New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre

New Television

New Television

The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre

Martin Shuster

The University of Chicago Press  •  Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2017 by The University of Chicago

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Published 2017

Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-50381-3 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-50395-0 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-50400-1 (e-book)

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226504001.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Shuster, Martin, author.

Title: New television : the aesthetics and politics of a genre / Martin Shuster.

Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017017755 | ISBN 9780226503813 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226503950 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226504001 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Television series—United States—History and criticism. | Families on television. | Wire (Television program). | Weeds (Television program). | Justified (Television Program).

Classification: LCC PN1992.8.S4 S475 2017 | DDC 791.450973—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/1017017755

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).

For Robin—

the person with whom I love to watch TV the most

The camera is far more than a recording apparatus. It is a means by which messages come to us from the other world. This is the beginning of magic.

Orson Welles

Without the mode of perception inspired . . . by the everyday, the near, the low, the familiar, one is bound to be blind to the poetry of film, to the sublimity of it.

Stanley Cavell, The Senses of Walden

"The sense we now have for essential characteristics of persons and objects is very largely the result of art . . . if we are now aware of essential meanings, it is mainly because artists in all the various arts have extracted and expressed them in vivid and salient subject-matter of perception."

John Dewey, Art as Experience

The family then may be called the first model of political societies.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract

Permit me to repeat that we are concerned not with the poet as a private person, not with his psychology or his so-called social perspective, but with the poem as a philosophical sundial telling the time of history.

Theodor W. Adorno, On Lyric Poetry and Society

Contents

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1

1.  Worlds on Screen: The Ontology of Television Series and/as the Ontology of Film

2.  Storytelling and Worldhood: The Screen and Us

Part 2

3.  This America, Man: Tragic Reconciliation, Television, and The Wire

4.  The Gangster, Boredom, and Family: Weeds, Natality, and New Television

5.  Boyd and I Dug Coal Together: Justified, Moral Perfectionism, and the United States of America

Conclusion

Notes

Index

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used for ease. They are followed by page numbers and cited in the body of the text. In the case of television shows, I use abbreviations for the three shows cited frequently, following the format season, episode. All other shows are cited throughout as necessary, without abbreviation.

Stanley Cavell

Hannah Arendt

Martin Heidegger

Television Shows

Others

Acknowledgments

I have been thinking about the issues that animate this book for many years. Writing this book has taken some time—on and off, likely close to half a decade; writing a book in this way is both wonderful and disheartening. It is the former because one can allow one’s ideas to percolate; it is disheartening because one feels frequently like one might never finish, like one’s intimate thoughts are little more than daydreams.

A few things proved to be essential to continuing work on this book: conversations with family, friends, and colleagues, invitations to discuss these issues in more academic and formal contexts, and, surprisingly, the continual release of more and more excellent television series (I say surprisingly because my initial thought about what I have termed in this book new television was that it would be a fleeting phenomenon, gone quickly, swallowed up by purely commercial interests).

A small group of academics has amplified my interest in thinking about these shows, in wanting to understand my own interest in them, and in understanding the significance of that interest. I have to thank especially Ada Jaarsma, Sandra Laugier, and Paola Marrati. All three—each in their own way—have proved to be invaluable conversation partners and have introduced me to many new insights. Each of them is an excellent scholar in her own right, and I find myself consistently learning from all of them. Paola and I were fortunate enough to edit a journal issue on the topic of New American Television Series for Modern Language Notes (MLN). I am grateful to Ada for reading an earlier version of this manuscript in its entirety—I have benefitted from her comments and our discussions; the final manuscript is certainly better because of her keen intellect and encouragement. Sandra and I have spent numerous hours discussing these shows, and she has introduced me to several shows I likely would have otherwise missed. Related to, but intellectually quite distinct from this group, is a small core of folks interested in the work of Stanley Cavell, with whom I have had the fortune of being able to think about Cavell; these include Steven Affeldt, Nancy Bauer, Gordon Bearn, Jay Bernstein, Hent de Vries, Lizzie Finnegan, Lydia Goehr, Espen Hammer, Kelly Dean Jolley, Victor Krebs, Carly Lane, James South, and Jonadas Techio. I am especially grateful to Hent, Carly, and Gordon, from each of whom I have learned during conversations. The summer faculty seminar that Gordon and Steven hosted at Lehigh in 2012 on Cavell and Rhees proved to be especially useful. Relatedly, I have to extend considerable gratitude to Kathryn Reklis and Natalie Wigg-Stevenson, two wonderful friends and scholars who extended to me the extremely useful invitation to spend some time blogging about television at the legendary Moth Chase. In this vein, the numerous conversations I shared in that medium with Travis Ables also proved to be invaluable.

