Faute de droits d'auteurs pour les captures d'écrans, mon document ne contient pas d'images. Si vous voudriez consulter ma thèse avec les images, veuillez me contacter. / Cette thèse de doctorat propose une analyse des temporalités narratives dans les séries télévisées récentes Life on Mars (BBC, 2006-2007), Flashforward (ABC, 2009-2010) et Damages (FX/Audience Network, 2007-2012). L’argument général part de la supposition que les nouvelles technologies télévisuelles ont rendu possible de nouveaux standards esthétiques ainsi que des expériences temporelles originales. Il sera montré par la suite que ces nouvelles qualités esthétiques et expérientielles de la fiction télévisuelle relèvent d’une nouvelle pertinence politique et éthique du temps. Cet argument sera déployé en quatre étapes. La thèse se penche d’abord sur ce que j’appelle les technics de la télévision, c’est-à-dire le complexe de technologies et de techniques, afin d’élaborer comment cet ensemble a pu activer de nouveaux modes d’expérimenter la télévision. Suivant la philosophie de Gilles Deleuze et de Félix Guattari ainsi que les théories des médias de Matthew Fuller, Thomas Lamarre et Jussi Parikka, ce complexe sera conçu comme une machine abstraite que j’appelle la machine sérielle. Ensuite, l’argument puise dans des théories de la perception et des approches non figuratives de l’art afin de mieux cerner les nouvelles qualités d’expérience esthétique dans la fiction sérielle télévisée. Pour ce faire, je développe le concept de figure de temps définie comme la forme abstraite, immédiatement ressentie, du mouvement temporel effectué par un récit. Il sera montré, en troisième lieu, que ces mouvements figuraux mettent en jeu l’orientation vers l’avenir et la préemption. Tous les récits du corpus anticipent leur propre fin et prennent forme en fonction de cette fin prédite, ce pourquoi ils seront appelés récits préemptifs où l’avenir pose un problème affectif plutôt qu’épistémologique. Je montre que, dans ces séries, la boucle passant par l’avenir est immédiatement ontogénétique dans la mesure où elle crée la réalité dans le présent en suscitant l’incertitude et la peur. Enfin, la thèse soutien qu’une telle politique affective fait partie de ce que Gilles Deleuze appelle les « sociétés de contrôle » qui opèrent une modulation continue des conditions de vie de l’individu. En suivant les écrits de Deleuze sur les sociétés de contrôle et sur l’Éthique de Spinoza, je suggère que les exigences d’un tel environnement modulant sont éthiques (plutôt que morales). Seront ensuite décortiquées les complexes de techniques, appelés procédures suivant les artistes-philosophes Madeline Gins et Arakawa, qui soutiennent une éthique pour survivre la société de contrôle dans la série Damages. / This thesis examines complex narrative temporalities in the recent television series Life on Mars (BBC, 2006-2007), Flashforward (ABC, 2009-2010), and Damages (FX/Audience Network, 2007-2012). The general argument proposes that the renewed technics of television have enabled innovative aesthetic standards and temporal experiences in serial TV fiction. It is subsequently shown that these new aesthetic and experiential qualities of TV fiction are correlative to an increased political and ethical relevance of time. This overall argument is laid out in four major steps. The project first addresses the technics of recent television to show how new technologies have enabled new techniques of experiencing television. Drawing on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as well as the media theories of Matthew Fuller, Thomas Lamarre, and Jussi Parikka, the complex and productive linkages between technology and techniques will be theorized as an abstract machine which I call the serial machine. The argument then draws on theories of perception and nonrepresentational approaches to art in order to analyze the new qualities of aesthetic experience in serial TV fiction. For this purpose, I develop the central concept of the figure of time understood as the directly felt abstract shape effectuated by a narrative’s movement through time. It will be seen, in a third step, that the figural movements discussed in this thesis concern questions of future-orientation and preemption. All of the narratives in this project anticipate their own ending and take form with respect to this foretold future. They are therefore conceptualized as “preemptive narratives,” in which the future poses an affective rather than epistemological problem. I will show that, in the serial narratives under discussion, the preemptive loop through the future is immediately ontogenetic in that it creates a reality in the present by inducing uncertainty and fear of the future. Finally, the thesis proposes that such affective politics are an element of what Gilles Deleuze calls control societies, in which conditions of life are constantly modulated. Following his writings on control societies and Spinoza’s Ethics, it is argued that the requirements of such a modulatory environment are ethical in nature (rather than moral). Drawing on the work by artists-philosophers Madeline Gins and Arakawa, I elaborate the techniques of attention which sustain an ethics for surviving the control society in the TV series Damages.

