skips work, does not take any calls, and spends his days in his
room in pajamas. Evidently, the show suggests that he is the victim.
Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki) even asks Penny to apologize to
Howard because he is “devastated” and compares Penny to the Incredi-
ble Hulk in the process. Penny is reluctant but does in the end agree
when Leonard cashes in an old favor. In sum, after almost two years of
constantly being the object of Howard’s sleazy comments and advances
and Penny’s just as constant rejections, she finally sets him straight, and
yet somehow he ends up being the victim and she needs to apologize.
Somewhat surprising are also all the accolades the ABC sitcom
Modern Family has received since the broadcast of its first episode. Of
course, it is the first American primetime show that features a gay cou-
ple living together, adopting a Vietnamese baby-girl, and in season five
they even get married. However, when it comes to women, one wonders
what is so modern about Modern Family. Once again, they are cast in
the most clichéd roles. The two main adult female characters are Claire
Dunphy (Julie Bowen), who is a stay-at-home mother, and Gloria Del-
gato-Pritchett (Sofia Vergara), who portrays a likable version of the
gold-digger trophy wife of Claire’s much older father Jay Pritchett (Ed
O’Neill). The ‘modern’ aspect of this character is perhaps that she is
from Colombia (so there is some ethnic diversity in the show) and that
she has a son from a previous relationship. We learn in the course of the
seasons that she used to be a rather poor single mother who worked at a
hair salon to support herself and her son but the moment she married
Jay, she stopped working altogether. In other words, neither of the two
women in the show works for a living (Claire only takes a job at her
father’s company in season five when all her children are in their teens),
but all four men do. As found so often in popular television, the women
are confined to their homes and somewhat reduced to the roles of moth-
ers and caretakers. In her book Prime-Time Feminism, Bonnie J. Dow
explains:
[…] I question the woman = mother equation and the implications of the
naturalization of that move in popular culture. My concern, then, is with
a powerful tendency that I see in popular culture and in feminist work of
recent years to use motherhood as the lens through which women’s lives
are viewed and to posit threats to identity as a mother as the most salient
ones a woman faces in the postfeminist 1990s. […] Moreover […] this
tendency normalizes women’s central caretaking roles and makes more
difficult and less likely needed critiques of the constraints of those roles.
(189)
The equation of women with motherhood is disconcerting, particularly

so if it is not presented as patriarchy compelling women into this role
but as the women’s own choice, even their natural choice. What is
somewhat implied in this notion is that women are inherently better
caregivers and that the mother-child relationship is most fulfilling for

both (see also Dow 196). The question remains, since the show is called
Modern Family, why not turn things around for once? Why, for in-
stance, not showcase Claire’s husband Phil Dunphy, played by Ty Bur-
rell, as a stay-at-home father, who takes care of the household and chil-
dren, and have Claire be the family’s provider? What is more, these
female typecasts even extend to the children. Claire and Phil have one
son and two daughters. The older Haley (Sarah Hyland) is the typical
‘pretty but dumb’ one, and the younger Alex (Ariel Winter) is the smart
but plain one. Yet this show has been showered with awards and nomi-
nations (including twelve Golden Globe nominations, winning one, as
well as forty-five Primetime Emmy nominations, winning seventeen).
An even stronger equation of women with motherhood can be seen
in the recently concluded FX drama series Sons of Anarchy. The main
female character of Gemma Teller Morrow (Katey Sagal), is the most
talked-about feature of this show, which centers on an extremely violent
men-only motorcycle club that trades weapons and drugs illegally. She
is portrayed as the fierce and outspoken mother of Jax Teller, the vice
president and later president of the club. Everything she ever does is (or,
at least, is what she believes to be) in the service of her son and his two
sons. Her role as a mother and grandmother seems to make for her entire
identity. And yet, Gemma is often described as a good example of a
strong female character. Reviewers and the creators alike have often
stressed her influential role in the midst of a highly patriarchal society.
As Rebecca Cathcart, for instance, writes in her New York Times article
“Out from under All That Big Hair”: “Amid a gritty culture of brawling,
gun-running men, women rule. And Gemma is the amoral ‘mother bear,’
said Kurt Sutter, the show’s creator and executive producer (and Ms.
Sagal’s husband). ‘This is a misogynist subculture for sure, but she’s in
control,’ he added.” In “Mothers of Anarchy: Power, Control, and Care
in the Feminine Sphere,” Leigh C. Colb expresses a similar view:
“While the Mothers of Anarchy, on the surface, have no control, in real-
ity they use their power in the private sphere to influence the public
sphere and effect great change, albeit with little public recognition for
their efforts” (178). Yet the fact that women pull the strings behind the
scenes is hailed as something positive, something ‘pro-women,’ is
problematic. Once again, this is a very reductionist view of the role of
women in society. Being the secret puppet master of a clearly misogy-
nist society cannot possibly be the highest achievement women can

strive for. As Leslie A. Aarons argues in “When a Charming Woman
Speaks”: “Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if Gemma could have a respected
voice and identity of her own, so she wouldn’t need to employ her ad-
mittedly impressive skills as a schemer to position herself next to Jax?”
(168). Yet she seems to be the epitome of a strong female character in
contemporary American television, beloved by many. As a matter of
fact, in season six she ends her constant fight with Tara Knowles, her
daughter-in-law, played by Maggie Siff, by brutally killing her in a fit of
rage. On the Internet, a Twitter-war emerged between #teamtara and
#teamgemma. Apparently, the murderous Gemma received so much
support that the show’s creator Kurt Sutter felt the need to turn to Twit-
ter himself: “The reasonable folks are #teamtara. The irrational ones are
#teamgemma. Knowing my fan base, Tara’s shit-out-of-luck” (Sutter).
In other words, Tara, who tried to get Jax and their sons out of the club,
away from their criminal and often lethal dealings and towards safety, is
much less popular than Gemma, who supports, even encourages, her
son’s perilous profession, ultimately risking everyone’s death.
This curious viewer perception seems to follow a pattern as well.
Perhaps the most drastic example of an extremely misguided audience
assessment of a character is that of Skyler White (Anna Gunn) from the
critically acclaimed AMC drama serial Breaking Bad. This show is
about the high school chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston),
who, at the very beginning of the series, is diagnosed with terminal lung
cancer. In order to pay for his medical bills and financially provide for
his wife and children after his passing, he decides to start cooking meth-
amphetamine and distribute it with the help of Jesse Pinkman (Aaron
Paul), a drug-addicted former student of his. Due to his illness and his
plausible and selfless motivation for becoming a meth producer and
dealer, Walter is initially an empathetic character despite his illegal
actions. Eventually, however, his cancer is in remission and he acquires
more money than he and his family will ever need. Nevertheless, he
does not stop but instead becomes the new drug kingpin by ruthlessly
getting rid of his competitors. For quite some time, Walter leads a dou-
ble life without even his wife Skyler knowing anything about his secret
business. When she finds out, though, he forces her to help him launder
all the money he makes and becomes more threatening every day.
Skyler, not dissimilar to Tara, is terrified and particularly worried about
their children. She asks Walter to stop, keeps confronting him, and
eventually fakes a near nervous breakdown so she has a reason to tem-
porarily move the children to her sister and DEA agent brother-in-law.
In other words, she does her best to protect her children from their father
who has become a violent meth-dealing sociopath. By all accounts,
Skyler should be the recipient of the viewers’ empathy, the character the
audience roots for. And yet, the number of Skyler hate-sites with outra-
geous insults that popped up on the Internet is astounding. This became
such an almost farcical phenomenon that Anna Gunn decided to com-
ment on it publicly in an insightful piece she wrote for The New York
Times titled “I Have a Character Issue.” In it, she openly wonders about
all this hatred for Skyler and at times even for herself, the real-life ac-
tress behind the fictional character:
My character, to judge from the popularity of Web sites and Facebook

pages devoted to hating her, has become a flash point for many people’s
feelings about strong, nonsubmissive, ill-treated women. […] A typical
online post complained that Skyler was a “shrieking, hypocritical harpy”
and “didn’t deserve the great life she has.” “I have never hated a TV-
show character as much as I hated her,” one poster wrote. The consensus
among the haters was clear: Skyler was a ball-and-chain, a drag, a shrew,
and an “annoying bitch wife.” (Gunn)
What is important is that Gunn’s trouble with the vitriol with which her
on-screen character is treated is not personal or caused by her own van-
ity; rather, she sees a connection between how female television char-
acters are criticized and how women in real life are perceived:
I’m concerned that so many people react to Skyler with such venom.
Could it be that they can’t stand a woman who won’t suffer silently or
“stand by her man”? That they despise her because she won’t back down
or give up? Or because she is, in fact, Walter’s equal? […] I finally re-
alized that most people’s hatred of Skyler had little to do with me and a
lot to do with their own perception of women and wives. Because Skyler
didn’t conform to a comfortable ideal of the archetypical female, she had
become a kind of Rorschach test for society, a measure of our attitudes
toward gender. (Gunn)
Gunn also points out that there have been other defiant female characters
who inspired this kind of overly negative response from viewers. She
mentions The Sopranos’ Carmela Soprano (Edie Falco), who was fa-
mously outspoken and did not agree with everything her mafia-boss
husband Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) did, as well as Mad Men’s
Peggy Draper (January Jones), who dared to divorce her cheating hus-
band Don Draper (Jon Hamm). It truly seems that the worst thing a
woman can do these days is to refuse to stand by her husband uncondi-
tionally. No matter what the man does—lie, cheat, even kill and endan-
ger his wife and children—the woman is not allowed to disapprove, let
alone take action against her husband (not even if it is ‘merely’ to pro-
tect the children).
Exactly what a strong and smart woman is allowed to do is depicted
in CBS’s legal drama The Good Wife. The pilot starts with a scene that
has become all too familiar in our political everyday life: Peter Florrick
(Chris Noth) holds a press conference resigning from his position as
State Attorney of Cook County, Illinois, when a sex tape with him and a
prostitute surfaces. His utterly humiliated wife Alicia Florrick (Julianna
Margulies) has to stand next to him for all the cameras to see that she
still supports her husband. It is as if she were a mere political prop for
her husband’s career and reputation. When Peter is imprisoned awaiting
his trial for corruption, financial needs force Alicia back into the work-
place. So she picks up her career as a lawyer again that she traded for
being a homemaker and mother of their two children years before.
Luckily, she soon realizes that being a lawyer is not just a job but
something of a vocation that she, despite many hurdles and a lot of pres-
sure, increasingly excels at. Throughout the next seasons, Alicia and
Peter have an on-off-relationship. Expectedly, she felt hurt and betrayed
in the beginning but eventually manages to forgive him and they recon-
cile. This does not last long, though, and they break things off again
rather quickly. Whatever the emotional and private bond between them
may be at any given time, however, Alicia never relinquishes her sup-
port publicly. She never seriously considers getting a divorce so as not to
hurt her husband’s career. She continues to play the happily married
wife for the media, i.e., she stands by her man. Unsurprisingly, there are
few hate-sites for Alicia Florrick on the Internet.
The sad but obvious conclusion from all these examples is that, de-
spite what some articles and documentaries would make us believe, we
are still a very long way from reaching any kind of on-screen gender
equality in American primetime television series. We have come a long
way since the 1950s; there is no question about that. However, as I have
tried to outline in this article, the evidence is overwhelming that things
need to continue to change for the better. The simple numerical under-
representation of female characters by a percentage that is larger than
the gender wage gap, the overwhelming confinement of women to cer-
tain stereotypically feminine roles, as well as the exhibition, reproduc-
tion, and condoning of misogynist patterns in storylines and character
behavior, all show that the status quo is still unacceptable. Media repre-
sentation matters as it contributes to shaping our worldview. The answer
to the underlying question of whether we still need feminism in the year
2015 is a resounding yes.
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Stanley, Alessandra. “Two Ways to Accessorize Power: Madame Secretary and
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RENÉ DIETRICH
Secret Spheres from Breaking Bad to The Ameri-

cans: The Politics of Secrecy, Masculinity, and
Transgression in 21st-Century U.S. Television
Drama
On the one hand, these

male characters live in the
public sphere of their jobs
and family, and on the
other hand, they exist in
the seamy underworld of
violent crime and/or cul-
tural transgression.
—Jason Landrum
Introduction: Male Anti-Heroes and the Logics of Gendered Secrecy
Jason Landrum’s characterization of the male protagonists in a number

of U.S. cable TV dramas in the early twenty-first century points out how
strongly the transgressive nature of these characters is tied to a sphere of
secrecy. Their status as morally ambiguous anti-heroes1 is built into the
structure of the narrative in that they lead “dual lives” (Faucette 80) or
appear to entertain “multiple existences” (Freeley 33). For instance,
Tony Soprano, the archetype of such a character in HBO’s The So-
pranos, is both head of a mafia Family in the professional sphere and a
1
This was the case to such an extent that at a certain point a number of TV
critics decried it as a cliché and formula. June Thomas puts it: “Enough with
the TV Antiheroes Already.”
196 Secret Spheres from Breaking Bad to The Americans
family father in the domestic sphere. As he tries to reconcile these

largely incompatible roles, his duress manifests in anxiety attacks, and
he has to realize that he can no longer keep these ‘separate spheres’
neatly apart. Many of his actions still display a desire to draw a line
between his domestic family and professional Family, specifically to
keep his criminal activities and their repercussions from his home. How-
ever, the instances where these lines do get crossed regularly intensify
the dramatic action (Sepinwall 40) and additionally signal the ethical
transgressions of Tony’s day-to-day existence most clearly; a case in
point would be the murder of Tony’s daughter’s boyfriend upon his
order (“Army of One,” S03E13).
Critics have likened Tony Soprano’s character more than once to a
“domesticated bear” (Martin 2); in this image the bathrobe he habitually
wears at home symbolizes his fur. Such an image signifies more than
merely James Gandolfini’s physique and energy in playing Tony So-
prano, though. Beyond that, it gives expression to the larger idea that
domestic life represents merely a cover for an allegedly more authentic
but hidden life of male-connoted freedom, self-assertion, primal in-
stincts, and sexual prowess. This notion becomes an even stronger factor
in succeeding dramas which at the same time further intensify this divi-
sion between the transparent and secret sphere in the male protagonist’s
life: as a result, these TV dramas firmly associate the sphere of secrecy
with transgression and masculinity and the sphere of transparency with
domesticity and femininity. This binary produces gendered spheres of
transparency and secrecy which pose a threat to each other and whose
collision creates disastrous results for all involved. In Mad Men, the
uncovering of Don Draper’s prior life as Dick Whitman triggers Betty’s
decision for divorce; in Dexter, Trinity’s knowledge of Dexter’s domes-
tic life leads to the murder of his wife; in The Shield, Vic Mackey’s
domestic life crumbles under his corrupt and illegal activities in the
guise as a police officer.
On the basis of this division of transparency and secrecy along the
lines of gender, this paper sets out to investigate the politics of gendered
secrecy in contemporary U.S. TV drama. By a closer look at the narra-
tive logics through which the protagonists’ secret lives are depicted, it
specifically asks how these logics help to constitute, or trouble, spheres
René Dietrich 197
of secrecy and transparency in various contexts of ethical and/or politi-

cal transgression.
The narrative logics of secrecy have been explored in depth by Eva
Horn in regard to espionage and treason in modern fiction. What she
outlines as the “logics of political secrecy” (“Logics” 103) in this con-
text also helps to illuminate the narrative logics and politics of secrecy
in recent U.S. TV dramas. For instance, she notes, “a core point of po-
litical secrecy [is] its profound and uncontainable ambivalence” (115-
16). Similarly, the TV dramas use secrecy to convey the ambivalence of
the anti-hero. Whereas the ambivalence of the anti-hero refers primarily
to the moral sphere and the ambivalence of political secrecy to the
problem of placing the political secret inside or outside the state’s own
sphere of legality, this distinction might be a finer point that one initially
assumes. Horn argues that modern democracy is characterized by an
increasing demand for transparency. Political secrecy is thus no longer
judged a legitimate aspect of politics on the grounds of being immoral.
Such a demand for transparency, one may add to Horn’s argument,
increasingly extends to the private sphere, so that the idea of secrecy
itself becomes suspect, or even synonymous with moral ambivalence
and possibly illegal activity in both private and political contexts. Horn
thus states: “From this perspective, the state’s secrets can never be
anything but its crimes; having secrets is already proof of criminal and
immoral political activities” (119). The TV dramas that connect this
space of secrecy to crime then display in a fictional realm what Horn
argues for the political sphere at large: “secrecy opens up a universe of
uncontained violence” (116).
For male anti-hero characters in contemporary U.S. TV series in the
wake of Tony Soprano, such as Walter White in Breaking Bad and
Nicholas Brody in Homeland, the narrative logics and politics of secrecy
can be described in the following way: the male protagonist leads a dual
life in which one part is visible to the social and political institutions that
evaluate the protagonist’s activities according to the legal and moral
criteria accepted in contemporary society. The apparatuses of state and
law, the environment of the workplace, but also the family and the home
belong to this sphere that demands transparency, whose reach thus cuts
across a conventional private/public divide. The other part of the pro-
tagonist’s existence is lived in the sphere of relative or absolute secrecy,
consists of socially deviant and unlawful action (often in the form of an
alternative criminal career), and needs to be kept as much out of purview

of the domestic social institution of family and home as hidden from
state institutions, particularly law enforcement. The secret sphere is thus
tied in complex ways to the public and the domestic realm while it needs
to stay invisible to both in order not to be subject to their controlling
forces in their shared demand for transparency.
In this gendered view of secrecy, masculinity is defined by a need for
secrecy as well as the simultaneous need to exclude the domestic realm
from this secret. At the same time, the domestic realm is defined as
feminine and imagined as being in need of protection from the secret
sphere and its repercussions.2 For the male anti-hero, however,
domesticity and femininity in their demand for transparency are fore-
most a threat to his sphere of secrecy, which he seeks to protect in order
to enjoy the gratification of its transgressions. As a result, the wives of
the protagonists are largely configured (at least initially) as embodi-
ments of social control and power over the domestic realm to which the
male protagonist appears to be confined in a life that fulfills the demand
for transparency. The secret sphere then becomes a space for unleashing
an otherwise domesticated, confined, and submissive masculinity.3
The combination of secrecy and masculinity further associates the
“universe of uncontained violence,” which secrecy opens up, with male
privilege and structures of patriarchal power. As one of the male anti-
hero TV dramas clearly indebted to The Sopranos, Breaking Bad both
displays these politics of gendered secrecy as well as problematizes
them in linking a sense of reinvigorated masculinity to the increasing
dehumanization and gross ethical transgressions of the main character
Walter White. This paradigm is furthermore troubled in Homeland. In its
depiction of gendered secrecy, it parallels the transgressive character of
2
Due to its greater dramatic interest for the viewer, the idea of a secret
becomes a necessity also on another level—as AMC’s Rob Sorcher advised
Matthew Weiner after reading his pilot script for Mad Men, that Don Draper
needs a secret (see Sepinwall 312). The attractiveness of secrecy for viewers
and network executives may be heightened by the phenomenon Horn
describes for the political realm, that the public emphasis on transparency
coexists with an equally large interest of the same public in secrecy (“Logics”
105), particularly in the form of scandal, or other forms of deviation.
3
See Lotz for a more extensive discussion of masculinities in twenty-first
century TV series.
René Dietrich 199
the male anti-hero with a female protagonist equally involved in the

sphere of secrecy, whose position though ultimately remains tied to
patriarchal structures of authority. Additionally, the political drama
recasts the logics of secrecy within the politics of espionage and covert
military operations, which transgress political-moral norms by disre-
garding the demand for transparency in liberal democracies. In The
Americans, finally, the male anti-hero is reinscribed within a marriage of
secrecy, for which the family and the home become transgressive sites
which the secret KGB operatives use to undermine the liberal capitalist
system of the U.S.
Strategies of Secrecy, Eroded Domesticity, and Corroded Humanity in

Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad directly links the emergence of Walter White’s secret life
as a drug manufacturer (and later chief of a drug empire) under the alias
of “Heisenberg” to his recapturing of a sense of “hegemonic masculin-
ity” (Connell 77; see also Faucette). The fatal diagnosis of inoperable
lung cancer, which functions as a trigger for his transformation, is de-
picted as merely the last instance in a series of humiliations and degra-
dations that show Walter as being emasculated in both the professional
and the domestic sphere. At the beginning, as has often been noted,
Breaking Bad creates sympathy for the hapless and meek middle-aged
teacher whose confrontation with death via the cancer diagnosis em-
boldens him to pursue lawless actions and attain greater dominance and
self-confidence overall. The progression of the series, however, shows
clearly how such an idealization of unchecked dominant “hegemonic
masculinity”— ostensibly called upon to protect the family from finan-
cial insecurity—produces a pathology of hubris, avarice, self-grandeur,
and pride. In a perverse reversal of the idea that life within the secret
sphere allows Walter to enjoy a more authentic life and makes him
“awake” (S01E01), his embrace of his secret identity transforms him
into, or simply reveals him to be, nothing but a “cutthroat narcissist”
(Freeley 41). In the course of the narrative, Walter’s humanity corrodes.
The toxic mixture of egoistic pride and ruthless self-interest exerts a
corrupting influence on everyone who comes, voluntarily or involuntar-
ily, in contact with him. Walter thus begins to function as a cancer him-
self in the way he indiscriminately inflicts damage on his environment.

Ultimately, the character’s transformation turns the world of the series
into a “universe of uncontained violence” (Horn, “Logics” 116).
A central narrative strategy in depicting secrecy lies in the decision
to reveal the secret to someone at a specific moment in time and under
particular circumstances. In fiction, a secret necessarily needs to be
shared, if only with the viewer, in order to qualify as a secret. Notably, at
the beginning of Breaking Bad, the cancer diagnosis and the criminal
actions Walter pursues in reaction to his increased “social strain” (Os-
borne 100) are treated as operating along the same lines of secrecy.
Walter is careful to withhold information not only about the beginning
of his career as a drug manufacturer, but also about his illness. Crucially,
the first person with whom he shares his secret is “Crazy-Eight,” a com-
petitor who tries to eliminate Walter as well as his partner (and former
student) Jesse Pinkman. After his failed attempt, Walter and Jesse hold
him captive in Jesse’s basement. In the episode in which Walter shares
the secret of his cancer diagnosis with him, he kills him after much
hesitation when realizing that Crazy-Eight would kill him instead (“…
And the Bag’s in the River,” S01E03). Only afterwards, at the end of the
same episode, does Walter tell his wife Skyler about his cancer. As his
act of confiding in her works foremost as a measure to justify his disap-
pearance, the trust implied in his disclosure to Skyler is simply a means
to veil his ongoing deception and protect the primary secret of his alter-
native criminal career. As Walter operates much more extensively as
“Heisenberg” in his illegal business under the cover of a timid middle-
aged cancer patient, his criminal alias remains simultaneously contained
within the confines of a struggling middle-class existence. Still, this
assumed border becomes quite permeable when Walter transfers the
thrill and sense of reinvigorated masculinity from the secret sphere of
illegal transgression to the transparent sphere of marital relations. Tell-
ingly, he responds to Skyler’s question why their sex in the car after a
school meeting was so good: “Because it was illegal” (“A No-Rough-
Stuff-Type Deal,” S01E07). Simultaneously, however, it becomes dra-
matically apparent how the violence prevalent in his secret sphere
threatens his own existence and the well-being of the people around
him: In the following episode, Walter’s anxiety after having witnessed a
brutal murder leads him to sexually violate Skyler—a transfer of trans-
gression from one sphere to another which threatens the family he osten-
René Dietrich 201
sibly seeks to protect from the repercussions of violence (“Seven Thirty-

Seven,” S02E1). Additionally, this scene already points to the patholo-
gies of male dominance the show later explores more extensively.
After two seasons, the show’s narrative structure of transformation
has situated Walter firmly within a male-dominated sphere of criminal
secrecy. This male domain is transgressed when Skyler’s suspicion
about his activities to procure money for his cancer treatment initiates
her eventual involvement in the criminal enterprise. In this collision of
the two spheres in Walter’s life, one slowly begins to erode the other. At
the beginning of season three, he confirms her suspicion that he is a
“drug dealer” with the slight modification that he is a “manufacturer”
(“No Mas,” S03E1). Ironically, this admission of guilt does not halt
Walter’s criminal venture, but rather expands the space in which “Hei-
senberg” is allowed to exist. The secret life conveyed by the alias of
“Heisenberg” now openly exerts control and influence beyond the con-
fines initially imposed upon it.
While this moment prompts the temporary separation and almost
causes Walter and Skyler’s divorce, it is noteworthy that, ultimately, it
neither leads to an implosion of the domestic sphere nor brings about the
end of Walter’s secret life—in contrast, Betty decides to divorce Don in
Mad Men when she finds out about his former identity as Dick Whit-
man. Instead, the disclosure of the secret to Skyler functions as a form of
release, after which Walter’s ongoing criminal activities and their con-
sequences start to consume his life in the sphere of transparency with
greater speed and determination. The professional sphere is altered when
his erratic behavior leads to his suspension from school (“Green Light,”
S03E04); and the domestic sphere is gradually but irreversibly eroded as
his wife becomes an accomplice to his enterprise in buying and running
the car wash as a money laundering operation—notably a central site of
his former humiliation and emasculation, as he sometimes had to wash
the expensive sport cars of his own students there (“Pilot,” S01E01).
When in season five Walter has his partner-in-crime Jesse Pinkman and
Skyler have dinner together in a home from which Skyler has removed
the children in order to protect them, it is clear how thoroughly the do-
mestic sphere has been eroded and hollowed out (“Buyout,” S05E06).
As the formerly secret sphere takes over Walter White’s entire life, so
the space formerly separated from his criminal existence is slowly de-
prived of any quality and comfort of the domestic and familial. Whereas
initially the secret life had infiltrated the home only in the form of
money bundles that naturally occupied spaces hidden from plain sight,
towards the end of the narrative, the home space is penetrated and con-
taminated by the protagonist’s secret sphere of increasingly “uncon-
tained violence”: at the end of season four, a plant in the yard becomes
the source for poisoning a child in Walter’s convoluted plan to win back
his partner (“End Times”/“Face Off,” S04E12/E13); and, at the begin-
ning of season five, the pool is used to capture Skyler’s despair when
she walks into it in the middle of a family dinner, an action that is both
calculated so as to justify moving her children to her sister Marie, and
shows the extent of her helplessness in living with the murderous “cut-
throat narcissist” (Freeley 41) Walter has become (“Fifty-One,” S05E4).
Finally, at the end of the series, foreshadowed in the middle of the final
season—the entire house is stripped bare after an extensive police
search. After everything has been confiscated as part of the investiga-
tion, the former family home is now barren and no longer anything but a
symbol for and a sign of the devastation caused by “Heisenberg,” Wal-
ter’s formerly secret alias. Spray-painted across the previous living room
walls, “Heisenberg” has now usurped Walter’s life and everything in it
(“Blood Money,” S05E09).
The moment that most strongly signals the corrosion of his identity,
the absolute consumption and corruption of the aspect of the character
associated with “Walter White” by “Heisenberg,” occurs at the end of
the fourth season, in the closely linked episodes “End Times” and “Face
Off” (S04E12/E13). It marks, to use Vince Gilligan’s much publicized
phrase, the last step in Walt’s transition from “Mr. Chips to Scarface”
(see Sepinwall 340). Additionally, it breaks with any idea of masculinity
that is not defined by aggressive dominance, such as protective father-
hood. In order to overcome his boss and adversary, Gustavo Fring, who
has threatened his and his family’s life, Walter develops a plan that
involves poisoning a child, Jesse’s girlfriend’s son Brock, in order to
manipulate Jesse so that he would help him kill Fring. The complicated
plan ultimately works, but until the final image in “Face Off,” which
shows the Lily of the Valley (the plant Walter used as source for the
poison), the viewer is not informed of this plan and in fact cannot
know—at least not for certain—that there was such a plan. In this cru-
cial moment of the series and the character’s development, the narrative
logics of secrecy are modified in order to exclude the viewer for the first
René Dietrich 203
time in the series. Before, every significant action that was kept secret
from the majority of the characters was shown to the viewer, with whom
Walter’s secrets, both in terms of his illness and his criminal activities,
were shared. This privilege can be seen as helping viewers to relate to
and identify with the main character, to develop a sense of intimacy and
even complicity with him. The narrative disclosure of the secret sphere
to the viewer suggests a contract between viewer and protagonist based
on privileged insight into the character’s actions and development. Such
a suggestion of a bond between viewer and protagonist arguably con-
tributes to Breaking Bad’s attractiveness and its ability to create a strong
audience investment in its protagonist (for a certain period of time),
despite his gradual moral descent and increasing degree of ethical trans-
gression.
Crucially, the series creates distance to Walter’s actions in this sig-
nificant moment of his decline by excluding the viewer from witnessing
his actions for the majority of “End Times,” the penultimate episode of
season four. For the first time, Walter disappears for the rest of the char-
acters and the viewers alike: he is off-screen and cannot be reached by
those trying to contact him. While one assumes that he hides out and
barricades himself at home in protection of Fring’s killers, the unac-
counted time span is instead used for the design and execution of a plan
that puts a boy close to death for the sake of Walter’s self-preservation.
This absence has a greater effect than allowing the series to move past
the details of a part of the narrative which is never fully clarified, or
simply creating suspense over the question of ‘who poisoned Brock.’
More importantly, it modifies the narrative logics of secrecy established
throughout the series in a way that strongly changes the viewer-protago-
nist relationship. The series transgresses those viewer expectations it has
created and breaches the contract between audience and protagonist
based on the privileged insight into the secret sphere. At the same mo-
ment Walter’s ethical transgressions exceed any previous scale and
signify the last step in what amounts to a break with his pre-diagnosis
character.
The series uses the possibilities of its medium to create a form of
visual secrecy. On the level of visual narrative, it replicates the simulta-
neity of revelation and obscurity in many of Walter’s actions—for in-
stance when he reveals his cancer diagnosis to Skyler while at the same
time obscuring the beginnings of his criminal career. What the series
shows as part of its visual narrative (which hitherto has granted the
viewer privileged insight into the secret sphere) partly functions as a
means to obscure a sphere of visuality (of Walter extracting the poison,
of mixing it with Brock’s drink or food) and character development
(Walter placing his own life above that of a child) that remains hidden
and secret to the viewer until the end. This secret is also lifted visually
through the final shot of the last episode of the season, a seemingly
innocuous shot of the White residence’s backyard, which then zooms in
on the plant. At the very moment in which Walter’s moral abyss and the
extent of his capacity for ethical transgression are made visible, he is
tellingly off-screen again.
The unprecedented breach of contract between the protagonist and
the viewership moves the viewer into a position which allows her or him
more easily to identify and sympathize with the characters who are be-
trayed and deceived by Walter’s criminal secrecy. The betrayal of char-
acters by Walter’s strategy of secrecy within the narrative, and the be-
trayal of the viewer’s expectations by the narrative strategy of visual
secrecy outlined above, correspond on the level of what is made visible
or remains invisible. The Walter White whom the characters assumed
they saw within their lives and viewers assumed they saw on the screen
in front of them has transformed into someone else in front of their eyes;
a part of what was assumed about Walter White as husband, father,
brother-in-law, or main protagonist is proven wrong by actions con-
ducted in a secret sphere made invisible by Walter’s narratives of de-
ception and, in this one moment in the series, the show’s strategy of
visual secrecy.
Sharing the secret with Skyler at the beginning of season three marks
the moment when Walter White’s life within the secret sphere starts to
bleed into the transparent sphere of his visible persona as father, hus-
band, teacher, and allows the transgressive quality of his secret sphere to
exert greater control over his existence. The transgression of viewers’
expectations to the point of breaching the previously established contract
between viewer and protagonist at the end of season four signals the
instant in which the life within the secret sphere, imagined as a form of
dominant “hegemonic masculinity,” has corroded Walter’s humanity
completely. Any distinctions between the domestic sphere and the
sphere of professional crime are eroded, and even the notion of a secret
identity contained as “Heisenberg” has become obsolete. Walter has
René Dietrich 205
completely embraced this aspect of himself, as there is also no longer

any egoistic or murderous impulse that he needs to hide from himself.
From such a position, Walter’s plan works perfectly; he has taken full
control and dominates the action (even when he has to improvise)
through a mixture of manipulation, coercion, and seemingly fearless
aggression. The only time in which one of Walter’s plans works even
more seamlessly is at the end of the series when he has accepted the
possibility of death and is able also to admit to Skyler that all the while
“I did it for me” (“Felina,” S05E16). The series thus suggests that abso-
lute control and male dominance are possible only at the expense of
one’s humanity or hope for life in any form. Full control can be taken
when nothing else is of importance. Fittingly, the final image in the
fourth season showing the poisonous plant is accompanied by Norah
Jones’s vocals: “Until you travel to that place you can’t come back /
Where the last pain is gone and all that’s left is black” (Burton/Luppi,
“Black”).
The Secret Spheres of Political Transgression and the Limits of Female

Agency in Homeland
As Homeland and The Americans both operate in the long tradition of

fictions that engage in the politics of state secrecy and treason, as re-
cently outlined by Eva Horn (War), their depiction of secrecy is natu-
rally more explicitly political than in Breaking Bad. While both series
thus offer a variety of perspectives on the politics of secrecy, the more
explicitly political context configures secrecy as a space that exceeds
recapturing a “hegemonic masculinity” through socially transgressive
behavior. Instead, the secret sphere is situated within a greater context of
political transgression in which female agency and sociopolitical cri-
tique are simultaneously enabled and circumscribed.
Due to its placement in the world of espionage and covert operations
after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, secrecy assumes a
prominent place in Showtime’s Homeland. In one sense, Homeland
shows similarities to previous TV dramas of secrecy with a male anti-
hero at its center, in this case the traumatized marine soldier and pris-
oner-of-war Nicholas Brody. At the same time, however, it suggests
another dimension to the life within the secret sphere, as Brody is sus-
pected to be a sleeper terrorist. Additionally, the series features Carrie

