Multimodal You: Playing with Direct Address in Contemporary Narrative Television

Birke, Dorothee; Warhol, Robyn; Alber, Jan; Olson, Greta

doi:10.1515/9783110569957-010

Cited by 6 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…From the 1950s onward, commercial messages, news programs, variety shows and anthology dramas, among other genres have established structures of address that project an audience sometimes inside and sometimes beyond the studio. (2017: 143)…”

Section: Are You Talkin’ To Me?!: Theatrical Migration From Stage To ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Less common is the occurrence of the convention within forms of fictional drama. In their article ‘Multimodal You: Playing with Direct Address in Contemporary Narrative Television’ (2017), Birke and Warhol outline three dominant trends of direct address within fictional television. The first trend, the ‘narratorial’ mode, revolves around shows bearing a close resemblance to that of the novel with ‘narrator figures who relate their own experiences to a more or less specified fictive audience’ (142).…”

Section: Are You Talkin’ To Me?!: Theatrical Migration From Stage To ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first trend, the ‘narratorial’ mode, revolves around shows bearing a close resemblance to that of the novel with ‘narrator figures who relate their own experiences to a more or less specified fictive audience’ (142). Examples here include the readers of Carrie Bradshaw’s magazine column within Sex and the City (1998–04) or the children of the narrator in How I Met Your Mother (2005–2013) (Birke and Warhol, 2017: 142). The second trend involves shows linked to documentary, such as reality TV or mockumentaries: fictional shows emulating a closer relation to ‘real’ life.…”

Section: Are You Talkin’ To Me?!: Theatrical Migration From Stage To ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I initiate the discussion around consideration of the migration of the theatrical convention of the ‘aside’ from stage to screen, reflecting on the broader ontologies of both mediums in relation to the treatment and effect of ‘breaking the fourth wall’. Key to the discussion is a consideration of this convention within what Dorothee Birke and Robyn Warhol (2017) describe as the ‘dramatic mode’: an approach to fictional story-telling involving direct address where the spectator remains ‘un-fictionalised’. This lack of audience framing preserves the diegetic/non-diegetic boundary, potentially contributing to what Tom Brown describes as ‘ontological strangeness’ when ‘fictional characters seem to look out of their world and into ours’ (2012: xiii).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Where did you go?! Trans-diegetic address and formal innovation in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s television series Fleabag

Wilson

2022

Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Te

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The article examines formal innovation, authorship and representation within Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s television series Fleabag (2016–2019). Through close examination of the developed use of direct address within the programme, in particular two key moments of trans-diegetic address, the analysis considers how, contrary to ontological assumptions, the adaptation of the theatrical ‘aside’, when converted for screen, can function to support, strengthen, layer and enhance aspects of a narrative, as well as help build performer/audience connectivity through perceptions of intimacy, authenticity and female agency.

show abstract

Section: Are You Talkin’ To Me?!: Theatrical Migration From Stage To ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Are You Talkin’ To Me?!: Theatrical Migration From Stage To ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Are You Talkin’ To Me?!: Theatrical Migration From Stage To ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Where did you go?! Trans-diegetic address and formal innovation in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s television series Fleabag

Wilson

2022

Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Te

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show abstract

“…As observed by media researchers (e.g., Marriott, 2007;Gerbaz, 2008;Brown, 2012;Birke and Warhol, 2017), the direct address technique, i.e., a construction in which a speaker communicates a message directly to the audience, breaking the continuity of the narrative flow, is an ideal crossroad for the articulation of the diegetic and extra-diegetic dimensions of a media text. The diegetic dimension is internal to the text's narrative, while the extra-diegetic dimension reaches out to the audience in the context of fruition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polydimensional Structure and Psychosocial Functions of the Direct Address in TV Series

et al. 2021

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Traditionally, in media studies research, the direct address or aside, i.e., a construction in which a speaker communicates a message directly to the audience breaking the continuity of the narrative flow, has been investigated mainly for its dramaturgical function. The present study aims to consider the direct address as a research object of the social psychology of communication to increase our understanding of this technique by going beyond the analysis of its dramaturgical function. In particular, the direct address will be examined through an integrated approach based on argumentative and conversational tools to highlight its less known polydimensional structure, i.e., diegetic and extra-diegetic dimensions and their interactions, and psychosocial functions, i.e., connecting the characters among each other within the show as well as with the audience. This objective will be achieved by analyzing two different direct addresses from the American TV series House of Cards. The analysis showed that the direct address performs its dramaturgical function by impacting both diegetic and extradiegetic levels. In the first case, as considered in previous studies, these plans are activated in parallel, aiming to build what we have defined as the “strategic subjectivity” of the character who employs this technique. Instead, in the second case—which comprises two direct addresses produced by two different characters—this technique involves the creation of what we will call “platforms of intersubjectivity.” In this occurrence, the dramaturgical action establishes a “bridge” between the diegetic and extradiegetic plans that act synergistically. In conclusion, the present study shows how an integrated approach based on argumentative and conversational tools of analysis permits to enlarge the traditional media studies perspective, highlighting the less investigated polydimensional structure and analyzing the psychosocial functions of the direct address, here considered as a research object of the social psychology of communication examined in its diegetic and extra-diegetic dimensions. The integration of the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation with the interlocutory logic theory has brought to light a new modality of use of the direct address that can be termed “intersubjective aside,” a type of aside that can be added to the three already known, i.e., aside ad spectatores, monological aside, and dialogical aside.

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Too Close for Comfort: Direct Address and the Affective Pull of the Confessional Comic Woman in Chewing Gum and Fleabag

Woods

2019

Communication, Culture and Critique

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The 2010s saw a boom in television comedies, created by, written, and starring women, that explored the bawdy and chaotic lives of protagonists who were experiencing some form of arrested development. These comedies sought to build intimate connections with their imagined audiences by crossing boundaries—social, bodily, and physical—to produce comedies of discomfort. Drawing in part on Rebecca Wanzo’s consideration of “precarious-girl comedy” (2016) I examine how two British television comedies intensified these intimate connections through the use of direct address, binding the audience tightly to the sexual and social misadventures of their twenty-something female protagonists. Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum (E4, 2015–2017) follows naïve and desperately horny black working-class Londoner Tracey in her quest for sexual experience, and Phoebe-Waller Bridges’ Fleabag (BBC Three, 2016–) documents an unnamed upper-middle-class white woman’s sharply misanthropic journey through grief. In both programmes direct address serves to intensify the embrace of bodily affect and intimate access to interiority found in the “precarious-girl comedy” (Wanzo, 2016), producing moments of comic and emotional repulsion. Each program uses direct address’s blend of directness and distance to different ends, but both draw audiences at times uncomfortably close to the singular perspective of their protagonists, creating an intensely affective comic intimacy.

show abstract

Multimodal You: Playing with Direct Address in Contemporary Narrative Television

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Where did you go?! Trans-diegetic address and formal innovation in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s television series Fleabag

Where did you go?! Trans-diegetic address and formal innovation in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s television series Fleabag

Polydimensional Structure and Psychosocial Functions of the Direct Address in TV Series

Too Close for Comfort: Direct Address and the Affective Pull of the Confessional Comic Woman in Chewing Gum and Fleabag

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