I have had the great fortune of being able to present this material in several different forums. An earlier version of the Justified chapter was first presented in 2011 at a symposium on new television series at the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins. A shorter version of the Weeds chapter was presented at a symposium on television at Hamilton College in 2012. I am grateful for the comments I received there, notably from Mercy Corredor, Katheryn Doran, Robbie Fagan, Todd Franklin, Luc Gutiérrez, Alex Host, Stephanie Hudon, Marianne Janack, Ben Joplin, Nicholas Kaleikini, Scott MacDonald, Russell Marcus, Cara Quigley, Chelsea Wahl, and Rick Werner. Later, what became the first chapter was presented at the Humanities Center in 2015 during a symposium on Philosophy between Old and New Media. I am grateful to the comments I received, especially from Michael Fried, Jeroen Gerrits, Alex Host, Anne Eakin Moss, and Yi-Ping Ong. A version of this chapter was also given as a keynote lecture at the 69th Annual Mountain-Plains Philosophy Conference—thank you to Adrian Switzer and others for the comments received there. An earlier version of the second chapter was presented at Texas A&M University. The questions and comments I received from the audience, and especially from Daniel Conway, Annabel Herzog, and Claire Katz, were useful and inspiring. Finally, in the spring of 2016, I presented an earlier version of the chapter on The Wire at Bucknell University. Conversations with Jason Leddington, Sheila Lintott, and Lissa Skitolsky were wonderful and heartening. Thank you to Sheila for her hospitality and also, during my visit, for getting me to do something that I’d long wanted to do: stand-up. Two of the chapters appeared in quite different and earlier form in MLN (Modern Language Notes): chapter 1 appeared as "The Ordinariness and Absence of the World: Cavell’s Ontology of the Screen—Reading The World Viewed,"¹ and the last chapter appeared earlier as "‘Boyd and I Dug Coal Together’: Norms, Persons, and Being Justified in Justified."²

It has been a benefit and a spur to teach some of the issues animating this book. At Hamilton in 2012, I taught a semester-long course on the Philosophy of Film and Television. At Johns Hopkins, in 2014, I taught Cinema and Philosophy. Both of these classes helped develop the ideas in this book. Later, at Avila University, I had the fortune to have four colleagues into Justified—thanks to Carol Coburn, Kelly Minerva, Ken Parsons, and Leslie Dorrough Smith. Thanks also to Teresa Lorenz-Do, Charlene Gould, Kristopher Proctor, Grant Reichert, Kelly Watson, and Jason Zeh. Finally, although only newly arrived, at Goucher College, I have already benefitted from the wonderful climate and discussions with Steve DeCaroli, Kelly Douglas, Ann Duncan, John Rose, and Maria San Filippo.

There is also a roll call of academic friends and colleagues that I want to thank for their support, suggestions, or conversations: Deborah Achtenberg, Bettina Bergo, Jeffrey Bernstein, Sai Bhatawadekar, Donald Bloxham, Rebecca Bodenheimer, Zak Braiterman, Jennifer Cazenave, Tarek Dika, William Edelglass, Oona Eisenstadt, Cristie Ellis, David Fooksman, Xandy Frisch, Christian Gannon, Rachel Galvin, Nathan Gies, Keith Giles, Owen Hulatt, Kathy Kiloh, Colin Koopman, Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz, Nathan Jun, Martin Kavka, Amer Latif, Jason Loviglio, Michael Paradisu-Michau, Josh Miller, Anne O’Byrne, Devin Pendas, Duncan Richter, Peter Shulman, Aaron Simmons, Tim Stock, Lauren Stone, and Joyce Tsai. Lastly, without the support of my extraordinary editor, Elizabeth Branch Dyson, this book may have never happened or, at least, would have been way worse. I appreciate her taking the risk of pursuing a project like this. Thanks also to Rachel Kelly, Dylan Montanari, and Caterina MacLean. Finally, this manuscript is also undoubtedly better because of the comments of several anonymous reviewers.