Mathieson, a female protagonist who is defined by her life as a CIA
analyst and thus moves within the world of secrecy politics. As both
Carrie and Brody are involved in the political maneuvers of secrecy
within the domains of espionage and covert operations, Homeland’s
narrative logics of secrecy differ considerably from Breaking Bad.
Whereas the viewer is complicit in Walter’s illegal activities from the
very beginning, making the exclusion of the viewer at the end of the
fourth season such a radical departure from the usual narrative tech-
nique, Homeland builds much tension and suspense in the first season
on the questions whether Brody is actually a terrorist or not, whether
Carrie’s suspicion is justified or to be attributed to her bi-polar condi-
tion.
The narrative logics surrounding Brody in the first season of Home-
land strongly revolve around the distinction (to draw once more on
Horn’s terminology) between mysterium and secretum (“Logics” 104).
The show is composed in a way which makes it equally plausible that
Brody might hide a specific secret (a secretum) or that he represents a
quality of the human psyche so damaged by imprisonment and torture as
to be unknowable, even to itself (gesturing toward the notion of myste-
rium). On several occasions, the statements he makes about his impris-
onment are revealed to be lies. The privileged insight of the viewer into
the sphere of secrecy is achieved at the beginning of Homeland through
a number of flashbacks: contrary to his statements, Brody did meet the
chief terrorist Abu Nazir, and he was involved in the alleged killing of
his fellow prisoner (“Pilot,” S01E01). While this might point to his
involvement with the terrorist organization, the portrayal of Brody’s
damaged state can lead viewers to assume that he cannot share aspects
of his experience for other reasons. In this case, his lies and elisions
seem to signal a profound disruption in his sense of truth, reality, and
self caused by the trauma of captivity.
Additionally, the show destabilizes the signifier “Brody” even more
by providing him with various attributes which are presented to a post-
9/11 viewership as seemingly incompatible: marine, Muslim, rescued
prisoner of war and national hero, suspected enemy of the state and later
Congressman. At any given moment, Brody seems to appear on two
sides of the conflict at once. The accurate decoding of these attributes is
made more complicated by the setting exactly ten after years after the
René Dietrich 207
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The audience might be skeptical

of convenient labeling in the climate of a growing disillusion over the
“war on terror” and its consequences. Additionally, viewers may be
familiar with the tropes of post- 9/11 TV and film (Dixon), as well as be
able to identify ambiguity and defiance of audience expectations as
generic conventions of recent cable TV dramas. This strategy of narra-
tive secrecy, in which the narrative itself remains deliberately obscure as
to who is to be trusted and believed, culminates at the end of episode
eight (“Achilles Heel,” S01E08). At the beginning of the episode, Brody
appears innocent because his fellow prisoner Thomas Walker, who is
previously presumed dead and whom Brody believed to have beaten to
death as ordered by his torturers, is identified as the prisoner of war who
had been turned against the U.S., seeming to provide a satisfactory an-
swer to the CIA and the viewership about Brody’s status. The end of the
episode, however, leaves no doubt about Brody’s association with Al
Qaeda, as he visits an important contact of Abu Nazir’s, even if in order
to declare his break with the operation. This decision is then undone by
the end of the next episode when he is incited to resubmit to the cause in
a sentimental narrative designed to elicit the viewer’s sympathy (“Cross-
fire,” S01E09). This narrative strategy of secrecy is not as striking as the
departure from the usual modus operandi of the show in Breaking Bad,
but it is similarly designed to produce a strong effect on the viewer when
his secret is revealed. Brody’s association with, and at the same time
seeming denunciation of, a terrorist network is clarified at exactly the
moment when the viewer is led to being least suspicious of him.
Whereas before, the viewer is conditioned to mistrust Brody and regu-
larly led to sympathize with Carrie’s position, the revelation of Brody’s
terrorist contacts after having been seemingly “cleared” of all suspicion
has the viewer most strongly register the contrast between what his fam-
ily and the CIA expect and desire him to be, and the fact of his secret
involvement in the plan of a terrorist attack.
In Breaking Bad, the necessity for secrecy is limited to Walter White
and the realm associated with his criminal enterprise. The theme of
espionage in Homeland naturally turns secrecy, deceit, and subterfuge
into techniques which are employed by both sides of the conflict and
foremost characterize the interactions between Brody and Carrie. Their
lives of secrecy are paralleled in the narrative, yet there are also signifi-
cant contrasts which more strongly point to the gender politics of se-
crecy involved in Homeland. Just as Brody has to hide his secret identity
as a terrorist, so Carrie has to operate covertly in her investigation of
Brody through surveillance and later in establishing personal contact.
What Michael Kackmann has analyzed as the precarious “matrix of
nation, state, and agent” (190) in modern representations of espionage is
already severely damaged at the beginning of the series: Carrie acts in
defiance of the state represented by her superiors, and targets the na-
tional hero figure of a returned prisoner-of-war as suspected terrorist
(“Pilot,” S01E01). At the same time, of course, her defiance of authority
is only in the nation’s best interest, just as Brody also envisions himself
as a defender of national ideals in his planned terrorist attack (“Marine
One,” S01E12).
Carrie, however, not only figures as adversary and parallel figure to
Brody, a dynamic which the series explores in their relation of attraction
and repulsion, but can also be seen as a foil to Brody, especially in the
way their respective spheres of secrecy relate to the sphere of transpar-
ency in their lives in particularly gendered terms. On the one hand, her
defiance of invariably male CIA authority and her own initiation of her
involvement with Brody seem to suggest that the use of secrecy and
deception allows Carrie to gain a particular degree of agency and control
otherwise withheld from her in structures marked by patriarchal author-
ity. On the other hand, however, Carrie’s position in this politicized
space of secrecy and duplicity is circumscribed by her relation to the
male characters in quite stereotypical fashion: the tension with David
Estes, head of the CIA, stems partly from them having had an affair that,
in his view, cost him his marriage; Saul Berenson acts in a mixture of
benevolence and sternness as her surrogate father; and when she con-
tacts Brody directly in order to pursue the illegitimate surveillance op-
eration by different means, their complicated affair turns her into the
lover of a married man.
What is also noteworthy about the gender politics of secrecy in
Homeland is that the family as a domestic institution of control, which is
quintessential regarding the secret sphere of Brody and other male anti-
heroes, does not figure into Carrie’s life. Her family, only existent in the
form of her father and sister, instead acts as a protective and supervising
force in the context of her bi-polar condition, a fact that she needs to
keep a secret from work, not her family (in notable contrast to Walter
White’s cancer diagnosis). Additionally, her condition is depicted as a
René Dietrich 209
disorder that may equally contribute to her professional success and her
personal difficulties. In Carrie’s life, the “separate spheres” of secrecy
and transparency collapse into the conventional construction of the pro-
fessional and domestic as separate spheres that particularly circumscribe
female lives—even if the movement of inclusion/exclusion has shifted
for Carrie. Carrie is not confined to the domestic sphere; instead, her
dedication to the professional sphere seems to preclude any possibility
of domestic life for her. The portrayal of her bi-polar condition in this
context indicates that this situation is rooted within her damaged person-
ality, instead of being a consequence of patriarchal structures embedded
within U.S. society. While Breaking Bad in its focus on masculinity
explores the pathologies of male dominance, Homeland ends up
pathologizing Carrie as representing the unmarried woman without
children dedicated to her work.
Carrie has no family from which she needs to keep her illegitimate
surveillance operation and later affair with Brody a secret, and her home
is taken up solely by work—indicated by the collage of Abu Nazir’s
network which is the first image seen of her home in the pilot. The most
extensive contact that she has with family life in the first episodes of the
series is through spying on Nicholas Brody’s private life and marital
troubles—which is possible because she has neither of those. Walter
White, almost until the end, claims that he led his secret life for his fam-
ily (and the series seeks to maintain a minimal level of sympathy for him
by indicating that harming his family is a line of ethical transgression he
will not cross), and Brody’s conflict is ultimately not so much politically
motivated but represented as one of loyalty between his ‘homeland’
American family and his surrogate family of his captor Abu Nazir. By
contrast, this dimension does not exist for Carrie, so that the show man-
ages to convey the sphere of secrecy as one of female agency, and at the
same time circumscribes the female protagonist rather rigidly and con-
ventionally within this sphere in ways that signal continuing male privi-
lege.
While Breaking Bad and other series focus on the private to illumi-
nate the politics of secrecy, the manifestations of secrecy on the individ-
ual level in Homeland correlate to the secrecy of espionage and covert
military operations after 9/11. This level of secrecy is foremost con-
veyed through the drone attack on the area of a primary school intended
to kill Abu Nazir, in which instead eighty-two children are killed, in-
cluding Nazir’s son Issa. This attack is orchestrated by the CIA and
ordered by the Vice President; its records are subsequently redacted. It
figures as the trigger to turn Brody against the U.S. (“Marine One,”
S01E12), and reliving it through memory makes Brody resubmit to
Nazir’s cause (“Crossfire,” S01E09). When Saul Berenson, in the final
episode of the first season, confronts David Estes with this, the latter
justifies the attack by stating that the operations of the secret service are
now “about projecting American power in the world” and no longer
about “old-fashioned spy games” that Saul, and by implication, Carrie
want to “play” (“Marine One,” S01E12).
With the portrayal of the drone strike and its consequences, Home-
land places the politics of secrecy within a larger context of political
transgression, in which the demand for transparency in liberal democra-
cies is disregarded in the interest of “projecting American power in the
world.” Since Homeland represents political power firmly embedded in
structures of patriarchal authority, its suggestion that the U.S. can unin-
hibitedly project its power in the sphere of political secrecy produces a
more direct connection between a “hegemonic masculinity” recaptured
within the secret sphere, indicated by earlier series such as Breaking
Bad, and the “universe of uncontained violence” which political secrecy
opens up, according to Horn (“Logics” 116). A character like Walter
White increasingly views his activities as being exempt from the law or
himself as being above the law in his hubris. Similarly, the political
secrecy in Homeland appears to operate in a way akin to Horn’s analysis
of the state secret: “[It] opens up an ‘extralegal space’ in which state
power, no longer under any control, asserts itself in its purest fashion. It
is, in fact, a space of war; the rules of civil life have been replaced by
those of engagement” (116). She further on connects this extralegal
space to Giorgio Agamben’s analysis of the “state of exception,” in
which “it is precisely this permanent exception and suspension which
enable law and order in the first place” (Horn, “Logics” 117). This no-
tion, often evoked in regard to U.S. politics after 9/11, is reflected by
Carrie’s surveillance of Brody without legitimation. At the same time
her operation, interested in securing the truth, ultimately appears to act
as a corrective to an agency which constructs the state of exception as
the extralegal space in which national power is constituted and pro-
jected. In Homeland, then, the ‘War on Terror’ allows forming a secret
sphere in which also a certain degree of female agency is possible, par-
René Dietrich 211
ticularly in opposition to the patriarchal structures of authority within

the intelligence agency. At the same time, though, the political secrecy
used for “projecting American power” (“Marine One,” S01E12) onto an
extralegal space that is able to contain “a universe of uncontained vio-
lence” (Horn, “Logics” 116) remains tied to these same structures.
The Americans, Spheres of Shared Secrecy, and Home as a Site of

Transgression
In The Americans, the “space of war” of political secrecy is the Cold

War—although the series makes clear, as one character puts it, that
“there is nothing cold about the covert violent exchanges between the
United States and the Soviet Union” (“Covert War,” S01E11). In this
more recent TV drama, the lines between the private, the public, the
secret, and the transparent sphere are redrawn in ways that trouble the
gender politics of secrecy outlined above. In a series focusing on two
Soviet agents living as Americans near Washington, D.C., an FBI agent
in counter-intelligence having just moved in next door, and almost every
character involved in intelligence or counter-intelligence operations, the
world of secrecy politics envelops nearly the entire world of the series.
Whereas for Walter White and other male anti-heroes of cable TV dra-
mas the life led in the sphere of transparency slowly becomes a cover for
their criminal or deviant life, the couple in The Americans is rather con-
fronted with the question of how to negotiate the lines between their
elaborate, longstanding cover and their existence as secret agents. While
Walter White creates the alter ego of his secret life, “Heisenberg,” in
absolute distinction from his domestic life, until the former slowly
bleeds into the latter and consumes it, the marriage of Philip and Eliza-
beth Jennings is, at the start of their mission, nothing but a cover to hide
their activities as secret agents. Their official names then rather signify
their alter egos.
In the context of the more common gender division in cable TV
dramas, it is particularly interesting to note that Elizabeth is the one
more dedicated to the cause, and possibly more ruthless in following her
political ideals in her work of secrecy. Philip, in contrast, is portrayed,
especially in the beginning, as comfortable fitting in and inclined to see
his American life and family as more than a cover and possibly more
meaningful than the Communist cause. This characteristic provides a

further intriguing contrast to a number of male TV drama anti-heroes,
whose lives within the secret sphere are regularly limited by their fami-
lies, the cover for the anti-heroes’ unleashed masculinity. The subversive
potential of this reversal is somewhat contained, though, as the
characters are Russian spies and therefore do not represent the American
norm in any way. Additionally, after Elizabeth and Philip attempt,
mostly upon Philip’s initiative, to turn their cover marriage into a real
relationship, it is, as conventionally expected, Elizabeth who is so hurt
by Philip betraying her not only sexually but also emotionally that she
decides on a temporary separation—in a series in which every instance
of a lie or betrayal resonates with the greater stakes of treason.
Ultimately, though, toward the end of the first season, the series finds
a common ground for the couple in the sphere of secrecy that earlier
series rarely depicted. When being treated for a gunshot wound,
Elizabeth asks Philip in the first season’s finale, in Russian, to “come
home” (“The Colonel,” S01E13). In this powerful moment of recon-
ciliation and emotional reconnection, home is reimagined as a sphere of
shared secrecy, and secrecy as the mutual ground for a marital bond. By
voicing this wish in Russian, Elizabeth manages to convey simultane-
ously an equally strong commitment to the cause and to the bond to
Philip. Using the Russian language suspends their cover existence as an
American couple so that Elizabeth can convey to Philip something
meaningful within their relationship, while it portrays at the same time
her close connection to the Soviet Union and its political cause, for the
sake of which they exist as a married couple in the U.S. “Home” is then
not a space of confined masculinity— that consequently seeks liberation
in a secret sphere—but itself a sphere of shared secrecy. Similar to ac-
tual privacy and intimacy, this sharing of secrecy creates a strong bond
between Philip and Elizabeth as husband and wife in a marriage bal-
ancing precariously between pretense and authenticity. Ironically,
though, the only time in these various series of secrecy that home is
imagined as a space of commonality is when it figures as the site from
which actions are taken to inflict damage on the U.S. ‘homeland’ and its
system of liberal capitalism in a marriage that is simultaneously authen-
tic and fabricated, a constellation fitting for the politics of serialized
secrecy in all their “uncontainable ambivalence” (Horn, “Logics” 116).
René Dietrich 213
Conclusion: The Transgressions of the Secret Sphere and On-Screen

Containment
In all of these television dramas of secrecy—Breaking Bad, Homeland,

and The Americans—the sphere of secrecy indicates a moment of “cul-
tural transgression” (Landrum 95), but it is also important to note how
the transgressive potential of the secret sphere extends beyond such a
moment of transgression in each case. Breaking Bad at one instance
combines the secret sphere of Walter White’s life and a sphere within
the narrated world that remains unseen via the strategy of visual secrecy.
Together they produce a scene in which a case of ethical transgression
and a transgression of viewer expectations coincide to breach the con-
tract of privileged insight between viewer and protagonist, diminishing
any identification or sympathy that still may have been possible before.
Homeland extends the transgressive potential of the secret sphere to the
realm of politics. The individual cases of Brody transgressing enemy
lines in the “war on terror” and Carrie transgressing the sphere of le-
gitimacy in her surveillance operation on Brody correlate with a politics
of covert operations and military aggression. These transgress the limits
of democracy and its demand for transparency in the interest of project-
ing the imperial power of the U.S. In The Americans, finally, marriage
and family become sites of transgression in being tied to the secret
sphere. The family, conventionally imagined as the smallest unit of U.S.
society, is employed as a cover from which to attack the system of de-
mocratic liberal capitalism for the objectives of the political enemy in a
war of “covert violent exchanges” (The Americans, S01E11).
Secrecy thus functions in many ways and on various levels in the TV
dramas analyzed in this essay. The male anti-hero who leads a secret life
of “cultural transgression” might then be the starting point for many
series to construct their sphere of secrecy, as well as for a respective
analysis of the strong link between masculinity and secrecy these series
suggest. At the same time, though, one might argue that the use of the
paradigm of the male anti-hero involved in a sphere of transgressive
secrecy becomes a means for these dramas to negotiate the significance
and the status of secrecy in present-day U.S. society in more general
terms. The focus on secrecy might then be a way in which contemporary
TV dramas announce their status as a medium of cultural significance,
akin to literature, in that they uncover and bring to the fore what is oth-
erwise repressed or hidden, invisible or excluded from view, and thus

submit U.S. society to a critical diagnosis. Their narrative structure,
however, might be exactly what prohibits a critique that is not compen-
sated with an element of affirmation. If one views the secret as a mani-
festation of what a society represses in its desire for a transparent and
unmarked norm, the explicit representation of the secret in these TV
dramas within a sphere of transgressive secrecy confirms, in reverse, the
distinct transparent sphere of a socially accepted norm. They thus mark
the secret as secret, and conversely affirm the norm as transparent, and
transparency as the norm. The juxtaposition of a secret and a transparent
sphere in these TV dramas might then be a way to highlight phenomena
of transgression and secrecy. At the same time, this supposed opposition
circumscribes these phenomena and the “universe of uncontained vio-
lence” (Horn, “Logics” 116) they could imply within a narrative struc-
ture that is reassuring in its specific way of portraying transgression. The
TV dramas of secrecy thus offer critical insight on what is represented in
the sphere of secrecy in all its “uncontainable ambivalence” (116)—the
pathologies of male dominance, the projections of U.S. imperial power
in the “war on terror,” the possibilities and limits of female agency in
patriarchal power structures, the critique of democratic capitalism as a
system—and simultaneously contain all of this in a secret sphere on the
TV screen.
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STEPHANIE SCHOLZ
Cashing In: The ‘Casino Indian’ on Television
The white people are

throwing money at the
tribes once more, but not
to tribal children at train
stations; millions of dol-
lars are lost each month at
bingo, blackjack, elec-
tronic slot machines, and
other mundane games of
chance at casinos located
on reservation land. The
riches, for some, are the
new wampum, or the curi-
ous coup count of lost
coins.
—Gerald Vizenor
A variety of stereotypical images often come to mind when non-Natives

think of ‘Indian Country,’ the poor/rich binary being perhaps the most
prominent: ‘Noble Savages’ relentlessly pursuing the survival of Native1
1
The terms “Native,” “Native American,” “American Indian,” and “Indian”
are still strongly contested. While many Indigenous scholars use the term
“American Indian,” most critics suggest the term “Native” as more suitable.
Gerald Vizenor writes: “The Indian became the other of manifest manners,
the absence of the real tribes, the inventions in the literature of dominance”
(55). In this essay, I follow Vizenor and Tahmahkera, using the term “Indian”
when referring to simulations or non-Native depictions and “Indigenous
Peoples,” “Native Peoples,” “Native Americans,” and “Natives” to refer to
the original inhabitants of North America.
218 The ‘Casino Indian’ on Television
culture while struggling to make ends meet, or affluent communities,

operating enormous gaming facilities on tribal land, would be two op-
posing pictures. But not all gaming facilities in North America are as
successful as casino empires like The Mohegan Sun or Foxwoods. In the
U.S., 246 tribes operate legal gaming facilities on tribal land in 28
states—overall, there are 450 casinos that produce 28 billion U.S. dol-
lars in revenue every year and employ 300,000 people (NIGA Report 6,
28; NIGC 1). The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) first legalized
gambling on tribal lands in 1988. Since the legalization of gambling
facilities, which were once operated in Quonset huts or trailers, they
have evolved from the “bingo halls” of the 1960s to modern casino
resorts. At the same time, many tribal governments developed a distinct
interest in tribal management—a way to self-govern Native education,
economy, health care, jurisdiction, and administration (Gibson 571). The
establishment of gaming facilities on tribal lands has been attributed to
the relocation of Indigenous tribes within the United States, often to
“worthless” lands without natural or mineral resources.2 Indigenous
researchers such as Pevar, or Calloway and Duthu point out that only a
small number of tribes are economically successful using gaming reve-
nues as catalysts for other economic ventures: statistically, only 20 of
the 246 so-called “gambling tribes” (Jackson; Calloway and Duthu 129,
Palermo) earn the lion’s share of Native casino revenues with facilities
in California, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Arizona (Callo-
way and Duthu 129). Nationally, the median income per Native person
in the U.S. is still about half the amount of non-Natives while unem-
ployment figures are double. Three times as many Natives live below
the poverty line than non-Natives, and only half as many Indigenous
teenagers finish high school and college as their peers (Calloway and
Duthu 118; Anders 166-67). Thus, the sight of Quonset huts and trailer
parks is still a common picture on reservations.
2
Based on original research conducted in California, Washington, New York
and Washington, D.C. in 2012, including personal in-depth interviews with
Native scholars, members of the National Museum of the American Indian,
and staff at Native television station FNX, my M.A. thesis focused on FNX
as a way of Native communication, financed through donations of an affluent
Native tribe. For a detailed and historical overview of Indian gaming, land
claim issues, and American Indian law, see Scholz (89-104).
Stephanie Scholz 219
In Canada, the number of casinos is much smaller. Out of 111 gaming

facilities, seventeen are Aboriginally operated (fifteen profitable, two
charitable). Still, the revenues of First Nations casinos, whose history
began as late as 1993, are used for similar purposes as in the U.S. (for
more detail, see e.g. Belanger 140, 144, 146-47; World Casino Di-
rectory; Stueck). Most gambling tribes share the profits among enrolled
members and contribute to social causes. The latter is required by law in
most areas. According to a report of the National Indian Gaming Asso-
ciation (NIGA) in 2004,3 revenues in the U.S. were used for education
as well as charitable causes for children and the elderly, economic en-
terprises, fire and police departments, enhancement of infrastructure,
and residential construction (NMAI 131-33). But side effects of the
gambling revenues are not only an enhancement of tribal economy and
sovereignty. Wealth also attracts “the envies,” as Vizenor states (33),
claiming that the newly gained affluence is “unearned” and a result of
cultural exploitation. This makes Native Americans once again subject
to (new) stereotyping, depicting them as greedy casino owners in main-
stream media.
The Ig/Noble Savage as “Reel Injun”: Indigenous Stereotypes in Film

and Television
Whether evaluated as no-

ble or ignoble, whether
seen as exotic or de-
graded, the Indian as an
image was always alien to
the White.
—Robert Berkhofer
Currently, scholarly literature devoted to Native television (or “Tribal

Television,” as Tahmahkera puts it [Television 15]) is sparse. In a larger
context, several studies have concentrated on representations and
stereotyping of “Indians,” including Robert Berkhofer, Philip Deloria,
3
In the U.S., the National Indian Gaming Association represents 184 of the
228 existing gambling tribes (NIGA “About”).
Daniel Francis, Beverly Singer, Duane Champagne, Jacquelyn Kilpat-

rick and Babra Meek.4 Stereotyping, according to cultural theorist Stuart
Hall, “sets up a symbolic frontier between the ‘normal’ and the ‘devi-
ant,’ the ‘normal’ and the ‘pathological,’ the ‘acceptable’ and the ‘unac-
ceptable,’ what ‘belongs’ and what does not or is ‘Other’ [...]” (“Specta-
cle” 258). The media enforces racist images and discursive practices by
portraying Native peoples through stereotypical tropes such as the “No-
ble/Ignoble Savage.” In general, “[s]tereotyping reduces people to a few
simple, essential characteristics, which are represented as fixed by Na-
ture” (257). As “a signifying practice [which] is central to the represen-
tations of racial difference” (257) it revolves around inclusion and ex-
clusion. Stephen Pevar states that stereotypes can be “conscious or un-
conscious, [and ascribe] generalized characteristics to a group based on
what one perceives as typical characteristics of members of the group”
(236). In a sharply opposed distinction between “us” and “them,” artifi-
cial boundaries between people(s) are eventually fixed. As Hall remarks,
“they” are often required to be “both things at the same time” (“Specta-
cle” 229), resulting in dichotomies such as “good/bad, civi-
lized/primitive, ugly/excessively attractive [or] repelling-because-differ-
ent/compelling-because-strange-and-exotic.” Consequently, there seems
to be always an and linked to stereotypical assumptions, making Native
Americans good and bad, poor and rich, or traditionally noble and cul-
turally exploitative.
Racialized depictions by a dominant group can be considered a “re-
gime of representation” (232), often spread through mainstream media.
Regarding Native Americans, “[p]opular culture is still full today of
countless savage [sic] and restless ‘natives,’ and sound-tracks constantly
repeat the threatening sound of drumming in the night [...]” (Hall,
“Whites” 21). Re-runs of ‘classic movies’ (i.e., Western movies), for
instance, revive outdated representations and meanings. As Adams
states, “[i]t was easy for colonizers to standardize and propagate these
distorted myths because they had control of the communications media
[sic]. Perverted images were paraded before the public to help justify
and legitimize the incarceration of the entire population of native people
4
In the following, I briefly summarize existing research on Indigenous
stereotypes. For a more detailed overview see e.g. Bataille and Silet, Bird,
Singer, or Tahmahkera.
[…]” (38). Simulated Indians—signifying “the absence of the tribal

real” (Vizenor 4)—like in the movie Dancing with Wolves inherit what
Gerald Vizenor calls “Manifest Manners” (5), the “melancholy anti-
selves in the ruins of representation” (7). In this sense, the frontier spirit
is shifted from geography to mentality (Johnson 111), differentiating
between the Whites and the ‘stern-faced Indians’ or ‘Redskins.’ Often,
the dominant regime derives character traits such as emotional coldness,
laziness, inner stoicism, or even blood thirst from bodily differences or
facial features (Hall, “Spectacle” 245). Therefore the outer observations
of Indigenous people are used as evidence for their Otherness (244).5
Stereotypes and simplifications of Native people remain an essential
part of interpersonal and mass communication (Dennis xi). When
thinking about Native Americans in the media, pictures of tomahawk-
waving, long-haired, half-naked men with copper skin, wearing war
bonnets, or, in the case of female Natives, ‘Squaws’ or ‘Indian Prin-
cesses’ with long black hair, accessorized with feathers and beaded
dresses, are still prevalent (Miller and Ross 248, 253; Brady 10; Tah-
mahkera, “Sitcom” 325, 338, 342; Lacroix 3-4, 5). Reinhardt argues that
European Americans have developed from wig-wearing men and corset-
jammed women into contemporary people. While they got rid of their
(red-)coats and bayonets, this evolution was denied to the Native popu-
lation. A movie ‘Indian’ without war paint or a buffalo is not considered
a ‘real Indian’ (Reinhardt 454; Brady 11). Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond
terms this phenomenon the “Reel Injun.” In his 2009 documentary Reel
Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian, he explores the portrayal of
Native Americans in film using excerpts from classic and contemporary
Hollywood movies. According to Diamond, Tahmahkera, and Lacroix,
5
Still, it has to be acknowledged that not all stereotyping is a result of
racialized regimes in order to oppress subordinate groups. Stereotyping is a
means to differentiate between the “self” and the “other” (Gilman 17).
Moreover, mainstream media try to foster quick understanding through a
technique called “cognitive shortcut” [kognitive Abkürzung] (Sawetz 474). It
causes people to reduce vast amounts of information—for example about
ethnic groups one is not particularly familiar with—in order to simplify
content. During this process, (character) traits are mistakenly or
exaggeratedly assigned to certain groups such as Indian tribes. Thus,
“[stereotypes] buffer us against our most urgent fears” and keep us from
being overwhelmed by our surroundings (Gilman 16).
examples of this “Reel Injun” can be found in popular television series

such as All in the Family, The Brady Bunch, I Love Lucy, Family Guy,
Saturday Night Live, or Southpark as well as in blockbuster movies like
Pawnee, Arrowhead, Lucky Luke, Pocahontas, Dances with Wolves, The
Last of the Mohicans, The New World or The Lone Ranger and, to a
certain extent, in Twilight and Avatar.
Renowned Indigenous author Sherman Alexie sees himself affected
by his regular consumption of mediated stereotypes: “I am a sit-com kid.
[…] So my timing, my sense of humor, my world outlook is definitely
partly shaped by situation comedies” (qtd. in Tahmahkera, “Sitcom”
324), thus indicating that stereotypes influence both non-Natives and
Indigenous people. Peter Lindsay adds that “the internalization of nega-
tive conceptions of identity might inhibit the ability of a group to reflect
accurately upon and lobby for its own interests” (217). Most portrayals
of Natives on television are, according to Alexie, almost bizarre: “The
only thing more pathetic than Indians on TV is Indians watching Indians
on TV” (qtd. in Liu and Zhang 107). Alexie’s observation that people
imitate socially acceptable opinions and behavior which can trigger a
lack of self-reflection is supported by Kopacz and Lawton (245) and
corresponds with current communications and media reception research
(Sawetz 473-74).
Three tropes of stereotypical depictions are prevalent (e.g. Downing
and Husband 137; Miller and Ross 249): based on Berkhofer, Miller and
Ross differentiate between the (sometimes overlapping) tropes of “ge-
neric Indian,” “good/bad Indian” and “the Indian as ‘other’” (249). They
suggest that mostly “generic” (or “pan-Indians”) make an appearance in
mainstream media. Certain lesser-known tribes are thus often replaced
with more popular ones to attract a broader audience (Kedong and Hui
106). The Sioux and Apache are therefore more popular than the Black-
feet or Ojibwe. The contrastive pair of the “good” or “bad Indian” or
“Noble/Ignoble Savage,” respectively, divides these pan-Indians into
‘good’ and ‘evil.’ Both are seen as a “historic relic,” a dying race that
belongs to the past (Miller and Ross 249; Brady 13). Additionally, “Reel
Injuns” speak what Meek calls “Hollywood Injun English” (HIE) or
“Tonto-Speak” (123), a broken form of English, underlining their innate
“primitivism” (Hall, “Whites” 22). Celeste Lacroix gives an “HIE”-
example from Chapelle’s Show: “Me no trustum white man. Me better
not go to bathroom, white man will steal my seat and call it Manifest
Destiny” (10). The “Indian as ‘other’” in turn parades exotic or romanti-

cized characteristics of Indigenous peoples in front of the camera. How-
ever, the image of the “Ignoble Savage,” as a violent trope, justifying the
ideals of Manifest Destiny, has largely been dominant in Hollywood’s
pictures (Lacroix 5; Johnson 111). A newly added trope is the ruthless
“Casino Indian” (1), as identified, described and criticized by Lacroix
through close readings of current American television series. This trope
depicts Indigenous characters who supposedly gain economic, political,
and thus social influence through operating casinos on tribal lands (9-
10).6 The stereotype of a Casino Indian also implies the accusation that
all casino-operating “Native Americans have manipulated the system
and cultural sympathy for their plight to gain access to unearned, and
more importantly, illegitimate wealth” (Lacroix 17). Thus for many
gambling tribes public relations are essential, as envy and grudges trou-
ble the few tribes who are economically successful (Tahmahkera, “Sit-
com” 328). Lacroix evaluates further that “the Ignoble Savage of the
past posed a threat of violence, while the contemporary Casino Indian
image […] reflects the fear of Native Americans as an economic and
political threat” (1). Eventually, Lacroix identifies three themes used in
mainstream media to depict contemporary Indigenous people in North
America: first, “Casino Indians Exploit Their Culture for Profit”; sec-
ond, “Casino Indians Are Led by Scheming, Immoral Chiefs”; and third,
“Casino Indians Aren’t Authentically Native American” (11-16). Native
leaders and members of tribal governments have become focused targets
of this new form of racism. They are accused of being greedy power-
seekers who abuse their Native heritage in order to create casino cash-
cows. One of the primary allegations is that members enroll in the tribe
on questionable premises.7 Additionally, elaborate casino decorations
have been the basis for accusations of tribes ‘selling their cultures for
profit.’ David Cuillier and Susan Dente Ross analyzed 224 official tribal
websites and found that tribes which operate casinos are indeed four
6
Referring to a scene from Drawn Together, Lacroix describes how the
portrayed Indigenous tribe is awarded a parcel of land on which an ancient
burial ground has been discovered; immediately they start building the “Lost
Souls Casino” (10-11, 18).
7
Galanda even alleges that the practice of enrollment and specifically
“disenrollment” from a tribe is a “non-Indian construct” which serves as a
“Tool of the Colonizers.”
times more likely to represent their own identity through a historic relic
frame or by relying on exotic Otherness, using symbols such as tipis or
sculptures of Native chiefs in headdresses. In comparison, tribes without
gaming facilities rather display a “voiced participant” frame (203), sup-
ported by contemporary images as well as assertions of sovereignty and
resistance, portraying these tribes in a self-governed way (211).8 How-
ever, the fact that this way of ‘cashing in’ does not work—because of
tribal conflicts, negative side effects for the community, or lack of eco-
nomic success, just to name a few obstacles—is often neglected (see e.g.
Lacroix 15-16, 18; D’Hauteserre 119-20). Research data reveals that
many tribal nations across North America still face poverty, unemploy-
ment, and high suicide rates along with a lack of medical care, infra-
structure, and education (NMAI 135-36; NIMH), making it impossible
to believe that all (Casino) Indians are rich by now. Still, broad audi-
ences consume media content, which, as Lacroix criticizes, “constructs
contemporary Native Americans in disturbing ways” (2) and “results [in]
a new and more virulent form of racism that is reflected in the media
stereotype of the ‘Casino Indian’”(3).
The Power of Being Different: Contesting Stereotypes and Counter-

Strategies
John Fiske explores how individual readings of texts create various

meanings, “according to the social conditions of its reception” (14) and
thus do not necessarily involve the internalization of the ideology in-
sinuated by a text (320). This implies that “[m]eanings and pleasures are
much harder to possess exclusively and much harder to control” (18).
Further, Fiske evaluates that resistance towards preferred meanings of
texts such as television programs is marked through discursive practice,
because discussions challenge dominant ideology (14): “There is a
power in resisting power, there is a power in maintaining one’s social
identity in opposition to that proposed by the dominant ideology, there is
a power in asserting one’s own subcultural values against the dominant
ones. There is, in short, a power in being different” (19). In “The Spec-
tacle of the Other,” Hall analyzes ways of contesting, challenging and
8
Peters analyzes in detail the casinos on the Muckleshoot reservation.
subverting racialized regimes of representation. Although Hall acknowl-

edges that people make strong efforts to fix meanings by stereotyping,
he indicates that these eventually begin to “slip and slide” (270). He
introduces the practice of “trans-coding,” which adds new meanings to
existing ones. Trans-coding strategies are “[r]eversing the stereotype,”
such as substituting ‘negative’ images with ‘positive’ ones (272) and
showing stereotypes “through the eye of representation” (274); e.g.,
trying to contest misleading and demeaning depictions from within by
stressing racial difference (often through humor). While stereotyping
works through strategies like essentializing, reduction, naturalization, as
well as binary oppositions and is closely linked to regimes of power,
deeper, unconscious levels also have an effect on representational prac-
tices (277). Trans-coding, as suggested by Hall, can be a beginning to
reverse stereotypes. While these strategies empower the ones who are
subject to stereotyping, simultaneously various audiences can be in-
cluded into this process by use of a ‘popular character-ensemble’ from
mainstream media (i.e., the good guy, a bad boy, a computer nerd, a
femme fatale). Contesting stereotypes thus involves practices of “mim-
icry” as proposed by Homi K. Bhabha since these offer a similar ap-
proach to both dealing with oppression and contestation from within by
imitating the dominant regime (121). Still, “[...] mimicry represents an
ironic compromise” and “[…] colonial mimicry is the desire for a re-
formed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost
the same, but not quite” (Bhabha 122). Thus, Native media content
which relies on hidden trans-coding as well as mimicry is only the be-
ginning of a contestation of stereotypes.
With specific regard to Native Americans on television, Dustin
Tahmahkera contrasts the mediated pattern of “recognizably Indian”
with what he calls “recognizably Native” (Television 8). He elaborates
that while recognizably Indian images support a colonized view on In-
digenous peoples, recognizably Native depictions, even though they
might seem conflicting or perplexing, help reinforce Native (and tribal)
recognition. Recognizably Indian and recognizably Native depictions
depend on each other:
In the dialectical battering of boundaries over representations, the con-

flicting epistemological formations […] stem from competing politics
and perceptions of indigeneity. Although the recognizably Indian has
occasionally attempted to challenge the boundaries, the recognizably
Native works consistently through Native frames of reference, in which

recognizably Native representations become the norm, not exceptions,
for changing the rules in televisual governmentality over representations
of the indigenous. Whereas the recognizably Indian has largely mar-
ginalized, disavowed, and displaced the Native, the recognizably Native
has labored to critically resist and creatively circumvent the Indian.
(Tahmahkera, Television 24)
Researchers agree that lawsuits and prohibitions alone cannot alter a

course of century-long misconceptions and misinterpretations (Pevar
238; Kopacz and Lawton 243-45; Lindsay 219). Valerie Taliman, for-
mer West Coast Editor of Indian Country Today Media Network and
Public Relations Manager of the television station FNX (First Nations
Experience), stresses the importance of reducing racism in the media.
Thus, through Hall’s strategies of trans-coding, Bhabha’s practice of
mimicry, and recognizably Native programming as described by Tah-
mahkera, stereotypes could be diminished and awareness and respect
enhanced. This in return would lead to changed forms of representation
in recognizably Indian media. According to Taliman, a recent change in
media coverage about Natives is already noticeable.
This leads to the question in how far Native media content counter-
acts the dissemination of old and new stereotypes. Since the Canadian
television station APTN (Aboriginal Peoples Television Network) went
national in September 1999, the Native media landscape has decisively
changed. Tahmahkera claims, referring to Moose TV, an APTN comedy
series, that Native programming is successfully contesting stereotypes
by using counter-strategies (Television 4): “Natives’ narratives of ‘clever
manipulation’ counter, readjust, and recontextualize the Indian through a
critical and creative Indigenous lens in efforts to deflate and displace the
cultural and political power of the Indian and to reinvent pop cultural
representations of the indigenous” (4). It remains to be seen whether
new strategies also contest the contemporary stereotypical trope of the
Casino Indian.
Cashing In: The Casino Indian on Native American Television
Another APTN hit program is Cashing In, set in a casino on Stone-

walker First Nation. The series, produced by Animiki See Digital Pro-
duction and Buffalo Gal Pictures for APTN, portrays the environment of
a successful gaming facility from a Native point of view. It addresses
themes familiar to drama series including gender, economics, and poli-
tics, as well as Native issues such as tribal government, land claims, and
Indigenous culture. In November 2014 Cashing In started its fourth
season. On its website, the series is described as follows:
Cashing In is a half-hour drama about the high stakes [sic] world of First
Nations gaming at North Beach Casino in Southern Manitoba. Set on
Stonewalker First Nation, nestled comfortably beside an affluent beach
community, Cashing In is a full house of sharp executives, smooth deal-
ers and colourful clientele. The North Beach Casino is a successful
gaming palace recently purchased by Matthew Tommy. His mission: ex-
panding the casino to include adjoining [sic] premiere golf course and
luxurious lakeside condos. His goal: capitalize on North Beach, making
it the jewel in his casino empire crown. The challenge: wheeling and
dealing while earning the respect of his toughest critic—his son Justin.
Through elaborate love triangles, merry mix-ups and ever-twisting plot
lines, Cashing In exposes the high-stakes, winner-takes-all world of First
Nations gaming. (Animiki See Digital Production/Buffalo Gal Pictures,
“Series”)
Figure 1: Cashing In cast. (Cashing In: Season One, DVD Cover). Used with
permission of Animiki See Digital Production Inc.
Figure 2: Screenshots from “Stand Tall” (S01E02): (a) opening credits: “You are
on Indian Land,” (b) Justin Tommy exiting his trailer, (c) The casino’s decora-
tion, (d) Business man Matthew Tommy (Cashing In: Season One). Used with
permission of Animiki See Digital Production Inc.
In the pilot to Cashing In, Matthew Tommy, owner of Thundercloud

