Essay about Mittell’s Television Genre Theory and Louie

Originally published in Cinema Journal 40, No. 3, Spring 2001, Jason Mittell’s â€Å"A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory† conceives of television genre as a cultural category rather than merely a textual component. In the decade since the original publishing of the article, television has evolved out of the multi-channel era and into the post-network era. In this new television landscape, genres are no longer a fixed entity1, and there is great academic potential in the in the study of television genres. The text, Thinking Outside the Box: A Contemporary Television Genre Reader, aims to explore and analyze genre in the current television landscape, and the Mittell article, republished in the book, serves as an entry point to such†¦show more content†¦Finally, this concept of genre will be applied to the development of the central questions in my final project. LOUIE: A GENERIC DISCOURSE Mittell suggests that genre studies should negotiate between specificity and generality, and offers the following as an approach: â€Å"The second way would be to start with a specific media case study and analyze how genre processes operate within this specific instance. Such projects might isolate a variety of starting points—an industrial formation, audience practices, a textual instance, a policy decision, or a moment in social history. We may start with a textual case to motivate our study, but we must still examine how genres transcend textual boundaries and operate within audience and industry practices as well.3† Also, according to the article, â€Å"we should focus on the breadth of discursive enunciations around any given instance, mapping out as many articulations of genre as possible and situating them within larger cultural contexts and relations of power.4† So, any generic discourse must begin with a full understanding of the context of a particula r text—in this case, Louie. Louis C.K. is one of the most influential and respected stand-up comedians working today. He has written for The Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with