The objective of this master thesis The image of television journalist in American television series is to unveil personality traits of main characters in five selected American series during five decades (from the beginning of the 1970s to present) by means of combination of interpretative reading and semiotic (visual) analysis, and by that interpret representation of journalists. Subsequently the typologies of journalistic characters by Brian McNair and Joe Saltzman are used to categorize 27 central figures to types or stereorypes. Majority of characters combined more different types but it could be stated that all images of journalists were positive - possibly due to bigger popularity among viewers. Simultaneously it is neccesary to point out that characters across analysed series classified to same categories are not fully identical - characters show enough resemblance for type identification but similarities are outweighed by differences.

The aim of the diploma thesis Media Representation of Adultery and Its Participants From the 1970s is to analyze and describe the image of partner infidelity in selected Czech and Czechoslovak television series through the time and sociocultural context. The analyzed material and topic requires first an outline of the basic media theories, with focus on the theory of media construction of reality. Then follows the theoretical concept of partnership and adultery, at first seen through the optics of social context and then through the partnership itself, which helps us to understand the imaging analysis, models and stereotypes in the stories. The third theoretical chapter brings a brief description of the history of the Czechoslovak and Czech series, with an emphasis on the period since the 1970s accompanied by the theory of construction of reality in television series. We analyze three series - Nemocnice na kraji města, Život na zámku and Ordinace v růžové zahradě; our analysis is based on qualitative methods, specifically the naratological and discourse analysis, which helps us in the end to answer the defined research questions, to record the occurrence of certain models or stereotypes in the image of unfaithful characters, plots and other interesting phenomena within the social context of the series.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T19:31:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Icaro Picerni.pdf: 2363875 bytes, checksum: be46e722144c3ec41ec60caac14a35be (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-04-29 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This work aims to study the television series O Vigilante Rodoviário in dialogical and synchronous way. In the first field, we studied their relations with the literary narrative, as the melodrama, through the affiliation to the classic Hollywood movies. In the second field, we analyzed the ways of Brazilian television, a period marked by many trials and fed by numerous serial American productions vying with national programs. Surviving after the bankruptcy of Film Company Maristela, Ary Fernandes and Alfredo Palacios created a television series that attracted the interests of the multinational Nestlé and that was broadcast on TV Tupi. This process does reflect on what being a pioneer within an even television in training and shows how the work sought to fit into hegemonic discourses to share some values with the urban middle class, who owned public capital to acquire an expensive receiver and inaccessible to the masses and do not constitute, therefore, a product of the culture industry. Internally, the representations of the series were studied in their cultural and pedagogical dimension. There is in it a Manicheans view of the world according to which the criminal evil never triumphs. On the other hand, the show presents the viewer values as legalism, respect for elders and hierarchies, the love of animals, the importance of collective security and the exaltation of the São Paulo State Highway Patrol. O Vigilante Rodoviário, on the one hand, conveys values of the urban upper middle class, and on the other, was established as an attempt to create a national industry pioneer series of programs. It can be seen as a quest to recover the national cinema, but limited by competition from American cinema hegemonic even in Brazil / Este trabalho tem como objetivo estudar o seriado televisivo O Vigilante Rodoviário nos sentidos dialógicos e sincrônico. No primeiro campo, levantamos suas articulações com a narrativa literária, como o melodrama, passando pelas filiações ao cinema clássico hollywoodiano. No segundo campo, analisamos os caminhos da televisão brasileira, numa fase marcada por diversas experimentações e alimentada por inúmeras produções americanas seriadas que disputavam com os programas nacionais. Procurando sobreviver após a falência da Companhia Cinematográfica Maristela, Ary Fernandes e Alfredo Palácios criaram um seriado televisivo que atraiu os interesses da multinacional Nestlé e que foi transmitido pela TV Tupi. Esse processo faz refletir sobre o que é ser um pioneiro no interior de uma televisão ainda em formação e mostra como a obra procurava se encaixar em discursos hegemônicos ao compartilhar alguns valores com a classe média urbana, público que possuía capital para adquirir um aparelho receptor oneroso e inacessível às massas, não se constituindo, assim, um produto da indústria cultural. No âmbito interno, as representações do seriado foram estudadas em sua dimensão cultural e pedagógica. Há nele uma visão maniqueísta sobre o mundo segundo a qual o mal criminoso jamais triunfa. Por outro lado, o seriado apresenta ao telespectador valores como o legalismo, o respeito aos mais velhos e às hierarquias, o amor aos animais, a importância da segurança coletiva e a exaltação da Polícia Rodoviária do Estado de São Paulo. O Vigilante Rodoviário, portanto, de um lado, transmite valores da alta classe média urbana e, do outro, constituiu-se como uma tentativa de criar uma indústria nacional de programas seriados de forma pioneira. Ele pode ser visto como uma busca por recuperar o cinema nacional, mas limitada pela concorrência do cinema norte-americano hegemônico até mesmo no Brasil

