english restoration tragedy
REALISM AND PLEASURE
To be popular a text must he both accessible and enjoyable. We would argue that texts aiming to challenge the ideological status quo can do so more effectively if they too are accessible and enjoyable. Primetime television is obviously accessible. Unlike much late-night programming which is assumed to be geared towards "minority" tastes, programs screened during primetime viewing hours are assumed to be, almost by definition, of general interest. Screening ORANGES at primetime would therefore in itself tend to "normalize" its subject-matter. In addition, ORANGES occupied a "quality" drama slot on BBC2. With its literary pedigree, high production values and provocative subject-matter, it belonged in the traditions of this prestige niche, leading audiences to expect that its concerns should be taken seriously.[4]
Realism provides the most widespread and familiar mode of narration in our culture. Modernism challenged realism's dominance in literature and the fine arts nearly a century ago, but in popular fiction, film, and television, realism continues to be the dominant narrative form. Realism's implied claim that it simply reflects reality, transparently representing that which is in any case transparent — the "facts" — appears particularly convincing in the photographic media of film and television, which, even as fiction, seem simply to record what is "there." Cohn MacCabe has argued that in appearing to "guarantee access to truth," realism hides its own constructedness, is formally incapable of representing reality as contradictory, and is therefore inherently conservative. (MacCabe, 1981, p. 310) Cinematic realism has been the topic of long-standing and complex debate. While we do not have the space here to discuss the philosophical aspects of realism's ability "to show things as they really are" (Lovell, 1980, p. 90), we do wish to argue, on the basis of our analysis of ORANGES, that realism does provide strategies able to challenge
To be popular a text must he both accessible and enjoyable. We would argue that texts aiming to challenge the ideological status quo can do so more effectively if they too are accessible and enjoyable. Primetime television is obviously accessible. Unlike much late-night programming which is assumed to be geared towards "minority" tastes, programs screened during primetime viewing hours are assumed to be, almost by definition, of general interest. Screening ORANGES at primetime would therefore in itself tend to "normalize" its subject-matter. In addition, ORANGES occupied a "quality" drama slot on BBC2. With its literary pedigree, high production values and provocative subject-matter, it belonged in the traditions of this prestige niche, leading audiences to expect that its concerns should be taken seriously.[4]
Realism provides the most widespread and familiar mode of narration in our culture. Modernism challenged realism's dominance in literature and the fine arts nearly a century ago, but in popular fiction, film, and television, realism continues to be the dominant narrative form. Realism's implied claim that it simply reflects reality, transparently representing that which is in any case transparent — the "facts" — appears particularly convincing in the photographic media of film and television, which, even as fiction, seem simply to record what is "there." Cohn MacCabe has argued that in appearing to "guarantee access to truth," realism hides its own constructedness, is formally incapable of representing reality as contradictory, and is therefore inherently conservative. (MacCabe, 1981, p. 310) Cinematic realism has been the topic of long-standing and complex debate. While we do not have the space here to discuss the philosophical aspects of realism's ability "to show things as they really are" (Lovell, 1980, p. 90), we do wish to argue, on the basis of our analysis of ORANGES, that realism does provide strategies able to challenge