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Dressing for television : costume, fashion and seriality
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Wolthuis, Josette Margarethe (2020) Dressing for television : costume, fashion and seriality. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3736719
Abstract
Asking how we can understand television through the way its people are dressed, this thesis aims to carve out a new field of study and enrich existing interdisciplinary scholarship by arguing for the key role of costume design and fashion in the meaningmaking process of serial television drama and by suggesting new ways to understand their value in terms of style, aesthetics and cultural expression. This project adopts a mixed-methodology approach linking textual analysis of selected case studies with the study of extra-textual material and interviews with costume designers. The chapters of the thesis each offer a different perspective on the subject to understand the workings of costume, fashion and dress in British and American television in relation to television’s medium specificity (seriality, address, cultural understandings and technology), cultural notions of dress and fashion, and questions of aesthetics, gender, realism and authenticity.
The thesis discusses seemingly ‘transparent’ as well as more ‘spectacular’ uses of costume and fashion on television and argues that this needs to be understood differently than in film. This becomes especially clear in examining how costume and fashion underpin seriality. Chapter 1 establishes the groundwork by outlining key issues in the conceptualisation of clothing on television from the 1980s to the 2010s. It re-evaluates assumptions about television and its uses of costume and fashion that have discouraged critical attention. Chapter 2 addresses how crime and legal dramas tread the line between realism and dramatization in the gendered professional dressing of their characters. Chapter 3 argues that style and substance are inextricable in television’s creation of meaning, focusing on period costume in recent dramas set in the 1950s-60s. Costume, fashion and dress codes on television structure its meanings and need to be studied as a key form of cultural expression. This thesis begins that work.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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| Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GT Manners and customs P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1990 Broadcasting |
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| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Clothing and dress on television, Fashion on television, Costume, Television programs -- United States, Television programs -- United Kingdom | ||||
| Official Date: | August 2020 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
| Theses Department: | Department of Film and Television Studies | ||||
| Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
| Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
| Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Moseley, Rachel ; Bruzzi, Stella, 1962- | ||||
| Sponsors: | University of Warwick. Research Excellence Framework PhD Completion Fund | ||||
| Format of File: | |||||
| Extent: | 229 leaves : illustrations | ||||
| Language: | eng |
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