srn2020oxford 26 Jul 2021 Empathy, Ethics, Genres, Panel 14, Personality disorder, TV series

Klika – Comic characters with personality disorders: has their time arrived?

Deborah T. Klika (Middlesex University, London, UK)

Panel 14 – TV & ETHICS

Monday 13 September (Day 4), Session 1, 9 am

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1

Luisa Cotta Ramosino on 6 Sep 2021 at 4:18 pm
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Really interesting. Contemporary comedy tv shows are a powerful tools/opportunities to create acceptance also because the audience can enjoy the character on a longer arc of development (compared to a movie), with up and down which are necessary to keep the audience involved for a long time but are also in a sense more realistic in describing disorders that can’t be “beaten” as often patients have to deal with the whole life…so the unresolved character of a returning series has the merit of being able to show both the hope for an positive outcome and the risk of a relapse (as they have done with a different disorder and a different genre in Homeland) . Fleabag is a brilliant example of a show that can have both very dramatic and very light moment. do you plan to extend your research to other characters/series?

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2

Paolo Russo on 9 Sep 2021 at 7:09 pm
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Great presentation, very well designed and delivered. It links nicely with Diane Barley’s paper analysing maladjusted/dysfunctional female protagonists in contemporary drama series. Yours shifts the focus, rather interestingly, on comedy, albeit still as a response to trauma, in terms of character development. This trait having become so common in contemporary serial TV (as well as film), doesn’t it show some kind of overreliance on backstory as the main dramaturgical driver without which there would be little story indeed? And on the interdependence of the two temporal levels of this relationship (i.e. past/trauma vs. present/PD)?

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3

Deborah Klika on 12 Sep 2021 at 7:34 pm
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Thank you for the comments and questions. I would like to extend my research to other characters/series without trying to ‘label’ characters or have deterministic view of how they should behave, and as Paolo notes, without being overreliant, or rather only reliant, on behaviour or trauma as backstory, which as you say there would be little story. An interesting point to consider is the interdependence on the two temporal levels – food for thought .Thanks for the contributions.

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SRN 2021

Klika – Comic characters with personality disorders: has their time arrived?

READ ABSTRACT & BIOS

WATCH PRE-RECORDED PRESENTATION

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