Florian Groß – medieninitiative

Imagining Media Change — Photos from the Symposium

Here are some images from our symposium “Imagining Media Change,” which took place on June 13, 2013:

Above, Ruth Mayer opening the symposium with some nice words of welcome.

Jussi Parikka talking about “Cultural Techniques of Cognitive Capitalism: On Change and Recurrence” in his wonderful opening keynote.

Florian Groß delivering his talk “The Only Constant is Change: American Television and Media Change Revisited” — with examples from Mad Men.

Bettina Soller on hypertext and fanfic in her talk “How We Imagined Electronic Literature and Who Died: Looking at Fan Fiction to See What Became of the Future of Writing”.

Me, Shane Denson, on escalators and “On NOT Imagining Media Change”.

Wanda Strauven delivering the second keynote, “Pretend (&) Play: Children as Media Archaeologists” — a lively talk with great examples!

Christina Meyer talking about the Yellow Kid and “Technology – Economy – Mediality: Nineteenth Century American Newspaper Comics”.

Ilka Brasch talking about early film serials and “Facilitating Media Change: The Operational Aesthetic as a Receptive Mode”.

Alexander Starre wrapping up the symposium with an excellent talk on “Evolving Technologies, Enduring Media: Material Irony in Octave Uzanne’s ‘The End of Books’”.

And finally, here are a few more random pictures:

Florian Groß, “The Only Constant is Change”

Abstract for Florian Groß’s talk at the symposium “Imagining Media Change” (June 13, 2013, Leibniz Universität Hannover):

The Only Constant is Change: American Television and Media Change Revisited

Florian Groß

“This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. Goes backwards, forwards. It takes us to a place where we ache to go again.” This is how 1960s adman Don Draper describes a slide projector in the historical television series Mad Men, and his pitch is also a potent way of describing the medium itself. From its development out of radio and film to its present convergence with digital media, television’s interaction with other media and processes of media change was often linked to its negotiation of the future and the past, progress and retrospection, and innovation and nostalgia.

This paper argues that in order to understand the future of television and the potential results of its increasing interaction with digital media, an understanding of the medium’s past as well as television’s own understandings of its past is instrumental. In this context, Mad Men’s historiography and its attempt to unearth and create historical material helps us to come to terms with the layers of television’s past whose residues always coexist with the medium in transition and continue to influence the shape of televisual things to come.

It’s Not TV: Conference Program

Above, the program for the conference “It’s Not Television” in Frankfurt, where Florian Groß, Felix Brinker, and I will be presenting this coming week. (More about our talks — and links to our abstracts — here.)

It’s Not Television (Or Is It?)

Three members of the Initiative for Interdisciplinary Media Research (Felix Brinker, Florian Groß, and Shane Denson) will be presenting papers at the upcoming conference “It’s Not Television” (22-23 February 2013, Goethe University of Frankfurt). Our abstracts can be found here:

Felix Brinker: “Narratively Complex Television Series and the Lure of Conspiracy – On the Politics of Long-Form Serial Storytelling and the Paranoid Eye of Active Audiences”

Shane Denson: “Serial Bodies: Corporeal Engagement in Long-Form Serial Television”

Florian Groß: “Born Alone, Die Alone, But Never Dine Alone: The Creative Individual and Generic Family Structures in Recent TV Series”

Florian Groß: “The Creative Individual and Generic Family Structures in Recent TV Series”

Abstract for Florian Groß’s talk at the conference “It’s Not Television” (Frankfurt, 22-23 February 2013). See here for talks by other members of the Initiative for Interdisciplinary Media Research.

Born Alone, Die Alone, But Never Dine Alone:
The Creative Individual and Generic Family Structures in Recent TV Series

Florian Groß

Ever since television has been part of the American family, the American family has been part of television. Even under the “not TV”-paradigm, family remains a central aspect of television, as shows like The Sopranos or Six Feet Under attest. In many recent shows, this constitutive part of the televisual landscape interacts with a highly fetishized figure in contemporary television, the creative individual. Californication’s Hank Moody, Mad Men’s Don Draper, or 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon are but a few examples of non-conformist, iconoclast and ingenious characters who express their innate urges in various aesthetic(ized) fields and serially assert their individual freedom and self-reliance. Yet, despite their superficial undermining of traditional (family) concepts, they also take serial recourse to standard conceptions of family. They may be adulterers, divorcees, or singles, but they hardly ever define themselves without the (white, middle class, nuclear) family, which emerges as a structure that provides the creative heroes with boundaries that prevents them from becoming antisocial.