The wonderful thing about a popular medium like television is that you can learn something from anyone; and I have had the great fortune to be able to discuss many of these shows with Russell Ain, Jason and Elaine Alley, Nikki and Ben Elgamil, Liliane and Abe Elgamil, Daniela Ginsburg, Reuben Krauson, Ian Shifrin, and Karen and Dimitry Shuster—all friends and family whose conversations I cherish. The same is even more true of my parents; it is one of the great joys for me to spend time kibitzing with them about television.

Finally, although our lives have changed so much since I began writing this book, there is no one in the world that I enjoy watching and discussing television shows with more than my spouse, Robin, who has engaged me in countless conversations about many things in this book and beyond; and it is to her that I dedicate this book—I am certain that without her seemingly unending support and love, this book likely would have never been completed.

Martin Shuster

Baltimore, MD

November 2016

Introduction

As a member of one of the most diverse groups on the planet, I have, like many, many others, been enthralled by a segment of the products of television, namely certain new television series. There is a growing consensus that David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990–1991) marks the origin point for a batch of now critically acclaimed shows like The Wire (HBO, 2002–2008), Six Feet Under (HBO, 2001–2005), The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007), and The Shield (FX, 2002–2008), down to shows in the present moment, like, for example, Halt and Catch Fire (AMC, 2014–), Orange is the New Black (Netflix, 2013–), Veep (HBO, 2012–), and The Leftovers (HBO, 2014–). I mention all of these shows in order to stress the range of topics, the breadth of visual and storytelling forms, and the number of aesthetic and political aims pursued by these television series (which index only a fraction of those in existence). My aims are not here to tell a history of these shows (although some of this story is presented in the first chapter).¹

Instead, I want to make a case for their importance as serious works of art. To do so, I situate them both amongst each other (as television series) and amidst other works of art oriented around moving images (say, painting, photography, film, and so forth).² The former prioritizes the discovery of a common genre or thematic mode, while the latter prioritizes an understanding of how such a common genre or mode is possible, what allows it to work and matter as art. Roughly, this is one way to account for the two halves of this book, the latter forming part one, and the former, part two. More needs to be said about all of this; in order to do that, let me more broadly situate New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre.

Scholars have characterized these television series as united by everything from quality³ to high end⁴ to television style⁵ to complexity⁶ to legitimate⁷ to good⁸ to beautiful,⁹ not to mention more ambitious determinations like representative of a golden age,¹⁰ a poetics,¹¹ or simply the cinematic,¹² and so forth. The impulse is thereby often to assimilate these shows to something else, to make sense of them by using some already existing paradigm. Such an approach is unavoidable, and yet understanding these shows as bringing something that exists outside of television into or within television strikes me as misguided. We need to understand these shows—this type of television—as the emergence of something new as television. A medium is here somehow coming to fruition, finally finding itself as capable of producing serious, sincere, and sustained art—art, that, in turn, calls for serious and sustained reflection.¹³ It is important to understand, then, that my interest is in a very small segment of what appears on television (much in the same way—to invoke an admittedly problematic analogy—an art historian or art critic is generally not interested in everything that is, say, painted). As a medium, television has been understood and often understood itself as one defined by flow (the idea, say, that what appears on screen is fundamentally controlled by the desire to captivate the viewer for a particular duration).¹⁴ Contrary to this understanding of television, my aims here are to treat elements of television—again, certain television series—as unitary works of art, comparable in their form and function to (great) novels or films.¹⁵ What follows is not thereby really about the medium of television as such; instead, my aim is to understand the aesthetic, political, and, ultimately, philosophical significance of works of art that use the medium of the television series. Notably, as the rise of important Amazon and Netflix shows suggests, these shows need not even be any longer linked to television; nonetheless, all such shows make use of—even as they expand—the qualities of the medium of television; they originate from and because of television. Take these remarks by Theodor W. Adorno (hardly a fan of television): it is impossible to prophesy what will become of television. What it is today does not depend on the invention, not even on the specific forms of its commercial exploitation, but rather on the totality in which the marvelous wonder is embedded.¹⁶ In turn, compare them to remarks by Stanley Cavell: "I have been among those who have felt that television cannot have come of age, that the medium must have more in it than what has so far been shown."¹⁷ Let me say: that time is now; the medium has come of age, and it is now up to us to reflect on the significance of that fact.