Gaming International, sends his vice-president Liz McKendra to con-
vince landowner John Eagle to give up his lease on wetlands. After the
first unsuccessful negotiations, Eagle (who wants to preserve the wet-
lands) tries to win McKendra over (“All In,” S01E01). However, in
episode two (“Stand Tall”) McKendra plans to turn the Native commu-
nity against Eagle by threatening their jobs and simultaneously offering
them the solution: expansion to revive the community. At the same time,
aspiring lounge manager Cheyenne Blueweed makes plans to sabotage
the first event of her competitor, convincing her fellow co-workers Scott
and Barry to join a scheme. The two employees agree to help her when
Cheyenne in return covers up their scheme to film women through sur-
veillance cameras (“Kings and Little Ones,” S01E04). Plot lines like
these follow the typical generic patterns of drama/dramedy, revealing
forms of stereotypes which readers are familiar with from mainstream
media. Additionally, scenes set inside the casino show the interior deco-
ration. In this specific scene (“Stand Tall,” S01E02), for example, Scott
is watching Cheyenne and Barry from the security’s room through a
surveillance camera hidden in an artificial snake. During the conversa-
tion of the three characters long shots show the casino’s interior, deco-
rated with palm trees, stones, small fountains and flowers, suggesting a
jungle or tropical environment. Following the above-mentioned research
of Cuillier and Ross on Native casinos’ decoration (involving the accu-
sation of cultural exploitation), it is significant to examine the props at
display. Remarkably enough, there are no war-bonnets, totems, medi-
cine wheels, feathers, or tipis visible (compare figure 2c). While setting
and props throughout the series evoke images of the sparkling world of
gambling and casino resorts (dark stretch limousines, sparkling wine and
jewelry), jungle plants, artificial snakes and fountains are more indica-
tive of nature rather than signifying an especially Native American con-
text. Still, the snake is an important symbol in many Indigenous cultures
and bears cosmological, mythical and ethno-cultural significance, de-
pending on each tribe (see, for instance, “Native American Snake”).
Thus, Native viewers might interpret certain pieces of decoration, like
the snake, in their very own context, whereas non-Native audiences
perceive the casino’s interior as ‘just exotic.’ This can be interpreted as a
form of secret communication or even resistance—entertaining the
crowds through an exoticist depiction but at the same time not explain-
ing Native meanings of symbols. When considering the accusation of
selling culture for profit, this is an important observation.9 A different
scene reveals how tribal issues find their way into the plot:
[Inside/Casino Office]
LIZ MCKENDRA: [Presenting in front of members of the
community] Thank you all so much for
coming. Thundercloud International is
now the single largest employer for all
the residents of Stonewalker. With this
new expansion we are going to offer a
9
It is problematic that Indigenous peoples have to justify ‘selling out their
culture’ while medieval games, revived ghost towns from the gold rush,
vintage cafés or nostalgic festivals and events are very popular in many
cultures, thus celebrating the past in order to generate profit.
landslide of opportunities to this

community [...] [John Eagle enters]
John! Please join us! I think you know
everyone here? This is Chief Neal,
William Eastman, we’ve got Lillian
Fiddler, Stanley Braden,—
JOHN EAGLE: I thought this was supposed to be a
private meeting!
LIZ MCKENDRA: Well, I didn’t think you’d wanna settle a
community issue in private.
JOHN EAGLE: A community issue? Since when is my
land a community issue?
CHIEF NEAL: Listen, Eagle, you’re rich, we’re not! We
need jobs.
JOHN EAGLE: There are different ways to create jobs.
—Other than paving over a wetland.
CHIEF NEAL: Screw the wetland, John, can’t eat it,
can’t drink it, and it isn’t offering us a
future.
LIZ MCKENDRA: Now, this is Mr. Eagle’s lease. So he
does have every right to ask questions.
John, what I’m proposing is that half of
the wetlands will stay untouched. This
way everyone wins.
JOHN EAGLE: Yeah, until you want another nine holes
on your golf course.
CHIEF NEAL: Uh, come on, Eagle! You wanna go play
in the mud? Go do it some place else!
JOHN EAGLE: Yeah, what about the gambling
addictions and the bankruptcies and
broken homes?
WILLIAM EASTMAN: What about a deal that carries zero
financial risk and guarantees massive
economic returns for your community?
LIZ MCKENDRA: Unfortunately it’s either expansion or
we’ll have to close over the next four
years. [Silence, John Eagle leaves].
(“Stand Tall,” S01E02)
Chief Neal, among other tribal members, is involved in business on

tribal land; North Beach Casino as “the single largest employer” refer-
ences the weak job markets in Indian Country. By threatening to close

down the casino, McKendra stresses the importance of the gaming facil-
ity. Chief Neal is forced to agree with the expansion because the com-
munity “can’t eat” and “can’t drink” the wetlands and depends eco-
nomically on the flourishing of the casino. Therefore, this scene reso-
nates with the casinos’ promise of affluence along with tribal sover-
eignty, offering opportunities to Natives who otherwise migrate to urban
areas.10 The closing of North Beach Casino would impose an increase in
unemployment for the community—a reason for the members to sell out
John Eagle. Eagle in turn contests the positive effects of Native casinos.
He warns against the destruction of nature while stressing the negative
side effects (gambling addictions, bankruptcies, broken homes). Harmon
(263) and Vizenor (143, 176) point out that some tribes, like the Mo-
hawk, are conflicted about the operation of casinos and its threat to tribal
sovereignty and traditions, and it is this conflict the show enacts. Thus,
the series questions whether casinos are a means to an end for tribal
sovereignty or a mere way into the capitalists’ world that does not lead
to any real political influence (Vizenor claims that “casinos on reserva-
tions are the sources of riches and the absence of political power” [175-
76]).
The scene continues with an incident voicing similar concerns. As
Eagle storms off and McKendra tries to stop him, they discover two
small children sleeping in a locked car while the engine is running.
McKendra smashes the window to save the children. When their father
re-appears from the casino, she calls for security: “This is abuse, ne-
glect! Endangerment!” To her surprise, the man laughs: “I spent more
money in there in a week, than you—.” McKendra is shocked: “Money?
I can’t believe you make this about money!” (“Stand Tall,” S01E02).
Again, the issue of gambling addiction is raised: the father emphasizes
how much money he has lost at North Beach Casino, blaming the Native
community for his misery and misbehavior. McKendra shows empathy
by banning the man from the casino—which, of course, will not provide
a solution to the problem. Still, regarding business on tribal lands,
10
About sixty percent of the Native population (counted via the U.S. census) in
the USA live in urban areas (NMAI 123; Champagne, Change 7).
Champagne also stresses that most tribes do not want to give precise numbers
of tribal enrollments (Champagne, Interview).
McKendra and Matthew Tommy stick to their plan, claiming: “If we

only get half now, we’re begging Eagle for the other half five years from
now. I want it all and I want it now” (“Stand Tall,” S01E02). However,
Tommy does not think completely rationally about the land deal since he
also grew up on Stonewalker First Nation and has a long standing
love/hate relationship with John Eagle. In the first episode of season
two, Tommy has to prove his Native heritage, residency, and enrollment
with the tribe in order to continue his gaming operations (“From Dubai
with Love,” S02E01). While Tommy wants to get rid of any upcoming
environmental issues in advance, Eagle is an environmentalist, a roman-
ticized “ecological Indian” in Krech’s sense (21): he lives on a horse
ranch, seemingly ‘in harmony with nature,’ practices Native traditions,
socializes with spiritual Natives, and acts on behalf of nature.
Similar Indigenous character traits are called up in a different scene.
Chrissy Eastman, an aspiring singer, has severe stage fright before her
performance and refuses to leave the dressing room. While Cheyenne
Blueweed, her manager, gives up, bartender Trevor Blueweed tries to
comfort Eastman:
You know, how I’m always telling you I have magic powers? […] It’s
true. I grew up in the bush with my grandfather until I was about ten
years old, learning about the ancient ways of medicine people. […] Lis-
ten, my grandfather sent me here, because my gift is growing too fast for
me to control. [Whispering] But I still have it. Now, tell me, what do you
want?”
Eastman replies that she wants to be a star and after a few chiming
sounds from the off and a little ‘magical’ waving of Trevor’s hands, the
audience suddenly sees a happy Eastman, ready to go on stage (“Stand
Tall,” S01E02). The scene is accompanied by Native music, cued by
Trevor’s appearance. Throughout the series, Trevor is seen doing magi-
cal tricks as a bartender, such as moving glasses and filling them ‘magi-
cally’ without touching. Also, his ‘gift’ of healing, foreseeing, as well as
the magical powers he uses to dazzle customers as a bartender are the-
matized in later episodes, making him a trickster in Vizenor’s vision.
The scenes mentioned above reveal that Cashing In, though a Native
production for an Aboriginal television station, makes use of different
forms of stereotypical depictions. The series often uses drama / dra-
medy’s stylistic devices, which serve character development and pro-
duce twists in the plot: there is the bad guy (ruthless casino owner Mat-
thew Tommy) and the good guy (environmentalist John Eagle), whose
destinies are interwoven by past events revealed bit by bit to the audi-
ence, calling up a typical drama series’ pattern of arch-rivalry, love
triangles, and plotting. Other characters include power seekers, pale
nerds as surveillance specialists, or good-looking gigolos as security
members, having love affairs with the rich housewives who gamble
away their husbands’ money. Yet through this ensemble of characters,
the show recalls Bhabha’s theory of mimicry, contesting the “Reel In-
jun” from within by imitating popular patterns of successful (White)
television drama instead of replicating ‘Cowboys vs. Indians’ plotlines.
Furthermore, by depicting Native actors and actresses in (for main-
stream media) unfamiliar roles, Hall’s idea of trans-coding and an ex-
pansion of the ‘list’ of Native images are also highlighted. Thus, Cash-
ing In appears like an Indigenous Dallas, weaving tribal issues into a
mainstream drama plot.
In general, the series plays with exoticist-positive or savagist-nega-
tive connotations of Native Americans. John Eagle portrays the “Indian
as environmentalist;”11 Chief Neal and the community members evoke
the notions of poor Indians as “historic relics,” while the trope of Indians
as romanticized/mythical shamans is embodied in the character of
Trevor Blueweed. Negative stereotypes are taken up by ruthless Mat-
thew Tommy, an immoral money- and power-hungry character, who is
not afraid to use violence against others. White people, in contrast, are
mostly portrayed as visitors from the outside, e.g. as gambling addicts
(such as the nameless white father), making them the excluded “Others”
who do not belong onto the reservation.
Linking the analysis to Lacroix’s notion of the Casino Indian, one
can claim that the depicted Casino Indians only partly use their culture
for profit. For instance, North Beach Casino is decorated to represent
nature rather than Native American culture (displaying no war bonnets,
feathers, drums or tipis). Except for casino owner Matthew Tommy,
most community members do not seem to be affluent. In addition, John
11
For more information about Native Americans as environmentalists see
personal interview with Tim Johnson (Mohawk), director of programs,
National Museum of the American Indian, and former editor in chief of
Indian Country Today. [Transcribed by Scholz 311-20].
Eagle warns about environmental devastation, gambling addictions,

bankruptcies, and broken families. Regarding Lacroix’s second claim
(that the stereotype of the Casino Indian includes scheming, immoral
chiefs), it can be noted that Matthew Tommy is de facto such a charac-
ter; however, he is not a member of the tribal government but merely the
largest employer on Stonewalker First Nation and thus a powerful fig-
ure. Chief Neal, on the other hand, tries to balance the side effects of a
gambling facility, and—with the help of John Eagle—questions
Tommy’s enrollment into the tribe eventually. Lacroix’s third claim (that
Casino Indians are constructed as not authentically Native American)
refers to the blood quantum that enrolled tribal members have to prove,
as well as to an ‘Indian’ outward appearance (i.e., long hair, stern-facial
expression, ‘copper’ skin tone) in order to justify tribal affiliation. In
Cashing In, most casino workers appear to be Native, even though their
actual heritage is never brought up or questioned. Additionally, they bear
Native last names (Blueweed), display ‘Indian’ characteristics (men with
long hair and earrings), or live on the reservation. Even Matthew
Tommy himself claims to have grown up on the “res” (“All In,”
S01E01), which is later revealed to be true when he proves his heritage
to public authorities (“Stand Tall,” S01E02).
In the course of events, Native images from mainstream media are
picked up, but are often twisted, exaggerated, or slightly altered, thus
trans-coding these images in humorous ways. While Matthew Tommy
and his son are apparently Native, for instance, they neither have long
hair nor dress in a stereotypical “Reel Injun” manner. Matthew Tommy
usually wears a dark business suit (figure 2d), signifying that he has
arrived in the capitalist world of contemporary North America. Moreo-
ver, throughout the first season, his son Justin Tommy tries to find his
mission in life, ending up on John Eagle’s farm. He excitedly tells his
former babysitter McKendra: “Hey, I finally figured it out! I’m gonna be
a cowboy!” (“Hello Cowboy,” S01E03). The physical crossing of Justin
Tommy (in a black limousine) from an affluent urban into a modest rural
Native environment is symbolized by a hand-painted road sign reading
“You are on Indian Land” in the opening credits (figure 2a). The
character’s transformation during the first season of Cashing In is par-
alleled by his change of outer appearance from expensive designer
pieces to the casino’s employee attire (while living in a trailer with co-
worker Barry) and finally a leather jacket, boots, and a cowboy hat.
Since, according to Fiske, different audiences produce different

meanings and pleasures, a Native audience is likely to interpret an epi-
sode of Cashing In differently. While non-Natives might find the situa-
tion of Liz McKendra as a babysitter for her boss’s son funny or awk-
ward, a Native audience might think of his career-dream to be a cowboy
as a hilarious pun. Even if a program like Cashing In might seem cliché-
coated, it hence contributes to a shift of stereotypes. At the same time,
familiar mainstream plotlines attract both Native and non-Native audi-
ences. Regarding the importance of the series in society, leading actor
Eric Schweig states that “[t]he more Indian people there is [sic] in film,
the better it is, so we can take the reigns and portray ourselves the way
we like to be seen by the public. […] All they see us, is on horseback,
drunk or in gangs” (Animiki See Digital Production/Buffalo Gal Pic-
tures, “Video”).
Transgressions between Recognizably Indian and Recognizably Native
Television does not

“cause” identifiable ef-
fects on individuals; it
does, however, work ideo-
logically to promote and
prefer certain meanings of
the world, to circulate
some meanings rather than
others, and to serve some
social interests better than
others.
—John Fiske
The development from Native absence or Reel Injuns to recognizably

Indian and finally recognizably Native texts—and thus the promotion of
new media archetypes—is key to programs like Cashing In. As Lacroix
points out, the Casino Indian enacts an alleged economic threat of afflu-
ent Natives to society. Vizenor, too, points to gambling tribes as a possi-
ble target of stereotyping, accusations, and hostility instead of accep-
tance: “The new wealth from casinos has not recast reservations into
states of real power with established policies” (33). Quoting Hannah

Arendt, he elaborates that wealth without power is “felt to be parasitical,
useless, revolting” and “wealth without visible function is much more
intolerable because nobody can understand why it should be tolerated”
(33). Thus, these mere “simulations of tribal power” are in reality the
“absence of power” (33). Political influence and cultural awareness are
therefore not driven by affluence. In addition, tribes operating casinos
have to justify their wealth, while European Americans undermine the
emerging economic and social power by creating depictions of Natives
as Casino Indians. As a result, Natives have to find different ways to
reverse their absence of power.
Cashing In as popular television programming can be seen as a
challenge to “racialized regimes of representation” (Hall, “Work” 249).
Nevertheless its themes and representations do not bear a clear message
for every audience, depending on their respective knowledge. While
colonial images of ‘stern-faced, stoic Indians’ (like Tahmahkera’s “In-
dian Head,” Television 2) or “Tonto-Speak“ make no appearance,
Cashing In enacts a conflict between “such spiritual people” and ruth-
less “business people” (Tahmahkera, Television 21), e.g. Trevor
Blueweed or John Eagle on the one hand and Matthew Tommy and
Cheyenne Blueweed on the other. Therefore, the series might also offer
fertile soil for reproaches of cultural exploitation when seen by an un-
aware non-Native audience since some characters inherit immoral,
scheming, or money- and power-hungry characteristics. In addition,
casinos generally bear a double-edged sword also for Native communi-
ties. As Vizenor claims, “[t]here are no traditional songs to tease the
electronic machines” (142). Thus, the charm of moccasin games and
chance is drowned by the noise of slot machines, processing countless
coins—for Matthew Tommy. This both reflects assumptions of Native
greed by non-Natives, as shown by D’Hauteserre’s analysis of the non-
Native community’s surrounding the Mashantucket Pequot tribe’s gam-
bling facility (122), as well as controversy among Native tribes on issues
of operating gambling facilities.
Still, portrayals of Indigenous people in recognizably Native ways
can certainly push the boundaries of colonized and recognizably Indian
depictions while simultaneously enhancing the “portfolio” of Native
representations. Therefore, the main difficulties regarding counter-
strategies are to escape the binary system of racial stereotyping and truly
re-placing negative connotations (Hall, “Spectacle” 272-74). Tah-

mahkera addresses television as a “new frontier” (Television 37), indi-
cating the transgressive character of “Tribal Television,” which contests
dominant, seemingly fixed meanings. The fact that in Cashing In the
plot lines of ‘good vs. evil’ are acted out by Native characters, using
techniques of mimicry and thus conquering a White genre (a serial tele-
vision drama), influences the meanings produced during reception. Fur-
thermore, the show might attract non-Native audiences who otherwise
would not think about Native American issues at all. Fiske calls the
potential of producing different meanings the “polysemy” (16, 19) of
television, which offers a “menu” of cultural commodities that can reach
a multitude of audiences which in return produce their own pleasures
and meanings (319). Consequently, recognizably Native programming
(on Native television stations like APTN and FNX) has to provide such
polysemic texts in order to reach diverse audiences and eventually lead
the way to contest racial stereotyping.
Outlook: The Importance of Cashing In and Native Media
Another way to “take the reigns” (Animiki See Digital Production /

Buffalo Gal Pictures, “Video”), to “wip[e] the war paint off the lens”
(Singer 98), to substitute the lack of personal interaction, and eventually
exit the cycle of self-fulfilling media prophecies, is the enhancement of
Native media productions in the tradition of the Canadian television
station APTN. While many Native media projects in the past failed
because of financial issues, the affluent California-based San Manuel
Band of Mission Indians became involved with media production in
2010. After collaboration with a local PBS station on a documentary, the
San Manuel, affluent through a flourishing gaming facility, began to
donate money for equipment. In 2011, the tribal government decided to
establish a PBS-linked Native American television channel, FNX,
initially donating six million U.S. dollars. The establishment of Native
media and the education of Native media producers and journalists can
be seen as a step towards social and political presence and influence—
thus contesting Vizenor’s claim of “wealth without visible function”
(33). Using APTN as a role model and airing series like Cashing In,
FNX started to expand nationwide shortly after its launch in 2011. A
recent donation of the San Manuel is meant to establish FNX as a

worldwide accessible Native media outlet.
The history of APTN reveals how a Native station can foster the
production of “Tribal Television” such as Cashing In, which not only
attracts large audiences, but also trains Native writers, directors and
producers in the production process (Horn). As a consequence, the
question is not if gambling is good or evil but rather what good gam-
bling tribes can accomplish with wealth and economic power. Vizenor
suggests establishing a network of Native ambassadors in order to create
an international presence as sovereign governments (148). In a similar
manner, global Indigenous television could foster Native presence as
well as cultural competence regarding Indigenous matters. The fact that
a Native television station like FNX, which is financed through dona-
tions by affluent tribes who operate gambling facilities, airs Cashing In
during prime-time, reveals that the series is used to transmit Native
ideas. Further audience research focusing on this specific series and the
meanings it carries would be interesting in this context.
Last but not least, another cultural function of Native television can
be seen in its continuation of oral cultural forms into the twenty-first
century. According to Jenkins, “Fiske and Hartley stress the similarities
between television and oral culture, describing television as a ‘bardic
media’ [sic]” (xxxi). Fiske emphasizes that television not only incorpo-
rates, but is actually essential to, oral culture’s survival, because it “pro-
vides a common symbolic experience and a common discourse, a set of
shared formal conventions” (80). Thus, for many non-Native readers,
Indigenous television programming is perhaps the closest they can get to
the experience of Native storytelling. Simultaneously, these formats
gradually counteract colonial reduction and dominance while fostering
awareness for Native culture.
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Transgression and Control: Serializing Crime
KARIN HOEPKER
No Longer Your Friendly Neighborhood Killer:

Crime Shows and Seriality after Dexter
The Crime Drama and Genre Diversification
The crime drama has always been one of the most successful and per-
sistent formats on U.S. television and continues to provide a long-
standing and profitable segment across the bandwidth of American tele-
vision, from conventional network channels to New Media protagonists
such as Netflix and Amazon. Even though critics habitually focus on the
genre’s aesthetically and ideologically conservative tendencies (Nichols-
Pethick 6; see also Sepinwall, esp. 130-53), the last decade has wit-
nessed an unprecedented proliferation of subgenres, ranging from cop
show, forensic procedural, and court show, to supernatural mystery in
endless variations.1 Crimes are solved with the help of forensic anthro-
pologists (Bones), sophisticated crime lab technicians (CSI: Crime Scene
Investigation), mathematicians (numb3rs), psychology professors (Per-
ception, Lie to Me), former con artists (The Mentalist), and legions of
ingenious profilers (harking back to Profiler and Millennium in the
1990s, followed by Law & Order: Criminal Intent, or Criminal Minds).2
1
For an in-depth discussion of the evolution of the police drama and scholarly
criticism’s disregard of its conservatism see Nichols-Pethick’s TV Cops.
2
The rise of crime shows that focus on profiling reflects not just a growing
public fascination but follows the disciplinary establishment of psychology as
a component of criminal forensics. While the FBI founded its Behavioral
Science Unit in 1974 and investigated serial crimes throughout its early
years, it was mainly David Canter’s work in the early 1990s that became the
foundation of Investigative Psychology as a subdiscipline and the increasing
influence of psychology in the investigative process (Winerman; Youngs).
248 Crime Shows and Seriality after Dexter
The professional social context has broadened as generic crime-solving

personnel has diversified across and beyond the institutional divides of
the American law enforcement apparatus: crime investigation is no
longer predominantly an affair of police and prosecution, and we watch
legal defense, U.S. Marshall Service, FBI, CIA, and a variety of special
task forces at work, often complemented by the talents of external
civilian advisors. In addition, crime shows increasingly draw on local
color and regionality as a resource of diversity. Settings have migrated
from traditional metropolitan urban settings of New York, L.A.,
Chicago, the greater Miami area,3 and a very occasional New Orleans
towards less represented and less iconographically recognizable urban,
ex-urban, and rural regions such as Albuquerque (Breaking Bad, In
Plain Sight), the northern Pacific rim with Portland (Grimm), Seattle
(The Killing), and Vancouver across the Canadian border (Motive), as
well as Detroit (Low Winter Sun), rural Kentucky (Justified) or the rural
Upper Midwest of Minnesota and North Dakota (Fargo). These sub-
differentiations within the portmanteau category of the crime drama are
reactions to the evolutionary pressures of a changing network and cable
ecology, influenced by new, ‘quality’-oriented markets and new modes
of production and consumption.4
I propose that, in the case of the crime drama, this systemic diversifi-
cation into new niche-ecologies has marked one of the most radical
innovations with regard to genre convention. The shows I focus on have
shifted their procedural attention from a common denominator of solv-
ing crimes to a much more ambivalent mixture of perpetration and de-
3
The 1980s and 90s particularly cast the Miami and Palm Beach areas as
favorite settings for the more glamorous crime, drug, and vice-formats such
as Miami Vice (NBC, USA Network 1984-1989) and CBS’s Silk Stalkings
(which also moved to USA after two seasons).
4
As Hagedorn, Kammen, and others have argued, throughout its history and
across its media, popular seriality has always been intimately connected to its
nature and needs as an inherently economically driven product that strives in
structure and content, for optimizing its market position (Hagedorn 27-28;
Kammen). A discussion of “quality TV”’s and television’s turn towards
complexity, specialization, and a strengthening of more niche-oriented
programming thus reflects an effort to target more specifically profiled
audiences (see for instance Caldwell for an early discussion, or McCabe and
Akass’s eponymous 2007 collection).
Karin Hoepker 249
tection. While uncomfortable double figurations such as the close con-

nection of protagonist and antagonist, of an ingenious villain and a bril-
liant detective, have been long-standing tropes, Showtime’s Dexter
(2006–2013) introduced a character constellation that truly crossed a
line. Dexter effectively broke the traditional contract of all detective
fiction, namely, that “[t]he detective himself […] should never turn out
to be the culprit” (Van Dine 129).5
Dexter established itself as a highly successful show on the unlikely
premise of introducing a pathological serial killer and vigilante as a
main protagonist. And yet viewers found themselves siding with Dexter,
a character who hunted down other killers whom we preferred to think
of as somehow ‘much worse’ in comparison. Despite reservations, the
show’s progression playfully tricked its audience into introducing highly
questionable distinctions of ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ as if there were justifiable
and exacerbated versions of serial killers. Moreover, viewers found
themselves enjoying social satire as Dexter subverted traditional middle-
class aspirations; the protagonist’s attempts at social mimicry, masking
his own alien-ness in the midst of quotidian suburbia, had the paradoxi-
cal effect of distancing viewers from the TV normality of white Ameri-
can middle-class family life as they shared the protagonist’s perspective
of asocial pathology.6 With Dexter, we persistently watched a show
which self-reflexively brought to the fore the very nature, and also the
potentially dark side of seriality, when it coupled its thematics—serial
killing—with its performative structure—a series of episodes. Using the
figure of the serial killer as the compulsive manifestation of a repetitive
principle that is, in its own way, very much part of our contemporary
viewing habits, Dexter subtly inverted our notions of the normal and the
deviant. Dexter’s particular chemistry, which so successfully combined
5
Van Dine’s golden-age “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” were in
themselves already ironically phrased and have been pleasurably broken time
and again ever since; yet their contractual form points toward the importance
of consensual and recognizable genre continuity that is part of the historical
tradition of crime fiction’s contract with its audience, which supplies the very
notion of a norm from which innovative practices may then deviate.
6
Elsewhere I argue that Dexter builds on a double dynamics of pathologizing
the normal and normalizing the pathological. For an analysis of this dynamic
in Dexter, which founds the show’s success, see my essay on “Slices of
Life—Killing and Seriality in Dexter.”
TV’s ‘monster of the week’-principle with the serial memory of a broad,

seasonal, and trans-seasonal narrative arch and an innovative visual
aesthetics, set the standards for many shows to follow.
Serial Killer Series after Dexter: The Logic of Escalation
Premiering in 2013 and 2014, NBC’s Hannibal, Fox’s The Following,

HBO’s True Detective, or A&E’s Bates Motel are all shows which in
their own way tap into the format of the serial killer series established by
Dexter. While participating in and contributing to the formation and
maintenance of generic continuity and serial narrative tradition, all of
these shows respond to pressures of innovation and transgression, to a
constant need of upping the ante and ‘going beyond’ that ensures the
novelty-bound attention and interest of a viewership. In a contribution to
Narration—Evolution—Distinktion: Zum seriellen Erzählen seit dem 19.
Jahrhundert (2012), Frank Kelleter and Andreas Jahn-Sudmann refer to
this characteristic dynamic in contemporary quality TV as “die Dynamik
serieller Überbietung” (205). In keeping with this diagnosis of a dy-
namics inherent to seriality, the shows I focus on, which are connected
by the common time frame of contemporaneous production and a com-
mon thematic and generic frame of reference in the wake of Dexter,
develop such a logic of escalation: each succeeding element seeks to
surpass, exceed, and outperform its predecessor—be it another show, a
previous season, a previous episode, or the previous, already horrid
murder-of-the-week. The economic pressures of the highly competitive
field of crime shows require series to develop distinction and a recog-
nizable branding which will appeal to a sufficient viewership to ensure
survival within the ecosystem of the “post-network era” (Lotz).
Clearly, many shows in the field of contemporary crime drama sim-
ply push the envelope regarding their depiction of violence. But much
more interesting are the broader aesthetic patterns and dynamics that
emerge from a logic of serial escalation as productions supersede and
surpass themselves and as generic variations evolve in an effort to
achieve a characteristic and recognizable profile. What are the recipes
for genre innovation? How do series combine the familiar and the inno-
vative, sameness and difference, repetition and variation? The small,
emerging subgenre which I have perfunctorily called the “serial killer
Karin Hoepker 251
series” might be a field of study particularly suitable to isolate such

tendencies, because the format, with its intrinsic coupling of structure
and content, self-reflexively foregrounds its seriality.
In order to illustrate how contemporary shows engage with the pres-
sures of distinction each in very specific ways, I will briefly characterize
and compare four prominent series: Hannibal, The Following, True
Detective, and Bates Motel. A focus on their individual modi operandi of
escalation allows a closer look at how each series comes to terms with
the seriality that is at the heart of both its form and its subject matter,
and how they come to generate their characteristic profile of continuity
and innovation, meant to assure both connectivity and distinction.
Hannibal: Opulent Horror and the Escalation of Compulsive Empathy
In April 2013, NBC launched Hannibal, which writer and executive

producer Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me) created as an
achronic prequel or rather a “preboot” (Franich) to Thomas Harris’s
novels and the subsequent films.7 Featuring Mads Mikkelsen (as Dr.
Hannibal Lecter), Laurence Fishburne (as Agent Jack Crawford), and
Hugh Dancy (as FBI-consultant Will Graham),8 the crime drama com-
bines the police and forensic procedural with the theme of the serial
killer. The format builds on a traditional cop-show antagonism of a
specialized and freshly assembled task group of crime fighters vs. a
serial killer. But the constellation is complicated by the fact that the
police seeks help from psychoanalyst and forensic psychologist Dr.
Hannibal Lecter—whom the audience, due to the dramatic irony of the
prequel’s narrative construction, knows to be a killer and cannibal—and
7
Thomas Harris’s novels Red Dragon (1981), The Silence of the Lambs
(1988), Hannibal (1999), and Hannibal Rising (2006) were adapted in
Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986), Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the
Lambs (1991), Ridley Scott’s Hannibal (2001), Brett Ratner’s Red Dragon
(2002), and Peter Webber’s Hannibal Rising (2007).
8
While Fishburne had just exited from his three-season role as CSI’s chief
investigator and lab supervisor Raymond “Ray” Langston, Dancy presented
the risk and potential of a ‘fresh face’ because he had, previous to Hannibal,
only appeared once on U.S. television in 2011, in a smaller recurring role in
the second season of Showtime’s dramedy The Big C.
even more so by the fact that the secret weapon of the FBI, profiler ex-
traordinaire Will Graham, mentally destabilizes as events progress.
Within the context of contemporary crime drama and its internal
logic of competition and escalation, Hannibal surpasses previous pro-
ductions in terms of darkly aestheticized, sometimes humorous, but
above all inventively gruesome “Elegant Horror.”9 As part of its brand-
ing, Hannibal’s motto “Feed your Fear” signals its transgressive agenda,
which exploits the connection of consumption and murder in the trope of
cannibalism. Where Dexter’s photographic and narrative dynamic had
opted out of a unidirectional logic of serial escalation (cf. Hoepker),
Hannibal celebrates the visceral. Its excessiveness of detail and the
stylized, often morbidly decadent opulence explodes the formal bounda-
ries of the crime genre. Lines of reasoning and deductive plots dissolve
under the overwhelming intrusiveness of sensory exposure, which we
visually experience via a camera technique that provides both external
and internal focalization as eye-line matches and shot/countershot tech-
niques expand into point-of-view sequences and clearly subjective (al-
ternative) reality perception.10
With the paradigmatic question “Can I borrow your imagination?”
FBI Special Agent Jack Crawford (Fishburne) recruits Graham (Dancy)
as civilian consultant for a particularly gruesome case of murders attrib-
uted to a killer the media had named the “Minnesota Shrike.”11 Craw-
ford’s phrase refers to the special talent and peculiar affliction which
engenders Graham’s uncanny success as criminal profiler. Graham has
9
See Katie O’Connell, CEO of Gaumont ITV, the company which produced
Hannibal as a straight-to-series order for NBC, commenting on Network
profile distinctions and genre expectations in horror-related shows (qtd. in
White). In this volume, Felix Brinker analyzes how the serial economy of
Hannibal also involves an activated fandom in this volume in more detail.
For a discussion of the function of the stylized settings in contrast with
elements of horror, see Wise and Keeps.
10
For an exploration of camera-techniques that generate as sense of
focalization, see Branigan.
11
For Graham’s recruitment see “Apéritif” (S01E01). The killer is named due
to his characteristic profile of presenting the bodies of victims mounted on
branches or antlers, reminiscent of the bird impaling their prey for purposes
of storage. Antlers, together with a mythologically chimeric stag figure,
become a hermetically coded leitmotif to the show across two seasons.
Karin Hoepker 253
the capacity to re-imagine and reconstruct the crimes through an act of

compulsive empathy—a technique visually represented to the viewer
through fragmented flashbacks, image superimposition, and a recurring
light-signal (a beam of light sweeping the screen in a pendular motion)
which transports the viewer back in time and momentarily into the kil-
ler’s perspective at the crime scene.12
Will Graham’s talent is not one of deduction but one of immersion
and identification; when he reconstructs the past events, he literally steps
into the killer’s shoes—a technique made explicit to the audience
through point-of-view camera, spatial arrangement, and by a recurrent
verbal marker he uses when he relives events at the crime scene. Gra-
ham ritualistically repeats the phrase “This is my design,” as he narrates
the criminal’s intentions in committing the crime. His repeated use turns
the phrase into a marker indicative of the forceful dialectic at the center
of the show’s psychological composition: the contesting forces of identi-
fication and alienation, empathy and repulsion, which are also at the
heart of Hannibal’s dynamic of escalation. “This is my design” indicates
forceful identification, in which the agent of detection merges with the
serial killer, but its stilted enunciation, the artificiality of the repeated
utterance, reminds us of the calculatedness and functionality of the ritu-
alistic staging.
Traditionally, the investigation of the crime scene provides a key
element in crime drama. Here, the show stages the brilliant intellect and
observation of the main investigator and generates strong connections
with genre traditions from Sherlock to Bones, numb3rs, Perception, or
Rizzoli & Isles. We see the key protagonist at work, assessing the crime
scene, and we are turned into a consciously second-order observer, as we
watch a master scan the crime scene for the clues and pieces of in-
formation which we know must be there but which we are traditionally
oblivious to or late to detect.13 Along with colleagues, who are also
12
See for example “Œuf” (S01E04), when Will revisits the crime scene of the
“Lost Boys” family murders. The light-beam is followed by a visualized
reverse run, in which the static tableau of the crime scene starkly contrasts
with the violent temporal dynamic.
13
One of the longest-standing conventions of the detective genre is, after all,
the construction of an informational discrepancy between the ingenious
detective, who solves the crime, and the sidekick, who serves as narrator or
focalizer to the reader or viewer. The temporal lag in understanding between
temporarily reduced to bystanders when faced with the detecting agent’s