My paper analyzes this dynamic interaction between an aestheticized individualism and the continued relevance of family structures. Furthermore, I want to link this narrative aspect of television series to their respective take on genres. In an era that is purportedly moving beyond genre, it becomes nevertheless apparent that series frequently resort to classic televisual genres and thus return to their generic ‘family’. In the end, looking at recent television’s simultaneous deconstruction and reconstruction of the American family helps to explain how and why today’s segmented audience(s) are symbolically (re-)united by forms of television that restore the social function of an “electronic hearth” (Tichi).

In Media Res: Teen TV & Pedagogy

This week (November 12-16, 2012), my colleague Florian Groß participates in a theme week entitled “Teen TV and Pedagogy,” over at In Media Res. Each day’s contribution, consisting of a video clip of up to three minutes accompanied by a short essay of 300-350 words, is designed to serve as a conversation starter aimed at involving a broad audience in discussion of key topics relating to television aimed at teen audiences.

To participate in the discussion, you will need to register beforehand at In Media Res. (Registration is simple, but it can sometimes take a while for user accounts to be generated, so it is recommended that you register asap.)

Here is the lineup of presenters/curators for the theme week, along with the titles:

Monday, November 12, 2012 – Phoebe Bronstein (University of Oregon) presents: A Huge Cancellation and the ABC Family Brand

Tuesday, November 13, 2012 – Chris Tokuhama (University of Southern California) presents: “We Don’t Need Another Hero: Individualism and Self-Reliance in Teen Television”

Wednesday, November 14, 2012 – Florian Groß (Leibniz Universität Hannover) presents: “Rebels with a Cause: Creativity and the Teen Drama”

Thursday, November 15, 2012 – Joe Barton (Newcastle University) presents: “British Student Sitcoms, Teen Television, and Neoliberal Pedagogy”

Friday, November 16, 2012 – Chelsea Bullock (University of Oregon) presents: “’This is an unstable environment’: Teen Mom 2 and Class”

The theme week is organized by Karen Petruska (Northeastern University).

Ulrich Blumenbach, “Der Übersetzer als Gärtner”

On Thursday, June 28 (at 6:00 pm in room 609, Conti-Hochhaus), Ulrich Blumenbach will talk about his work as German translator of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. The talk, titled “Der Übersetzer als Gärtner: Pfingstrosen, Kraut und Rüben,” will take place in the context of Florian Groß’s seminar on Infinite Jest, but everyone is welcome to come!

The Aesthetics of Authenticity

I am pleased to announce The Aesthetics of Authenticity: Medial Constructions of the Real, an essay collection co-edited by two of my colleagues, Wolfgang Funk and Florian Groß, along with Irmtraud Huber from the University of Berne. The book will appear in early May with German publisher Transcript. Here is a short abstract for the collection:

“As a concept that increasingly gains importance in contemporary cultural discourse, authenticity emerges as a site of tearing tensions between the fictional and the real, original and fake, margin and centre, the same and the other.

The essays collected in this volume explore this paradoxical nature of authenticity in the context of various media. They give ample proof of the fact that authenticity, which depends on giving the impression of being inherent or natural, found not created, frequently turns out to be the result of a careful aesthetic construction that depends on the use of identifiable techniques with the aim of achieving certain effects for certain reasons.”

And here is the Table of Contents:

“Exploring the Empty Plinth. The Aesthetics of Authenticity” (Wolfgang Funk, Florian Groß, and Irmtraud Huber)

FRAGMENTATIONS

“Authenticity as an Aesthetic Notion. Normative and Non-Normative Concepts in Modern and Contemporary Poetics” (Susanne Knaller)

“Found Objects. Narrative (as) Reconstruction in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad” (Wolfgang Funk)

“Monolithic Authenticity and Fake News. Stephen Colbert’s Megalomania” (Seth Hulse)

“Authentic Bodies. Genome(s) vs. Gender Norms in Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and BioShock” (Sven Schmalfuß)

CONTESTATIONS

“‘The Real Thing.’ Authenticating Strategies in Hemingway’s Fiction” (Melanie Eis)