Putting things in this way, I thereby intend to invoke a tradition, chiefly, but not exclusively, American,¹⁸ of reflecting on the arts in the context of one’s interests. As Cavell puts this idea, the impulse "to take an interest in an object is to take an interest in one’s experience of the object, so that to examine and defend . . . [one’s] interest . . . is to examine and defend my interest in my own experience, in the moments and passages of my life I have spent with them" (PH 7). Essential to this tradition are figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Robert Warshow. One can thereby see an important political or critical—perhaps, critically political, or politically critical—dimension to all of this. Making the case for the importance—aesthetic, political, or otherwise—of a segment of television is to describe one’s own experience as much as the possible and actual experience of others; and if potentially there are no others, then it has at least been revealed who speaks for whom and who does not.¹⁹ Such a conception of criticism is intimately tied to a conception of, indeed allegiance to, a version of ordinary language philosophy (itself a contested and variable designation). My own conception of the procedures and possibilities of ordinary language philosophy is influenced by Cavell, who shows how a commitment to its execution necessitates that we broaden our conception of what counts as philosophy (for him, importantly, Hollywood cinema and Shakespeare, a story that I take up in more detail in chapter 3). The idea animating this book, then, and one that has been pursued by Cavell, is that there is a parallel between ordinary language (sensitivity to what we should say and when) and aesthetic judgment (the discourse of criticism as the determination of importance).²⁰ Thinking about film, Cavell stresses that:

The question what becomes of objects when they are filmed and screened—like the question what becomes of particular people, and specific locales, and subjects and motifs when they are filmed by individual makers of film—has only one source of data for its answer, namely the appearance and significance of just those objects and people that are in fact to be found in the succession of films, or passages of films, that matter to us.²¹

The same holds true of television series and the genre or mode that I have termed new television. Two interesting points emerge here. Robert Warshow captures one of them quite well when he points out that to take seriously a connection between our experience and a possible community of others is to see ourselves as self-made exactly in the virtue of the interests we have taken, of the interests that have become ours; yet, we thereby, at the same time, invent (discover) our community or audience.²² This formal point extends to another point about how works of art might function socially: in presenting something deeply particular—as the best of the shows that interest me do, ranging, for example, from contemporary Baltimore in all of its detail (The Wire) to gold rush–era South Dakota (Deadwood) to the world of 1960s–era New York advertising (Mad Men)—these shows present something that thereby emerges as common or shared, for it is exactly the particularlity that these shows exhibit that makes salient our ordinary or shared experience; particularity and universality become more available (there is, of course, a lot more to be said here about all of this, and especially about the relationship between fiction and reality, a topic pursued in chapter 2).²³

Talk of experience, however, faces the brutal fact of the culture industry,²⁴ of its prominent connection to almost all contemporary arts, but especially to television. We know and see all too well how experience in mass society has withered, become hollowed out, found itself undermined or warped almost entirely by market forces that are unlikely to recede. This is not a new worry, and some of the figures already mentioned—notably Warshow—understood that the culture industry, while problematic, need not undermine the possibilities of and for art. Warshow stresses that, in thinking about and doing serious criticism of mass art, we are "creating out of [our] own mind and sensibility not only the literary object but also its significance and its justification."²⁵ Assumed in such a procedure is that there can be significance and justification, and this is an assumption I examine explicitly in chapter 2. This, however, also raises an essential point about such a scholarly inquiry. A philosophical inquiry into television shows, even in the relatively narrow scope pursued here, falls into an array of disciplines (philosophy, aesthetics, art criticism, television studies, media studies, cultural studies, critical theory, and even, to the extent that a great majority of these shows originate in the United States, American studies). With how quickly disciplines produce knowledge, it is impossible for any one person to master the techniques and literatures associated with each. For this reason, what follows is by no means a comprehensive account of these shows. I engage with this range of disciplines only to the extent that their concerns overlap with my own, which revolve consistently around making a case for the philosophical—here chiefly and perhaps narrowly understood as the aesthetic and political—importance of these shows. To pursue this task, New Television is divided into two parts.