superior skills, the process of detection occurs as a spectacle for our
benefit, as the protagonist provides explanations and the exegesis of a
meaningful pattern where we perceive only random noise. Hannibal taps
into this convention of using the crime scene as a first testing ground for
the detective’s skill against the murderous forces of destruction, but the
serial audaciously skips the step of rational translation on which “tales
of ratiocination” (Poe, “Review” 299) have been founded ever since
Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841). When Will Graham’s em-
pathetic imagination becomes the primary agent of detection, his obser-
vations are the product of a trained technique, but they are primarily
private and highly subjective perceptions within an internal process, to
which the camera makes us privy. It is only in a second step, through
Will’s interaction with the rest of the team, that the observations re-enter
the informational circuit which supports the economy of crime-solving
communication. In contrast to traditional detection, literary or filmic,
Hannibal’s profiler does not see, interpret, and translate the crime scene
for us, but the viewer partakes in Will’s sensory exposure and his raw
perceptive intensity, which, even in the beginning, has us fear for a mind
too precariously close to madness.
So, on the one hand, Hannibal draws us to the brink of a character’s
mental sanity through a technique which melds sound and visual effects
into a solipsistic psychoscape of perception none of the other characters
can share. On the other, the show strategically distances and alienates us
with its emphasized theatrical staging and calculation of effect. We are
continuously conscious of the high artificiality of both dialogue and
imagery. Hannibal never uses its filmic and narrative means to openly
offer explanatory models or provisions of psychological plausibility—an
abstinence all the more striking since large portions of the show take
place in Hannibal’s psychoanalyst’s office. The show avoids drawing us
in through simple sympathies and emotional appeal, in order to make the
processes of identification, which are nonetheless inevitable in the
claustrophobic, habitual intimacy of serial viewing, feel forced, just as
Dupin and the nameless narrator, between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson,
emphasizes not just the exceptional analytical capacity of the detective figure
but also serves as a narrative device to allow for a communicative
verbalization of the deductional process.
Karin Hoepker 255
the profiler’s identification with the killer is a “Willed” and deliberate

one. In the uncomfortable process of self-exposure and repetition that is
part of watching a series, Hannibal uses the seriality of the killer series,
the coupling of thematics and form, to have us experience the thrills and
precariousness of transgressive identification and the disintegrative force
of a logic of escalation.
The Following: Intertextuality and Serial Conspiracy
Parallel to Hannibal, FOX launched The Following as a serial counter-

point which instructively combines mechanisms of genre hybridization,
techniques of compositional innovation, and intertextuality, all of which
illustrate a contemporary understanding of a quality-TV recipe. The
show, created by Kevin Williamson (Dawson’s Creek, The Vampire
Diaries), works with a classic constellation of protagonist and antago-
nist, in which a detective figure, former FBI agent Ryan Hardy (Kevin
Bacon), obsessively tracks serial killer Joe Carroll (James Purefoy),
who, in turn, has developed an intimate love-hate relationship with his
pursuer. And yet, while such a constellation would suggest an integra-
tion of plot elements into an over-all narrative framework of detection
and pursuit, The Following uses narrative variation, recombination, and
generic innovation in order to create a distinctive profile within the
competitive field of crime drama.
As a marked entry, the first season opens with an unconventional
temporal structure and point of attack, and the pilot develops a narrative
vantage point for the plot so immediate it seems reminiscent of a second
season. Episode one starts off long after the main villain has been caught
and imprisoned, but the pursuit has taken its toll, leaving the protagonist
damaged physically and psychologically. The FBI seeks to win him back
as a civilian expert, when after Carroll’s imprisonment a series of copy-
cat murders begins, but we encounter Hardy as a man with a serious
drinking problem, who has quit his job at the FBI, separated from the
woman he loves (who turns out to be the serial killer’s ex-wife),14 and
14
Conceiving the two male characters as triangulated through a common love
interest also serves as a motivator for conflicted feelings of mutual obsession
which may then be safely cast in terms of heterosexual competition while the
has the viewer worrying whether he will be up to the new task. Previous
events have left Hardy literally heart-broken, with a pacemaker
implanted after the killer had stabbed him through the chest—a condi-
tion which gives the show ample cause to blend in the sound of a heart
beat in critical situations, building tension as it reminds us of the hero’s
potentially fatal weakness but also giving the show, literally, “a tell-tale
heart.”
The Following foregrounds intertextuality through a broad frame-
work of literary references to canonical nineteenth-century gothic: The
show’s villain is not just a charismatic professor of English literature,
but he also specializes in Poe, the godfather of both detective and horror
fiction. Joe Carroll’s acolytes, some of them former students, kill by
proxy, using Poe themes, Poe masks, Poe imagery, as well as inscrip-
tions of Poe quotes on human bodies both dead and alive, and Carroll
orchestrates events according to the chapters of a novel he is writing,
allegedly a continuation of Poe’s fragment The Lighthouse. Whereas
Poe’s work seems a perfect source for gloomy motifs of murder, horror,
madness, and the grotesque and has high pop-cultural recognition value,
many critics (including this viewer) did not respond well to the effort.
The show’s intertextual attempts, such as a moment in the pilot when
Hardy stands at a crime scene and spontaneous shouts “The Raven! Poe
is symbolizing the finality of death!” drew much satirical comment (cf.
Stanley; Kellogg), which may not have been the attention FOX had
hoped for with its rather unironic show.
In its overall concept, The Following taps into the serial logic of es-
calation via a striking explicitness of violence, but, more significantly, it
also massively increases the scale of the serial crime. In contrast to
Dexter or Hannibal, the investigating protagonist is not under direct
suspicion, but the agency of the serial killer expands into the collective
hive of a widening conspiracy. The collectivity of orchestrated copy-cats
actual power struggle remains firmly homosocial. The format clearly caters to
the notorious conservatism of FOX’s audience. An analysis of the female
characters in the show would be worth undertaking in order to catalogue the
relentless stereotyping and behavioral patterns of women screaming, hyper-
ventilating, running misdirectedly in high heels, and hurling pointless
accusations and demands at the protagonist, which torment and drive the
broken romantic hero in his knight errantry (on contemporary TV misogyny
see Klecker in this volume).
Karin Hoepker 257
escalates the singular murder-of-the-week principle via an accumulative,

ritualistic repetition, executed by changing agents. Here, the show ex-
plodes the question of agency by introducing a “following” which, as it
turns out, has been undermining society for years. They are your col-
leagues, your babysitter, the nice gay couple next door, and the threat
thus becomes fuzzy and omnipresent. And yet, the figure of conspiracy
remains strangely flat and without critical edge. The Following does not
direct its trajectory of uncovering towards social satire or towards
marking the whited sepulchre, as might have been suggested by the
show’s fascination with gothic literary traditions;15 nor does it attribute
much weight to the experience of epistemic doubt triggered in characters
as they come to be confronted with a proliferating number of murderous
impostor identities. Instead, the narrative logic of ‘trust no one’ remains
strangely empty. As a comparison with True Detective will show, the use
of conspiracy is a device for the complication of plot and agency within
narrative; and yet complication in itself does not automatically entail
narrative complexity in Mittell’s sense. Where Dexter subverted and
ironically questioned social normativity, and where Hannibal rendered
conventional mechanisms of identity and identification precarious, The
Following expands its conspiratorial into what one might call, using
Richard Hofstadter’s term, a “paranoid politics” (77-78).
True Detective: Seriality & Paranoid Detection
Conspiracy in a very different garb also informs HBO’s True Detective,

created by Nic Pizzolatto and first aired in January 2014, which borrows
its title from a “true crime” pulp magazine that originated in the mid-
1920s. True Detective explores the space of ambiguity between conspir-
acy and paranoia, when its narrative trajectory of crime-solving, which
starts with a single murder, begins to bifurcate and branch out into mul-
tiple tangents that suggest the murderous activities of a collective rather
than a single serial killer. As the plot develops across a complexly
15
Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland, Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman
Brown,” and Melville’s Confidence Man come to mind; George Lippard’s
The Quaker City might provide an interesting historical template for re-
reading The Following’s pop-cultural genealogy.
structured eight-episode arc, an increasingly paranoid process of detec-

tion and interpretation is induced by the serial grouping of events; the
unfolding of the diegetic world confronts the viewer with iterative re-
occurrences and clusters of events, the randomness of which at least one
of the detectives, Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey), an outsider
figure who works in tag team with local detective Marty Hart (Woody
Harrelson), questions. Cohle’s observation and deduction are only par-
tially accessible to us, since Marty’s character provides focalization and
point of entry to the viewer. We follow Cohle’s investigation from the
perspective of an at times unwilling sidekick. We witness how Cohle
assumes the existence of a pattern in a maze of seemingly disconnected
incidents and missing person cases and how paranoid detection thus
becomes the tool that generates seriality from chaos. Whether the cases
are indeed connected to a serial killer and whether a conspiracy of mur-
der and abuse may be uncovered, or whether the observer’s obsessive-
ness projects a pattern where there is only an agonizing density of ran-
dom evil, remains open for a long time during the first season.
The opening titles, designed by Antibody for Elastic, who also pro-
duced the aesthetically memorable title sequences of Deadwood, Game
of Thrones, and Masters of Sex, reflect the show’s epistemic ambiguity
that invades both content and structure.16 Creative Director Patrick Clair
and his team conceived the titles after an in-depth exchange with True
Detective’s creator and showrunner Pizzolatto and director Cary Fuku-
naga.17 Set to The Handsome Family’s pre-existing title song, they cre-
16
While technically a paratext to the series, True Detective’s opening sequence
is conceptually very close to the show’s agenda and demonstrates in a
nutshell how True Detective employs a highly aestheticized visuality to
closely tie and complement form and narrative content. Except for Dexter
with its “Morning Routine”-opener (Hoepker) none of the other shows
discussed here have similarly elaborate title sequences.
17
Part of True Detective’s distinctiveness and narrative as well as visual
coherence is due to its small creative and production team: Pizzolatto serves
as author, creator, and show-runner, Cary Fukunaga (who had also directed
the 2011 reinterpretation of Jane Eyre with Michael Fassbender and Mia
Wasikowska, but had no prior experience with TV series) as director, and
Adam Arkapaw (who shot the New Zealand mini-series Top of the Lake,
2013) as director of photography. Whereas there might be a turn towards
more auteur-guided TV-formats (most notably The Knick, a fin-de-siècle
Karin Hoepker 259
ated a sequence which foreshadows the show’s intense and highly aes-
theticized cinematography and combines the symbolically charged im-
agery with a deep conceptual connection between characters and the
geography of the Louisiana setting (Clair qtd. in Perkins). Most notably,
the title sequence uses an optics of double exposure and of photographic
superimposition as a technique which visualizes the overlayering of
different versions of reality so characteristic of the series’ diegetic
structure and worldview. The sequence evokes elements with iconic
high-recognition value which blend into a genre hybrid to establish a
distinct rural Louisiana Noir: we see a bayou landscape and industrial
pollution, sexually charged images of women overlayering a geography
of highways and parking lots, playgrounds and oil refineries, revivalist
religion, bar scenes and the translucent medusa-shapes of jellyfish—
signaling violence, beauty, desire, and despair, all filtering again and
again through the faces of the two protagonists. Shapes and patterns
compete for the viewer’s attention, but the technique refuses to dissolve
the tension by assigning a clear preference for foreground and back-
ground, just as the show’s narrative denies the audience the orientation
of authoritative information and direction.
Similar to The Following and Hannibal, True Detective also ap-
proaches the topic of serial killing from the cop side of the crime show,
but it compositionally exceeds its competitors in the complexity of its
narrative and temporal structure. The plot’s narrative arc, which is
strongly and primarily seasonal rather than episodic, follows a murder
and missing person cases with a similar m.o. (modus operandi) along the
Louisiana coast over a period of seventeen years: starting in 1995 and
seemingly solved in 2002, the case file comes under revision and is
reopened in 2012.
Consequently, the case narrative tackles the problem of time and
repetition, common to all serial killing series, via a complex structure of
three temporal levels of narration. A primary temporal level shows the
medical drama directed by Steven Soderbergh, who is also in charge of

editing and cinematography), other series employ teams of authors to
generate twelve to thirteen episodes per season. True Detective’s mere eight
episodes were written, produced, and run by a much smaller team around
Pizzolatto, author of the 2010 Texan noir novel Galveston, who had already
demonstrated his hand for serial crime in writing two episodes for the 2011
Seattle-based U.S. remake of The Killing.
events starting in 1995 with an obscure murder case, while an inter-

spersed and secondary plot level offers a discrepant narrative version of
the same events. The secondary level’s official report, visually distin-
guishable to the viewer as documentary-style single fixed camera foot-
age, is narrated by Cohle and Hart in retrospective. The narrative pre-
sented during an internal investigation seventeen years later clearly
conflicts with the version of the primary sequence of events in an
agreement to cover up the true sequence of events. The viewer is drawn
into the series’ escalating dynamic of paranoid detection fuelled by
Cohle’s obsessive pursuit of an elusive conspiracy that protects the key
figure in an open-ended series of killings. The interweaving of time-
levels and competing versions of events complicates orientation and
refuses to grant exegetic certainty in interpreting the serial pattern of
events. The dynamic accelerates when, on a third plane of plot develop-
ment, action sets in again in 2012: brought together involuntarily by the
internal investigation, the estranged former partners, who have both quit
the police force, return to their cold case. When the partners reconvene
over their unresolved case, the action condenses into a singular, con-
tinuous plot strand which runs from the sixth episode to the finale in
episode eight.
Structurally and conceptually most striking about the way in which
True Detective tackles the serial killing theme is the fact that it makes
little obvious formal use of the motif of seriality but uses it as a strong
compositional device to frame perception. We know on the level of
diegesis that the two protagonists are hunting a serial killer, but crucial
markers typical for the generic staging of serial killing are missing, such
as moments of ritualistic repetition, the recurrent find of staged bodies
that crystallize into a killer’s modus operandi, or the lining up of single
cases that connect into a chain and inform the show’s episodic structure.
Instead, the conspiracy theory that initially informs only one investiga-
tor’s interpretation constitutes a mere hypothesis of seriality, which
becomes attractive as it, almost perversely, promises order, meaning, and
purpose in the face of the random cruelty of an ever-growing number of
uninvestigated missing women and children. Layer by layer, the show
unravels into a maze of clues and connections, once hidden in the
randomly chaotic noise of the everyday, but now brought into light by
the obsessive and relentless search of the detective. And yet, the cross-
linking is merely suggested; we are told so by the protagonists and the
Karin Hoepker 261
pieces seem to come together, but True Detective refrains from granting
us full closure. The social mycelium which has procured that psycho-
pathic killer, as if history and bayou swamp had spat him out as the
result of generation-long forms of abuse and ritualistic practice, is
something the detectives cannot even begin to uproot.
It will be interesting to see how True Detective, which is conceptu-
alized as a seasonal anthology rather than a show based on the prospect
of multi-seasonal continuity, will fare in its second season after aban-
doning its distinctive setting, entire cast, director, and director of pho-
tography.18 The shedding of much of the content and creative input that
shaped the first season will bring to the fore the remaining characteris-
tics that contribute to the show’s conceptual brand and common generic
elements, such as a recognizably localized and visually atmospheric
rural noir, which may provide trans-seasonal continuity as a counter-
point to seasonal permutation.
Bates Motel: Oedipal Detection & ‘Portrait of the Killer as a Young

Man’
As a last, striking variation of the serial killer series, I propose to briefly

look at Bates Motel as a format, which might best be described as a
hybrid of crime drama, highschool gothic mystery/romance, and David
Lynch’s Twin Peaks.19 Bates Motel, which started to air on A&E in
18
The concept of an anthology series, which originated in often pulp genre-
related radio formats or frameworks to pitch rotating star casts, leaves room
for experimentation with coherence that is not plot- or content-based. Show’s
like American Horror Story (FX/FOX, 2011-present) or Penny Dreadful
(Showtime, 2014-present) exploit the connection with the pulp tradition more
strongly than True Detective, but the advantages of being able to cast stars
who might shy away from long-term series commitments are considerable.
Pizzolatto himself discusses his plans for True Detective’s new season in an
interview with Scott Paulson (Paulson).
19
See Ganser in this volume. Of course there are several other crime dramas
which pick up on the serial killer theme, some of them rather conventional,
some of them remakes of previously successful European crime drama like
AMC’s The Killing, the 2011 Seattle-set remake of the successful Danish
2014, was produced without a pilot as a straight-to-series production

and, after a second successful season, has been renewed for a third, ten-
episode run. Carlton Cruse (Lost, as well as the upcoming U.S. remake
of Les revenants), Kerry Erin (Friday Night Lights), among others, con-
ceptually developed the show for television as a present-day prequel to
Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic 1960 film Psycho, in which we encounter
Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) as a teenager, living with his mother
Norma (Vera Farmiga), who has recently opened a motel.20
Bates Motel thus makes its connection to serial killing via an implicit
intertextual reference, similar to Hannibal, which relies on the viewer to
recognize the quotes and connections. Through its framing as a prequel,
the plot development finds a strongly dynamic counterpoint in the dra-
matic irony the discrepant information distribution generates. While not
entirely certain about the show’s future outcome, we are cast in the role
of an observer who bears an exegetic suspicion which prevents us from
seeing the events and deaths that occur as a series of unfortunate and
deadly ‘mishaps.’ And yet, despite our knowledge of the very distinct
possibility that Norman might end up a murderous psychopath and
Norma a desiccated mummy in an armchair upstairs, the tension- and
sympathy-building techniques of the series complicate the process in
ways which are once again indicative of the powerful pleasures of serial
narration and consumption. For, in a strategy similar to that employed in
Dexter, the show’s coastal Northern Californian setting, the idyllic envi-
ronment of a very Twin Peaks-y small town, appears surprisingly
strange and alienating through the eyes of the newly arrived mother and
son. The first episodes leave open to speculation whether it might
merely be our focalization through the perspective of two overly-cau-
tious fugitives from their own past, or whether there is indeed something
amiss in the tightly knit small-town community. Gradually Norman’s
and Norma’s social context turns out to be so criminally corrupt and
shady in its own way, that, despite our reservations, mother and son
inevitably become the viewer’s island of familiarity and normality.
series Forbrydelsen, or The Bridge, FX’s remake of the Danish/Swedish co-

production Broen/Bron.
20
On strategies of the modernized prequel or “prebooting,” see Scahill’s
“Motel Rebate.”
Karin Hoepker 263
Strikingly, for a contemporary series which is very much about ado-

lescence and Norman Bates as a young man, Bates Motel retains a very
unobtrusive psychological angle; without ever offering the all-too-obvi-
ous diagnosis in explicit narrative, it never stumbles into the motiva-
tional trap of psychologizing the mother-son relationship. Despite the
centripetal force of the deep and unmistakably pathological dynamics of
the mother-and-son constellation, to which all other characters become
mere satellites, the relationship itself remains surprisingly opaque.
The series is indeed Oedipal in a much more literary sense than a
mother snuggling up in bed to her teenage son would suggest. Bates
Motel relinquishes the more conventional double of a closely coupled
protagonist and antagonist figure, which traditional narratives of detec-
tion and pursuit of a killer require. The series foregrounds the lack of an
agent of justice, a profiler or investigator, and the town’s sheriff or the
corrupt deputy are certainly unsuitable for that role. Instead, the unlikely
choice, the teenage boy and focus of our dramatic suspicion, is exposed
to and drawn into the web of mystery and becomes our unwilling agent
of detection. The first season introduces us to the diegetic world without
the vanishing point of a singular evil counterpart, a king-pin master-
mind, or an ingenious serial killer who would function as a mirror and a
vis-à-vis to our protagonist. Nor can there be such a character. For,
through a sleight of hand that reminds us of Sophocles’s tragedy Oedi-
pus Rex, the series casts a veil of ignorance and forgetfulness over the
protagonist that hides crucial information from his consciousness as
much as from the viewers. Ultimately it may very well be that the evil
murderous antagonist whom Norman seeks to discover and reveal is
indeed no uncomfortable double, as we have become accustomed to
from other serial killer series, but Norman himself—leaving viewers
stuck in wonder about the Oedipal tragedy at stake.
Surveying the field of the contemporary U.S. crime series through
the peculiar lens of the serial killer series, we observe how the logic of
escalation, which is at the heart of popular seriality itself, functions as a
dynamic circular figure. It both motivates generic sub-differentiation
and is driven by the ecological pressures of the television landscape.
Within this scenario, I read the serial killer series not as a freak of the
system, spawned by self-surpassing demands for ever more shocking
explicitness and violence, but as a development which draws on the
fascinating potential of its inherent self-reflexivity. Because its topic of
serial killing demands explicit or implicit emplotment, the genre faces

the structural considerations regarding its own formal and production
principle. As we watch those plots self-consciously unfold, we must face
the function of these pleasures and horrors that drive us to the compul-
sive ritual of serial viewing.
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JANINA ROJEK
Crime, Control, and (Medical) Condition: The

Illness Narratives of The Sopranos, Boss, and
Breaking Bad as Boundary Transgression
“What Changed?”—“You.
You Got Sick.”
—Ezra Stone to
Tom Kane in Boss
The Sopranos, Boss, and Breaking Bad are serials that feature the ever
so popular male anti-hero: Tony Soprano, Tom Kane, and Walter White
are protagonists who break the law and moral codes and get away with
it. And since the serials revolve around these men, the viewer is on their
side, despite their actions. This inversion of traditional notions of justice
and morality makes the serials prime examples of transgressive
television. Tony Soprano, Tom Kane, and Walter White ruthlessly
employ physical and psychological violence to reach their professional
goals, and, more often than not, this involves criminal activities.
However, this is not the only way in which they transgress established
boundaries. In their professional lives they blur and cross the boundary
between morality and immorality, but at the same time they struggle to
maintain a façade of morality in their private lives—a struggle that
becomes increasingly harder and hence, the boundary between their
professional and private lives is blurred, too, as ruthlessness and deceit
eventually creep into their family lives. While these aspects deserve—
and have received—scholarly and journalistic attention, a third boundary
transgression of the serials has not yet been discussed: the three
protagonists suffer from depression, Lewy Body dementia, and lung
cancer, respectively, illnesses that render them weak and thus challenge
their ideas of masculinity. As they lose control over their bodies and
268 Crime, Control, and (Medical) Condition
their businesses, the boundary between masculinity/health and

weakness/illness is simultaneously constructed and blurred, which puts
not only their own perception of their masculinity into question, but also
challenges viewers’ evaluation of their roles as male anti-heroes. Illness
is thus a third boundary transgression, for it not only challenges
expected roles, such as the anti-hero, but also conventions of the
crime/Mafia/political drama serial, whose protagonists are traditionally
strong and powerful. The illness narratives are central to the stories of
the serials discussed here, albeit not so much on the diegetic level with
illness as a lived reality; rather, the illness narrative functions variously
as an expression, trigger, or culmination of the protagonists’ other
transgressions: for instance, in Breaking Bad, Walt’s lung cancer is the
expression of his passivity (and thus a metaphor), and it triggers his
criminality. An understanding of illness as metaphor has been criticized
(Sontag), but it still looms large in some forms of illness fiction, which I
will examine in the following. I will briefly recapitulate the
metaphorical significance attached to the body and to illness, as well as
the representation of illness in fiction, and outline the critical debate
over these representations and metaphorical usages. Here, I
contextualize the three serials in the tradition of illness fiction. Having
established the background and context for my analysis, I will then
examine the portrayals and functions of the protagonists’ illnesses on the
textual level as expressions of a fear of losing control and a symbol for
other collapsing boundaries.
The Sopranos, Boss, and Breaking Bad could be named alongside a
host of other recent series that depict characters suffering from—mostly
mental—illnesses on television. On the most basic level, this increase in
fictional portrayals of illness is owed to the fact that illness is a feature
of modern society, in which demographic changes and a higher life
expectancy have brought about, in Bryan Turner’s words, “a new range
of ‘killer diseases’” (5). However, the question remains what the illness
narrative means on the textual and cultural level.1 Fictional portrayals of
1
In her article, “Therapy Culture and TV: The Sopranos as a Depression
Narrative,” Deborah Staines claims that the heightened visibility of illness
narratives is owed rather to the medium and not necessarily a sign that
“Western culture is […] more obsessed with health at this point in time than
ever before” (173). Yet, it seems that scientific advancements and popular
knowledge about neurological and other conditions might have triggered an
Janina Rojek 269
illness are not limited to televisual storytelling of course, but are also
featured in written narratives, where they have received wider scholarly
attention and I adopt the insights of studies of written illness narratives
as the basis for my analysis. In their edited collection Disease and Dis-
order in Contemporary Fiction, T.J. Lustig and James Peacock attest
“the prevalence in contemporary literature of neurological phenomena
evident at the biological level” (n. pag.), which they refer to as the “syn-
drome syndrome.” The contributors to the study claim that literature
dealing specifically with neurological conditions, such as Capgras,
schizophrenia, dissociative disorders, or autism, re-negotiate the age-old
question of identity, personality, the self, and what it means to be human
from a biomedical viewpoint. According to Patricia Waugh, this per-
spective bears the danger of employing “neurobiological materialism”
(18) which reduces the self to “a material property of the brain.” The
brain can then “still further be reduced to neural networks, modules,
neurotransmitters and genes.” Reducing the human body to its neuro-
logical, molecular, and genetic make-up dehumanizes it and raises a
range of epistemological questions such as: what is left of the self, what
makes us human, and what accounts for personality? This is especially
relevant for neurological conditions since they affect body and mind, but
similar questions might also be evoked with regard to more strictly
‘bodily’ illnesses, which I will focus on in my analysis of Breaking Bad.
Another dimension of illness fiction is the exploration of illness
through the “biocultural” lens that considers the degree of social con-
structedness of illness and the meanings and stigmata attached to illness.
In Medicine as Culture, Deborah Lupton takes this biocultural approach,
stating that “[m]ost social constructionists acknowledge that experiences
such as illness, disease and pain exist as biological realities, but also
emphasize that such experiences are always inevitably given meaning
interest in illness fiction in general, of which televised illness fiction is one

aspect. Arguably, television, and especially serials, lend themselves more
readily to the illness narrative due to prolonged storylines. Thus, Staines
writes about the therapy narrative in The Sopranos that “[t]he techniques of
serialized drama complement this depression narrative in a neat conjunction
of medium and therapeutic message: the seriality of television is not unlike
the seriality of sessions with a psychiatrist” (169). Exploring the correlation
between seriality and illness narratives might further offer insight into the
working of seriality, yet it would go beyond the scope of this article.
and therefore understood and experienced through cultural and social

processes” (14). Taking this idea further, Turner speaks of the “somatic
society,” that is, “a society within which major political and personal
problems are both problematized in the body and expressed through it”
(1). Through illness, the body takes center stage as its failings and the
repercussions of its breakdown become apparent. In The Body and Soci-
ety, Turner delineates the development of the body and its regulation in
Western societies. His approach helps to explain the social and cultural
implications of losing control over one’s body. In Christianity, the hu-
man body is marked as evil and “came to be more closely associated
with Man as a fallen or defective creature” (12). In addition, regarding
the human body as mere flesh denies its humanity, which is the founda-
tion for the Cartesian mind-body dualism. As Turner explains, “[w]hile
flesh stood in the same sphere as sub-human animality, the soul became
the carrier and symbol of all forms of spirituality and rationality.” In
postmodernity, with its scientific findings and suspicion of master nar-
ratives, including that of rationalism, this notion is challenged: the “im-
age of human beings” went from “one of control, domination and sover-
eignty” to “lonely, homeless and alienated creatures” (19). This is fea-
tured in the serials as well: the protagonists are aware of losing control
and being powerless, yet they refuse to acknowledge this condition and
struggle to retrieve what they assume was their once stable, true self.
The serials thus create a tension between the postmodern concept of
identity—expressed, partially, through the illness narrative—and the
notion of the unified self. Tom, Walt, and Tony connect their sense of
self and self-worth strongly with their professional lives, for while they
are helpless against their illnesses, they attempt to maintain control,
dominance, and sovereignty in their businesses. Yet their work does not
provide the independence they strive for, since many of their actions
depend on the workings of institutions, for example, the political ma-
chinery in Boss. They are furthermore controlled by business partners or
opponents: for instance, Jesse and Gus in Breaking Bad influence not
only Walt’s actions, but also his personality as they have no small part in
turning him into a ruthless killer. Finally, all three protagonists try to
adhere to cultural conventions, such as the supposed sanctity of the
nuclear family. In addition, Tony is expected to follow the Mafia’s con-
ventions, in particular omertà, the code of silence, but in this, he fails as
well. Tom, Walt, and Tony cannot uphold control—neither in business
Janina Rojek 271
nor in the family, nor over their bodies—thus, they cannot adhere to the
rules of their respective social circles and become alienated from both of
them. Their failing bodies then do not only partially trigger this aliena-
tion, they also express the suffering that comes along with this exclusion
and loneliness. Turner also references this sociology of the body. He
states that in the “late modern age,” notions of the self and of the indi-
vidual have changed: While “our orientation to reality assumes a know-
ing cognitive subject […] much of this cognitive rationalism has been
replaced by an emphasis on emotionality, sensibility and sensuality,”
which is reflected “in some recent sociological writing on the body”
(20). Turner refers to the work of Chris Shilling and other scholars who
attest that “the project of the self, as the principle legacy of individual-
ism has now been converted into the project of the body” (20).
Shilling states that
[a]s a result of developments in spheres as diverse as biological repro-

duction, genetic engineering, plastic surgery and sports science, the body
is becoming increasingly a phenomenon of options and choices. These
developments have advanced the potential many people have to control
their own bodies, and to have them controlled by others. This does not
mean that we all possess the resources, or the interest, which would en-
able us radically to reconstruct our bodies. (3)2
2
Although Shilling does not mention illness in this context, illness treatment
also offers options and choices, but only to those that have necessary re-
sources. Thus it widens social gaps: for instance, inadequate health care puts
the resources needed to control illness—as far as medicine allows it—out of
reach of those who are not covered. The issue of availability and affordability
of treatment is raised, marginally, in the serials I am discussing, as well. I am
thinking here of Walter White’s inadequate health care coverage in Breaking
Bad that is the trigger for his criminality and also addressed when the Whites
pay for Hank’s rehabilitation treatment after he is shot. The aspect of inade-
quate health care is so central to the serial that it has found expression in a
popular meme circulated on the Internet and in a comic by Christopher
Keetly (qtd. in Bolen n. pag.), both of which essentially state that Breaking
Bad in Canada would have ended right after the diagnosis, as Walt would
have received treatment covered by health insurance. While the issue of af-
fordability is not emphasized in The Sopranos or Boss, the clandestine nature
of therapy and doctoral visits in both serials respectively allows the assump-
tion that it cannot be covered by insurance.
One aspect of the body as project that is more relevant for my analysis is
that of “individual responsibility” which is somewhat paradoxical in “a
time when our health is threatened increasingly by global dangers”
(Shilling 5). The discourse of individual responsibility stresses the im-
portance of “[s]elf-care regimes [that] require individuals to take on
board the notion that the body is a project whose interiors and exterior
can be monitored, nurtured and maintained as fully functioning.” When
the body falls ill and control is no longer possible, responsibility might
first be assigned to the individual—the reverse argument then frames
individual illness as an expression of global concerns. In the serials I am
discussing here, the fictional portrayal of depression, Lewy Body de-
mentia, and cancer can be read to reflect, express, and comment on ex-
istential angst in a post-9/11, late capitalist Western society faced with
threats of terrorism, environmental concerns, and social issues such as
inadequate health care, but also with the insecurities engendered by a
pluralistic society with changing and more fluid gender roles.
Regarding illness as an expression of global concerns is, of course,
problematic for those faced with the reality of illness—as Susan Sontag
reminds us, “illness is not a metaphor” (3)—but global concerns are
nonetheless central to the function and meaning of illness, especially in
fiction. However, I will not examine these global concerns that form the
larger cultural framework of the serials, but rather the notions of indi-
vidual responsibility for illness. Here, illness is a personal experience
that reflects the protagonists’ lives, and it is through their illnesses that
the bodies of Tony Soprano, Tom Kane, and Walter White are given
center stage: not only are their bodies problematized, but also their
physical failures are rendered meaningful. Their bodies are more than
their neurological, physical, and biochemical make-up, and they are
more than their own, private bodies: they are bodies in a social structure
and culture. This situates their illnesses at the increasingly blurred inter-
section of the private and the public/professional. Tom’s, Tony’s, and
Walt’s illnesses have an impact on their experience of their own physi-
calities, personalities, and social relationships, but also on their everyday
lives and careers. On the textual level, their illnesses thus express the
collapse of boundaries and the fear of losing control.
As mentioned before, the illness narratives challenge the anti-hero
image of the protagonists as they threaten their masculinity. In this
sense, illness erodes the boundary of gender, which Deborah Lupton and
Janina Rojek 273
Jackie Stacey both stress in their respective studies. Lupton writes that
“illness is linked so strongly to femininity rather than masculinity that
the notion of a man as a passive, weakened patient under the care of a
doctor—relinquishing control of his body to another—challenges these
dominant norms of masculinity” (28). Illness as a threat to masculinity
has to be overcome so that masculinity can be restored, which is attested
to in the use of war and battle metaphors employed to describe the fight
against disease (Sontag 64-66; Lupton 65-68). Fighting illness is thus
framed as a heroic narrative—reflecting a common pattern in popular
culture in which, as Stacey remarks, the usually male protagonist takes
risks to fight for certain principles, successfully overcoming obstacles
on the way to reaching his goals (8). Similarly, “[p]eople who survive
cancer” and by extension, I argue, any life-threatening illness “are trans-
formed from feminised victim to masculinised hero in the narrative re-
telling of individual triumph” (10-11). These issues are central for Tony,
Tom, and Walt—they lose control over their bodies, which reflects and
simultaneously aggravates the loss of control they face in their careers,
and this challenges their masculine authority. Attempting to reinstate
their masculinity, they try to write their stories into narratives of tri-
umph, to (re)gain authority and control in their lives by way of control
over their bodies. Besides the physical aspects, they also have to deal
with the psychological aspects of their illnesses: coping with their ill-
nesses means coping with their selves as they have to negotiate anew
who they are, not only within, but also beyond their social, i.e., gender,
familial, and professional roles. This loss of self is a motif central to
syndrome fiction, according to Waugh (see Lustig and Peacock 11). It is
marked by a “mood […] of weariness and loss” and “attempts to retrieve
the self by exploring what gave rise to its loss and in doing so moves
beyond both a neuroscientific and a postmodern view” (11). The So-
pranos, Boss, and Breaking Bad do not offer detailed neuroscientific
explanations and explorations of illness so much, but the protagonists’
bodily and/or mental crises produce a loss of self. In this respect, their
crises can be seen as the culmination of social alienation—an uncon-
scious process—and through the crisis and ensuing loss of self (in the
sense, also, of social role), the protagonists are faced with the challenge
to retrieve their former selves. This, of course, presumes that they had a
unified, stable self to retrieve in the first place. Thus, the illness narra-
tives are the paradoxical product of postmodernity: they challenge the
master narrative of rationalism and the mind/body split, for loss of bod-
ily power means loss of self. Therefore, these narratives are rife with
anxieties and cannot be aligned with models of the stable self. Closing
the circle, the attempted retrieval of a stable, masculine self is part of the
triumph narrative; however the protagonists are denied this triumph, not
only by the postmodern condition that forms the context of these narra-
tives, but also by the status of the protagonists as social deviants.
As a gangster, Tony Soprano is such a social deviant. He is a mascu-
line anti-hero who has to exert authority and control and cannot allow
weakness, but he finds it increasingly difficult to maintain this role as he
becomes prone to panic attacks, which seem to be induced by his de-
pression. In cultural terms, his depression expresses his inability to cope
with modern life as he experiences it. His view on the world and his
business is marked by nostalgia for the good old days both in relation to
his private and his business life. In his first therapy session, he explains
his dissatisfaction with the Mafia business to Dr. Melfi, telling her, “I
feel like I’ve come in at the end. Like I missed the best bits” (S01E01).
His remark attests to his romanticized view of his business, clearly in-
fluenced by seminal pop cultural texts such as The Godfather that func-
tion as the almost mythological roots of his business ethics. In addition,
Tony has a strong sense of responsibility to his ethnic roots and, there-
fore, he tries to instill a sense of ethnic pride in his children. For in-
stance, in the pilot episode he shows his daughter Meadow the church
his grandfather and grand-uncle helped build. He also strives to maintain
the patriarchal Italian American family. This is illustrated when he
counters his daughter’s complaint about his supposedly old-fashioned
banishing of talking about sex—referring to the Lewinsky affair—from
the breakfast table by stating: “You see out there it’s the 1990s but in
this house it’s 1954” (“Nobody Knows Anything,” S01E11). However,
he can establish the norms and values he associates with the 1950s nei-
ther in his private nor in his professional life. He feels disconnected
from his business because he does not agree with its declining moral
codes and failing integrity, exemplified by his crew’s willingness to
engage in drug trafficking. Additionally, contemporary Mafia life also
makes it difficult for him to keep up the boundaries between his two
lives, as he cannot keep his occupation from his children and lives in
constant fear of losing his family. This is symbolized by his infatuation
with a family of wild ducks that has taken up residence in his pool,
Janina Rojek 275
whose departure triggers his first panic attack. In a session with Dr.
Melfi, the ducks are explicitly addressed as a symbol of his whole fam-
ily. When Tony tells her about a dream in which a bird—“a seagull or
something” (S01E01) flies away with his penis, she points out that this
is another water bird, which connects it to the ducks and thus to his
family. The dream quite overtly represents a fear of castration, and it
relates to his complicated relationship with his mother, too: he tells
Melfi that his mother Livia once threatened to gauge his eyes out with a
fork when he was a child, which is yet another representation of his
castration anxiety and fear for his masculinity. His mother poses a dou-
ble-threat, not only to his mental health, but to his professional life as
well, as she plots to have him eliminated to reassert his Uncle Junior’s
place as acting boss. Although interpreting the dream and its symbolism
might represent a simplified kitchen-counter psychology approach, his
therapy sessions offer a nuanced depiction of his psychological issues
and allow the audience an insight into his psyche and his fears of losing
control. This fear is engendered, in part, by threats to his (outdated)
model of masculinity.3 What I find most noteworthy about his therapy,
therefore, is the fact that the use of almost clichéd symbols might also be
read to reflect Tony’s own suspicions about therapy which is encoded as
feminized: although he realizes that he is depressed and accordingly
seeks help, he questions the very concept of therapy, wondering “what-
ever happened to Gary Cooper, the strong, silent type” (S01E01) whom
he idealizes but cannot be. His depression cuts him off from his busi-
ness, where it would be seen, he correctly fears, as a sign of weakness
and where it poses a danger to himself, since talking about the business
to outsiders, even in the context of therapy, means breaking omertà, the
code of silence. Even though it seems to bring him closer to his family at
first, especially his wife Carmela, his feeling of isolation and loneliness
remains, and his therapy does not improve his marriage.
Tony continues therapy throughout the six seasons, and it is sup-
ported with medication that keeps his depression at bay, but as Dr. Melfi
has to acknowledge, Tony will not be cured. In the serial, this is ex-
plained by the criminal personality for whom therapy might function to
3
For further elaborations on the models of masculinity represented in The
Sopranos, see Franco Ricci’s The Sopranos: Born under a Bad Sign, specifi-
cally the chapter “God Help the Beast in Me.”
justify his criminal acts rather than stopping them. In cultural terms,
Tony’s cure is impossible because his illness is the expression of his
existential condition: Tony’s depression is manageable with medication,
and some of his issues, e.g., the relation to his mother, can be worked
through in therapy, but his fear of losing control, his longing for an
idealized bygone time, and his alienation from those around him cannot
be ‘fixed.’
What therapy does, then, is not so much to cure Tony, but to charac-
terize him and address, as Deborah Staines writes, “questions about
subjectivity in contemporary Western society, particularly, how it is
psychologized and medicalized. The scripts are informed by the genre of
psychological literature and its array of descriptors for unconscious
desires, conflicted socialization, and psychic wounds” (171). However,
she also points out that “[t]his psychologizing of the subject is generally
not under critique within the show. Instead, the scripts use them to char-
acterize Tony” (171). Thus, the serial depicts the lived reality of Tony’s
depression, but this is not its main concern: the illness narrative is a tool
for characterization, to express postmodern fears, to offer an insight into
Tony’s motivations and emotions, which then enables viewer identifica-
tion through “the shared cultural exposure to the language of therapy”
that the audience is “anticipated to have” (Staines 172). Opposed to this,
but just as central, is the simultaneous function of therapy to emphasize
Tony’s deviance: “Tony demands something more linear from these
sessions, like a path to coherent subjectivity, habitually asking, ‘Where
is this getting me?’ Tony’s refrain is all about refusing to become a
subject (the reconstructed male, the law-abiding citizen) he is reluctant
to embody” (169). Therapy makes Tony more accessible, Staines indi-
rectly claims when she addresses the recognizability “[i]n today’s West-
ern societies [of] the central Sopranos narrative of mental illness and its
accompanying tropes of anxiety, Prozac, unconscious denial and weekly
therapy” (171). But at the same time, the serial never lets the viewer
forget that Tony is a criminal. For instance, his first on-screen murder—
he strangles someone with a piece of wire—happens as early as season
one’s fifth episode (“College”). Tony is thus clearly a social deviant in
both of his social circles: as a citizen, his criminality makes him an out-
sider; as a mob boss, his illness alienates and excludes him from his
business—both because he breaks accepted gender roles by laying bare
his fears and emotions and because he breaks the Mafia principle of
Janina Rojek 277
silence. Yet, as the serial presents him foremost as a family man—family

