Modern TV Dramas: Evolving Storytelling and Social Impact
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Presentation Transcript
Dramas Unit 4
TV Buzz • Older TV dramas focused on one main character or one central plot. • Today, the trend is toward multiple characters and story lines. • This move may be due to the perception that audiences today have shorter attention spans that did audiences of the past.
The Glamour of Work • Another contrast between situation comedies and dramas is that dramas are more likely to be set in the workplace than at home • They glamorize certain jobs • Lawyers, doctors, police officers, and firefighters/emergency rescue workers • Rarely will you see lawyers doing research or police officers spending hours filling out paperwork and firefighters/emergency rescue workers waiting around for a call
Conflict and Violence • The central theme is conflict- within a person, between nature, or between two people • Conflict resolution is the way two or more people resolve their disputes • Through negotiation and compromise or violence • Dramas are about 44 minutes long and they need to create and resolve conflict rather quickly • Violence is a very dramatic and very quick way of dealing with conflict
Conflict and Violence • Gratuitous violence serves no purpose in a story’s plot. It’s simply included because viewers are excited by violence • Purposeful violence is violence that does serve a role in the story’s plot • Good guy may use violence to save people form the bad guys
Violence on TV • By the time you have completed elementary school, you will have witnessed more that 100,000 violent acts on TV, including 8,000 murders. • By the time you graduate from high school, these numbers double to 200,000 acts of violence and 16,000 murders
What is Justice? • According to Encarta Dictionary justice is: fairness or reasonableness, especially in the way people are treated or decisions are made • Some have tried to develop a definition of justice as meaning something that most members of society believe is fair • Not everyone can agree on what is justice • Death penalty
TV and the Professionals • LA Law, a drama that depicted a law firm in Los Angeles, ran from 1986 to 1994. During that time, law school applications jumped from 61,300 in 1986 to a peak of 94,000 in 1991 • ER, was given credit for the increase in application to medial school • Many students entering college decide to pursue criminal justice degrees in part because of the way law enforcement careers are depicted in police dramas.