Philosophy and New American TV Series

The idea of organizing a workshop on “Philosophy and New American TV Series” came from the desire to understand why for so many of us certain TV series had suddenly become the object of endless passionate conversations. Few topics seemed to capture so much shared interest and curiosity, which in itself is remarkable if one considers that television productions had not exactly been at the center of intellectual debates for a very long time (except for the almost universal complaints about the dismal quality of most programs and the pernicious effects of news channels that in the best case, provide little information, in the worst, systematic misinformation). The question seemed even more compelling when new TV series stopped being discussed only in private settings, among friends and colleagues, and officially entered the classroom: as movies did some time ago, now TV series claim the right to be taken seriously as legitimate objects of philosophical teaching and research. In sum: what at the beginning seemed an idiosyncratic taste turns out to be, as always, a quite widespread phenomenon (at least in the United States and in Europe, particularly in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom).

Two sets of related questions were most interesting to us: in the first place, what’s new about new American TV series? And in what sense, if any, are they specifically “American”? Secondly, what is their philosophical significance? In both regards we were inspired (and encouraged) by Stanley Cavell’s groundbreaking book on classic Hollywood comedies, Pursuits of Happiness: his inquiry into the philosophical significance of popular movies and emphasis on their relation with, and importance for, a certain idea of American democracy as initially outlined by Emerson and Thoreau deeply resonated with most of the issues we were concerned with.

The emergence in the last two decades of this new genre of popular American TV series (mainly but not exclusively produced by HBO), highly innovative both in visual and dramatic terms, calls for similar analyses of their philosophical, aesthetical, and political underpinnings although in the context of a different cultural and social landscape largely shaped by cable TV and the Internet. The fact that series like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Mad Men or True Blood, to name only a few, have achieved an impressive international success further reinforces the sense that their role in shaping popular culture, or parts of it, is comparable to the one movies used to have and does not undermine what we just said about their unmistakable “American brand.” Quite to contrary, we would like to suggest: it’s their capacity to express local landscapes, fragments of lives bound to specific places and times, that makes them so appealing outside of their geographical boundaries. These shows are an interesting case of the larger problem of the relation between the local and the global and may offer a new perspective on what is at stake, philosophically and politically, when the most singular proves to be the only access to true universality as Gilles Deleuze claims in Difference and Repetition.

On the first set of issues, what stands out most clearly is the extent to which these shows extend certain dominant television paradigms. As an example, and remarkably, new American TV series share much in common with soap operas. Like soap operas, they are serialized, featuring what may be termed an “expandable middle.”¹ Although serialized, unlike soap operas, episodes fit into a broader whole, where a sense of narrative coherence and continuity must be retained—these series end, and often do so in dramatic ways (from The Wire’s ultimate montage to the Sopranos cliff-hanger). Serialization and coherence both contribute to the distinct aesthetic qualities of these shows, which feature complex and evolving characters, multi-episode and season plot arcs, varied narrative and visual styles and techniques.² It would not be too much to say that these shows combine the best elements of great works of literature with the best elements of great works of film. Similarly, these shows are intimately connected to the latest production and distribution technologies, most notably cable television...