in the sense of his own clan and the business—his deviance lies in
breaking their rules. As Turner explains, deviance theory can also be
applied to illness:
[…] illness is a form of deviance and as such illness is subject to stig-

matization which results in a devaluation of the self. The maladies of the
body become the stigmatization of the person. Although this perspective
clearly illustrates the alienation of the patient from himself and from his
social environment, it is important to bear in mind that not all illness is
stigmatized; some forms of illness, like some forms of deviance, have a
social prestige and in a peculiar way are positively evaluated. (223)
Within the Mafia family, Tony’s depression and panic attacks are nega-
tively evaluated. Within the biological family, however, therapy seems
to hold the promise of positive change, expressed, for example, by Car-
mela’s enthusiastic reaction to Tony’s confession about therapy before
she learns that Dr. Melfi is a woman. Yet all in all, his illness remains
problematic and stigmatized, whereas his deviance as a citizen is “posi-
tively evaluated,” to use Turner’s words, since it gives him masculine
authority and control, and renders him an interesting character. A scene
in which he plays a prank on his gossipy neighbors particularly illus-
trates his ‘bad boy’ charm: he asks them to hide a mysterious box in
their yard, leading them to believe it is connected to some kind of Mafia
business. The viewers and Carmela know, however, that the box is only
filled with sand. Having observed the scene, Carmela remarks to Tony,
“You’re kind of cute when you’re being a bad boy” (“A Hit is a Hit,”
S01E10). In scenes like this one and in therapy, the viewer gets to know
both Tony’s charming and vulnerable sides. Additionally, Tony’s
fears—laid bare in therapy—might be shared by the viewer, leading to
greater identification. To sum it up, his illness is a plot device that drives
the narrative forward, characterizes Tony, and functions as a shorthand
for Western, postmodern anxieties: Tony cannot balance his Mafia and
family personas; he has to constantly re-negotiate his social role and
reassert his masculinity which he constructs around patriarchal and ma-
chismo models that loom large in the Mafia, even though they are out-
dated outside of this particular social circle. His illness might bring him
closer to the viewer and his family, but it ostracizes him from the social
environment of his business. The illness narrative thus expresses the
blurring and collapsing of the boundaries between his private and pro-
fessional lives: On the one hand, he attempts to protect his family from
the harsh reality of the business he is in and seeks to solve his problems
that stem from and influence his larger family. On the other hand, he
attempts to conceal his problems and his therapy from the Mafia. Even-
tually, he fails in both. For instance, his children learn about and con-
front him with his real occupation, and his mother, upon learning of his
therapy, tries to have him murdered. In this sense, the illness narrative
challenges Tony’s anti-hero persona, for it makes him more likeable, but
also weak. It is left to the viewer to negotiate the serial’s paradoxes:
therapy seems to promise a consolidation of Tony’s unstable selves as a
Mafia boss and family man, but postmodernism’s lessons have taught
the viewer and Tony to mistrust the story of the unified self. The song
“The Beast in Me” that accompanies the end-credits to the pilot episode
describes this dilemma: The beast in Tony, that is, his depression as
much as his violence, is close to the surface, only “caged by frail and
fragile bonds.” It “has had to learn to live with pain,” but it has not suc-
ceeded; Tony still seeks help for the beast in him. And as the serial’s
lack of closure suggests, it is a process that might never end.
In a similar vein, Boss presents a protagonist who refuses to accept
the pain of his diagnosis and the reality of his illness. He is unwilling to
give up the boundary between his private and professional lives, al-
though his illness threatens both. Instead, he tries to keep authority and
control in a political world that seems to be falling apart, just as his body
begins to fail him, too. The serial establishes control and the loss thereof
as the main themes in the very first scene: it opens with a secret meeting
of Tom Kane with his doctor in an abandoned warehouse, where she
tells him that he has been diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia. The
diagnosis is devastating, as the progress of the illness means audiovisual
hallucinations, tremors, memory loss, and the eventual need of twenty-
four-hour assistance, the epitome of losing control. As the mayor of
Chicago, Tom Kane is supposed to be a figure of power and authority.
Yet the song accompanying the opening credits already renders his po-
sition of power ambiguous and foreshadows the course of the serial, as
the most prominent and repeated lyrics warn, “Satan, your kingdom
must come down.” The illness narrative thus underscores the corruption
of politics and the failure of sovereignty.
Janina Rojek 279
Furthermore, Kane’s illness also reflects and expresses his social

isolation: he is alienated from his wife, Meredith, their relationship is
merely a façade for the public, and he has cut his ties with his daughter
Emma, a former drug addict. His familial relationships are further com-
plicated as they emphasize the priority that business takes over family:
Kane’s father-in-law, Rutledge, who preceded Kane as mayor, is wheel-
chair-bound and seemingly catatonic, thus serving as a constant re-
minder of how Kane might end up. What makes Rutledge even more
important is the cause of his stupor, which is revealed to be drug-in-
duced. As both Meredith and Tom Kane do not shy away from drastic
measures to reach their professional goals, the revelation of the cause of
Rutledge’s catatonic state invites the assumption that he needed to be
‘taken care of’ to advance Kane’s political career.4 In a similar way, their
relationship to their daughter Emma is sacrificed for Kane’s career as
well because her drug abuse has made her a liability. Kane’s profes-
sional life is thus the reason for his social isolation, but when he falls ill,
he becomes more aware of his loneliness, and he undertakes several
attempts to break out of it. However, he cannot reach out to Meredith, to
whom he does not even reveal the fact that he is sick until the last epi-
sode of season one.5 Nonetheless, one of his hallucinations illustrates his
longing to connect with her: after talking to her in his office, he heads to
the bathroom, where he spills his pills on the floor. He then hallucinates
4
However, due to the cancellation of the serial after the second season in
which the cause for Rutledge’s stupor is revealed, the storyline is never fully
resolved.
5
While Meredith turns out to be manipulating Kane and following her own
political aspirations, Kane does not seem to suspect it until the second season.
Even though Meredith thus also adds to the dissolution of his political “king-
dom” (cf. the opening theme), I believe the illness narrative to be the central
metaphor for his loss of control nonetheless, for Meredith’s attempts at ma-
nipulating him fail. In the first episode of season two (“Louder than Words”)
she is accidentally shot—Kane being the original target—and thus rendered
weak and powerless. In the final episode of the second season (“True
Enough”), Kane regains the upper hand in his relationship with Meredith.
Knowing of her betrayal, he enters her room to prove his authority. He with-
holds her oxygen mask she needs due to the shooting, savoring the power he
has and when handing it back threateningly tells her, “mortality is inevitable,
but yours will forever remain tied to mine” (“True Enough,” S02E10).
seeing Meredith enter the room to help him, reassuring him all the while
that she is there for him and reacting calmly to his confession that he is
ill (“Remembered,” S01E05). In this hallucination, her actions and
words not only indicate her willingness to offer emotional support and
her permission for him to be weak, which she would not grant him oth-
erwise, it also illustrates Kane’s longing to connect with her. As Kane
cannot open up to or connect with his wife, his next close familial rela-
tion, Emma, has to function as the stand-in.6 In addition, she initially
procures his medication, since she is privy to the secret of his illness and
has the necessary contacts. In contrast to Meredith, Emma seems genu-
inely concerned about her father’s well-being and presents a possible
source for emotional support. The illness narrative in Boss therefore
explores the blurred boundary between private and professional life and
offers glimpses of the possibility of true family relationships.
However, personal relations have to, time and again, be sacrificed for
Kane’s political career—a recurring strategy in the Kane/Rutledge
family. Although Kane’s illness makes him reconsider decisions in his
private life, it does not change his personality. When he is at his weakest
physically and professionally, he is the harshest. His struggle for control
comes to a climax in the last episodes of the first season: a plot against
him, which has been in the making throughout the whole season, comes
to light, and his reactions illustrate how much his social role determines
his identity. In the episode, Meredith finally asks him about his illness,
and he replies, “You’ll know soon enough. But today, it doesn’t matter,
because today I’m not going anywhere. By the time this day ends, every
person who has plotted against me will feel the force of my wrath. No
one will be left unscathed. No one” (“Choose,” S01E08). And indeed, no
one is. In the previous episode he called his daughter and told her, in
tears, that he loved her, only to have her publicly arrested for her illegal
dealing with medication in order to draw attention away from his in-
volvement in a political scandal. This example illustrates his character:
while his illness makes him reach out for help, he cannot give up power,
and he still prioritizes his career over his family. His advisor, Ezra Stone,
6
After his hallucination, Kane meets with Emma and remarks that she has her
mother’s hands, which supports the point that she functions as a stand-in for
her mother—she thus becomes the companion to her father that Meredith is
not.
Janina Rojek 281
offers an apt analysis of Kane’s personality in a dialogue that frames the

entire episode and creates a sense of impending doom. Stone reflects on
Kane’s career and the “terrible things” that they have both done, which
they used to justify with the belief to be acting for the good of Chicago.
However, Kane’s illness has changed him, Stone believes, having made
him self-centered and power-hungry. Stone confronts Kane with his
egotism and tells him, “The only thing that matters for you now is you.
Your personal survival” (“Choose,” S01E08). Stone’s words mark Kane
as the ruthless ruler who keeps power for the sake of power. While this
might not present a change in personality, Stone nonetheless interprets it
as such and attributes it to Kane’s illness. In the same way, Kane’s
illness seems to make Kane himself reconsider his social role; however,
it does not induce him to change his behavior, but, on the contrary, it
prompts him to uphold his social role even more aggressively.
Accordingly, by the end of the episode, Kane’s adversaries (including
his wife) are either dead or politically and emotionally destroyed, and he
seems to be on the path back to power and authority. Yet this impression
is quickly destroyed: the last we see of Kane for the first season is him
on the floor, unable to move, shaken by a spasm. He might be able to
control his political career for now, but eventually, he is as helpless
against external forces in the body politic as against those forces at work
within his own body. His body is thus cast as an “other” (Freund,
McGuire, and Podhurst 149), as his final enemy who cannot be
controlled and who will bring Kane’s “kingdom” down.
The illnesses portrayed in Boss and The Sopranos could be termed
illnesses of the mind: Lewy Body Dementia causes cognitive decline;
depression and anxiety are mental illnesses with possible neurological
roots. As such, they immediately draw attention to questions of identity
(what does it mean not to be in control of one’s perception or memory?)
and social role (how to perform authority in face of losing control over
one’s emotions, body, and mind?). In contrast, the more strictly bodily
disease portrayed in Breaking Bad does not immediately challenge per-
sonality and identity, yet, in the same way as the illness narratives in the
other serials, it negotiates loss of control and masculine authority. In
order to assess this aspect, it is necessary to briefly examine the opening
of the serial. Walter White is cast as being trapped in his life, which is
established in the opening scene: he is first shown in bed next to his
sleeping wife Skyler at five in the morning, awake and worried. The
following shots offer possible explanations for his insomnia: a focus on

items for a baby suggest that the prospect of having another child might
worry him; then the viewer follows his glance to a plaque on the wall
acknowledging his contribution to Nobel Prize-winning research in the
field of proton radiation in 1985. As it becomes clear that he has not
pursued a career in research but has become a high school chemistry
teacher instead, the glance towards the plaque suggests that he is dissat-
isfied with his job. We meet Walt on his fiftieth birthday, which begins
like any other work day with the habitual family breakfast, is followed
by teaching unmotivated students, and concludes with verbal abuse and
humiliation at his second job at a car wash, indicating that teaching
alone does not support his family. His day culminates in a surprise
birthday party arranged by Skyler during which he appears uncomfort-
able and out of place. Walt’s detachment from the social gathering is
particularly illustrated when his brother-in-law, DEA agent Hank, puts
himself in the spotlight, excluding Walt from his own party, and, by
extension, family. Walt is thus cast as someone who is not in charge,
who does not have authority, and who does not exert control.
Walt’s cancer diagnosis then functions as a narrative device and
metaphor for a life gone wrong—a common approach to the social
meaning of cancer. As Susan Sontag writes, “[p]hysicians found the
causes or predisposing factors of their patients’ cancers in grief, in worry
[…], in straitened economic circumstances and sudden reversals of
fortune, and in overwork […]” (52). It is, she continues, “regarded as a
disease to which the psychically defeated, the inexpressive, the re-
pressed—especially those who have repressed anger or sexual feel-
ings—are particularly prone” (100). While these assumptions about
cancer might lack actual scientific basis, this is how Walt’s cancer is
cast. It is the trigger that makes him take control of his life. His criminal
path, even though necessitated by inadequate health care, allows him to
exert authority, to reassert his masculinity, and it is shown (supported by
wide-angle shots of the open skies of the New Mexican desert) as a
liberating experience. This echoes the cancer narrative, mentioned ear-
lier, which Jackie Stacey describes: “The person with cancer is offered
the opportunity to achieve heroism through bravery, fortitude and
strength of will-power […]. Through the experience of the disease and
the fight against it, these people become heroes by discovering their
uniqueness and individuality. This is the true value of the trauma: the
Janina Rojek 283
chance to find oneself” (13). When Walt turns criminal, he starts dis-
playing stereotypical masculinity: for instance, he becomes more asser-
tive in his and Skyler’s sex life, and he physically attacks a group of
teenagers who make fun of Walt Jr. in order to defend his son’s honor,
and, by extension, his own. In the course of five seasons, he gradually
assumes the identity of his alter ego Heisenberg, who takes control, is
ruthless and calculating, and represents a somewhat twisted hyper-mas-
culinity run amok. In this sense, Walt does question his social role and
identity through illness, but in contrast to Tony and Kane, he does not
attempt to reassemble a supposedly once stable self, but uses illness as a
chance to reinvent himself and to gain control. Taking control in his
criminal life then gives him the illusion to be in control of everything,
not only his business and family, but his body as well. This is illustrated
perfectly when another patient at an oncology clinic advises him to “le[t]
go” as the course of his illness is not in his hands any more. To this, Walt
replies,
Never give up control. Live life on your own terms […]. I’ve been living
with cancer for the better part of a year. From the start, it’s a death sen-
tence. That’s what they keep telling me. Well, guess what? Every life
comes with a death sentence. So every few months, I come in here for
my regular scan, knowing full well that one of these times […] I’m
gonna hear some bad news. But until then, who’s in charge? Me. (“Her-
manos,” S04E08)
However, it turns out that Walt cannot keep control of his business and
family in the same way as he cannot control his body. Even though he
goes into remission early in the serial, he remains ill and has to undergo
regular check-ups, which emphasize that he did not win the final battle,
to employ the common metaphor, against his illness. Yet, if cancer is a
metaphor, it does not merely represent the outcome of his life and his
passivity before: as the serial progresses, cancer becomes the metaphor
for uncontrollable growth, corruption, decay. Walt’s business operation
keeps on growing, somewhat uncontrollably, increasingly spreading to
his personal life, so he tries to make necessary cuts to keep both his
professional and private lives healthy. However, he eventually has to
give up the struggle, as he fails not only to retain control over his busi-
ness and family life, but also to keep both apart. At first, cancer is the
expression of emotional and physical defeat, which Stacey describes as
“a monstrous physical manifestation of other problems” (12). It then

functions as the trigger for Walt to transform his life and represents his
shot at the hero narrative. Yet, he chooses the path of the villain instead,
which soon turns destructive as he also turns away from his former ide-
als and principles. Thus, even though he adopts the stance of a fighter
against his illness, he dies in the end: by turning into Heisenberg, Walt
has lost himself and thus his narrative cannot end triumphantly. In this
sense, cancer kills Walt by proxy.
In conclusion, it is clear that none of the serials discussed here offer
the heroic survivor story, for two reasons: first of all, Tony’s, Tom’s, and
Walt’s illnesses are chronic and/or terminal. Second, and more im-
portantly, the serials employ the illness narrative metaphorically, rather
than focusing on the lived reality of illness. Illness is not only an expres-
sion—both felt by the protagonists and visible to the viewer—of exis-
tential dread and loss of control, but simultaneously, if paradoxically, the
trigger of both loss of control and ensuing anxieties. Furthermore, illness
also expresses, or might even be equated with, social deviance:
“Badness becomes sickness” (Freund, McGuire, and Podhurst 133) or,
perhaps more fittingly, the relation between illness and deviance is cir-
cular, cause and effect not being clearly determinable: deviance becomes
illness becomes deviance. Susan Sontag has also examined the
correlation of deviance and illness:
Illness expands by means of two hypotheses. The first is that every form
of social deviation can be considered an illness […]. The second is that
every illness can be considered psychologically. Illness is interpreted as,
basically, a psychological event, and people are encouraged to believe
that they get sick because they (unconsciously) want to, and that they
can cure themselves by mobilization of will; that they can choose not to
die of the disease. These two hypotheses are complementary. As the first
seems to relieve guilt, the second reinstates it. (57)
As stated above, the three serials invert the notion of social deviance, for
the protagonists’ transgressions against morality and the law are not
what marks them as deviant in their professional social circles. Instead,
within these circles, illness represents social deviance: criminal activi-
ties, ruthlessness, and violence are presented as the norm of the Ma-
fia/politics/the drug business respectively and thus are encouraged; ill-
ness and its accompanying associations of weakness and loss of control,
Janina Rojek 285
however, cast the protagonists as outsiders of their more relevant profes-

sional social circles—in the sense that they bestow primary identifica-
tion. Tom Kane’s and Tony Soprano’s bodies—and connected with it,
their minds—fail and are thus beyond their control. They become out-
siders to their professional circles because their bodies are deviant in the
sense that they cannot exert the masculine authority and follow the con-
ventions prescribed by their professions due to their illnesses. In this
sense, their illnesses lead to a transgression of their social roles. How-
ever, the illness narratives themselves transgress the expected genre
conventions of political and Mafia drama, as stated before. For Breaking
Bad, the case of deviance as illness is reversed, as Walt’s body is physi-
cally deviant first, and, consequently he becomes socially deviant. In all
three serials, the protagonists attempt to be strong, to control their ill-
nesses with the sheer power of their wills, but fail. Depression, Lewy
Body Dementia, and cancer reflect their lives, their personalities, and
their societies. Tony, Tom, and Walt are denied heroism and triumph,
their battles are lost—or cannot be won in the first place—and thus they
do not fulfil the expected outcome of illness-turned-triumph narratives.
As I have suggested, the serials’ set-ups already mark the protago-
nists as deviant from traditional notions of morality and justice through
their criminality, and this is not necessarily what makes the serials them-
selves transgressive, since anti-hero protagonists who adhere to different
codes than those established by American mainstream society are a
staple feature of quality TV of the third generation. In the context of the
serials, Tony, Tom, and Walt transgress boundaries through their ill-
nesses. In this way they challenge their own and the viewer’s image of
the masculine, powerful, sovereign anti-hero, which is in turn what ren-
ders the serials transgressive television. Finally, all levels of meaning of
the illness narratives come together: their illnesses might be terminal or
not, they can be treated, checked, and fought, but in the end, there is no
cure for Tony’s, Tom’s, or Walt’s conditions and similarly, there is no
end to or resolution of transgressive serials, as boundaries and conven-
tions are established only to be transgressed again.
Works Cited
Bolen, Michael. “Why Breaking Bad Would Never Happen in Canada.”

Huffpost TV Canada. 24 Sep. 2013. Web. 12 Dec. 2014.
Boss: Die Komplette Erste Staffel. Created by Farhad Safinia. Starz, 2013. DVD.
Boss: Staffel 2. Created by Farhad Safinia. Starz, 2014. DVD.
Breaking Bad. Season 1. Created by Vince Gilligan. AMC, 2008. Web.
Breaking Bad. Season 4. Created by Vince Gilligan. AMC, 2011. Web.
Freund, Peter S., Meredith B. McGuire, and Linda S. Podhurst. Health, Illness,
and the Social Body: A Critical Sociology. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River:
Prentice Hall, 2003. Print.
Lupton, Deborah. Medicine as Culture. 2nd ed. London: Sage, 2003. Print.
Lustig, T.J., and James Peacock. Introduction. Diseases and Disorders in
Contemporary Fiction: The Syndrome Syndrome. Ed. T.J. Lustig and James
Peacock. New York: Routledge, 2013. 1-16. Print.
Ricci, Franco. The Sopranos: Born Under a Bad Sign. Toronto: U of Toronto P,
2014. Print.
Shilling, Chris. The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage, 1997. Print.
Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. New York:
Doubleday, 1990. Print.
Stacey, Jackie. Teratologies: A Cultural Study of Cancer. London: Routledge,
1997. Print.
Staines, Deborah. “Therapy Culture and TV: The Sopranos as a Depression
Narrative.” Depression and Narrative: Telling the Dark. Ed. Hilary Clark.
New York: SUNY P, 2008. 165-76. Print.
The Sopranos. Season 1. Created by David Chase. HBO, 1999. Web.
Turner, Bryan S. The Body and Society. 2nd ed. London: Sage, 1996. Print.
Waugh, Patricia. “The Naturalistic Turn, the Syndrome, and the Rise of the Neo-
Phenomenological Novel.” Diseases and Disorders in Contemporary
Fiction: The Syndrome Syndrome. Ed. T. J. Lustig and James Peacock. New
York: Routledge, 2013. 17-34. Print.
MATTHEW LEROY
Death Art: Representations of Violence in NBC’s

Hannibal
Introduction
For the world did not

change, this violence had
always existed and would
never be eradicated, men
would die under the boot
and fists and horror of
other men until the end of
time, and all human his-
tory was a history of vio-
lence.
—Richard Flanagan
He can assume your point

of view, or mine—and
maybe some other points
of view that scare and
sicken him. It’s an uncom-
fortable gift, Jack. Per-
ception’s a tool that’s
pointed on both ends.
—Thomas Harris,
Red Dragon
How far is too far? Does the border between the acceptable and forbid-
den exist to be broken? These are the questions inherent to the debate
over transgressive television. Journalists love to toss the two queries
288 Death Art
back and forth while avoiding the off-putting self-reflective sibling that
comes trailing along behind with its accompanying guilt and demands
for rationalization: why do I enjoy watching it?
Violence has a long history. It has not only been a major phenome-
non in modern Western society, but also in the realms of television. The
corresponding worry about the level of violence, about the way it is
represented, and about imitation and moral dissolution has accompanied
the medium since its very beginning. For example, in the “hypodermic
needle model,” watching crime was thought to be akin to a shot of nar-
cotics, breaking the audience’s inhibitions and making them susceptible
to committing crimes themselves (Csaszi, “Framework” 3). As the qual-
ity of television reaches unprecedented heights—the so-called “golden
age of television” that was instigated by HBO’s investment in quality,
technology, creativity, and its ability to attract the entertainment indus-
try’s top talent (Edgerton 12-13)—so has the attention to violence and its
aesthetic qualities grown. Television has replaced movies at the apex of
the entertainment world, and stars are beginning to see TV not only as a
way to promote their careers in the film industry, but as a more re-
warding market niche altogether. For example, Matthew Mc–
Conaughey’s portrayal of Rustin “Rust” Cohle in the popular series True
Detective helped him win an Academy Award for Best Actor in 2014.
However, along with the praise has come a censoring spotlight. Televi-
sion is drawing the same attention and criticism to its, at times elaborate,
scenes of violence as movies such as The Godfather, Terminator, and
Pulp Fiction once did.
Since the 1990s, cable television has taken over the U.S. television
landscape. This phenomenon has been largely a result of HBO investing
vast amounts of money in program development, limiting the number of
episodes per season in each series and focusing on high-quality televi-
sion (Edgerton 5-8). It is not only the medium itself that has changed,
but its content as well. Long gone are the days of cellular episodes that
existed isolated from each other—a major character would go through
an almost existential crisis in one episode only to be acting as if it never
happened in the following one—or containing direct easy-to-understand
messages. Jason Mittell writes in Narrative Complexity in Contempo-
rary American Television that technological transformations and an
increased focus on viewer control have led to greater narrative com-
plexity, e.g. a rejection of the need for plot closure, a shift towards serial
Matthew Leroy 289
rather than episodic narration and a move away from generic plots to
innovative narrative devices and expanded story arcs (31-33). Today,
television offers complicated plot lines and messages that are at times
difficult to decipher or, as is common in the post-modern time of the
anti-hero, devoid of any moral message or lesson at all. As a result,
transgressive television is more prominent than ever before.
In combination with the recent influx of money and an increased fo-
cus on creativity there has been a development in terms of the construc-
tion of elaborate death scenes that verge on works of art, what I call
death art.1 This article will analyze the representation of violence in the
television series Hannibal, looking at the trend of greater efficiency in
television series heroes when it comes to killing (Gerbner 75), as well as
the idea of violence in television as art, both as an artistic product and as
an artistic performance that is represented in the innovative and exqui-
sitely shot murder scenes that punctuate each episode.
Hannibal—The Cable Cannibal
Television today flails in an ocean of blood. After the stretched pas-

trami-flecked tracksuits of The Sopranos, the microscopic nerd fantasies
of CSI and the monotonously voiced embodiment of soullessness in
Dexter, another tale of murder enters the fray. Hannibal is here, revived,
re-marketed, and re-cast for NBC: it is something that only our post-
modern world could create—not just a work of fiction, but a re-creating
of a previously created fiction.
In Jean Baudrillard’s opinion, we live in an environment of confus-
ing symbols, re-imaginings, and simulations. Baudrillard defines simu-
lation in his book Simulacra and Simulation as “the generation by mod-
els of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer
precedes the map, nor does it survive it” (1). It is a world where the
distinctions between art and reality have disappeared, with television at
1
Defining art is a near impossible task. Morris Weitz writes of the lack of
consensus in academia where each theory claims “that it is the true theory be-
cause it has formulated correctly into a real definition the nature of art; and
that the others are false because they have left out some necessary or suffi-
cient property” (27). This article will focus on the aesthetic side of death pre-
sented as art.
290 Death Art
the heart of this world of simulations. Importantly, he highlights the

difference between feigning and simulation: “simulating is not pretend-
ing […] pretending, or dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality
intact: the difference is always clear, it is simply masked, whereas sim-
ulation threatens the difference between ‘true’ and the ‘false,’ the ‘real’
and the ‘imaginary’” (3). The widespread obsessiveness of fans of tele-
vision series and the subsequent fears of copy-catting that lead orga-
nizations to demand the censorship of violent television shows is a direct
symptom of the way simulation in transgressive television threatens the
difference between ‘true’ and ‘false.’ The fear is not just of a gruesome
image, but of the closeness between a television death and a real one.
This death art, depicting killing as an art form in a world of hyperreality,
is one of the major elements of transgressive television.
An example of the uneasy closeness between the real and imaginary
can be seen in the decision to pull episode four before airing in the
United States. In an interview, Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller spoke
about how the recent Sandy Hook massacre, where a child fatally shot
twenty other children, was behind the decision, stating that what he and
his team “were being sensitive to was children killing other children
with guns—as opposed to graphic content, or horror content” (Arthur).
Hannibal finds itself in the middle of a television series boom, a high
wave of success and creativity that, as many argue, began with HBO and
The Sopranos. It is also part of a trend of re-booting television shows
and movies. Superman, Batman, Star Trek, Hawaii Five-O, and Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles have all been subject to this phenomenon. This
trend of re-booting, what William Proctor calls the attempt to resusci-
tate, recycle, and regenerate old franchises by returning to a recogniz-
able product range (1), supports Baudrillard’s notion of a world of cop-
ies of copies with no original. There are more re-boots than ever, and the
distinction between copies and originals is blurred. As viewers, we are
never quite sure if we should discard memories of the original series’
plot lines or if we should assume that the continuity of plot remains
unbroken. It is important, however, that we do not completely forget the
previous series. This memory is the entire reason why studios produce
re-boots:
Studios have these little gems in their library. They may have fallen out
of favour or disappeared to some extent but they’re still the names the
public recognize. So they dust them off and try again. Quite simply
Matthew Leroy 291
they’re easier to sell because they have name recognition. It’s like rein-
vigorating the brand. (Lussier qtd. in Russell 89)
Hannibal is a form of reboot and prequel in that it is another in the line

of Hannibal Lecter stories, and yet it takes place before the cannibalistic
psychiatrist was put behind bars. Set in what is presumably the present,
the show details FBI profiler Will Graham’s attempts to solve murders
through his mysterious ability to re-experience crimes from the killer’s
point of view. This, at times confusing and dangerous, ability is
“guided” by the ingenious, deadly, and always immaculately dressed
Hannibal “the cannibal” Lecter.
Despite its filmic quality and legions of fans, the series has struggled
in the ever-combative television rating duels. Halfway through the sec-
ond season the signs were negative with “its April 28 episode pulling in
just 2.45m, compared to 3.35m for its season two opener (and 4.31m for
its season one premiere)” (Donahue).
The show itself is extremely bloody, as can be expected when a
show has a cannibal as one of its major characters. Indeed, after numer-
ous complaints certain stations have decided to ban the show due to its
level of violence. KSL-TV (an NBC affiliate) posted the following on its
Facebook page:
PROGRAMMING NOTE: After viewing the past few episodes, as well

as receiving numerous complaints from viewers, KSL-TV will cancel
the airing of the NBC show “Hannibal” on Thursday evenings. This de-
cision was made due to the extensive graphic nature of this show. The
time slot will be replaced with a special edition of KSL 5 News at 9
p.m. NBC remains a valued partner to KSL-TV. KSL is confident that
with the proliferation of digital media, those who wish to view the
program can easily do so. (Qtd. in Marechal)
The show is certainly unsettling. It forces the viewer into following one
of television’s most interesting killers and presents a world where “good
guys” are sparse. Hannibal Lecter as a psychiatrist—and therefore seen
by society as one devoted to healing—is himself troubling. He does not
292 Death Art
kill for vengeance, at least not outside of the literary version.2 Further-
more, he does not kill for material gain, but instead seems to be some
force of Faustian-like evil, a modern Satan causing chaos wherever he
treads. The show also prompts the examination of mental illness and the
depths of human depravity. Take for example the conversation between
Lecter and Will Graham after Graham has killed a serial killer named
Hobbs in episode two of the first season. It is an examination of the right
to kill and the awkward pleasure that can be taken in the killing itself:
HANNIBAL LECTER: It’s not Hobbs’s ghost that’s haunting

you, is it? It’s the inevitability of there
being a man so bad that killing him felt
good.
WILL GRAHAM: Killing Hobbs felt just.
HANNIBAL LECTER: Which is why you’re here, to prove that
sprig of zest you feel is from saving Abi-
gail, not killing her dad.
WILL GRAHAM: I didn’t feel a ‘sprig of zest’ when I shot
Eldon Stammets.
HANNIBAL LECTER: You didn’t kill Eldon Stammets.
WILL GRAHAM: I thought about... I’m still not entirely
sure that wasn’t my intention, pulling the
trigger. (“Amuse-Bouche,” S01E02)
Some reviewers have actually criticized the decision to produce another

