Style and Stylistics (Discussion)
Television: Visual Storytelling and Screen Culture
Group 1: Pretend you are "evaluative" and "descriptive" stylisticians. How would you study The Mindy Project? Devise a research project that you might attempt with this TV text.
Group 2: Pretend you are an "analytic" stylistician. How would you study The Mindy Project? Devise a research project that you might attempt with this TV text. Be sure to account for the following "functions" of style discussed in the textbook.
- symbolize
- decorate
Group 3: Pretend you are an "analytic" stylistician. How would you study The Mindy Project? Devise a research project that you might attempt with this TV text. Be sure to account for the following "functions" of style discussed in the textbook.
- persuade
- hail or interpellate
- differentiate
Groups 4: Pretend you are a "historical" stylistician. How would you study The Mindy Project? Devise a research project that you might attempt with this TV text. Be sure to account for "craft practices" and "schemas."
"Televisuality and the Resurrection of the Sitcom in the 2000s"
View a scene from The Mindy Project (see Blackboard and screenshots online).
- All Groups: List at least three aspects of the The Mindy Project scene that mark it as single-camera production.
- All groups: Table 5.3 in "Televisuality and the Resurrection of the Sitcom in the 2000s" lists elements of the "single-camera televisual schema". Is The Mindy Project "televisual", in addition to being a single-camera production? Identify any elements from this table in the scene.
Bibliography
- Butler, Jeremy G. Television: Visual Storytelling and Screen Culture. NY: Routledge, 2018.
- Butler, Jeremy G. "Televisuality and the Resurrection of the Sitcom in the 2000s," in Television Style (NY: Routledge, 2010), 173-222.