Scottish Television Drama and Understandings of Scottish Identity: Shifting or Stuck?
Event Date January 25, 2012 5 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Location – ATRiuM Boardroom (CA419)
A research presentation by Jacqui Cochrane (Glasgow Caledonian University). Part of the CCI Seminar Series 2011/12.
Scottish identity has been a contested concept for many years within art, literature, theatre, film and television.
Maloney (2011: 60) maintains that twentieth century popular theatre in Scotland successfully celebrated both Lowland and Highland contributions to modern Scottish identity in ways that were often socially and politically challenging.
Some of these theatre productions were adapted into television drama (for example; The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, 1974; and The Slab Boys, 1979, 1997).
The Wednesday Play and Play for Today, at various points between 1965 and 1984, facilitated a platform for engagement with Scottish issue, often through a form of gritty social realism. However, such an approach with its attendant constructions of Scottish imagery has long since fallen out of favour with producers of television drama.
The purpose of my research is to explore what has taken place in Scotland since the decline of the single TV drama. What is the current shape of Scottish-produced TV drama? What representations of Scotland has Scottish-produced TV drama provided over the last twenty years between 1990 and 2010? And how do the subject positions of media professionals and audiences influence what is produced and understood as ‘Scottish’ through the medium of television drama?
These are some of the questions which the current project aims to investigate including the use of online qualitative questionnaires, interviews and focus groups.
Organised by the Centre for the Study of Media and Culture in Small Nations.
All welcome. Please also join us for drinks and food with our guest speaker after the seminar.