Lecter story for television rather than the big screen, stating that
“[w]atching in your own home rather than in a dark theater with
strangers reinforces your sense of safety, and returning to the same show
every week reinforces your sense of familiarity. Safety + familiarity = a
terrible recipe for fear” (M. Harris). Hannibal, however, is able to pivot
and use this sense of security to enhance the feeling of terror as we are
taken into the world of a killer.
Hannibal takes much pleasure in playing with the assumptions of the
viewer, especially those who have read the novels by Thomas Harris and
seen the films that starred Anthony Hopkins as Lecter. In NBC’s Hanni-
bal, in stark difference to previous versions, Special Agent-in-Charge
2
Here we dip once more into the world of simulacra and have to forget the
previous incarnations of the Hannibal Lecter character while still recognizing
him at the same time.
Matthew Leroy 293
Jack Crawford is black and Dr. Bloom is a woman, as is the tabloid

journalist Freddie Lounds.3 Familiar scenes of psychiatric restraints,
basement dungeons, and the infamous Lecter mask pop up throughout
the series in new situations and upon characters that were in reverse
positions in the novels and films: a case in point would be the image of
Lecter smiling at Will Graham who sits imprisoned in Dr. Chilton’s
Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane—the iconic 1991
film had Lecter behind bars. This role reversal together with Will Gra-
ham’s ever deepening mental problems and the powerfully violent im-
ages that are splattered across the screen, provide a sense of uncertainty
for the audience, a sense that nothing is safe. The series contains con-
trasting levels in terms of light, sound and perceptions, sometimes as an
aid so that it is clear that we are reliving a murder through Graham’s
eyes. At certain points a pendulum-like line of light sweeps across the
screen, and we experience the killing in reverse with Will Graham tak-
ing the place of the murderer. At other times there are screeching noises
and excessive violence to show that we are experiencing real-time ma-
cabre reality and sometimes these effects are played with, mixed up to
paint a dark world of fear and madness.
The show has many characters performing violent acts, whether that
be Hannibal Lecter creating elaborate plans of deceit to methodically
kill and at times consume (or even take pleasure in watching others un-
knowingly consume) his victims, or the Special Agent-In-Charge and
head of Behavioral Sciences at the FBI, Jack Crawford, fighting with
Lecter in the psychiatrist’s kitchen. Then there is criminal profiler Will
Graham, who re-enacts murders in order to discover how they were
committed and by whom. The reason why the latter of all these acts of
violence—the different murders that illustrate each episode—are most
often seen in a worse light has something to do with how certain char-
acters are able to kill successfully, more elaborately, and without getting
caught.
3
In both the novels and films Freddie Lounds has always been a man, while
Jack Crawford has been portrayed by a white actor in all previous movies.
294 Death Art
Efficiency—Why We Cheer for Hannibal
Hannibal Lecter as played by Mads Mikkelsen spreads darkness wher-

ever he goes. And although Hannibal is filled with aestheticized vio-
lence, it is devoid of rape or sexual violence (Doyle). The blood and
gore that do occur often have a purpose, painting a picture of a tor-
mented Will Graham who must live with images and re-enactments of
death (Brazeale). Both Graham and Lecter are highly intelligent and
methodical. Their ability to form elaborate plots, discover clues not
found by other detectives, and successfully kill their opponents without
being caught makes them efficient characters.
In his book Reading Television, John Fiske writes how efficiency,
i.e., being able to successfully kill, is crucial when dealing with the issue
of heroes and villains. According to a report made by Gerbner and his
colleagues at the Annenburg School of Communications in 1970, vio-
lence efficiency seems to have a large influence upon the audience’s
distinction between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ guy. As a result of living in
a competitive society that values efficiency in many aspects of life, “the
loser is […] to some degree socially deviant and thus appropriately
represented, in terms of the social value structure, as a criminal,” Fiske
writes (29).
A look at Hannibal seems to confirm this argument as Dr. Lecter
kills many people and his violence is often presented in an intricately
planned way. If we consider his murders from an aesthetic point of view
as well as considering the amount of work involved, Lecter’s murders
are far superior to those committed by the different killers that appear in
each episode. Indeed, Lecter often seeks to punish these killers for their
dilettantism. This way the audience is able to continually watch, and at
times root for, a main character who happens to be a killer. It is not
necessarily that the audience enjoys death in this art, but, instead, that it
enjoys death being carried out well.
A more traditional example of the efficient hero is that of the cop
who coolly shoots down his adversary thanks to his training and steady
hand. The audience’s admiration for the skill and intelligence of a char-
acter cannot only be applied to Hannibal Lecter but also to Jack Craw-
ford. Laurence Fishburne, as Crawford, plays the role of talented cop to
the letter in Hannibal.
Matthew Leroy 295
The type of violence committed by Lecter also influences the audience’s

feelings towards him. Fiske notes that drugs, theft, and sex offenses
were the least approved crimes in television (29), something that Dr.
Lecter takes no part in. The crimes committed by Lecter are works of
art, with bodies depicted in innovative and thought-provoking manners.
Also, the killer-to-corpse ratio is a standout factor in deter–mining
efficiency (Fiske 31-32), which Lecter fulfills adequately.
Death Art
Movies and television that are violent in nature are often analyzed in
terms of their moral message or sociological discourse. The fundamental
rule of a crime story for example is that of an act of violence being re-
solved through the use of legitimate violence (Csaszi, “Television Vio-
lence”), e.g., a cop shooting a robber or a sheriff shooting an outlaw.
What is often ignored is the aesthetic factor that is central when viewers
watch and enjoy. Every year, thousands of tourists file into the Prado
Museum in Madrid to view “Saturno devorando a su hijo” by Francisco
José de Goya y Lucientes. The painting depicts a wild Titan feasting on
the body of a naked child (Russo). The meaning of the painting has long
been debated, but what is obvious is that swarms of people gather to see
this image of a child being torn to pieces in the Titan’s brutal clutches,
to see this death art.
The idea of watching a television show based on murder and dead
bodies is a peculiar one. Why does the viewer not switch off? The pos-
sible answer is the fine balance between horror and titillation when it
comes to the grotesque and unclean—what the French philosopher,
feminist, and writer Julia Kristeva calls the abject. In Powers of Horror:
An Essay on Abjection Kristeva writes of how phenomena that both
threaten and create the self’s borders (here the parent’s desire for a child
to drink milk that the child does not want) are jettisoned:
Food loathing is perhaps the most elementary and most archaic form of
abjection. When the eyes see or the lips touch that skin on the surface of
milk—harmless, thin as a sheet of cigarette paper, pitiful as a nail par-
ing—I experience a gagging sensation and, still farther down, spasms in
the stomach, the belly; and all the organs shrivel up the body, provoke
tears and bile, increase heartbeat, cause forehead and hands to perspire.
296 Death Art
Along with sight-clouding dizziness, nausea makes me balk at that milk

cream, separates me from the mother and father who proffer it. “I” want
none of that element, sign of their desire; “I” do not want to listen, “I”
do not assimilate it, “I” expel it. But since the food is not an “other” for
“me,” who am only in their desire, I expel myself, I spit myself out, I ab-
ject myself within the same motion through which “I” claim to establish
myself. That detail, perhaps an insignificant one, but one that they ferret
out, emphasize, evaluate, that trifle turns me inside out, guts sprawling;
it is thus that they see that “I” am in the process of becoming an other at
the expense of my own death. During that course in which “I” become, I
give birth to myself amid the violence of sobs, of vomit (3).
Kristeva extends the abject to filth and dead bodies. There is a sense of
horror and fascination at the sight of a cadaver, a sight that must be
thrust aside in order to live because it is “not the lack of cleanliness or
health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order”
(Kristeva 13). When we view murder in Hannibal we recoil at the sight
of the dead body and, at the same time, create our own self by distancing
ourselves from the corpse. The horror of what we will become struggles
with our desire for control over our own body, mortality, and identity.
The use of violence in television shows draws viewers deep into the
minds of the murderers, raising uncomfortable feelings of admiration for
the killer (Smith). The constant question is whether to like the killer for
his—and it most often is a his and not a her—sense of taste and plan-
ning, or to reel away in horror at the bloody crimes committed. Shortly
after this consideration comes the even more unsettling self-examina-
tion: is it his sense of style that I admire or something much darker?
Such a complex mix of emotions involved in watching television shows
about the personalities behind violence creates a strangely compelling
desire to reconsider the killings. Joel Black writes in The Aesthetics of
Murder that “if murder can be experienced aesthetically, the murderer
can in turn be regarded as a kind of artist—a performance artist or anti-
artist whose specialty is not creation but destruction” (14).
The idea of murder as art in Hannibal is constant, revealed in the
show’s attention to setting, to dreams that evoke fantastical images of
death, to erupting environments and psychosis, and to the varied meth-
ods and results of murder in each episode. Hannibal’s audience, includ-
ing the fiercely loyal “Fannibals” who constantly fight to keep the tele-
vision show on-air, are presented with a different murder scene each
Matthew Leroy 297
week. These deaths are arranged in the most innovative and aestheti-
cized manner. From a corpse sprouting mushrooms to a looming tower
of dismembered limbs against a gray ocean backdrop, from victims with
their lungs ripped out and elevated to resemble angels’ wings to bodies
impaled upon deer antlers—these arrangements have both thought and
creativity involved. This attention to detail and artistic presentation of
death in Hannibal seems to be a result of the plethora of TV corpses in
previous shows. It appears that the image of a corpse in a morgue or CSI
lab has become so routine that more outrageous representations of death
are demanded (Ostrow).
Hannibal is a work of aesthetic design: every week Dr. Lecter is
immaculately dressed and serves a Michelin-star worthy meal to equally
finely dressed diners in his dark home. The aesthetic values of the show
carry across to the victims, whose body parts often end up on the doc-
tor’s plate. This attention to the visceral properties of the victims is art-
like in its representation. The combination of violence and beauty
shocks and intrigues the audience at the same time—not only is there the
presence of fear, but the show also demands a visceral and intellectual
response to the ideas of death and morality (Posocco). Hannibal is not a
cheap 1980s’ horror movie nor a slasher fest full of mindless semi-vir-
ginal teenagers escaping some masked psychopath.
Steven Jay Schneider goes even further by suggesting that it is not
simply the presentation of bodies that makes violence artistic:
What makes the acts of violence artistic in nature is not so much the cre-
ative use or display of the victims’ bodies as the sheer ingenuity and
showmanship exhibited by the murderers in committing their crimes—
an ingenuity and showmanship which elicits a complex and at least par-
tially aesthetic response from viewers.
A common theme in movies and television series has been the tendency
to showcase murder as either an artistic product, where the scene and
remains of the crime are most important, or as an artistic performance
with the killer committing the violence. In Hannibal’s representation of
violence, however, there is the presence of both artistic product and
artistic performance. The murder scenes in Hannibal could be consid-
ered a modern version of what the French call nature morte, or still life
(or perhaps more fittingly still death). The form of art presented in Han-
nibal is due to Will Graham’s ability to relive the murders, his artistic
298 Death Art
performance. This re-living transfers the still bodies and dried blood
splatters into a tableau vivant or living picture. The art turns alive and
the audience is directly confronted not just with the sorrow of the after-
math of death, but also with the struggle for life and the adrenaline-
surging, almost erotic, moment of attack. Will Graham’s struggles pro-
voke empathy and sympathy from the audience as he must endure the
frightening killings and the visuals themselves heighten the audience’s
shock and emotional response to the murders (Posocco). It is the combi-
nation of the end product of murder and a glimpse at how the murder
has been carried out that differentiates Hannibal from the safety of
regular horror movies or older versions of the Lecter story.
Hannibal contains not only death as art, but also death as a subject of
art criticism. The relationship between the killer and the cop or profiler
is akin to that between the artist and the viewer. “The killers paint in
blood and entrails, or distort corpses into sculpture or mixed-media
works” (Seitz), and the police pore over these killings in the search for
clues, but, as they announce the methods used to the other police and the
viewer at home, they are also in a way critiquing the work of the killer.
This criticism is doubly dangerous because of the presence of Dr. Lecter
at the crime scenes. Lecter, as a psychiatrist assisting the FBI by pro-
viding valuable psychological and criminological insight into the mur-
ders, is also, in a beautiful example of dramatic irony, actively judging
and later murdering the killer, and then re-creating the original slaughter
in his own superior style. If we consider the killer to be an artist, as Seitz
suggests, then Lecter can be thought of as not only an artist, but also as
an art critic.
Conclusion
The representation of violence in Hannibal corresponds with theories of

audience appreciation for efficiency in violence, while appealing to the
aesthetic pleasure in television killing as an art form. The main charac-
ter, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, is a killer with incredible intelligence, who
punishes the different killers in each episode for their incompetence and
then often recreates or competes with their murders through his own
carefully constructed crimes. In this he functions much like an art critic,
observing, together with Will Graham, the product of the artist/mur-
Matthew Leroy 299
derer, commenting on it, and then recreating it as an artist/murderer

himself, at times even dragging Graham into the killing.
This blurring of lines between the good and bad, the hero and villain,
is at the core of transgressive television at the moment. It is the unclear
motivations behind the actions of our favorite characters that potentially
make the television shows an almost addictive form of guilty pleasure.
With the thrusting-forward of villains to center stage, with the shows
themselves being named after the ‘bad guy,’ it is becoming acceptable to
announce to your office co-workers that you enjoy watching a genius
serial killer hunt down and slaughter people on a Thursday night. The
days of secretly pretending to be Darth Vader and not Luke Skywalker
while swinging your imaginary lightsaber in an Errol Flynn-like duel
with your best buddy are over. It is almost socially acceptable to say you
are cheering for Dr. Lecter. Almost.
The way Hannibal presents the crime scene enables the viewer to
contemplate each episode’s murder as an artistic product. There is, for a
moment, a sense of safety in the static characteristics of the death. This
sense of distance and safety is then turned on its head as the artistic
product is thrown into the dark morass of artistic performance, as the
nature morte becomes tableau vivant. The music slows, the screen dark-
ens, a pendulum-like wiper swishes across the screen. Actions reverse,
blood splatters up from the floor and enters the body, the knife seals the
wound and the killer steps back from the victim. Screams deafen. We are
in the world of Will Graham, looking through the eyes of the killer. We
are witness to the murderer as an artist at work. We walk the tightrope of
horror and joy. We squirm with excitement and shudder in fear. We keep
watching.
300 Death Art
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Csaszi, Lajos. “Television Violence and Popular Culture: The Crime Story as
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—. “Towards a Cultural Framework of Audience Response and Television
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Matthew Leroy 301
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FELIX BRINKER
NBC’s Hannibal and the Politics of Audience

Engagement
NBC’s Hannibal exhibits many of the features commonly associated

with “quality TV” programming:1 high production values, a reliance on
complex ongoing storylines, an overwhelmingly positive reception by
television critics, and—last, but not least—a tendency to score poorly in
the Nielsen ratings. Since its premiere in 2013, Hannibal has garnered
consistently low viewership numbers, and even earned the dubious
honor of being “the lowest-rated [network] drama to get renewed” for
the 2014 television season (Hibberd).2 In addition to its rating-related
troubles, the show’s graphic depictions of violence and its treatment of
the theme of cannibalism sparked some controversy and resulted in the
removal of the series from one of NBC’s affiliate stations.3 Despite this
1
Compare, for example, Robert J. Thompson’s 1996 definition, which
includes “quality pedigree,” serial “memory,” “controversial” subject matter,
“awards and critical acclaim,” as well as the “struggle” against the
commercial needs of television programming as features of “quality TV” (13-
15).
2
The show’s ratings averaged at 2.9 million viewers per episode during the
first season (out of a total of approximately 115.6 million television house-
holds in the U.S.) (“Hannibal”). During the second season, the ratings con-
tinued to drop to an average of 2.54 million viewers, a poor performance
compared to that of a hit show like CBS’s The Good Wife (averaging 9.41
million viewers during its 2012-2013 season) or NBC’s Law and Order: SVU
(which averaged 6.68 million during the same period) (“The Good Wife,”
“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”)
3
KSL-TV in Salt Lake City, Utah, dropped the show due to its controversial
subject matter (see Pierce). The incident followed earlier controversies, like
the producers’ decision not to air “Œuf,” the show’s fourth episode, whose
theme of murderous children was deemed unsuitable for broadcast (see Bi-
304 Hannibal and the Politics of Audience Engagement
poor performance, Hannibal has sustained a run of two seasons and

returned for a third in June 2015—a surprising development within the
framework of American network television, whose programs have tradi-
tionally aimed to maximize the size of their audiences in order to attain
sufficient advertising revenues. A key reason for Hannibal’s unexpected
survival can be attributed to the changed reality of viewers’ media con-
sumption habits in the digital era and the migration of televisual content
to a number of different media platforms, which have rendered Nielsen’s
measurement of live viewership increasingly impractical.4 Thanks to
digital time-shifting and recording devices, the media libraries of com-
mercial video-on-demand providers, and countless illegal opportunities
to watch television content online, contemporary TV dramas now ad-
dress viewers who “increasingly select what, when, and where to view
from abundant options” and who, accordingly, might forego the live
broadcast of new episodes in favor of other means of access (Lotz 15).5
NBC’s decision to renew the series therefore indicates an adjustment of
the medium’s metrics for commercial success and a shift in its business
model. While the size of the live audience once was television’s primary
measure of profitability, a show like Hannibal today operates by default
across a range of different media outlets, as its episodes are released on
Apple’s iTunes, NBC’s own ad-based streaming service, and other
video-on-demand services shortly after (or even concurrently with) their
broadcast, and premiere as home video releases on DVD and Blu-ray
bel). Hannibal is furthermore targeted by censorship advocacy groups like

the American Decency Association or the Parent’s Television Council, whose
lobbying efforts entail attempts to have advertisers pull their support for the
program (“About the PTC”; Gildemeister; van Houten).
4
For a general discussion of the impact of digitization on the aesthetics of
popular serial formats see Denson and Jahn-Sudmann 3-5; for a discussion of
the decline of the Nielsen ratings model see Ziegenhagen 13-20.
5
During Hannibal’s initial airing on NBC live viewership numbers for all of
American television were declining steadily: according to a December 2014
Nielsen report, the amount of live television watched daily by the average
American adult was down to four hours and thirty-two minutes during that
year, twelve minutes less than in 2013 (Pallotta). In addition, the rise of cable
television and the more recent appearance of high-profile programming by
online giants like Amazon or Netflix have reduced “the size of the audience
for any single program” (Mittell, “Complexity” 31).
Felix Brinker 305
shortly after the end of each season.6 Since the returns of these ancillary
markets contribute to the program’s overall economic performance, the
broadcast of new episodes takes on an additional function besides gen-
erating advertising revenues: each new installment of Hannibal—and the
controversies, critical responses, fan reactions, mentions, and condem-
nations it occasions within a wider online public—now also fulfills a
promotional purpose for the program itself and potentially increases the
cultural visibility of the series as a whole.7 Hannibal’s live broadcast, in
other words, can be profitable despite poor ratings, as long as it gener-
ates sufficient media buzz to raise its chances of success on other plat-
forms and markets. The show’s self-fashioning as a controversial, so-
phisticated piece of quality television can therefore be understood as a
response to the competitive environment of the digital era and its global
online publics and serves to generate public attention for the program. In
this context, Hannibal’s tendency to transgress representational norms
and conventions for the display of violence makes good business sense,
at least as long as it sparks controversy and allows the program to dis-
tinguish itself from less edgy competitors.8
In this article, I would like to take Hannibal’s status as a ratings-
challenged, controversial quality TV show as a starting point to discuss
some aspects of the show’s aesthetics and their role for its ongoing effort
to maintain its footing within the digital-era television landscape. In
particular, I am interested in the formal means and aesthetic strategies by
6
In addition, Hannibal’s seasons have moved quickly to international markets
after their initial U.S. broadcast. The distribution and marketing practices of
the television industry in this respect mirror those of contemporary Holly-
wood blockbuster cinema, which today also gains the majority of its profits
from the returns of ancillary and foreign markets (compare Schatz 35-39) and
which has similarly reduced the delay between theatrical and home video re-
leases in recent years.
7
Accordingly, scholarship itself might contribute to the public profile of a
series. For a discussion of scholarship on The Wire along these lines, see
Kelleter, Serial.
8
According to Ritzer, aesthetic transgressions (like the liberal use of profane
language and graphic depictions of sex and violence), along with the treat-
ment of taboo subject matters, are key elements by which ‘quality TV’ shows
distinguish themselves from other shows and other types of programming
(54-90).
which Hannibal encourages its viewers to dedicate their time and

attention to the program, the ways in which the show inspires the con-
sumption of related media content, as well as in how it mobilizes a small
group of hardcore fans—the so-called “Fannibals”—to participate in the
creation of the media buzz around the show. To explore these matters, I
examine some aspects of the show’s seriality and their relationship to
what I call its politics of engagement, i.e., the ways in which the series
attempts to pre-structure and steer the reception practices of its viewers
in order to bring them in line with the commercial imperatives that in-
form its production. Put differently, the politics of engagement refer to
the formal and medial strategies TV shows employ to exert control over
the behavior of viewers in order to encourage what one might call—in
loose analogy to the notion of “preferred reading” (Fiske 16)—preferred
reception practices, or preferred “regimes of watching” television (Fiske
73).9 In the case of Hannibal, I argue, these politics operate on various
levels of the program, and serve to delineate three major vectors or tra-
9
My usage of ‘engagement’ or ‘audience engagement’ parallels Ziegenhagen’s
and Askwith’s definitions of the term, who use it as a shorthand for a “range
of possible investments (financial, emotional, psychological, social, intellec-
tual, etc.) that a viewer can make in a media object” (Askwith qtd. in Ziegen-
hagen 73). Engagement in this sense encompasses the “consumption of re-
lated content and products, [...] the participation in related activities and in-
teractions,” “the viewer’s identification with certain aspects of the media ob-
ject,” as well as “her motivation or desire for the aforementioned aspects”
(Ziegenhagen 73 [translation mine]). For my purposes engagement can be
understood as the time and attention viewers dedicate to the consumption of
television series and related media content, as well as to the social and com-
municative practices occasioned by the reception of TV shows. Politics of
engagement, in turn, refers to the strategies by which television series seek to
increase viewers’ engagement to secure their own profitability. To paraphrase
Marshall McLuhan, I am interested in the politics of the medium (and of the
form) rather than in the politics of the message here (McLuhan 7-23). Paying
attention to the politics of engagement in the way I define them opens up a
perspective on the political significance of television series’ medial practice,
i.e., casts light on a politics that exists in relative independence of a pro-
gram’s treatment of political subject matters or its ideological preoccupations
and connotations. For a similar take on superhero movies, see Brinker, “Po-
litical Economy”; for a discussion of Fringe and Homeland along the same
lines, see Brinker, “Formal Politics.”
Felix Brinker 307
jectories for viewers’ engagement with the series. On the level of serial
narration, Hannibal, like other complex dramas, articulates demands for
attentive and regular viewing by balancing ongoing storylines with epi-
sodically contained plots, as well as by frequently shifting gears between
different layers of levels of diegetic reality. While many contemporary
prime-time dramas employ a similar approach, these elements of com-
plex serial storytelling in Hannibal operate alongside a serialization of
affectively potent images of gruesome violence, which address viewers
on a corporeal rather than a cognitive level and thereby endow the show
with a peculiar, morbid appeal. These graphic depictions of violence—
which are present in every episode—are arguably Hannibal’s most
transgressive aspect as they push the boundaries of what is acceptable
within the traditionally conservative medium of American network tele-
vision. While these sequences add little to Hannibal’s narrative, I want
to suggest that their inclusion not only courts public controversy, but
also enables the show to offer the appeals, thrills, and sensations of the
body horror genre on a weekly basis. I furthermore discuss a third tra-
jectory of audience engagement that derives from the show’s character
as a latest installment in a loose series of texts featuring the Hannibal
Lecter character. By combining these three registers or modes of seriali-
zation, Hannibal promotes a regime of watching that demands the sus-
tained, attentive, and regular involvement of viewers as well as the con-
sumption of related content in other media. Hannibal, in other words,
tries to compensate for the small size of its live audience by maximizing
viewers’ engagement with the program. In doing so, the show partakes
in a broader medial transformation that redefines television experi-
ence—once understood as the predominantly passive and distracted
consumption of TV shows—as the constant and active engagement with
televisual content across several different media platforms. This newly
active character of television reception also expresses itself in the in-
creased importance of online fan practices, which I will discuss towards
the end of this article. In its ongoing struggle to stay on air, Hannibal
has repeatedly capitalized on the activities of fans and profited from the
cultural visibility that passionate supporters of the show generated
through their strong online presence. I argue that this harnessing of fans’
textual production is a good indicator for the political significance of the
regime of watching promoted by the show, and suggest that Hannibal’s
politics of engagement amount to a project aimed at capturing the time,
attention, and cultural productivity of viewers. In advancing the trans-

formation of television into what Ivan Askwith calls an “engagement
medium” (3), Hannibal thus not only transgresses representational
boundaries, but contributes to a blurring of the differences between labor
and leisure, between recreational media consumption and economically
productive activity.
Politics of Engagement and Narrative Complexity in NBC’s Hannibal
As commercial forms of popular culture, serial narratives of any me-

dium or period depend on the active involvement of their audiences in
order to ensure their own continuation; accordingly, they have to find
ways to engage their recipients repeatedly, regularly, and over longer
periods of time in order to remain profitable. In the case of network
television series, this project has traditionally been driven by the need to
attract a sizable chunk of a national audience on a weekly basis, and it
has entailed a specific use of the television medium, along with a spe-
cific textual form tailored to capture and bind the attention of viewers.
During the heyday of American television’s classic network era (i.e.,
between the 1960s and the early 1980s, when ABC, CBS, and NBC
alone competed against each other for dominance over what was then a
genuine mass medium), the dramatic format of choice was the episodic
series, which presented a new, self-contained adventure each week and
returned to a narrative equilibrium by the end of each installment (see
Lotz 9-12; Engell 121-24). In this early period, the larger politics of the
medium aimed at aligning the recreational practices and routines of a
mass audience with the static and inflexible broadcasting schedules of
its networks; programming therefore appealed to “the widest range of
viewers” possible, and its episodic form allowed for infrequent, irregu-
lar, and distracted viewing (Lotz 11). While programming during the
classical network period “was uniform, uncorrelated with channels, and
universally available,” the present abundance of TV channels and digital
platforms has resulted in a fragmentation of markets and target audi-
ences, and a corresponding radical diversification of the styles and sub-
ject matters that can be found in prime-time drama series. Despite this
heterogeneity of televisual offerings, however, many contemporary
drama series share a common approach to storytelling, which Jason
Felix Brinker 309
Mittell has labeled “narrative complexity.” Narratively complex shows,

Mittell suggests, have abandoned the classical norm of episodic story-
telling and are free to develop their characters and plots across install-
ments and seasons (“Complexity” 32-34). As a result, they demand an
intensified form of engagement on the part of their audiences and, as
Frank Kelleter notes, can no longer be adequately understood or enjoyed
if consumed in the mode of irregular, distracted, and piecemeal recep-
tion (“Serien”). Instead, their emphasis on long-running storylines and
their liberal use of surprising plot twists, pro- and analepses, and other
formal complications demand constant attention and an ongoing invest-
ment in the program (Kelleter, “Serien”). As reception has become in-
creasingly independent from the broadcasting schedules of networks and
stations, television drama’s formal politics, in other words, have shifted
to a project aimed at intensifying viewers’ engagement with specific
programs across different platforms.
In more than just one way, Hannibal constitutes a prime example for
this current state of contemporary prime-time dramas. Genre-wise, the
show belongs to the cycle of “serial killer series” that have followed in
the footsteps of Showtime’s success show Dexter (Showtime, 2006-
2013; compare Karin Hoepker’s contribution to this volume), and, as
such, Hannibal’s exploration of themes of serial killing and cannibalism,
along with its frequent depictions of gruesome violence, limits its ability
to appeal to a mass audience from the outset. Hannibal’s orientation
towards a small niche market also expresses itself in its overall visual
style, which, with its detailed mise-en-scène, muted color scheme, fre-
quent use of time-lapse sequences as establishing shots, and its tendency
to linger on details and frames in close-up, evokes the aesthetics of
arthouse cinema.10 In terms of narrative form, Hannibal follows the lead
of other complex dramas and relies on the long-term unfolding of a
central, ongoing conflict between its two protagonists—genius-cannibal-
turned-psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter and FBI profiler Will Graham—in
order to encourage its viewers to tune in on a regular basis. All of the
show’s episodes advance this core narrative, which develops by means
of dramatic plot twists, startling revelations, and the occasional flash-
back and flash-forward sequence; nonetheless, Hannibal does not es-
10
See Saraiya and VanDerWerff for a discussion of the show’s cinematography
and visual aesthetics.
chew episodic elements completely. Similar to other complex network

shows like The Good Wife, Person of Interest, or The Blacklist, Hanni-
bal combines the unfolding of its larger story-arc with the procedural
elements of a case-of-the-week formula that has Will and the members
of the FBI’s ‘Behavioral Science Unit’ attempt to catch a different serial
killer each week. A major appeal of these procedural elements lies in the
show’s ability to repeatedly reinvent and develop the same basic detec-
tive plot in an unexpected manner, each time presenting one or several
new villains with increasingly violent schemes: from the family man
turned serial killer, who skins his victims and prepares their flesh as
dinner for his unwitting loved ones in the pilot (“Apéritif”), for example,
to the psychopath who buries his victims alive as sustenance for a spe-
cial breed of mushrooms in the second episode (“Amuse-Bouche”), and
the roving band of lost children who, led by a sociopathic adult, go on a
killing spree against their families in episode four (“Œuf”). The relative
episodic closure of these killer-of-the-week plots renders Hannibal ac-
cessible to viewers who watch the show only infrequently; at the same
time, the show’s parallel development of its ongoing storyline—whose
events usually turn out to be entangled with the cases investigated by the
protagonists—promotes a more regular reception. Hannibal’s balancing
of episodic and serial plots can thus be understood as a mechanism to
turn casual viewers into loyal followers of the program. Accordingly,
events set up in earlier episodes might become relevant again later in the
series. “Œuf,” for example, features a seemingly inconspicuous scene
that has Dr. Lecter (who works as a consultant for the FBI and hides his
murderous activities from his employers) handling Will Graham’s fish-
ing gear. In the first season’s finale (“Savoureux,” S01E13), this scene
retroactively takes on a sinister significance, when it is revealed that
Lecter planted evidence incriminating Will—and in referencing this
scene again, the show invites its viewers to go back and review earlier
installments in search of similar clues about the rest of the narrative.
Hannibal here capitalizes on the fact that contemporary television drama
is no longer restricted to the ephemeral television broadcast as the pri-
mary channel of transmission and encourages a non-linear mode of
reception appropriate to the show’s existence in digital video formats.
Hannibal encourages a similar attention to detail on the level of in-
dividual episodes, too, as the show moves frequently between different
narrative levels that each correspond to a different plane of diegetic
Felix Brinker 311
reality. Each episode of the show features at least one scene in which
Will Graham reconstructs the horrible murders he investigates by imag-
ining himself in the place of the killer. In these moments, the program
takes the viewers into the heightened, subjective reality of Will’s imagi-
nation and visualizes his mental processes through a montage sequence
whose beginning is signaled by a shot of a light pendulum swinging in
front of a black background. Within this level of diegetic reality, the
normal, linear flow of time is disrupted and reversed as images move
backward and then forward again while Will, via voiceover, articulates
his understanding of the modus operandi of the killer he is chasing and
proceeds to act out the events of the respective crime in his mind. Occa-
sionally, Hannibal uses these scenes set within Will’s “headspace” (a
term used by Dr. Lecter) to momentarily disorient and confuse view-
ers—as, for example, in the opening scene of the show’s very first epi-
sode, which begins from the subjective vantage point of Will’s imagina-
tion rather than in the diegetic baseline reality (“Apéritif”).11 In mo-
ments like these, the show foregrounds the perspectival and potentially
biased nature of its narration—or, to put it differently, Hannibal urges its
viewers to question the images it presents. In addition to the heightened
reality of Will’s headspace, each episode furthermore features one or
more brief, surreal, dream-like sequences that take us into the uncon-
scious workings of Will’s mind. Whereas the scenes set in Will’s head-
space depict him in the process of committing murders and other acts of
heinous violence as a visualization of his investigative method (and
simultaneously establish or recapitulate the central facts of the case-of-
the-week plot for the audience’s benefit), the dream sequences present
short streams of disturbing imagery that seem to pick up on minor de-
tails of the show’s story world and inflate these to nightmarish propor-
tions. In this manner, the statue of a stag in Hannibal Lecter’s office
(which appears briefly in the pilot episode), becomes a recurring and
increasingly threatening presence in Will’s dreams. Throughout the run
of the show, the significance of these dream sequences—whose begin-
nings are marked by a change in the color palette—remains opaque and
ambiguous, and their appearance thus provides an additional layer of
meaning that fosters audience’s speculation about Will’s motivations and
11
In the episode “Coquilles” (S01E06), Lecter uses the term “headspace” to
refer to Will’s mind and his imaginative abilities.
mental health. While the movements between the show’s different

planes of reality are explicitly signaled in the first few episodes of the
show, the boundaries between these levels begin to collapse as Will’s
sanity declines over the course of the first season. Starting with “Co-
quilles,” the sixth episode, the show moves increasingly freely between
scenes set in its base-line reality, Will’s headspace, and his dreams and,
as a result, repeatedly produces moments of potential disorientation for
its viewers—or at least for those members of the audience who have not
been paying close attention.
Taken together, Hannibal’s narrative strategies articulate demands
for viewers’ sustained, regular, and alert reception of the program, and in
this respect, the show mirrors the cognitive challenges that much of
contemporary quality TV poses to its audience. As Frank Kelleter points
out:
[N]owadays series are told in a way that one can hardly follow them
adequately without repeated viewings or a heightened attention to long-
term developments and detail. In the battle over the rare resource of at-
tention, American quality television [...] articulates a medial dictate of
attentiveness: those who want to follow along need to pay attention;
mere passive, distracted viewing will lead to frustration. (“Serien”
[translation mine])12
The show’s take on complex serial narration, however, constitutes only

one dimension of its politics of engagement. As I argue in what follows,
Hannibal combines its appeals to the comprehension skills and atten-
tiveness of its viewers with another, more basic and visceral appeal that
comes to the fore in the show’s frequent and graphic depictions of vio-
lence.
12
“[V]ielmehr werden Serien nun so erzählt, dass man ihnen ohne mehrmaliges
Anschauen oder erhöhte Achtsamkeit für langfristige Entwicklungen und
Nuancen oft kaum noch angemessen folgen kann. Im Kampf um die knappe
Ressource Aufmerksamkeit formuliert das amerikanische Qualitätsfernsehen
gewissermaßen ein mediales Konzentrationsdiktat: Wer mitkommen möchte,
muss aufpassen; bloßes Berieseln-lassen wird zur Frustration führen.”
Felix Brinker 313
Serializing Body Horror
True to its form as a show based on characters from Thomas Harris’s