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:18:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Mariana Pimenta Cama.pdf: 1094285 bytes, checksum: feaea7b876b6d9926947835492557d27 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-10-23 / The current research intends to reflect in a critical manner about the ways of representation of criminality on audiovisual media, especially on television. The target of this analysis is to point out media processes that highlight and exemplify the way crime is turned into a spectacle, reconfiguring narrative formats of police drama and news currently active. When it comes down to representing images of violence and criminality, the audiovisual media culture has been showing two main slopes: the news that incorporates construction elements typical of soup operas, and the fictional program that intends realism, showing the routine of police in action in big urban areas. Under the eye of speculation promoted by news media, two cases will be analyzed, which took place in 2008: the case of Isabella Nardoni and the young girl Eloá Pimentel, exhaustingly reproduced and detailed on the internet. In the thin line of the crime-spectacle in the universe of fiction, we ll analyze the narrative of TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, highlighting the episodes "Grave Danger" and "Monster in a box". From the methodic point of view, the research bases itself on the audiovisual analysis provided for television and in its versions for Internet and DVD, willing to investigate the connection between the subject in question and the visible object, interpreting the spectator as a morbid voyeur. From the theoretical point of view, the research lays on "real shock" concept by Beatriz Jaguaribe, on the hypothesis of intimacy spectacle by Paula Sibilia, presented on O Show do Eu: a intimidade como espetáculo", and on the "A Sociedade do Espetáculo" by Guy Debord. The arguments concerning the News are anchored by work of Eugênio Bucci and Maria Rita Kehl, "Videologias". The reflexion regarding the spectator with violent images is based on the work by Susan Sontag, "Diante da dor dos outros", and on the works of Arlindo Machado, "A Televisão levada a Sério" and "O Sujeito na Tela". In the end, it is concluded that the persistent shocking images that infest the many diverse ways of informational communication operate through contagious systems, which lead to dramatization elements of the journalism of the real for the fictional and spectacle of crime for the News universe, on television and internet / A presente pesquisa pretende refletir de forma crítica sobre os modos de representação da criminalidade nas mídias audiovisuais, em especial na mídia televisiva. O objetivo da análise é apontar processos midiáticos que evidenciem e exemplifiquem o modo como o crime é transformado em espetáculo, reconfigurando os formatos narrativos de dramas policiais e do telejornalismo vigentes. A cultura das mídias audiovisuais, no que diz respeito à representação das imagens de violência e criminalidade, vem demonstrando duas vertentes predominantes: o telejornalismo que incorpora elementos de construção típicos das telenovelas e a programação ficcional que se pretende realista, retratando o cotidiano da polícia em ação nos grandes centros urbanos. Sob a ótica da espetacularização promovida pela mídia jornalística, serão analisados dois crimes ocorridos no ano de 2008: o caso da menina Isabella Nardoni e o da jovem Eloá Pimentel, fartamente reproduzidos e detalhados na internet. No que tange ao crime-espetáculo no universo da ficção, analisaremos a narrativa seriada televisiva CSI:Crime Scene Investigation, com destaque para os episódios "Grave danger" e "Monster in a box . Do ponto de vista metodológico, a pesquisa baseia-se na análise dos audiovisuais concebidos para televisão e em suas versões para internet e DVD, a fim de investigar a relação entre o sujeito vidente e o objeto visível, entendendo o espectador como voyeur-mórbido. Do ponto de vista teórico, a pesquisa apoia-se no conceito de "choque do real" de Beatriz Jaguaribe, na hipótese de espetacularização da intimidade de Paula Sibilia, apresentada em O show do eu: a intimidade como espetáculo" e na obra "A sociedade do espetáculo" de Guy Debord. As discussões sobre telejornalismo são ancoradas na obra de Eugênio Bucci e Maria Rita Kehl, "Videologias". A reflexão sobre a relação do espectador com as imagens de violência baseia-se na obra de Susan Sontag, "Diante da dor dos outros", e nas obras de Arlindo Machado, "A televisão levada a sério" e "O sujeito na tela". Ao final, conclui-se que as insistentes imagens de choque e violência que assolam os mais diversos meios informacionais de comunicação operam por sistemas de contágio, que levam elementos da dramatização do real do telejornalismo para o universo ficcional e de espetacularização do crime para o universo do telejornal, na televisão e internet