“Real Lives – Living Wild. Authenticity, Wilderness, and the Postmodern Robinsonade in James Hawes’s Speak for England and Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (Francesca Nadja Palitzsch)

“Monica Ali and the Suspension of Disbelief” (Melanie Mettler)

PERFORMANCES

“Poet and the Roots. Authenticity in the Works of Linton Kwesi Johnson and Benjamin Zephaniah” (David Bousquet)

“The Dilettantish Construction of the Extraordinary and the Authenticity of the Artificial. Tracing Strategies for Success in German Popular Entertainment Shows” (Antonius Weixler)

“‘Brooklyn Zack is Real’: Irony and Sincere Authenticity in 30 Rock” (Florian Groß)

“Authentic Simulacra or the Aura of Repetition. Experiencing Authenticity in Tom McCarthy’s Remainder” (Irmtraud Huber and Sophie Seita)

Florian Groß, “‘Quality TV’ and ‘Graphic Novel’: What’s in a Name?”

Abstract for Florian Groß’s talk at “Cultural Distinctions Remediated: Beyond the High, the Low, and the Middle” (Leibniz University of Hannover, 15-17 December 2011):

‘Quality TV’ and ‘Graphic Novel’: What’s in a Name?

Florian Groß (American Studies, Hannover)

The terms Quality TV and Graphic Novel have become almost synonymous with a broad revaluation of television and comics, two media that have traditionally been related exclusively to popular, even mass, culture. And yet, both terms are less about a democratization of taste than about new forms of cultural distinction. Reminiscent of, though by no means identical with, historical processes of cultural distinction, both Quality TV and Graphic Novel refer to a certain subset of texts with higher aesthetic value and emphasize the role of creativity and education in their production as well as reception. Given the media to which these two categories of cultural distinction are applied and the timeframe in which they have developed, it is necessary to come to terms with their specific forms of distinction, which can no longer be read along the lines of high/low culture, but rather as embedded processes of an ever-expanding popular culture that ultimately have to be considered on their own.

Through an analysis of the terms Quality TV and Graphic Novel with respect to collaborative and individual authorship/production, seriality, and media convergence, this talk attempts to highlight the specific cultural work performed by the terms and thus shed light on related intra-/intermedial developments. Furthermore, it will explore their instrumentality in redefining television and comics, as well as media culture in general, in times of a rapidly changing media landscape.

Florian Groß über 30 Rock: Vortrag in Regensburg

Auch Florian Gr0ß hält einen Vortrag auf der DGfA-Jahrestagung in Regensburg. Hier ist sein Abstract:

A Kinder, Gentler Americanization?: Transnational Cool and 30 Rock

International audiences often consume U.S. television series with surprising effects, as Ien Ang has shown with respect to the subversive global reception of Dallas and audiences’ critical take on the show’s celebration of capitalism. Yet, many recent television series seem to be aware of this subversiveness and deliver it already built-in. Especially genre-bending and style-conscious shows of the high profile Quality TV-variety routinely feature non-conformist characters and voice criticism of global corporate capitalism.

I want to trace this phenomenon through a case study of the television series 30 Rock, a metafictional NBC-comedy about the production of a live-action NBC show. The show mocks, criticizes and debunks corporate America and the global impact of U.S. media while at the same time being an international commodity itself. As such, it perpetuates a development that McGuigan has called “cool capitalism,” whose major aspect “is the incorporation of disaffection into capitalism itself.”

By focusing on 30 Rock’s construction of a particular audience defined by taste rather than nationality, I want to read its mocking representation of U.S. capitalism as a contemporary inflection of Americanization connected more to processes of heterogeneity than a homogenizing ‘Coca-Colonization.’ 30 Rock may never be a global phenomenon on a large scale like Dallas. Still, its international impact shows how contemporary ‘narrowcasting,’ through which certain groups of viewers rather than large masses are addressed, can become a transnational phenomenon. The imagined global community of shows like 30 Rock consists of active and subversive viewers who see themselves as parts of a subculture critical of globalized U.S. capitalism—and nevertheless consume a product tailored to their tastes by a culture industry that imagines a strikingly similar group. I want to argue that this paradox can only be resolved if we find a cultural analysis that mediates between the hope that audiences are critical subversives and the fear that they are passive ‘cultural dupes,’ and comes up with a third way of analyzing consumer capitalism.