series of Hannibal Lecter-novels, Hannibal revels in frequent and
graphic displays of violence and offers weekly depictions of gruesome
bodily mutilation, cannibalism, and psychological cruelty that echo
similar moments in the film adaptations of Harris’s Silence of the Lambs
or Red Dragon. Many episodes, for example, feature scenes that present
Dr. Lecter chopping up, preparing, cooking, and eating the organs of
those he has killed as part of elaborate dinners; similarly, the show’s
killer-of-the-week plots repeatedly give rise to scenes in which the pro-
tagonists discover the disfigured and dismembered corpses of murder
victims, usually arranged into morbid tableaux that attest to the ritualis-
tic needs of their killers. In the ensuing investigation, the FBI’s forensics
experts then proceed to dissect what is left of the victims within a sterile
lab environment, frequently in the presence of Will Graham and his
superior Jack Crawford, who discuss their latest theories and hypotheses
about the crime while their colleagues proceed to cut into, open up, and
take apart dead bodies. Other occasions for the display of violence are
provided by the moments in which Will re-imagines the chain of (usu-
ally very bloody) events leading up to the latest murder, as well as in the
scenes that convey the eventual confrontations between the investigators
and their suspects, which frequently escalate into the use of deadly
force. However, while the show’s case-of-the-week formula and ongo-
ing storylines offer many justifications for the display of violence, Han-
nibal often delivers them with surprising restraint—at least when it
comes to the total screen time it dedicates to the unobscured, in-focus,
and prominently framed display of wounded, mutilated, or dismembered
human or animal bodies. In particular during its first season, the show
employs such gruesome vistas sparingly, as each episode features no
more than a maximum of five minutes of graphic depictions of dead
bodies or violence; and instead of allowing the camera to linger on such
horrifying sights, the show’s editors present more brutal images by
means of quick cuts and shots of short length. In most of Hannibal’s
episodes, the more horrifying sights and actions are thus depicted clearly
and graphically only for a few seconds at a time, and otherwise remain
half-concealed in shadow, out-of-focus, or just out of frame. In other
moments, disturbing occurrences and behavior are present by implica-
tion only—as in the many scenes that capture Dr. Lecter in the act of
serving dinner for his unsuspecting friends and co-workers, for example,
in which various meat-based haute cuisine meals of dubious provenance
are dished out, but it remains ambiguous if actual acts of cannibalism
occur. When crime scenes and dead bodies appear on screen for the first
time, however, camera and mise-en-scène typically stage the victims’
corpses in the center of the frame of a wide shot or medium-wide shot,
almost like carefully composed pieces of art—although here, too,
glimpses of the disfigured victims remain brief. Hannibal thus presents
violence and body horror in a stylized, methodical fashion that corre-
sponds to its overall arthouse aesthetic as much as to the needs of NBC’s
Broadcast Standards and Practices department.13
Hannibal’s more gruesome moments add a dimension of audience
engagement that counterbalances the narrative complexities discussed
above. As Shane Denson has suggested in his discussion of the possibil-
ity of an “affective turn” in television studies, the inclusion of such
graphic depictions of violence can be understood as offering a non-nar-
rative, affective appeal that addresses the spectator on a bodily rather
than a cognitive level (“Bodies”).14 One of the characteristics of films
13
Since American network television programming is broadcast via terrestrial
frequencies that are considered a public domain under U.S. law, the content
televised by the four big networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX) is subjected
to regulation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) whose
guidelines restrict the airing of “profane” and “indecent” programming
(Ritzer 54). Although graphic depictions of violence are not subjected to the
same strict FCC regulation as profane language or nudity, network television
typically refrains from broadcasting too violent programming in what Ritzer
terms a “self-censorship of TV content” (57 [translation mine]). On the part
of the individual networks, Broadcast Standards and Practices departments
(BS&P) are tasked with the implementation of FCC guidelines and the
management of other “moral, ethical, and legal implications” of aired
programming (“Broadcast Standards and Practices”). BS&P, in other words,
effectively enforces self-censorship in cases that might cause unwelcome
controversy. Hannibal’s stylized and methodical approach to graphic
violence is arguably informed by NBC’s attempt to produce controversial
content and still meet its own broadcasting standards.
14
Ritzer suggests as much (84-85), but does not discuss this mode of corporeal
or affective engagement offered by contemporary television series in greater
detail. Denson’s take on affect theory draws on Brian Massumi’s suggestions
Felix Brinker 315
with allegiances to “body genres” like horror, Denson notes with refer-
ence to Linda Williams, is their potential to affect the viewer viscerally
by featuring powerful, shock-like moments that evoke feelings of terror,
disgust, or morbid fascination (“Bodies”; see also Williams). In horror
films, for example, graphically violent scenes are typically carefully
timed to appear at specific moments (for example to maximize the effect
of jump scares).15 While such moments might be motivated by the plot,
their significance is not limited to the level of narrative comprehension
alone. In fact, as Denson notes, such scenes might be “narratively rather
pointless,” but powerful because they impact the viewer on a pre-cogni-
tive level of “auto-affective” corporeal response (“Bodies”). Similarly,
Hannibal’s depictions of cannibalism, murder, and bodily mutilation
offer shocks, thrills, shudders, and related bodily sensations for an audi-
ence that might or might not like what they see. In any case, the inten-
sity of the bodily responses evoked by the show might imprint its violent
images strongly on the viewers’ memory, especially if presented in a
stylized fashion.16 The employment of such scenes within a serial format
like Hannibal, however, provides the program with a specific appeal
unavailable to standalone films. By repeatedly including images of
graphic violence in the form of the recurring motifs of cannibalism and
serial killing—i.e., by developing and reiterating these depictions over
the course of its serial unfolding—the show institutionalizes the modu-
lation of affect as part of a recurring viewing experience, and thereby
instrumentalizes the corporeal appeal of its images as a means of audi-
ence engagement. In his study of quality TV’s transgression of norms
that “approaches to the [film] image are incomplete if they operate only on
the semantic or semiotic level” and that attention to the category of intensity
or affect needs to supplement cognitivist approaches to film reception (87).
For a brief introduction to the concept of affect, see Shouse.
15
Tom Shone notes how the timing and rhythm of particularly shocking
displays of violence is often the result of careful editing and methodical
revision in response to reactions by test audiences—as evidenced, for
example, in the edits done for the theatrical cut of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws
(23-26).
16
This affective power of Hannibal’s more gruesome scenes might explain the
regularity and frequency with which these, despite their relative brevity, are
mentioned and discussed in the many online reviews and criticisms of the
show (see, for example, Saraiya and VanDerWerff).
regarding the depiction of sex and violence, Ivo Ritzer suggests that the
tendency of cable television dramas like Spartacus (Starz, 2010-2013)
or Dexter to include graphic imagery serves to channel “emotional in-
tensities, whose experience creates a bond [between the viewer and] the
program” (86).17 Hannibal’s use of body horror arguably serves to offer
a similar “weekly affective ‘fix’” as a central attraction (Denson, “Bod-
ies”). As a result, Hannibal repeatedly produces powerful imagery that
might still linger in viewers’ minds long after the details of the show’s
labyrinthine storylines and many killer-of-the-week plots are forgotten.
Multiple Hannibals and the Lecter Franchise
Hannibal’s storytelling strategies and its graphic depictions of violence

are both important factors for viewer’s ongoing and sustained engage-
ment with the series, but the program also promotes the consumption of
other, related media texts. Taken in its entirety, the show can be under-
stood as the latest entry in a larger franchise that began with the release
of Thomas Harris’s 1981 novel Red Dragon, continued with Michael
Mann’s 1986 film adaptation Manhunter (starring William Petersen and
Brian Cox), Harris’s three subsequent novels, the three Lecter-films
starring Anthony Hopkins (1991’s The Silence of the Lambs, 2001’s
Hannibal, and 2002’s Manhunter-Remake Red Dragon), and the 2007
film prequel Hannibal Rising (featuring French actor Gaspard Ulliel as a
younger Lecter). NBC’s version of Hannibal, as Andrew Scahill points
out, presents itself both as a reboot of, and a prequel to these earlier
franchise entries, as it chronicles the backstory of the first encounters
between Graham and Lecter, but recasts the main characters with new
actors and transplants the story into a new narrative continuity set in the
present of the early 2010s (Scahill). As a “preboot,” Hannibal can pre-
sent its material as simultaneously new and already familiar, a dynamic
that comes to the fore in particular in its re-staging of the main charac-
ters, who share characteristics with their predecessors from other media,
but are nonetheless different enough to stand on their own (Scahill).
Mads Mikkelsen’s version of Hannibal Lecter, for example, echoes both
17
“[...] emotionale Intensitäten [...], durch deren Erleben eine Bindung an das
Programm erfolgt” [translation mine].
Felix Brinker 317
the Lecter of Harris’s novels and the Anthony Hopkins version of the
figure with his cultured manner, his keen sense of smell, his genius as a
psychiatrist, and, of course, his cannibalism; but where the novels and
the films present the character as a “small, lithe,” widow-peaked man in
his late fifties or early sixties (Ling 381-82), Hannibal features a
youngish Lecter in his forties. The show similarly reinvents Lecter’s
opponent Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) as an investigator who suffers
from the zeitgeisty affliction of an Asperger’s-like empathy disorder—a
stark difference from William Petersen’s first cinematic incarnation of
the character in Manhunter, whose clothing style and demeanor evoke
tough 1980s’ investigators like Miami Vice’s Sonny Crockett and Ri-
cardo Tubbs.18 Hannibal’s version of Lecter and Graham can be under-
stood as examples of what Shane Denson and Ruth Mayer have termed
“serial figures,” that is, as recurring, popular characters which—like
Superman, Frankenstein, James Bond, Dracula, or Batman—periodi-
cally undergo virtual reboots or rebirths but remain recognizable and
familiar as they retain their iconic features across incarnations (see 185-
91). As serial figures, the show’s two lead characters are always already
familiar and yet new and different—and their inclusion shapes viewers’
expectations about the works they appear in, and invites them to com-
pare different versions of the same character. In the same fashion, the
show uses its status as preboot to recall iconic moments from the films
of the franchise, like the “burning wheelchair” scene from Manhunter—
in which the burning corpse of crime reporter Freddie Lounds is
strapped to a rolling wheelchair and startles an innocent bystander as it
passes—which the show restages in the second season episode “Ko No
18
Coincidentally, director Michael Mann served as executive producer on
Miami Vice (NBC/USA, 1984-1989). It should be noted that almost all of the
installments of the larger Lecter franchise (and not just NBC’s Hannibal)
play minor variations on the main protagonists of Harris’s stories. In
Manhunter, for example, Brian Cox’s character is named ‘Lektor’ instead of
‘Lecter,’ a departure from the source text that is subsequently undone in the
three films starring Anthony Hopkins (which share a narrative continuity
separate from that of Mann’s film). Similarly, the Lecter of the novels sports
an extra sixth finger on his left hand (Ling 382), a trait not shared by any of
the non-literary incarnations of the character. These differences attest to the
serial nature of these figures, which are periodically reinvented in order to
appeal to new audiences.
Mono” (S02E11), again with subtle differences to the original.19 To

borrow a formulation from Umberto Eco, we can understand such
echoes of the earlier films as “catalyzers of collective memories” that
call up the audiences’ pre-existing knowledge about their previous ap-
pearances (3). Hannibal, in other words, flaunts its status as a second
(or, rather, third or fourth) take on iconic characters and moments, and
points its viewers to the existence of the rest of the franchise.
The program’s many instances of franchise-related intertextuality
can be understood as an attempt to create a form of cross-media synergy
between film and television properties, as they index other productions
owned or distributed by the larger NBCUniversal media conglomerate
(NBC’s parent company).20 The show thus not only performs an updat-
ing and narrative expansion of the films and novels it adapts, but also
invites viewers to consume the films alongside Hannibal in order to spot
resonances, continuities, and divergences between the different versions
of the story—and thereby renders the preceding productions relevant
again for contemporary audiences.21 In doing so, Hannibal embodies the
core principle of the media franchising model which, as Tino Balio puts
19
The scene had been restaged in 2001’s Red Dragon before. In Hannibal, it
turns out that Graham and Crawford have replaced Lounds’s body with that
of an unnamed victim as part of a scheme to entrap Lecter.
20
NBCUniversal is not the only corporate entity to benefit from Hannibal’s
promotion of the earlier films. During the last thirty years, the rights to
Harris’s novels and characters have changed hands several times—the
Silence of the Lambs adaptation, for example, was produced by Orion
Pictures, while the rest of the franchise (including Manhunter and NBC’s
Hannibal) were produced or co-produced by different companies owned by
the De Laurentiis family. Returns from the home video releases of the film
are furthermore shared by NBC’s sister company Universal and its rival film
studios MGM and Twentieth Century Fox—with Universal producing and
distributing home video releases for Manhunter, Hannibal, and Red Dragon
(which it co-distributed theatrically with MGM), Fox controlling the rights
for The Silence of the Lambs, and MGM those for Hannibal Rising. For a
discussion of franchising as a business model, see Balio 26-28 and Grainge
48-60.
21
Along similar lines, Scahill suggests that, as a “preboot,” Hannibal offers the
added pleasures of “marvel[ing] at the sophisticated play of references, the
modes of reflection, and the rejoinder of known narrative […] with newly
constructed narrative.”
Felix Brinker 319
it, aims at the creation of branded content that is “instantly recognizable

and exploitable across all platforms and all divisions” of a conglomerate
(25). Hannibal’s status as a preboot thus adds an additional trajectory of
audience engagement to the two other registers of serialization discussed
above: While the show’s reliance on complex narration and the affec-
tively potent thrills of body horror serve to intensify viewers’ ongoing
engagement with the show itself, its intertextuality adds a vertical di-
mension that encourages the consumption of related properties in other
media. Taken together, the consumption practices occasioned by these
three modes of serialization—or, to be more precise, the sales of DVDs,
Blu-Rays, digital video streams and downloads generated by them—
more than compensate for the poor ratings performance of the show’s
live broadcast.
“Fannibal” Labor in the Attention Economy
As I have suggested at the beginning of this article, the different aspects

of Hannibal’s formal aesthetics discussed so far can be understood as an
attempt to situate the program prominently within what economists
Thomas Davenport and John Beck would call the “attention economy”
of contemporary television—i.e., a market on which viewers’ attentive-
ness is in short supply, and where any kind of content has to distinguish
itself from the “information glut” of our digital media environment if it
wants to find an audience (Davenport and Beck 4, see also 1-15). Han-
nibal’s continued presence on NBC attests to the show’s relative success
in this respect, as well as to its ability to engage a sufficient amount of
viewers strongly and regularly enough, as well as across sufficient plat-
forms, to be profitable. Despite its obvious niche appeal and small num-
ber of live viewers, Hannibal has furthermore managed to generate a
remarkable amount of interest by professional critics and news outfits
whose reporting on the show raises its profile within a larger media
public.22 In what follows, I want to turn briefly to a subset of online
22
Journalistic attention to the show ranges from the many sites that offer
weekly recaps of Hannibal’s episodes during the television season (like The
AV Club, IGN.com, DenOfGeek, Hitfix, Flavorwire, DigitalSpy, Serien-
junkies, Collider, or TV.com, to mention only a few), to news coverage in
trade journals like Entertainment Weekly and Variety, as well as on sites like
discourses on the show that contributes significantly to the creation of

media attention for the program: to the textually productive online ac-
tivities of the show’s dedicated fans (or “Fannibals,” as they call them-
selves).
While press coverage of the show arguably contributes the most to
Hannibal’s cultural visibility, a non-trivial part of the media buzz around
the show is created by fans—who, for example, provide commentary,
analyses, and interpretations of the show on sites like Hannibal Wiki,
share image-based memes on tumblr-blogs (e.g. Madness), praise and
criticize the program’s themes in fanzines (see Gianutsos and Leigh),
circulate fan fiction and fan art in dedicated online fora, and discuss the
show in the commentary sections of entertainment news websites, as
well as on social media and countless fanblogs. While only a small part
of the show’s audience engages in such active and textually productive
practices, their effect for the show should not be underestimated. By
providing commentary, discussion, and analysis of the show, sites like
the Hannibal Wiki, for example, provide, as Frank Kelleter and Daniel
Stein have noted, a “metanarrative perspective,” that allows less
dedicated viewers to navigate Hannibal’s story-arcs, character constel-
lations, and intertextual references, and thereby open the show’s various
levels of meaning up to a broader audience (275).23 Abigail DeKosnik
has furthermore argued that the textually productive practices of fans
constitute a form of work whose productivity is exploited by the produc-
ers of media franchises as a cost-effective way to promote and market
their content. For DeKosnik, the online activities of fans are therefore
best conceptualized as an example of what Tiziana Terranova has called
“free labour,” that is, as a form of “simultaneously voluntarily given and
unwaged” cultural work that contributes to the bottom-line profitability
of media franchises (74; see also DeKosnik 98-99). DeKosnik’s sugges-
tion seems particularly apt in the case of Hannibal, whose fans have
organized collective efforts to promote their favorite show on several
occasions. When NBC threatened to cancel Hannibal after its first and
second seasons, for example, concerned “Fannibals” took to Twitter in a
Buzzfeed, to reviews in newspapers like The Guardian or The New York

Times.
23
“metanarrative Perspektiven” [translation mine]. Along similar lines, Jason
Mittell has discussed online content that serves to frame the show as
“orienting paratexts” (“Paratexts”).
Felix Brinker 321
campaign to save the show, urging their followers to spread the word
about the looming cancellation and asking them to become regular
viewers of the program (Hall). “Fannibals” here effectively created a
decentralized marketing campaign to prolong the existence of their fa-
vorite show; while its ratings did not increase as a result of their actions,
the resulting media attention undoubtedly raised Hannibal’s public pro-
file. The effort of the show’s hardcore fans here aligned itself with Han-
nibal’s formal and medial politics and continued the show’s ongoing
effort to increase its commercial success.24 Fan activity, in other words,
provided the show with the required surplus of media attention needed
to generate a perspective of future viewers and home video sales, and
thus contributed to Hannibal’s renewal.
Conclusion
This article set out to explain the unlikely survival of NBC’s Hannibal, a
show with a radical niche appeal, within the competitive environment of
digital-era network television. I have argued that the program’s combi-
nation of the appeals of complex storytelling and body horror, along
with the intertextuality resulting from its status as a preboot, engage a
sufficient amount of viewers in attentive, regular, and sustained recep-
tion practices to sustain its run on NBC, even if the show’s ratings re-
main exceptionally low. Ultimately, this article claims that Hannibal’s
politics of engagement—i.e., the formal and medial strategies and de-
vices by which the show tries to nudge its viewers towards a behavior
that contributes the most to its continuation and relative commercial
success—aim at an intensification of television reception. Accordingly,
this article suggested that Hannibal is a show that wants to be consumed
in a state of constant attentiveness, that demands the long-term invest-
ment of viewers, and that expects a readiness to watch scenes and epi-
sodes more than once. In this respect, the show can be considered a
24
These efforts on occasion entailed rather specific instructions: One supporter
of the show, for example, took the opportunity of a posting on wikiHow to
suggest the proper media consumption practices to keep Hannibal on the air.
To be a “Fannibal,” this user argued, one would have to watch the show on a
regular basis, “read the books,” “watch the films,” “join social media” and
participate in the fandom (“How to Be a Fannibal”).
prime example of digital-era television drama, i.e., of a narrative format

that has shed its once-defining ephemerality and taken on a more solid
and stable form, and which can now accommodate more complex narra-
tive constructions. For Hannibal’s positioning within the competitive
landscape of contemporary television, the show’s challenging of norms
for the representation of violence is a double-edged sword: while it
provides the show with a unique niche appeal, a reliable way to cause
controversies and to court public interest, as well as a powerful affective
attraction, it also limits the show’s ability to increase the overall size of
the live broadcast audience. So far, however, Hannibal has managed to
compensate for this lack of mass appeal by capitalizing on the enthusi-
astic support of fans who dedicate their time to the promotion of the
show online.
On a more abstract level, Hannibal’s politics of engagement can be
understood as an attempt to maximize the program’s share of the time
that audiences can dedicate to the recreational consumption of media
content, as well as an effort to profit from the free cultural and textual
production of viewers that circulates online. In these terms, the formal
and medial politics of complex dramas like Hannibal can be understood
as a political project to mobilize viewers and to harness their time, at-
tention, and cultural work for the continuation of the capitalist enterprise
that American network television still is. In this manner, Hannibal’s
aesthetic transgressions can become productive for the further subsump-
tion of social life under the interests of capital that expresses itself in the
attempt to transform an otherwise unproductive activity—recreational
media consumption—into a source of surplus value.
Epilogue
The ideas presented above were originally developed for a presentation

held in the fall of 2014 and subsequently expanded to full article length
during the spring of the following year. Since then, Hannibal’s uncertain
fate has been sealed, as NBC canceled the show on June 22, 2015 (with
the third season finale airing as the last episode on August 29). Before
the show left the airwaves for good, its fans once more attempted to
avert the looming cancellation by voicing their support online, but this
time their protest—which, among other things, included a Change.org-
Felix Brinker 323
petition addressed at NBC that garnered more than 80,000 signatures

from various countries (Mazal)—remained unsuccessful.
While fans protested, Hannibal’s producers and writers appeared to
have anticipated the show’s eventual demise and played up the show’s
more idiosyncratic aspects during its third season. As a result, Hanni-
bal’s last thirteen episodes completely eschewed self-contained killer-of-
the-week plots (already less prominently featured in the second season)
and relied even more strongly on a surrealist, dream-like cinema-
tography than the preceding seasons of the show. The show furthermore
patterned season three’s ongoing storylines—which revolved around
Lecter’s flight to and eventual capture in Europe, and Graham’s pursuit
of a serial killer dubbed the “Tooth Fairy”—closely after the plots of
Harris’s novels Red Dragon and Hannibal, and thereby increased the
frequency of intertextual references and allusions to the preceding en-
tries of the Lecter-franchise. Taken together, these artistic decisions
arguably rendered Hannibal even less accessible to a broader audience
than before. Accordingly, the show’s ratings declined further over the
summer of 2015 (“Hannibal”). In the episode “The Great Red Dragon”
(S03E08), the character Dr. Chilton delivers a few lines that self-reflex-
ively comment on the program’s status as a perennially ratings-chal-
lenged show. Addressing the now imprisoned Lecter, Chilton proclaims:
You—with your fancy allusions and your fuzzy aesthetics. You’ll al-
ways have a niche appeal. But this fellow [i.e., the Tooth Fairy], there is
something so universal about what he does. […] [He] strikes at the very
core of the American Dream. You might say he’s a four-quadrant killer.
Chilton’s statement nicely sums up the show’s formal tics and its prob-
lems in appealing to a broader audience. At the same time, it can also be
read as a thinly veiled reference to the David Duchovny-starring serial
killer drama Aquarius, which premiered on NBC in May 2015 in the
time-slot directly preceding Hannibal, and which is based loosely on the
real-life crimes of Charles Manson and his ‘family.’ Hannibal, in other
words, here reminds us that, while it might be gone from our television
screens for the time being, serial killer series in general certainly are not,
and that other examples of the genre are bound to replace it. As serial
figures with a considerable staying power, however, Dr. Lecter and Will
Graham will be resurrected sooner rather than later. In fact, a follow-up
feature film to Hannibal is currently being discussed (see Sepinwall)—a
development that demonstrates that the Lecter-franchise still possesses a

potential for further serialization. Hannibal’s eventual demise, however,
also exemplifies that even celebrated, niche-oriented “quality TV”
shows cannot escape the economic realities of network television for-
ever, as well as the risks associated with any attempt to revive a once-
successful property.
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CHRISTOPH SCHUBERT
Dexter in Disguise: A Stylistic Approach to Verbal

Camouflage in a Serial Killer Series
Introduction
The linguistic investigation of discourse in television series is both

challenging and rewarding, for this genre usually employs natural con-
versation but at the same time often features characters in extreme situa-
tions who need to resort to specific discursive strategies. The Showtime
television series Dexter, whose eight seasons aired between 2006 and
2013, is loosely based on Jeff Lindsay’s series of novels starting with
Darkly Dreaming Dexter. The protagonist Dexter Morgan works in law
enforcement as a forensic blood spatter analyst in Miami, Florida. At the
same time he leads a secret life as a serial killer, carrying out murders
based on a self-justice ideology which is derived from a moral code that
his foster father Harry Morgan taught him as an adolescent. Since this
code obliges him to exclusively kill murderers who have managed to
escape legal prosecution, his deeds are discursively framed as justified
and even as helpful to society.
Dexter Morgan’s double life as both scientist and serial killer has ef-
fects on his discursive behavior, for “sincerity as a possible mode of
discourse” is unavailable for him (Richardson 149). In traditional horror
and crime movies, killers are usually “portrayed as marginal and deviant
subjects through the use of a discourse that diverges from the conven-
tional norms of cooperation” (Piazza 87), such as the killer in David
Fincher’s Se7en (1995), played by Kevin Spacey. The murderer Dexter,
however, hides in plain sight, as he blends in verbally and discursively,
which enables the series to feature a serial killer as a likeable protago-
330 Dexter in Disguise
nist.1 Thus, by faking various types of affection in human interaction

(Gregoriou, Language 119), the protagonist manages to disguise per-
fectly as a forensic scientist: “The extraordinary Dexter Morgan works
at trying to appear utterly ordinary. He doesn’t say much and, as a guy,
can get away with seeming like the stereotypical unemotional and unex-
pressive type” (DePaulo 69).
Along these lines, it is revealing to take a closer look at the protago-
nist’s name, which supports his positive image. While the Latin origin
means “on the right-hand side of a person” (Trumble and Stevenson,
“dexter”), the derived adjective dexterous is defined in the Shorter Ox-
ford English Dictionary as “[h]aving mental adroitness or skill, clever;
contriving” and “[h]aving manual or manipulative skill or adroitness,
deft of hand; having good physical coordination” (Trumble and Steven-
son, s.v. dexterous). Thus, etymologically, dexterous forms the lexical
opposite of the Latin sinister (‘left’) and characterizes Dexter Morgan as
physically and mentally outstanding, which hints at his almost super-
heroic qualities. The fact that the show bears the protagonist’s first name
additionally evokes a close relationship between the leading character
and the TV audience.2
Dexter’s disguise is particularly threatened in season four of the se-
ries, when Dexter acts as the husband of Rita Bennett and caring father
of three children so that he needs to be particularly inventive regarding
his camouflage. As Dexter’s dead foster father Harry, appearing to
Dexter frequently as a ghost, points out to him at the end of episode two
of season four: “you’re juggling family, work and a dark passenger
who’s always got one hand on the steering wheel.” Thus, Dexter has
serious problems with his “work-nonwork-family balance” (Mullins 90).
Since his urge to kill is personified as his “dark passenger” (S04E01),
Dexter’s quasi-schizophrenic character becomes apparent. Accordingly,
when Dexter’s wife Rita inquires about his seemingly erratic behavior,
he evasively comments that “this darkness creeps in, and it takes over”
(S04E12). In season four, he even uses the pseudonym “Kyle Butler” in
1
Notably, appealing killers are quite common in contemporary TV series, as
demonstrated by the protagonist in Hannibal, Walter White in Breaking Bad,
or Lorne Malvo in Fargo.
2
This is further reinforced by the occasional nickname “Dex,” as it is used, for
instance, in episode four of season four, which is entitled “Dex Takes a Holi-
day.”
Christoph Schubert 331
order to get closer to his main adversary, the so-called “Trinity” killer.
Furthermore, in season four Dexter does not have an accomplice like
Miguel Prado (season three), his girlfriend Lumen Pierce (season five),
or his lover Hannah McKay (season seven), so that he does not have the
opportunity to share his true nature with another human being. For all of
these reasons, season four is most suitable for an investigation of Dex-
ter’s verbal play of hide-and-seek.
The present essay intends to investigate the discursive strategies
Dexter uses in order to conceal his “extracurricular activities” from the
other characters at several communicative levels. Thus, as Dexter is
“groundbreaking in its ethical ambiguity” (Gregoriou, “Times” 284),
Dexter’s own discursive behavior reflects this polyvalence also in lin-
guistic terms. Hence, this “serial killer series” (see Hoepker, this vol-
ume) is self-reflexive not only regarding content and serial structure but
also with regard to Dexter’s recurring discursive strategies. In addition,
it will be shown that the ubiquitous presence of incongruity between
truth and make-believe creates dark humor and irony throughout the
series. With regard to methodology, the stylistic approach combines
issues of contextual language use and genre (Johnstone; Jeffries and
McIntyre) with the analysis of the distinctly literary and aesthetic quality
of a fictional narrative TV series (Bednarek; Quaglio; Richardson).
Discursive Features of TV Series
While cinema offers a “single isolated narrative experience”—with the

notable exception of sequels and prequels—, television provides a
“more consistent and/or repeated exposure” (Piazza, Bednarek, and
Rossi 1). For this structural reason, it is useful to distinguish between
“cinematic” and “televisual” discourse. If, however, the focus is on the
language use of the fictional characters, the blended cover term of “tele-
cinematic” discourse is more appropriate.3 This concept also comprises
multimodal discourse, including verbal utterances, visual images, and
3
By contrast, Janney distinguishes “cinematic discourse” from “film dis-
course” by defining the former not as language use in film but as “the audio-
visual discourse of film narration itself” (86). In the present article, I will
mainly focus on the communication in film, not through film.
acoustic signals in the general medium of film (Piazza, Bednarek, and

Rossi 1).4
Still, language use in feature films or television series has been
largely neglected by linguists so far. This fact is emphasized by Marta
Dynel, who finds that “linguistic works on sitcom discourse are rather
scarce” (“I’ll be” 311), and it is likewise diagnosed by the editors of a
recent volume entitled Telecinematic Discourse:
As with film discourse, television discourse has not received much at-
tention in linguistics. This appears to conform to a general tendency
where, despite its importance, popular culture is overlooked in various
linguistic sub-disciplines. (Piazza, Bednarek, and Rossi 8)
In addition, manuals for scriptwriting (e.g. Cooper) do not go into lin-

guistic detail when they generally recommend “realism” in dialogues
(Quaglio 11). Despite this realism, however, it is a fact that “[l]ike thea-
tre dialogues, film dialogues belong to a variety of their own, both being
language written to be spoken” (Mittmann 575). Along these lines,
Mittmann, Quaglio, and Bednarek point out differences between “natu-
ral conversation” and scripted telecinematic dialogues on the basis of
mainly quantitative data.
By investigating Friends, Dawson’s Creek, and Golden Girls with
statistical methods, Mittmann (577-78) shows that some conversational
routines are significantly overrepresented in TV series dialogue, as
compared to natural everyday conversation. This includes greetings,
polite formulae such as thank you or sorry, and imperatives such as look
and come on. She also finds that taboo expletives are underrepresented
in television in favor of God or hell, which is also confirmed by Quaglio
(147), whose results are based exclusively on Friends. Still, the lack of
four-letter words might be a typical feature of family-friendly entertain-
ment. Dexter, oscillating between the genres of drama, thriller, and dark
comedy, contains heavy swearing, particularly by Debra Morgan, Dex-
ter’s tomboyish foster sister with a preference for creative collocations
with fuck.
In more detail, Quaglio states that television dialogue shares many
basic linguistic characteristics with everyday conversation, but he also
4
For recent models of multimodal film analysis see the monographs by Wild-
feuer and Bateman and Schmidt.
finds some differences in terms of frequency: Friends contains less

“[v]ague language” (139) such as the hedges kind of or stuff, for the
utterances need to be clearly understandable for a TV audience. Moreo-
ver, the sitcom is more strongly marked by “emotional language” real-
ized by intensifiers; it is more informal, as expressed by slang usage,
and it has fewer narrative features, as marked, for example, by a low
percentage of past perfect forms. Bednarek’s study, which relies exclu-
sively on Gilmore Girls, adds that fictional TV conversation “avoids
unintelligibility” (64), which may occur in spontaneous communication
in the form of overlaps or simultaneous talk, and that TV dialogue has “a
relatively even distribution of (short) turns” by the characters. Ulti-
mately, television dialogue as a genre is closer to fictional dramatic
discourse than to everyday communication, since it does not take place
in real time. The scripted interaction, which is written by creative
scriptwriters to be spoken by actors, is an aesthetically and emotionally
enhanced version of natural conversation.
The Communicative Situation in Dexter
In order to give a full account of Dexter’s techniques of verbal camou-

flage, it is indispensable to characterize all communicative layers pre-
sent in the series. Due to the parallels between the discourse of drama
and scripted television, it is necessary to distinguish between an “exter-
nal” and an “internal communication system”—a distinction loosely
related to the various participant roles (Pfister 3). Since Dexter addition-
ally talks to dead interlocutors such as his father and brother, however, it
is necessary to define three levels (cf. table 1).
Communication system Respective interlocutors
I. External system Film crew and TV audience

(also voice-over V/O)
II. Internal system Dexter and other characters
III. Inner system Dexter and his dead father or brother
Table 1: Communication systems in Dexter
First, the external communication system covers the relationship be-

tween the producers of the series and the TV audience. Hence, the “col-
lective sender” is the “film crew (directors, scriptwriters, editors, actors,
etc.)” (Dynel, “I’ll be” 313). Although the viewers are, superficially,
mere overhearers of the dialogues, they are the actual addressees, so that
this communication system can also be called the “recipient’s level”
(Dynel, “I’ll be” 312).5 Along these lines, Dexter is marked by a
substantial amount of voice-over discourse, which in film studies is
defined as “off-camera narration or commentary” (Dick 44). In Dexter,
the protagonist’s thoughts are frequently revealed by himself in this
way, although he simultaneously appears on the screen without talking.
Since Dexter often operates alone and keeps communication with other
characters to a minimum (Lavery 47), such interior monologues are
necessary to keep up the suspense and to explain Dexter’s actions during
his solitary endeavors. Clearly, the cinematographic technique of voice-
over belongs to the external communication system, since it is not re-
vealed to the other characters but works as a strategic narrative device.
Second, there is the internal communication system between diegetic
characters, which may thus be called the “inter-character level” (Dynel,
“I’ll be” 312). While the audience of the show functions as “interactive
participants or viewers,” free to initiate or terminate the telecinematic
5
Dynel rightfully points out that, additionally, there may be a “metarecipient,
[…] an informed viewer who watches a film/series/serial from a privileged
position, analyzing film discourse consciously” (“I’ll be” 315).
discourse, the characters are “represented” participants (Piazza, Bedna-

rek, and Rossi 9). Still, the internal communication system forms the
characters’ actual living environment, in which they perform their ac-
tions and communicative strategies.
Finally, the TV series Dexter employs an additional third level that
may be called the “inner” communication system, as it is realized by
Dexter’s imaginary dialogues with his dead foster father Harry. It is thus
a hybrid system that reveals Dexter’s personal thoughts through the
conversational mode. As Lavery specifies, “Harry Morgan has appeared
in every episode to date, either in flashbacks or as a spectral presence
serving as his monster stepson’s very special conscience, which gives
Dexter someone to talk to in addition to us” (47). Like the internal sys-
tem, the inner one consists of dialogue with a character, but the dead
father mainly personifies Dexter’s inner moral worries and qualms. At
the same time, the inner system needs to be kept apart from voice-over
discourse, for it shows a dialogic structure. While the addressees of the
monological voice-over comments are merely present at the recipient’s
level, the communicative partner in the inner system actually appears on
the screen. In reverse analogy to the personified moral code, Dexter’s
older biological brother Brian Moser, the “ice-truck killer” of season
one, reappears from the dead in season six, episode seven, in order to
personify Dexter’s “dark passenger,” urging Dexter to murder people
indiscriminately.
Dexter Morgan’s Verbal Camouflage
On the basis of these three communication systems, Dexter Morgan

makes use of verbal camouflage in numerous ways. As various re-
searchers have shown, the visuals of the show’s title sequence initiate an
air of humorous ambiguity and sinister multivalency (Gregoriou, Lan-
guage 115; Karpovich 27-42). In this opening sequence, common
morning activities, such as the preparation of breakfast, shaving, and the
use of dental floss, metaphorically represent brutal acts of violence. This
is additionally supported by significant color coding, since the dominant
hues of red and black represent blood and menacing darkness. Analo-
gously, as the close-up shots give equivocal hints to the audience, Dex-
ter’s utterances can often be decoded in more than one way.
The Internal Communication System
In the internal communication system, whenever Dexter is in danger of

being uncovered, he tends to be intentionally vague. Although unclear
expressions have been found to be much less frequent in television dia-
logue than in natural conversation, this very vagueness fulfills an im-
portant function of verbal camouflage in Dexter. A typical case in point
occurs in season four, episode one, when Dexter’s wife Rita calls him on
the phone just as he is about to kill his victim Benito Gomez (example
1):
(1) DEXTER: Can I do it? Can I have it all? [Cell phone rings]—Oh, shit.
[Cell phone rings] Hello?
RITA: Dexter, I need you to go to an all-night pharmacy right away.
DEXTER: I’m kind of in the middle of something.
RITA: Well, Harrison has an ear infection. He’s in a lot of pain,
Dexter. Whatever you’re doing can wait.
DEXTER: Uh, right. My mistake. I wasn’t thinking. I’m on my way
[Hangs up]. Kids. Gotta go. No time to savor this.
While the indefinite pronoun “something,” which is supported by the

downtoning and hedging expression “kind of,” sounds common and
harmless, the audience sees Dexter putting his hand on the mouth of his
victim, who is tied up and gagged on the table. This creates a stark con-
trast that results in a grim type of humor and stresses Dexter’s physical
brutality, which is directly opposed to his role as a loving father. After
Dexter has hung up, he mock-apologizes to his victim before stabbing
him, which further highlights the bizarre coalition of social roles. In
many other situations, Dexter equally refuses to give a clear description
of his current undertaking, when, for example, he uses his standard ex-
cuse “I’m kind of in the middle of something” in episode four (season
four) as a reply to his sister Debra. Ironically, Dexter’s vague excuse is
once again unsuccessful, so that he is required to reschedule his plans.
When he is called by his boss in episode eleven of the same season, he is
even interrupted in his evasive move, so that this strategy is increasingly
invalidated: “Uh, can it wait? I’m kind of in—Okay. Yeah, no, I’ll be
there.” Modifications of his elusive excuse occur in examples (2) and

(3):
(2) RITA: Dexter, are you on your way home?

DEXTER: Just finishing up a few things. (S04E09)
(3) DEXTER: Oh I wish I could go with you right now.

RITA: Me too.
DEXTER: I just got a few loose ends to tie up at work, and
I’ll see you tonight. (S04E12)
In (2), baby Harrison is ill again and needs attention. The general noun
“things” here collocates with the indefinite quantifier “a few” and the
downtoner “just.” In (3), Dexter uses the metaphor of tying up “loose
ends” when he intends to murder the Trinity killer, so that this meta-
phorical action may be taken at face value, while the killer is literally
still on the “loose.” In a different scene, when Rita asks Dexter why he
wants a padlock for his garden shed, he explains that there is “dangerous
stuff” (S04E06) in it, disguising the identity of his killing tools. Simi-
larly, when Dexter is asked to go on an overnight camping trip with his
stepson Cody on the weekend but at the same time has plans to murder a
criminal, he again uses the general noun “stuff” as an excuse. However,
Rita is not satisfied with this pretext and somewhat sarcastically replies
“[y]ou can’t cancel because of stuff. Cody will be so disappointed”
(S04E07). Hence, although Dexter succeeds in hiding his double life, his
prevarication often does not enable him to buy additional time for his
alter ego.
While these maneuvers are strategies to hide his clandestine agenda,
occasionally Dexter gives hidden clues about his “dark passenger” to
other characters. This may happen in dialogues with his sister Debra or
with the Trinity killer (whose real name is Arthur Mitchell), as examples
(4) and (5) demonstrate.
(4) DEBRA: I don’t even know who Harry is anymore.

DEXTER: He’s still everything you remember him to be.
DEBRA: Is he?
DEXTER: We all have secrets, Deb. Some of them shouldn’t be found
out. (S04E07)
(5) DEXTER: I killed a man.