Cette thèse de doctorat propose une analyse des temporalités narratives dans les séries télévisées récentes Life on Mars (BBC, 2006-2007), Flashforward (ABC, 2009-2010) et Damages (FX/Audience Network, 2007-2012). L’argument général part de la supposition que les nouvelles technologies télévisuelles ont rendu possible de nouveaux standards esthétiques ainsi que des expériences temporelles originales. Il sera montré par la suite que ces nouvelles qualités esthétiques et expérientielles de la fiction télévisuelle relèvent d’une nouvelle pertinence politique et éthique du temps. Cet argument sera déployé en quatre étapes. La thèse se penche d’abord sur ce que j’appelle les technics de la télévision, c’est-à-dire le complexe de technologies et de techniques, afin d’élaborer comment cet ensemble a pu activer de nouveaux modes d’expérimenter la télévision. Suivant la philosophie de Gilles Deleuze et de Félix Guattari ainsi que les théories des médias de Matthew Fuller, Thomas Lamarre et Jussi Parikka, ce complexe sera conçu comme une machine abstraite que j’appelle la machine sérielle. Ensuite, l’argument puise dans des théories de la perception et des approches non figuratives de l’art afin de mieux cerner les nouvelles qualités d’expérience esthétique dans la fiction sérielle télévisée. Pour ce faire, je développe le concept de figure de temps définie comme la forme abstraite, immédiatement ressentie, du mouvement temporel effectué par un récit. Il sera montré, en troisième lieu, que ces mouvements figuraux mettent en jeu l’orientation vers l’avenir et la préemption. Tous les récits du corpus anticipent leur propre fin et prennent forme en fonction de cette fin prédite, ce pourquoi ils seront appelés récits préemptifs où l’avenir pose un problème affectif plutôt qu’épistémologique. Je montre que, dans ces séries, la boucle passant par l’avenir est immédiatement ontogénétique dans la mesure où elle crée la réalité dans le présent en suscitant l’incertitude et la peur. Enfin, la thèse soutien qu’une telle politique affective fait partie de ce que Gilles Deleuze appelle les « sociétés de contrôle » qui opèrent une modulation continue des conditions de vie de l’individu. En suivant les écrits de Deleuze sur les sociétés de contrôle et sur l’Éthique de Spinoza, je suggère que les exigences d’un tel environnement modulant sont éthiques (plutôt que morales). Seront ensuite décortiquées les complexes de techniques, appelés procédures suivant les artistes-philosophes Madeline Gins et Arakawa, qui soutiennent une éthique pour survivre la société de contrôle dans la série Damages. / This thesis examines complex narrative temporalities in the recent television series Life on Mars (BBC, 2006-2007), Flashforward (ABC, 2009-2010), and Damages (FX/Audience Network, 2007-2012). The general argument proposes that the renewed technics of television have enabled innovative aesthetic standards and temporal experiences in serial TV fiction. It is subsequently shown that these new aesthetic and experiential qualities of TV fiction are correlative to an increased political and ethical relevance of time. This overall argument is laid out in four major steps. The project first addresses the technics of recent television to show how new technologies have enabled new techniques of experiencing television. Drawing on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as well as the media theories of Matthew Fuller, Thomas Lamarre, and Jussi Parikka, the complex and productive linkages between technology and techniques will be theorized as an abstract machine which I call the serial machine. The argument then draws on theories of perception and nonrepresentational approaches to art in order to analyze the new qualities of aesthetic experience in serial TV fiction. For this purpose, I develop the central concept of the figure of time understood as the directly felt abstract shape effectuated by a narrative’s movement through time. It will be seen, in a third step, that the figural movements discussed in this thesis concern questions of future-orientation and preemption. All of the narratives in this project anticipate their own ending and take form with respect to this foretold future. They are therefore conceptualized as “preemptive narratives,” in which the future poses an affective rather than epistemological problem. I will show that, in the serial narratives under discussion, the preemptive loop through the future is immediately ontogenetic in that it creates a reality in the present by inducing uncertainty and fear of the future. Finally, the thesis proposes that such affective politics are an element of what Gilles Deleuze calls control societies, in which conditions of life are constantly modulated. Following his writings on control societies and Spinoza’s Ethics, it is argued that the requirements of such a modulatory environment are ethical in nature (rather than moral). Drawing on the work by artists-philosophers Madeline Gins and Arakawa, I elaborate the techniques of attention which sustain an ethics for surviving the control society in the TV series Damages. / Faute de droits d'auteurs pour les captures d'écrans, mon document ne contient pas d'images. Si vous voudriez consulter ma thèse avec les images, veuillez me contacter.