The first part develops the ontological qualities of these television shows, arguing that one can only understand them by examining the ontology of the screen more broadly—in other words, by embedding them within larger issues within the (present) nature of film, and thereby of photography, and even of painting (this is the topic of chapter 1).²⁶ This discussion leads to a consideration of the structures of and possibilities for storytelling that the screen offers, as well as to a consideration of the relationship between storytelling and human life more generally (this is the topic of chapter 2). Combined, these chapters argue that if a medium is understood—as it ought to be—along the lines that Cavell (and also, for example, John Dewey) has suggested, as foremost denoting possibilities of communication, then television series ought to be understood as a medium that combines elements from television, film, and literature (broadly speaking). Furthermore, the critical potential and aesthetic success of these shows are thereby tied to the histories and techniques of these diverse media (a topic pursued in depth in chapter 1). Contrary to what might be understood as quite naive ideas about works of art, these shows should not be conceived as only—indeed even mostly—somehow reflecting or imitating the ordinary world. Instead, they, like great works of art, are as constitutive of that ordinary world as reflective of it (a topic pursued in depth in chapter 2). The first part of New Television is thereby animated by a concern to understand the aesthetic significance of these shows.

The second part pursues close readings of three shows: in chapter 3, David Simon’s The Wire (HBO, 2002–2008), in chapter 4, Jenji Kohan’s Weeds (Showtime, 2005–2012), and in chapter 5, Graham Yost’s and Elmore Leonard’s Justified (FX, 2010–2015). Although dozens of other shows are discussed throughout, I have limited my discussion to these three for two reasons. First, all of these shows have concluded and can thereby be analyzed as complete works of art.²⁷ Second, put together into a constellation, they present what I am terming a unified thematic mode: new television—a mode that is consistently on display in many other shows. This thematic mode, which is here explored and detailed by means of close readings, is flagged as applicable to many other cases. Now, the success or failure of this procedure will depend on how compelling the potential analogies turn out, but there is no reason to think that such analogies would be more compelling with the addition of more shows; in fact, possibly the contrary. To feel the weight of this point: note that even dealing with these three shows is already to grapple with over 150 hours of screen time, a fact that raises the pragmatic point that an academic inquiry into new television requires patience, from the author as much as from the reader.

To present a sketch of the aforementioned genre, or what I have been terming a thematic mode, right from the start, and thereby to put elements of my proposal forward in their entirety: my claim is that the aforementioned three shows, but also the thematic mode known as new television, exhibit a contemporary world as entirely emptied of normative authority. Both surprisingly and delightfully, then, Robert Minnow’s famous quip about television being a vast wasteland in fact exactly captures the basic portrayal of normative breakdown presented in new television, a breakdown that is best understood—as Hannah Arendt understands it—a desert (a point pursued explicitly in chapter 4). Notably, however, amidst the variety of sites where such a breakdown is explored—whether political, social, economic, legal, aesthetic, or otherwise—the institution of the family consistently appears exempt from this predicament and such a portrayal. In the shows that interest me most, family (but not thereby a traditional one) is presented and explored as a symbolic site for worldly renewal and possibility. Both worldly and renewal are meant in a specific sense (the former elaborated in the first chapter, the latter in the second and fourth), stressing distinctly human capacities for action and meaning. Especially, these terms ought to be understood as designating, symbolically, by means of a recourse to family, a prioritization of human natality, the fact that every human birth introduces someone entirely new. The full magnitude of this point connects closely to themes about language and action across interlocking inquiries in aesthetics and language (in the form of creation), politics (in the form of foundation), and ethics and religion (in the form of conversion and baptism).²⁸ This, then, is the most fundamental meaning of the term new television employed throughout—a sense that in addition to being novel aesthetic objects these shows are conceptually linked by a genre or mode that explores the newness that emerges from human natality, indeed, every human birth. In this way, I take it that these shows, at least the ones produced and taking place in the United States, are implicitly—if not explicitly—concerned with the current political moment, where public trust in US institutions is at an all-time low and where, whatever promise the project of the United States of America might be taken to suggest, such a promise is shown forcefully—perhaps even irreparably—to be in danger of disappearing.²⁹ Notably, however, the basic thematic mode of new television is not exclusive to the United States (as BBC Two’s 2013 show Peaky Blinders makes clear in its presentation of this same mode, which it elaborates in the context of turn-of-the-century Britain). Essential to the entire account, though, is the fact that the family is explored as the site for potential political renewal, albeit in a manner where the contours and parameters of the family stay—perhaps necessarily—amorphous or empty, suggesting that the best hope to be had in the environment of normative emptiness is politically—if not ethically and aesthetically—to cultivate and maintain a conceptual space for novelty; these are topics taken up in the last chapter and the conclusion.³⁰ The second part of the book then explicitly explores the political significance of these shows, if political is understood broadly as concerned with the entire domain of what might be understood as human being together.

