Author Archive

Style, Structuring Conceits, and the Paratexts of Mad Men

May 22, 2015
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Style, Structuring Conceits, and the Paratexts of <em>Mad Men</em>

Piers Britton on Mad Men's visual style, series structure, and Sixties-philiac tendencies, and how the TV series turned its tension between the espousal of emotional truthfulness and a preoccupation with “superficial” visual pleasures into a branding strategy.
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Black Widow and Whedon Exceptionalism: Accounting for Sexism in Age of Ultron and the MCU

May 15, 2015
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Black Widow and Whedon Exceptionalism: Accounting for Sexism in <em>Age of Ultron</em> and the MCU

Piers Britton explores questions of representation and issues of authorship and creative control in "Avengers: Age of Ultron" and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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Marvel, Wired? Daredevil and Visual Branding in the MCU

May 1, 2015
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Marvel, Wired? <i>Daredevil</i> and Visual Branding in the MCU

How far are Marvel Studios’ film and television franchises visually coded for homogeneity? How insistently, that is to say, is brand identity maintained at the levels of design, cinematography, editing and post-production processing?
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“Television Aesthetics” versus Formal and Stylistic Analysis

April 8, 2015
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“Television Aesthetics” versus Formal and Stylistic Analysis

Piers Britton reflects on the unacknowledged divergences in use of the term “aesthetic” within television studies, and suggests that some of the elisions are leading to unproductive argument.
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The Cultural Lives of Doctor Who: Of Anniversaries and Authenticity, Costumes and Canon

December 5, 2013
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The Cultural Lives of <i>Doctor Who</i>: Of Anniversaries and Authenticity, Costumes and Canon

In this latest entry in The Cultural Lives of Doctor Who series, Piers Britton discusses the use of costume as a marker of authenticity in "The Name of the Doctor" and its many ramifications for Who tradition and canon.
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