Que signifie aimer une « série télé » aujourd’hui ? Ou, selon une formulation plus pragmatiste, que font faire les séries à leurs spectateurs ? Pour répondre à ces questions, cette thèse invite à se démarquer du paradigme de la réception – lequel fournit la majorité des études sur le sujet – et explorer les ressorts et contours de la pratique des séries. Il s’agit d’étudier les activités concrètes dans lesquelles s’engagent les amateurs, la façon dont se tissent leur attachement aux séries, les ingrédients de ce tissage, les appuis et prises matériels, techniques et relationnels de cet attachement. Ce travail montre que la pratique spectatorielle ne s’arrête pas au seul moment du visionnage, lorsque l’individu est devant son poste, mais s’étend à l’ensemble des activités, des temps et des espaces au cours desquels celui-ci entre en relation avec une série. À partir d’une quarantaine d’entretiens approfondis et de l’examen des principaux relais sociotechniques et médiatiques des séries, la thèse se propose de suivre les amateurs dans leurs pratiques quotidiennes, du visionnage et de la conservation des séries à leurs échanges conversationnels, en passant par les procédures d’information et de découverte, d’approvisionnement et de partage de contenus. Autant d’activités, non pas seulement « réceptives », mais réflexives, corporées, instrumentées et collectives, qui permettent d’apprécier la diversité des formes d’attachement des « sériphiles » à ces objets singuliers. / What does it means to love a "TV series" nowadays? Or, to use a more pragmatic formulation, what do television series make their viewers do? To answer these questions, this thesis invites the reader to move beyond the paradigm of reception – on which the majority of studies in the field build upon - and explore the remits and contours of the practice of series. The aim is to study the practical activities undertaken by amateurs, how their attachments to the series are built, the ingredients of this attachment, and the material, technical and relational means of this attachment. This work shows that spectators' practices do not stop at the moment of viewing, when the individual is in front of his post, but extends to all activities, times and spaces through which an individual connects to a series. Drawing upon forty in-depth interviews and an examination of the ways in which series are socio-technically mediated, the thesis proposes to follow amateurs in their daily practices, from the viewing and storage of series, to their conversational exchanges, as well as through the procedures of information and discovery, procurement and sharing of content. All these activities are not only "receptive". As the thesis shows, they are at once reflexive, embodied, instrumented and collective, and they reveal the diversity of attachments of the "seriephiles" to these singular objects.