With an eye toward setting up the discussion that follows, let me stress now an important difference between television series and other media involved with moving images, most importantly cinema. Here is an element of the cinema experience that Cavell stresses in The World Viewed (1971):

One could say that movie showings have begun for the first time to be habitually attended by an audience, I mean by people who arrive and depart at the same time, as at a play. When moviegoing was casual and we entered at no matter what point in the proceedings . . . we took our fantasies and companions and anonymity inside and left with them intact. Now that there is an audience, a claim is made upon my privacy; so it matters to me that our responses to the film are not really shared. At the same time that the mere fact of an audience makes this claim upon me, it feels as if the old casualness of moviegoing has been replaced by a casualness of movie viewing, in which I interpret as an inability to tolerate our own fantasies, let alone those of others—an attitude that equally I cannot share. (WV 11)

Note several things. First, the condition of set showtimes is not inherent to cinema, but one that cinema arrived at through historical contingencies (many believe it to be tied to the premier of Hitchcock’s 1960 film, Psycho, which was the first to require show times, because Hitchcock felt it was essential to the film’s success to do so; I mention this to stress again a point taken up in detail in the first chapter: that media—and thereby importantly television—do not come premade, but evolve historically).³¹ Second, note what sort of potential role this suggests for television series and what sort of relationships to them it makes possible. In the case of the cinema, prior to the invention of movie times, films were simply screened continually, and individuals would arrive whenever they liked, and watch whatever they would like, for however long. With the establishment of screen times, individuals, apart from stragglers, arrived as an audience and departed in the same way. Cinema thereby underwent a major transformation of the audience’s relation to its own imagination.³² I take Cavell’s suggestion to be the following. Prior to the establishment of set times, one could arrive at the theater with one’s own fantasies about how the items of the screen (films) fit with (the items of) one’s life; one maintained a distance and a privacy that allowed one to explore what is screened in this context, in the context of the relative anonymity of entering and exiting the screening as one pleased, according to one’s whims. With the establishment of set times, there arose a regimentation (although also an increasing variety) of movie genres, and thereby of shared responses (it is no accident then that Psycho starts this phenomena: there just were certain expectations of and for the audience, just as there are in comedies, thrillers, and, now, in variations like comedy-thrillers, and so forth). Cavell stresses that something is lost in this change: it matters that our responses are not (read: ought not to be) shared, that is, there is an important exercise in determining one’s reactions, in understanding one’s relationship to what is on the screen, and in establishing on what that relationship rests, both internally (in the form of your fantasies) and externally (in the form of what the screen presents); and all of this without the suggestion that these two are unrelated and without the idea that this has wholly disappeared from contemporary film. Think again about Warshow’s suggestion that we are each self-made in this way, and understand these claims about the changing nature of media as claims about the changing nature of our very possibilities and impossibilities.

In this respect, television series are significant because—despite whatever changes they will continue to undergo—they are a medium created explicitly for the small screen of the home (small likely an archaism, given the current size of home screens). The existence of this sort of small screen, of these sorts of sophisticated television series, opens up a space for exactly what Cavell believes to be lost in cinema: the ability, here by design, to explore what is on the screen in the context of one’s fantasies, and with the inherent anonymity that might make possible self-exploration and