A Study Of Genre TV Plays: Theory And Practice

TV plays, a kind of comprehensive narrative art through TV media, provide for the masses an easy avenue to cultural communication, and it is also a symbol system for constructing both the value of contemporary ethics and the imaginative relationship between individuals and societies. Judging by the number of TV productions and audience, it is no doubt that China is a big country of TV plays. However, considering the study of TV plays, we find that theoretical study and literary and artistic appreciation are always lumped together and the theoretical study does not keep up with the highly developed practice of TV culture. This dissertation attempting to do something for the study of TV plays and make a breakthrough of it puts forwards the concept of genre TV plays by making a systematic study of each aspect of genre TV plays and also reveals the integral structure of TV plays by elaborating on the relationships among different TV plays.The study of this dissertation follows three routes. First, after comparing author films and genre films, the author puts forward a concept—Genre TV plays. Second, the author studies the archetype and the pedigree of the genre teleplays on the basis of structuralism. Third, the author carries out the research for the super-text of the genre teleplays and conducts a preliminary analysis which includes genre teleplays, ideology, the market segmentation of genres and teleplays, the notion and the approaches of genre innovations etc. Meanwhile, based on the research of the above theories, seven teleplays falling into different genres are picked out as the cases for study.Author films emphasize not only the personal style but also the absolute right to the control of the film creation, while genre films, putting genre over personality, pay more attention to audience's heart's desire and appeal and the film industry etc. It is obvious that TV plays are closer to genre films. This dissertation proposes that genre TV plays are those sharing the same or similar text character and the same archetype. Genre films represent the deep structure of audience's psychology. It is the fruit of the market segmentation and the bridge linking creation, media, copy and audience together. Moreover, the pursuit of the maximum of the audience rating also contributes to shaping genre films.In author's opinion, the genre is a kind of synchronic language structure rather than the words from a certain script writer or a director. After referring to the general theory of general linguistics that language is prior to individual existence and transplanting the archetype criticism into the research field of TV plays, the author puts forward a model of criticism which concerns the study of genre teleplays. What the criticism focuses on is not a certain TV play, but the bridge which connects the TV play and the type it attributes to through the deep structure of TV plays. And then, according to the genres, the integral structure of TV plays can be established. In this way, thousands of TV plays can be located in their own pedigrees. This dissertation discusses seven most representative genres of the teleplay. These seven genres like the spectrum of seven colors span myths plays, knight plays, history plays, love plays, ethics plays, Sitcom and parody plays. Of course, there are some other transitional genres among the seven ones, as if they were the secondary color among the spectrum of the seven colors.From the genres of folk stories, architecture, literature to that of films and TV plays, it seems that the genre is a logical rule above to its own style. This rule is not stipulated by human beings. It forms along the track of the development from generation to generation and Myths plays, historical plays, action plays and love plays, all of these genres are abstracted by the elimination and filtration of history and the sedimentation processed by human being's survival and traditional custom so that they display the vital force of the mass culture. Furthermore, audiences are not the passive aesthetic objects, neither is the appreciation of TV plays a passive action. After we choose and process those artistic pieces, a reciprocal bilateral construction is positively founded on their own experience and original cognitive structure. Who creates the genres of action plays, love plays? It's the anonymous authors who create the genre films, but we show as much respect to those anonymous authors as to the great anonymous architects.