Sans corps, pas d'histoires. Vecteur d'action, instrument de la narration, et support d'un lien d'identification fort entre le spectateur et le personnage, le corps est la principale figure des médiums cinématographique et télévisuel. Si le cinéma a toujours, depuis ses balbutiements, glorifié la vivacité inépuisable des corps, parallèlement déjà, planait la face inversée de cette exposition, la menace muette de la mort. Mais si le dernier souffle avant la mort est bien souvent encore, au cinéma et à la télévision, synonyme d'ultime communion avec la vie et de résistance à la mort, qu'en est-il du corps et du personnage quand la mort s'en est saisi à jamais et qu'il ne reste plus aux vivants, personnages et spectateurs, qu'à se confronter au cadavre ? Figure parasitaire, le cadavre n'est ni un personnage ni même un figurant. A la fois signe vide et noyau narratif, c'est à partir de lui et de son examen pendant l'autopsie ou sur les lieux du crime que va se nourrir et se développer l'intrigue policière. Et s'il peut paraître secondaire, voire accessoire, à regarder les fictions policières sous l'angle de son non-regard fixe et opaque, il donne à voir quelque chose du crime, de son caractère profondément injuste, et des rapports qu'entretiennent les vivants avec une mort qui se présente sur la table d'autopsie, sous ses traits les plus abjects. L'enjeu de cette thèse sera d'envisager la façon dont les fictions policières mettent en scène le cadavre comme le reflet, d'une troublante précision, d'un défaut contemporain de distanciation face à la mort. Il s'agira bien pour nous, et selon un principe analogue à celui qu'applique le philosophe Maxime Coulombe dans son essai sur les zombies, de considérer le cadavre fictionnel comme « analyseur de la société contemporaine » et comme « symptôme de ce qui taraude la conscience de notre époque » / Without bodies, no stories. A vehicle of action, a narrative agent, and the support of a strong identification link between the audience and the character, the body is the main figure of cinematographic and television mediums.If cinema has always, from its early stages, glorified the endless liveliness of bodies, the reverse side of this exposure has simultaneously been lingering: the mute threat of death. However, in films or in television series, if the last breath before death is often synonymous with a ultimate communion with life and with a resistance to death, what happens to the body and the character when death has seized them for ever, and the living – characters and audience – are only left facing the corpse? As a parasite figure, the corpse is neither a character nor even an extra. Both an empty sign and a narrative core, the crime plot will indeed develop from the corpse and its examination, during the autopsy or on the crime scene. And whereas the corpse may seem secondary, even minor, if we look at crime fictions from the angle of its fixed and opaque non-look, it still allows us to see something of the crime and of its deeply unfair nature, and of the relations between the living and a death that appears in its most abject features on the autopsy table. In this study, we will examine how crime fictions stage corpses as disturbingly precise reflects of a contemporary lack of perspective in front of death. Similarly to the philosopher Maxime Coulombe in his essay on zombies, we will consider the fictional corpse as an "analyser of contemporary society" and as a "symptom of what is tormenting the consciousness of our time"

Films, séries télévisées ou jeux vidéo, les fictions audiovisuelles populaires encouragent et alimentent la consommation de produits culturels variés, apparentés instinctivement à un univers fictif, une marque, un genre ou une organisation spécifique. L’analyse de ce réflexe au moment de la réception permet de mettre au jour les mécanismes établissant les liens entre les œuvres, au moyen du concept central de marqueur, élément en apparence anodin dans la fiction mais fondant une allusion compréhensible sous certaines conditions. L’étude des stratégies de réduction du risque mises en place par les organisations produisant les fictions audiovisuelles montre que les marqueurs jouent un rôle essentiel dans la conception, la production et la mise sur le marché de ces produits culturels, sans en garantir systématiquement le succès, difficilement mesurable. Ces stratégies autorisent, voire encouragent un usage et une appropriation ludique des marqueurs qui conditionnent l’exploration des univers fictifs (parfois génériques) de la culture populaire par ses publics, et sa réutilisation par ses créateurs. / Be they video games, movies or TV shows, popular audiovisual fictions encourage the consumption of diverse cultural works, instinctively linked to a specific fictitious universe, brand, genre or organisation. Analyzing this audience’s reflex leads to the inner working of how cultural products are linked together, thanks to an apparently innocuous element which indeed supports an allusion. This marker, as we will call it, can be understood as such only under certain conditions. When it is, it can play a central role in the risk-reduction strategies implemented by entertainment industries during the design, production and marketing of mainstream fictions, with no guarantees of of a success that can hardly be summed up by box-office numbers. These strategies, in turn, promote a playful use of markers in fictions, allowing the audience’s exploration of popular culture universes, and their recycled use as allusions by creative teams in the TV show, film and video game industries.

The diploma thesis named Gender Stereotypes in Contemporary British Period Drama. The Comparative Analysis of Downton Abbey and Mr Selfridge compares the marks of gender stereotypes and conservative principles in British period drama series. The analysis of their clash with progress in society and technology during the first two decades of the 20th century is performed on the method of qualitative content analysis of two examples of popular contemporary British costume drama Downton Abbey and Mr Selfridge. The theoretical framework of the thesis is based on the concept regarding history in film. The main category of research is the work with female characters and their social roles in Edwardian Britain which is characterized by unprecedented social change. The objective of the thesis is to analyze the way a female character reflects stereotypes and conservative principles that are usually believed to be characteristic features of period drama series. Additional objective is to examine how the 21st century society is mirrored in manipulation with stereotypes and social values in the series. The content analysis is based on the three criteria most interconnected wih position and social change of women of that era. These refer to property and proprietorship, sexuality, and emancipation of women in...