AMS 1650 - HBO, FROM PULP TO PRESTIGE

credits: 3.0
Crosslisted/Same As: ENG 1650
Crosslisted/Same As (2): MCD 1650
AMS 1650-ENG 1650-MCD 1650. In the 21st century, the Home Box Office (HBO) network has positioned itself in the foreground of two distinct eras of televisual culture, the birth of prestige TV, inextricable from millennial HBO programming, especially The Sopranos and The Wire, and more recently the streaming wars, a chaotic phase during which media purveyors transition from the hegemony of cable to that of platforms. At the nexus of this transition, HBO aired what has been called the final artifact of the monoculture, Game of Thrones. In this course, we will consider both the recent history of HBO and its less prestigious origins, during which the network survived in part by specializing in stand-up comedy, second-tier professional sports, and softcore pornography. How does HBO’s production and programming decisions reflect the cultural, economic, and political patterns of U.S. mass media from the mid-1970s to the present? How has the network shaped consumer tastes and consumer behavior? How has the network adapted and appropriated narratives and techniques from other mediums? It is not just TV. It is HBO. Objectives: A) Navigate rationales and critiques associated with the regime of neoliberalism which directly parallels HBO’s history; B) Parse the production, distribution, consumption, and reception phases of various televisual genres; C) Perform the exegesis of a televisual scene with attention to both formalist and historicist methodology. Method of Instruction: Multimedia Curation, Collaborative Research, Discussion, and Lecture. Method of Evaluation: Response Papers, Participation Surveys, Discussion Prompts, and Group Project.