Product: Capital TV series


What needs to be studied? Key Questions and Issues:

This product relates to the theoretical framework by providing a focus for the study of:

Media Language
Capital is a complex mainstream television product in which the codes and conventions of the crime drama are intertwined with aspects of social realism. Detailed analysis of this media form
including the process through which media language develops as genre will provide students with an opportunity to understand and reflect on the dynamic nature of genre. Analysis should
include:
• Mise-en-scene analysis
• Semiotics: how images signify cultural meanings

Narrative
restricted narration etc. – position the audience?
• Capital is characteristic of contemporary TV narrative style in its use of multiple story structure.
• Narratology including Todorov.

Genre
• Definition of the series as a hybrid genre, belonging to the drama, social realism and crime genres
• Genre theory including Neale.

Media Representations
Capital provides a wide range of representational areas to explore; the family, place, nation, class, ethnicity, race and issues.
• Negative and positive use – or subversion – of stereotypes.
• Representations of family and their ideological significance – Capital constructs its representation of nation in part through contrasting images of the family.
• Representation of place – London and by implication, the nation.
• Analysis of how the representations convey values, attitudes and beliefs about the world.
• Theories of representation including Hall.

Media Industries
The central way into an institutional approach is to consider Capital as a BBC programme and to examine how it can be seen to fulfil the demands of Public Service Broadcasting.
• Capital is a Kudos production for the BBC, an independent company which also produces successful programmes for other broadcasters.

Media Audiences
Issues of audience are also relevant throughout the other theoretical frameworks. In media language, the use of different formal structures to position the audience to receive and interpret meaning is central, while the study of representations has at its heart the reinforcement of social and cultural values for audiences.
• The production, distribution and circulation of Capital shows how audiences can be reached, both on a national and global scale, through different media technologies and platforms, moving from the national to transnational through broadcast and digital technologies.
• The way in which different audience interpretations reflect social, cultural and historical circumstances is evident in the analysis of Capital which is explicitly linked to contemporary
issues.
• The advertising campaigns (trailers, websites at home and abroad) for the series demonstrate how media producers target, attract and potentially construct audiences.
• Cultivation theory including Gerbner.
• Reception theory including Hall.

Product: Deutschland 83 TV series

What needs to be studied? Key Questions and Issues

This product relates to the theoretical framework by providing a focus for the study of:

Media Language
The series is visually interesting, constructing a stylised representation of ‘real’ places which transmit meanings about characters, places and issues. A detailed analysis of different aspects of mise-en-scene will provide students with a strong foundation to build on in terms of analysing representations, ideological meanings and audience positioning. Analysis should include:
• Mise-en-scene analysis
• Semiotics: how images signify cultural meanings
• Postmodernism: Use of pastiche and bricolage
Narrative
• How does the use of the narrative conventions of the spy thriller and crime drama – use of enigmas, binary oppositions, restricted and omniscient narration etc. – position the audience?
• The narrative of Deutschland 83 has been controversial – particularly in Germany -through its
use of binary oppositions to contrast East and West Germany.
• The role of the hero and effect of audience alignment with Martin Rauch, a Stasi Officer.
• The narrative of Deutschland 83 can be defined as postmodern in its self-reflexive style.
• Narratology including Todorov.

Genre:
• Conventions of the TV series and the way in which this form is used to appeal to audiences
• Definition of the series as belonging to the spy thriller genre
• Conventions of the period drama and reasons for its popularity
• Analysing the use of specific genres to discuss wider issues in society
• Genre theory including Neale

Media Representations
Deutschland 83 provides a range of representational areas to explore from the national and regional to political structures and gender roles. All of the areas tend to overlap with representations of a nation’s historical past allowing students to consider how representations reflect social, cultural and historical circumstances:
• Representation of national and regional identity (East and West Germany (Europe))
• Representation of gender: male hero and spy, the female ‘love interest’ etc., the way
characters signify wider issues in society.
• Analysis of how the representations convey values, attitudes and beliefs about the world – both
contemporary and past.
• Theories of representation including Hall
• Feminist theories including bell hooks and Van Zoonen (role of women)

Media Industries
Deutschland 83 is part of a recent trend – which really started with BBC4’s showing of The Killing – for foreign language series to perform well critically and commercially with particular UK
audiences. It can be argued that Deutschland 83 was a deliberate attempt by the German media industry to develop a prestige series which could take advantage of the new openness to ‘foreign’ products abroad.
• It is a co-production of AMC Networks’ SundanceTV and RTL Television (German and American), positioning it to exploit the national and global market.
• Bought by C4 in Britain as part of their ‘Walter presents…’
• Cultural industries including Hesmondhalgh

Media Audiences
Issues of audience are also relevant throughout the other theoretical frameworks. In media language, the use of different formal structures to position the audience to receive and interpret meaning is central, while the study of representations has at its heart the reinforcement of social and cultural values for audiences. The study of institutions is also indivisibly linked to the need to define and attract specific audiences.
• The production, distribution and circulation of Deutschland 83 shows how audiences can be reached, both on a national and global scale, through different media technologies and
platforms, moving from the national to transnational through broadcast and digital technologies.
• The way in which different audience interpretations reflect social, cultural and historical circumstances is evident in the analysis of the series which are explicitly linked to contemporary
issues.
• The reception of the series in Germany, Europe and the US
• The advertising campaigns (trailers, websites at home and abroad) for the series demonstrate how media producers target, attract and potentially construct audiences.
• Cultivation theory including Gerbner
• Reception theory including Hall
Social, political, economic and cultural contexts
Deutschland 83 is part of cultural phenomenon of the early twenty first century which for the first time saw TV series not in the English language become part of mainstream UK broadcasting. It deals with the political past of Germany through the setting of the last decade of the cold war.
This political past is explored through a revisionist approach to German and European history which questions some of the previous certainties about that period. This is a useful product to
explore the vital issues of how nations explore their past through popular culture and how this is also a way of commenting on contemporary society. The economic context can be explored
through patterns of ownership and production and how the product is marketed nationally and globally.