Genological Problems with the Television Landscape: A Proposed Classification of Factual Hybrid and Reality TV Genres
Beata Kosińska-Krippner
beata.krippner@ispan.plInstitute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8096-9708
Abstract
Syncretism and hybridization, inscribed in the definition of the film genre, have become a genre distinguishing feature for many television forms that appeared in the times of neotelevision. The docusoap wave in the mid-1990s and the dynamic proliferation of other hybrid genres made many viewers and commentators feel lost in the TV genre landscape. In Poland, history repeated itself with another wave of proliferation of new TV genres and the emergence of scripted-docu. However, this time the conceptual chaos also affected scientific works. The author identifies the phenomenon of secondary conceptual blurring of genre names from the area of television genology in the second decade of the 21st century. Using a few selected examples, she describes the struggle of researchers with classifying, and above all naming, television hybrid genres, and the consequences of genological problems. She also presents a proposal for the classification of borderline television genres, which is to help partially control the conceptual chaos in this area. In her classification, the author separates the group of factual hybrids from reality TV hybrids.
Keywords:
factual hybrid genres, classification of TV genres, docusoap, scripted-docu, reality TVReferences
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Authors
Beata Kosińska-Krippnerbeata.krippner@ispan.pl
Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8096-9708
PhD in the humanities, film studies and media studies scholar. Assistant Professor at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw). In 2011-2020, head of the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Film and Audiovisual Arts at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Member of the Editorial Staff of Kwartalnik Filmowy, in which in 1993-2003 she published, i.a. an annual chronicle of film events. Her scientific papers on the history and theory of film and television were published, among others, in Kwartalnik Filmowy and collective volumes. She collaborated with the quarterly Polish Culture (1997-2015). She was a member of the jury of the International Short Film Festival in Lublin (2013-2014) and a member of the expert committee at the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2012-2014). Member of the Polish Society for Film and Media Studies. Her research interests include the documentary film in the context of hybrid border genres (including mock-document and docusoap), the history and theory of film and television genres, as well as Austrian cinema.
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