TRINITY: You killed someone?
DEXTER: [V/O: You of all people act appalled.]
By mistake.
TRINITY: How? What happened?
DEXTER: I thought he was the right— [sighs] I thought he was an
animal.
TRINITY: You—you were hunting?
DEXTER: Yes, it was a hunting accident. (S04E08)
In (4), Debra has just found out some distressing news about the past of
their foster father Harry, while Dexter tries to comfort her with the fact
that everyone has “secrets.” By arguing that “some of them shouldn’t be
found out,” he utters a reassuring commonplace to his sister but at the
same time covertly admits to his double life, which, however, can only
be fully decoded in the external communication system by the viewers.
In (5), Dexter spends some time with Trinity under the pseudonym of
“Kyle Butler” in order to find out about the serial killer’s modus operan-
di and his private life, since he assumes that Trinity might be a role
model for camouflage. For the sake of winning Trinity’s trust, he con-
cedes that he killed a man but calls it a hunting accident. Again, this
narrative unfolds a hidden meaning, as Dexter actually hunts metaphori-
cal ‘animals’ in the shape of humans, such as the Trinity killer, who is
framed as downright bestial in the series, since he lacks Dexter’s moral
code. Thus, the statement also foreshadows Dexter’s plan to bring the
serial killer to his own kind of (self-)justice. This type of lexical ambi-
guity also appears when Dexter talks to Trinity’s son and comments that
“your dad seems like a special guy” (S04E06), for the adjective “spe-
cial” is highly polysemous. Another case in point is Rita’s well-meant
wish “[e]njoy your freedom. Go wild” (S04E04) when she embarks on a
weekend trip with their children. However, when Dexter repeats her
words in his reply “Right. Go wild” (S04E04), the connotative meaning
of “wild” is utterly threatening.
Apart from insinuation and innuendo, the internal communication
system also displays specific situations in which Dexter literally reveals
his “dark passenger” to selected individuals, as demonstrated by the next
two extracts:
(6) BABY: [Crying]

DEXTER: Oh, who’s a good boy?—Yeah, who’s a good boy? Who’s a
good boy? Yeah. [Whispering] Want to know a secret?
Daddy kills people. Well, bad people. Not really anybody
else I can tell about that, you know? (S04E01)
(7) KRUGER: Look at you. What kind of father does this? What kind of
husband?
DEXTER: Not the kind who kills his family.
KRUGER: You’re going to have to choose.
DEXTER: Not what you chose.
KRUGER: You can’t hide what you are.
DEXTER: Oh, I can. I’m better at it than you. (S04E04)
In these instances, Dexter’s double life is in no danger of being uncov-

ered. In (6), he talks to his baby son Harrison, who is not yet able to
comprehend the meaning of his words. Again, there is the striking in-
congruity between conventional parent-child talk, including the third
person use of “Daddy” instead of the first person pronoun, and the out-
rageous content of admitting to be a murderer. Extract (7) exemplifies
the second category of situations in which Dexter does not run the risk
of being publicly unmasked. Immediately before he kills his constrained
victims, he confronts them with their criminal past and informs them
about their imminent death. In this case, the person to be killed is Zoey
Kruger, who murdered her own family. Since these are the last words
she will ever hear, Dexter can confess to her that he hides his murderous
alter ego. Similarly, when Dexter kills Benito Gomez in episode one of
season four, the victim in the kill room tells him “I know you,” which
Dexter acknowledges with the words “I’m the blood guy.” While Go-
mez met Dexter as a professional blood spatter analyst earlier, now the
double meaning of the compound “blood guy” becomes obvious to him.
The External Communication System
In contradistinction to the internal communication system, the external

one heavily relies on voice-over comments by Dexter himself. When the
protagonist talks to other characters, he avoids inconvenient topics,
makes ambiguous statements, or occasionally tells lies, whereas the TV
viewers are always informed about his real objectives and motives.
Thus, he lets the audience know that his family life is partly make-be-
lieve, as in extracts (8) and (9):
(8) DEXTER: [V/O: Dexter Morgan, good suburban husband. Happy father
of three. On paper, anyway.] (S04E01)
(9) CODY: You have to help me finish my report on African animals.

ASTOR: No, I need him to put up the shelves in my room.
DEXTER: Actually, guys, it’s been a long day and I’m kinda—
RITA: Go easy on him. He’s only one person.
DEXTER: [V/O: That you know of.] (S04E06)
In (8), Dexter sarcastically clarifies in voice-over that his cheerful fam-

ily life mainly exists on paper, while his serial killer identity, which
actually defines him, is completely hidden. Hence, the final addition
“On paper, anyway,” which converts the previous statement into its
opposite, functions like a punchline at the end of a canned joke. Extract
(9) shows Dexter coming home after a long working day, when two of
his children, Cody and Astor, ask him to help them with various tasks.
When Rita tries to support him with the phrase “only one person,” his
voice-over comment reveals his quasi-schizophrenic personality to the
viewers in the form of the defining relative clause “that you know of.”
In this way, the viewers are treated as Dexter’s accomplices, who are
privy to his illegal yet to some extent understandable activities. In (10),
Dexter’s voice-over invites the viewers to share his dark sarcasm in a
conversation with the Trinity killer.
(10) TRINITY: Take my hammer. Take good care of her, though. We’ve
been through a lot together.
DEXTER: [V/O: So I saw.]
Very kind of you, Arthur.
TRINITY: Well, generosity of spirit, Kyle. It’s the reason we’re all
here.
DEXTER: [V/O: Not all of us.] (S04E06)
As Dexter, under the name of Kyle Butler, joins Arthur Mitchell’s

Christian charity project “Four Walls One Heart,” Mitchell provides him
with a hammer as a tool to work with. However, Dexter had seen Trinity
bludgeon one victim to death with this very hammer, so that he actually
receives the murder weapon from the perpetrator himself, which he
ironically comments on. Consequently, Trinity’s vague phrase “been

through a lot” is interpreted in a sarcastic way by Dexter, and Trinity’s
hypocritical motto “generosity of spirit” is restricted by Dexter to those
persons in the project who are not serial killers, which excludes both
Trinity and Dexter himself.
In many situations, however, Dexter’s voice-over utterances not only
contain sarcastic contextualizations but actually reveal his true thoughts
in contrast to lies he tells to other characters, as shown in the next three
extracts (11), (12), and (13):
(11) DEXTER: You really want to know what’s inside?

RITA: Yes.
DEXTER [Opens box] It was Harry’s. I wasn’t comfortable having it in
the house with the kids, So I kept it here. See? I have nothing
to hide. [V/O: Except for the syringes, scalpels, and bone
saw hidden in that secret drawer underneath.] (S04E05)
(12) JONAH: I can e-mail you the list if you want.

DEXTER: I don’t have e-mail.
JONAH: Who doesn’t have e-mail, Kyle?
DEXTER: [V/O: Off the top of my head, people who don’t exist.]
(S04E10)
(13) DEXTER: [Cell phone rings] Yeah?

LUNDY: Dexter. Frank Lundy here.
DEXTER: [V/O: The last person in the world I want to hear from.]
Glad to hear from you. (S04E02)
In (11), Dexter gives an incomplete und untruthful response to Rita’s

inquiry about the contents of a mysterious box he kept in his old apart-
ment. Apparently, the opened box merely contains an old gun owned by
his dead father, who was a police officer, while the secret contents, his
killing tools, are exclusively mentioned in voice-over. Thus, the viewers
are urged to take his side not only in his role as a serial killer but also as
a two-faced husband. As many examples show, this narrative revelation
through voice-over commonly appears in question-answer sequences.
Thus, in (12), Dexter does not answer the question asked by Jonah,
Trinity’s son, who offers to e-mail Dexter important data about his fa-
ther. The fact that “Kyle” is merely one of Dexter’s aliases used in con-
tact with the Mitchell family is shown only in voice-over. The hidden
response to Jonah’s quasi-rhetorical question thus contributes to the

series’ wit and the viewers’ sympathy for its protagonist. Finally, extract
(13) serves as an example that demonstrates Dexter’s success in faking
politeness as an important conversational strategy. When he is called on
the phone by FBI special agent Frank Lundy, who is well-known for his
skills in catching serial killers, Dexter replies with the standard formula
“glad to hear from you.” With the voice-over revelation that this inter-
locutor is utterly unwelcome, Dexter’s irony is not only humorous but
also allows the viewers, who may have been in a similar situation, to
identify with him.
A notable and highly original reference to Dexter’s double life oc-
curs in the external communication system when Dexter’s wife Rita
sings along to Culture Club’s 1983 hit song Karma Chameleon while the
two are sitting in the car with baby Harrison (example 14).
(14) RITA: [Sings along] Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon,
you come and go.
DEXTER: [V/O: Okay, if I count yesterday, then this is day two of me
being the best husband in the world. I can last another five
days.] I really need to stop for a coffee someplace.
RITA: You already had a coffee.
[Sings along] Red, gold, and green. Every day is like sur-
vival, survival. You’re my lover, not my rival.
DEXTER: [V/O: Really, I started Saturday afternoon, so it’s actually
been more like 2 1/2 days.]
RITA: [Sings along] Every day is like survival, survival.
DEXTER: [V/O: Only 4 1/2 to go. I’m never gonna make it.] (S04E03)
While Rita appears to enjoy the melody of the song, the audience is
made aware of the subtext of the lyrics by Dexter’s sarcastic and mo-
notonous voice-over comments. According to these gloomy reflections,
his ability to be a good father and husband will last no longer than one
week, so that he starts counting days. Since Dexter needs to behave like
the chameleon in the song, for him “every day is like survival” in more
than one way. On the one hand, he has trouble counterfeiting the role
expected of him, while on the other, the revelation of his “dark passen-
ger” would make him a candidate for capital punishment in the state of
Florida. Although Rita takes great pleasure in the pop song, viewers
with a knowledge of the complete lyrics will be aware that it expresses a
critical stance towards people who hide their real convictions and try to
suit everybody. Consequently, the song in the external communication
system satirizes not only Rita’s naivety but also Dexter’s hypocrisy.
The Inner Communication System
The inner communication system mainly relies on personifications both

of Dexter’s moral conscience in the form of his father Harry and Dex-
ter’s need to kill embodied by his brother Brian. Since the interlocutors
in these dialogues are actually departed, the conversations are merely
representations of Dexter’s mental disposition. Cinematographically,
Harry’s unreal presence is usually marked by a soft focus lens and re-
verb effects in the audio track. Thus, Dexter’s basic dilemma is aptly
summarized in the form of a warning by Harry in a key sequence, here
quoted as example (15):
(15) HARRY: You’re juggling too many people, Dexter.

DEXTER: I know—Arthur, Beaudry, Rita, now Batista.
HARRY: I’m not talking about them. I mean Dexter Morgan—blood
tech, husband, father, serial killer, and now Kyle Butler,
extortionist? Which one are you?
DEXTER: All of them. (S04E11)
While Dexter appears not to see the core of his problem at first, Harry
makes him aware of the dimensions of his split personality. This impres-
sion is multimodally supported on the screen by a camera shot which
shows Dexter’s reflection in four different mirrors. By using the ana-
phoric pronoun “them” in the plural, Dexter verbally signals that he is
aware of his multiple identities triggered by his “dark passenger.”
Again, the consequence is that Dexter needs to disguise and keep apart
his various roles with the help of evasion and pretense. As the next ex-
tract (16) demonstrates, Harry is sure that Dexter is incapable of leading
a regular family life and warns him accordingly:
(16) HARRY: I hope you’re not taking any of this seriously. The wife, the
kids, the house in the ’burbs. It’s all great camouflage, but
that’s all it is.
DEXTER: It’s gotten more complicated than that.
HARRY: Then uncomplicate it. You need to realize your limitations.
Remember exactly who you are. (S04E03)
After the enumeration of Dexter’s unexpected achievements in his per-

sonal life, Harry summarizes them as mere “camouflage.” Although
Dexter does not agree, he has come to realize that there is a strong ten-
sion between the different spheres in his life. He chooses to continue his
double life, which forces him to keep up his verbal camouflage as well.
Harry represents the critical, reasonable voice of self-doubt that advises
him to abandon his family, since Dexter is likely to be convicted eventu-
ally, so that Harry prophesies that “long after you’re executed they’ll
still have to go through life with your name branded across their fore-
heads” (S04E12). Obviously, by such negative foreshadowing, the dra-
matic suspense in the external communication system is drastically en-
hanced.
Humor Based on Communicative Incongruity
Despite its dramatic plot and a high degree of graphic violence, Dexter
contains a lot of black humor. Thus, Francis characterizes Dexter as
“dark comedy” (186) and even diagnoses that “Dexter’s inner mono-
logue is where stand-up resides” (185), since here the discrepancy be-
tween truth and make-believe is most prominent. Along these lines,
most of Dexter’s humor can be explained with the help of the “incon-
gruity” theory of humor (Attardo 103) and the corresponding “incon-
gruity-resolution model” (Dynel, “Pragmatics” 3). Accordingly, humor
is based on the fact that the recipient becomes aware of an incompatibil-
ity of two events or utterances but at the same time is able to resolve the
discrepancy, which leads to a comic effect. This is the typical strategy of
punchlines in canned jokes, but it also occurs in the conversational hu-
mor of telecinematic dialogue.
In particular, humor may arise when audience expectations are not
met, as in the beginning of episode one of season four, which is ironi-
cally entitled “Living the Dream.” Dexter appears on the screen, looking
grim, driving his car at night, while eerie music is heard and the follow-
ing words are uttered (example 17):
(17) DEXTER: [V/O: Tonight’s the night. The night when a primal, sacred
need calls to me. I’ve waited and waited. But tonight, this
night it’s time. Tonight’s the night I finally … sleep.] [Gets
out of car and closes door carefully. Baby cries. Dexter
opens car door.] Oh, okay, Harrison. The driving thing
didn’t work. The singing thing didn’t work. You planning on
both of us not sleeping for another three months? (S04E01)
Clearly, here the series plays with the viewers’ anticipation of another
murder, as supported multimodally by images of a car ride in the dark
and frightening sounds. The scene is also highly reminiscent of the be-
ginning of the first episode of season one, when Dexter’s killing agenda
is introduced. In addition, lexical choices point toward Dexter’s “dark
passenger,” who is often paraphrased as a “need,” which in turn is aptly
labeled as “primal” and “sacred” to the protagonist. Moreover, the scene
is interspersed with brief scenes showing the Trinity killer silently at-
tacking his first victim. When it becomes clear that the reason for Dex-
ter’s trip at night was to put Harrison to sleep, the incongruity becomes
obvious and is resolved by the viewers’ knowledge about Dexter’s dou-
ble life. Thus, the discrepancy ultimately relies on two conflicting se-
mantic “scripts” (Attardo 107), for in this case the SERIAL KILLER script
competes with the FAMILY FATHER script.
When Dexter is busy planning both family and vigilante activities at
the same time, voice-over is often the source of black humor, revealing
the clash between pretense and reality, as shown by example (18).
(18) RITA: Where are you going?

DEXTER: I gotta prep the boat. If we’re camping out, we’ll need a tent,
sleeping bags, food, water. I gotta get two children’s life
vests.
[V/O: Abduct Jonathan Farrow, take him back to his studio,
kill him, cut him to pieces, dump him in the ocean.]
Honestly, Rita, this is gonna take me a while.
RITA: Do you need some help?
DEXTER: No, I got it.
RITA: This really means a lot to Cody.
DEXTER: Me too. (S04E07)
Dexter manages to gain some time by enumerating the things he needs

to get for the camping trip, while he really plans another murder, as
revealed to the audience in voice-over. Again, the gruesome to-do list

stands in stark contrast to the harmless shopping list. For the audience,
the first occurrence of the pronoun “this,” as used by Dexter, anaphori-
cally refers to the murder, while Rita relates it to the camping prepara-
tions. Similarly, the second instance of “this,” uttered by Rita, may be
related either to the trip or the kill. Therefore, the incongruity between
both the two subjects and the two communication systems results in
morbid humor.
Finally, incongruity also occurs in Dexter’s professional life, for he
actively interferes with police work in order to capture the Trinity killer
for his own kill room. In extract (19), his sister Debra, who is a police
officer, tells him that she knows who stole the Trinity case files.
(19) DEBRA: […] Somebody stole Lundy’s Trinity research.

DEXTER: [V/O: Me.]
DEBRA: And there’s only one person who’d have a reason to do that.
DEXTER: [V/O: Me?]
DEBRA: Trinity.
DEXTER: You’re kidding. (S04E06)
Hiding his surprise behind an emotionless poker face, Dexter discloses

his theft to the TV audience, while Debra, a highly esteemed investiga-
tor, appears completely clueless. The effect is enhanced by the twofold
answer, the first one with a falling, the second with a rising intonation.
Dexter’s final comment “you’re kidding” also has a double meaning
because Debra is likely to understand it as ‘I would never have expected
that,’ while the viewers with their background knowledge of Dexter’s
agenda will decode it as ‘that is nonsense,’ so that the comedy is here
based on dramatic irony at Debra’s expense.
Conclusion
As the examples analyzed above have shown, the character Dexter

shows a double-edged discursive behavior. On the one hand, his utter-
ances often act as verbal camouflage in the interior communication
system when he finds excuses or ambiguous pretexts to gain time for his
secret life as a serial killer. On the other hand, he gives occasional hints
about his vigilante activities, which may be pleasurably decoded by the
viewers in the external communication system. This latter process is

additionally supported by hidden clues, when, for instance, Dexter’s
boat, which he uses to dispose of the bodies in the sea, bears the name
“Slice of Life” throughout the whole series. Along these lines, in situa-
tions of dramatic irony Dexter commonly has the same knowledge as the
audience, in contrast to the other characters. This tension proves highly
effective for the popular appeal of the series, for it results in both black
humor and thrilling suspense. By making the viewer his accomplice
through witty and sarcastic voice-over comments, Dexter manages to
present himself in a very favorable light.
By condensing the main functions of the three communication sys-
tems, it is possible to assign descriptive labels to each of them. Thus, the
internal system may aptly be called the level of action and suspense.
Dexter is intentionally vague and evasive with the help of polysemous
nouns such as stuff or things or with ambiguous adjectives such as spe-
cial. Occasionally, he gives clues through metaphors such as animal,
which, however, are not deciphered by the other characters. Hence, in
contrast to the typical language of TV series, unclear and hedging ex-
pressions are here intentionally employed. Dexter’s true character is
revealed exclusively to his victims immediately before their death and
on one occasion to his baby son. By contrast, the external system relates
to a large extent to the level of irony and humor. Dexter displays his true
self by relating his actual thoughts through voice-over, which is occa-
sionally enhanced by other multimodal means such as songs. Since the
voice-over comes from the protagonist himself, the technique is compa-
rable to drama, where similar functions are fulfilled by asides or solilo-
quies. The confidential first-person narrative perspective creates a close
relationship with the addressees and supports empathetic identification
with the protagonist. Finally, the inner communication system mainly
functions as the level of conscience and moral sense. Harry’s admon-
ishing voice inside Dexter’s head leads to grave discussions that hardly
leave any space for humor or exciting action.
With regard to Dexter’s verbal camouflage, the “logic of escalation”
(see Hoepker, this volume) clearly applies. From season one to season
four, it becomes more and more difficult for Dexter to conceal his dou-
ble life, while his danger of being unmasked rises continually, owing to
his expanding social life and corresponding obligations. Thus, apart
from the serial killer thrill, Dexter works as a metaphor for the common
role-playing that individuals carry out in their daily lives. Although the
role conflict is certainly much less dramatic for most viewers, the basic
problem is similar. The fact that this situation is multimodally supported
by camera work, music, and sound effects provides ample opportunity
for future interdisciplinary research on the construction of an ethically
doubtful yet oddly likeable serial killer. Thus, while the serial Dexter
clearly transgresses crime show conventions, the character Dexter tries
very hard to stay within the limits of communicative conventions.
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Contributors
MARJOLAINE BOUTET is Associate Professor (maître de conférences) in

American History at the University of Picardy-Jules Verne (Amiens,
France) and former Fulbright grantee. She has written several books and
articles on TV series in French (Les Séries Télé pour les Nuls, First,
2009; Sériescopie: guide thématique des séries télévisées, Ellipses,
2011; and Cold Case: la mélodie du passé, 2013) and is a member of the
Editorial Board of the on-line peer-reviewed bilingual journal TV/Series.
Her main research interests are the representation of war, politics and
history in TV series, and TV series as historical documents. She has
written several articles about political dramas to analyze their links with
society.
FELIX BRINKER is a doctoral candidate at the John F. Kennedy Institute’s

Graduate School of North American Studies at the Free University of
Berlin, as well as an associate member of the DFG Research Unit “Pop-
ular Seriality – Aesthetics and Practice.” He holds a B.A. in American
Studies and Political Science, as well as an M.A. in American Studies
from Leibniz University Hannover, where he completed his studies in
2012 with a thesis on “The Aesthetics of Conspiracy in Contemporary
American Serial Television.” His dissertation project discusses the me-
dia franchises built around recent superhero blockbuster films as exam-
ples of a neoliberal popular culture. His research interests include popu-
lar seriality, film and television studies, media theory, critical theory,
and the politics of American popular culture. He has published articles
on contemporary American television series, blockbuster film, and me-
dia franchising, focusing in particular on the interactions between nar-
rative form and reception practices.
BIRGIT DÄWES has just moved to the University of Flensburg, Germany,

where she serves as Professor and Chair of American Studies. She re-
ceived her doctoral and post-doctoral degrees from the University of
Würzburg, Germany, and held previous positions as Professor of
352 Contributors
American Studies at the University of Mainz, at National Sun Yat-sen

University in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and at the University of Vienna,
where she also recently directed the Center for Canadian Studies. Her
works include two award-winning monograph studies, Native North
American Theater in a Global Age (Heidelberg: Winter, 2007) and
Ground Zero Fiction: History, Memory, and Representation in the
American 9/11 Novel (Heidelberg: Winter, 2011), as well as editions
such as Indigenous North American Drama: A Multivocal History
(Albany: SUNY Press, 2013), Narratives of Fundamentalism (LWU
46.2-3 [2014]), Enacting Nature: Ecocritical Perspectives on
Indigenous Performance (with Marc Maufort; Brussels: Peter Lang,
2014) and (with Ingrid Gessner) Commemorating World War II at 70:
Ethnic and Transnational Perspectives (American Studies Journal 59
[2015]). She serves as co-editor of the Routledge book series
“Transnational Indigenous Perspectives.” Her current research focuses
on the culture of surveillance, contemporary American and European
television series, media education, and issues of cultural memory.
RENÉ DIETRICH holds a post-doc research post funded by the DFG

(German Research Foundation) as principal investigator and leader of
the project “Biopolitics and Native American Life Writing” at the
Transnational American Studies Institute, Johannes Gutenberg-Univer-
sity Mainz. He is the author of Revising and Remembering (after) the
End: American Post-Apocalyptic Poetry since 1945 from Ginsberg to
Forché (WVT 2012), as well as the co-editor of Lost or Found in
Translation? Internationale/ Interkulturelle Perspektiven der Geistes-
und Kulturwissenschaften (WVT 2011), and A History of American
Poetry: Contexts-Developments-Readings (WVT 2015). His essays on
Settler Colonial and Indigenous Studies, Native American writing,
contemporary American poetry, drama, postmodernist and noir fiction,
as well as on the (post-)apocalyptic in American culture, literature and
film have appeared in Anglia, Amerikastudien / American Studies, and
several edited volumes.
GARY R. EDGERTON joined Butler University as Professor and Dean of

the College of Communication in 2012. He was previously eminent
scholar, professor, and chair of the Communication and Theatre Arts
Department at Old Dominion University where he received the univer-
Contributors 353
sity’s 27th Annual Research Award in Recognition of a Distinguished

Scholarly Career in 2011. He has published twelve books and more than
eighty essays on a variety of television, film and culture topics in a wide
assortment of books, scholarly journals, and encyclopedias. His 2007
volume, The Columbia History of American Television (Columbia Uni-
versity Press), was named the 2008 John G. Cawelti Award winner for
Outstanding Scholarly Inquiry into American Cultural Studies by the
American Culture Association. He also coedits the Journal of Popular
Film and Television.
ALEXANDRA GANSER is Professor of American Literary and Cultural

Studies at the University of Vienna. Her dissertation was published as
Roads of Her Own: Gendered Space and Mobility in American Women’s
Road Narratives, 1970-2000 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009). She re-
searches and publishes in the fields of mobility studies (e.g. co-ed. vol.
Pirates, Drifters, Fugitives: Figures of Mobility in American Culture
and Beyond, 2012, with Heike Paul and Katharina Gerund), gender
studies, popular culture studies, transatlantic studies and border studies,
ecocriticism, Native American studies, film, and intermediality. Her
second book, sponsored by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), examines
transatlantic representations of piracy and is entitled “Crisis and Dis-
courses of (Il)Legitimacy in Transatlantic Narratives of Piracy, 1678-
1865.”
KARIN HOEPKER is Assistant Professor of North American Studies at the

Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. Her
book No Maps for these Territories: Cities, Spaces, and Archaeologies
of the Future in William Gibson was published with Rodopi in 2011.
She is currently working on her second book project on The Edge of
Reason: Fiction, Risk and Probability in Antebellum Literary Narra-
tives. She has been a visiting researcher at Princeton University’s Fire-
stone Library and the George J. Mitchell Special Collections of the
Bowdoin College Library; the German Academic Exchange Council
(DAAD) funded her research as a visiting scholar at Stanford University
in 2012/13. Her research interests include fiction and the American
novel as well as crime fiction and contemporary American TV-series.
She also works in the field of Science and Fiction Studies and is a mem-
ber of “Bio-Objects and Bio-Subjects,” an Emerging Field Initiative that
354 Contributors
facilitates discussion and collaborative work between humanities schol-

ars and life scientists at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen.
CORNELIA KLECKER is an Assistant Professor at the Department of

American Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, where she
teaches mostly American literature, American culture, film and televi-
sion. She is a series editor of “Film and Television Studies” at Univer-
sitätsverlag Winter, which will also publish her forthcoming monograph
Spoiler Alert! Mind-Tricking Narratives in Contemporary Hollywood
Film (2015). Her journal publications include “Authentication Authority
and Narrative Self-Erasure in Fight Club” in Amerikastudien / American
Studies 59.1 (2014), “Mind-Tricking Narratives: Between Classical and
Art Cinema Narration” in Poetics Today 33:4 (Winter 2012), and
“Chronology, Causality, … Confusion: When Avant-Garde Goes
Classic” in Journal of Film & Video 63.2 (Summer 2011).
MATTHEW LEROY is an author, journalist, and teacher of English and

cultural theory. He was born in Sydney, Australia and has been writing
nearly his entire life. His short stories have been published worldwide
and he is currently working on his first novel. In 2005 he moved to
Europe where he lives with his family in Vienna, Austria. After learning
German, he completed an undergraduate degree in Communication
Sciences and then studied Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at the
University of Vienna. His fields of interest are violence in media and
culture, literature as well as cultural studies and cultural theory with a
particular interest in North American and Australian studies.
FABIUS MAYLAND received his B.A. degree in English Studies from the
University of Bonn, Germany, and is currently pursuing a Master’s
Degree in North American Studies at the Free University of Berlin. He
studied abroad for a semester at the University of New South Wales in
Sydney, Australia in 2015 and has been supported by the Studienstiftung
des deutschen Volkes (German National Academic Foundation) since
April 2015. When not writing about American TV series and other as-
sorted pop culture, Fabius enjoys reading, and working with, the
philosophies of Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, and Manuel DeLanda.
Contributors 355
KIMBERLY R. MOFFITT is associate professor of American Studies and

affiliate associate professor in the Departments of Africana Studies and
of Language, Literacy and Culture. Her teaching interests include
culture, media studies/criticism, Black hair and body politics, sports and
media, and popular culture. Dr. Moffitt’s research focuses on mediated
representations of marginalized groups as well as the politicized nature
of Black hair and the body. She has published three co-edited volumes,
including Blackberries and Redbones: Critical Articulations of Black
Hair and Body Politics in Africana Communities (Hampton Press,
2010), The Obama Effect: Multidisciplinary Renderings of the 2008
Campaign (SUNY Press, 2010) and The 1980s: A Transitional Decade?
(Lexington, 2011). She has also published her work in academic
journals and several edited volumes. Her current research projects
continue to explore the black body such as her work exploring white
femininity in Disney’s The Princess and the Frog and the
representations of Black males on Disney television programming. She
extends her research interests into the community by offering media
literacy workshops in middle schools as well as seminars on Black hair
and body politics as it relates to bullying among middle school girls.
NICOLE POPPENHAGEN currently holds a teaching and research appoint-

ment at the University of Flensburg, Germany. Before joining the Eng-
lish Department in Flensburg, she worked as university assistant at the
Department of English and American Studies in Vienna, Austria, and for
the American Studies division at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz,
Germany, where she also pursued her research interest in the field of
transnational life writing. She was a teaching fellow at Bowdoin Col-
lege, Maine, U.S.A. in 2007/08 and completed her studies in Mainz with
a thesis entitled “Negotiating Concepts of Identity in Chinese American
Women’s Writing” in 2011. In her dissertation, she explores Chinese
American family narratives from a transpacific perspective. She served
as guest editor for the 2015 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Current
Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies.
SIMONE PUFF is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Departments of

African American Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies at Syracuse
University. Previously, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor of
American Studies at the University of Graz in Austria and a Visiting
356 Contributors
Scholar in the Department of Communication, Culture & Media Studies

at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She also taught at the
Universities of Vienna, Salzburg, Innsbruck, and Klagenfurt in Austria
and at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany. Simone Puff has
published on topics such as colorism and skin color politics in African
American literature and culture, representations of the Black feminist
movement in the media, the Harlem Renaissance, and on the television
show Scandal. The monograph based on her award-winning dissertation
(University of Klagenfurt, 2012, Fulbright Prize for ‘Best Dissertation in
American Studies’ in Austria) on discourses of skin color in Ebony and
Essence magazines is currently in preparation. She is the co-editor of a
book on the television show Scandal (with Kimberly R. Moffitt and
Ronald L. Jackson II) to be published in 2016. Her other research
interests are located in the broad realms of American Cultural Studies;
Black protest movements and digital humanities; the intersections of
race, gender, and class; and Critical Whiteness Studies.
JANINA ROJEK is a doctoral candidate, research assistant, and lecturer

(wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) for North American Literary and Cul-
tural Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg. Her research interests
include popular culture, seriality, television studies, contemporary
American literature and 9/11 literature, illness and trauma, nineteenth-
century periodical fiction, and the gangster/ crime in American culture.
Her dissertation project examines the quality debate and seriality from a
historical perspective under the working title “Tracing Seriality: The
Quality Debate in Late Nineteenth-Century American Magazines.” She
has given talks on the topic of seriality and television series in Germany,
Austria, and the United States (at Drew University’s 2nd Annual Dean
Hopper New Scholars Conference) and in 2014, an article with the title
“Previously on the Quality Debate: Serialization and the Continued
Practice of Cultural Hierarchization” appeared in issue 15.1 of Current
Objectives in Postgraduate American Studies.
STEPHANIE SCHOLZ studied Communication Science as well as Theater,

Film, Media, and Photography at Washington & Jefferson College, the
University of Vienna, and the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. She
has worked in journalism and public relations, publishing articles and
photographs in Germany, Spain, and the Unites States. In 2012, her
Contributors 357
Bachelor’s thesis on media representations of female politicians in the

United States and Germany received an award from the Students’ Union
at the University of Vienna. She first came into contact with Indigenous
media during a semester in the United States. Following up on her inter-
est in Indigenous representations, she conducted research with the In-
digenous television station First Nations Experience (FNX) in Southern
California. Her Master’s thesis, completed in 2014, focuses on FNX as a
new forum for Indigenous media communication and reception. She is
currently finishing a graduate degree in Journalism and Communication
at the University of Vienna with a thesis on children’s television.
CHRISTOPH SCHUBERT is a Full Professor of English Linguistics at the

University of Vechta, Germany. He received his Ph.D. and his postdoc-
toral degree (Habilitation) from the University of Würzburg. His main
publications are a study on the complex sentence in English poetry (Pe-
ter Lang 2000), a postdoctoral study on the cognitive constitution of
space in descriptive text types (Niemeyer 2009), and a book-length in-
troduction to English text linguistics (Erich Schmidt, 2nd ed. 2012). He
is co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Language and Politics
entitled Cognitive Perspectives on Political Discourse (2014). Currently,
he is working as co-editor on two further collections of essays, namely
Variational Text Linguistics: Revisiting Register in English (de Gruyter
Mouton) and Pragmatic Perspectives on Postcolonial Discourse: Lin-
guistics and Literature (Cambridge Scholars). He has acted as a peer
reviewer for Cambridge University Press and for the journals Intercul-
tural Pragmatics as well as SKY Journal of Linguistics, amongst others.
He has published widely in the areas of discourse analysis, text
linguistics, stylistics, cognitive linguistics, and pragmatics.
DOROTHEA WILL is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Media and

Culture Studies and lecturer in English Literature and Culture at the
University of Passau, Germany. After graduating from both the Uni-
versities of Oxford (M.St. in English Literature, 2009) and Passau (B.A.
International Cultural and Business Studies, 2008; German and English
Studies, 2010), she now researches into British television comedy ex-
ports to the U.S. with a particular focus on the politics of laughter and
identity in the sitcom genre. Her further research interests include
women’s travel writing, British children’s literature as well as Scottish
358 Contributors
culture and literature, in particular poetry from the eighteenth century to

the present day.

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BIRGIT DÄWES, ALEXANDRA GANSER, NICOLE POPPENHAGEN

Representing Power: Formats of Political TV Series

Normative Crossings: Institutions, Gender, and Ethnicity

Transgression and Control: Serializing Crime

Season Recap: A Preface

With a focus on what we term “transgressive television,” the present

overwrite: morally ambivalent politicians bending actual events into

Klecker unmasks various instances of what she terms “drive-by

perspective, Christoph Schubert analyzes the serial killer narrative of

In Hannibal’s second season, Will Graham once says to Hannibal Lecter

Birgit Däwes, Alexandra Ganser, and Nicole Poppenhagen

Transgressive Television: Preliminary Thoughts

The war was lost

In the opening credits to the second season of Nic Pizzolatto’s True

production sites of Louisiana’s petrochemicals, together with the frag-

Times critic Charles McGrath praised the “considerable degree of origi-

Schiller’s Der Geisterseher ([The Ghost-Seer], 1787/89) to Charles

dieser Wiederholungen erlaubt. Serialität wäre daher primär keine Erzähl-

term itself suggests highly subjective judgments of taste and sociocul-

implications. Similarly, Homeland, another example of those serials

(e.g. David Milch’s Deadwood [HBO, 2004-2006]), or historical drama

function as a “vehicle for social commentary” (Bigsby 19), but also

of television as “a highly conflictual mass medium in which competing

Ames, Melissa, ed. Time in Television Narrative: Exploring Temporality in

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philoso-

The Countdown to Y2KTV and the Arrival of the

Elevating the Showrunner Model

The American showrunner

When David Lynch’s Twin Peaks debuted on ABC in April 1990, no

When the abbreviated two-season run of Twin Peaks culminated in June

Wells’s ER (1994-2009) and Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing (1999-

spread critical accolades. The show’s unexpected level of success over

The Role of The Sopranos in the Rise of Cinematic Television

The engines of [television]

ation of serialists, some of whom also became successful showrunners,

1980 when the first examples of McGrath’s “prime-time novel” started

“In stimulating the creation of a wide variety of new satellite networks,”

this medium in a way we hadn’t been perceived before. It was a real

“little patience for learning on the job” (Biskind 284). He tolerated no

The Ascendancy of Y2KTV

More than a half-century after the first stirrings of prime-time drama,

transitional period in the media environment, even if they might be

moving to another transitional benchmark where subscription dollars

Dunleavy, Trisha. “Strategies of Innovation in ‘High-End’ TV Drama: The

Martin, Brett. Difficult Men. New York: Penguin, 2013. Print.

“The Guardian’s Top 50 Television Dramas of All Time.” The Guardian. 12

Transgressive Serialization and the Serialization

Scholars studying contemporary TV series often mention Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks and the Development of the Contemporary TV Series

According to Gary Edgerton, editor of the Columbia History of

wall), was made possible by network despair as well as courage and

series (defining them as “high-end character-driven long-form

(32) and instead foregrounding ongoing stories across a range of genres,

In addition, Twin Peaks emphasized a sense of medial self-reflexivity

In einer fortlaufenden Fernsehserie finden sich Brüche in größerer

Twin Peaks also broke new ground concerning the transgression of

man who calls himself Mike and identifies as an otherworldly being.

systems, multiple dimensions of reality beyond his control and

two-season series, playing also with the Peaks/peeks homonym (for

investigates Twin Peaks, which becomes a temporary, vicarious home