With the technology of digital photography being widely used in both film and television production, it is hard to differentiate a TV show and a film merely from its looking. However, with a closer observation, it can be discovered that TV shows mostly uses static shots, especially when shooting the scene of dialogues. Meanwhile, films tend to use more camera movements, such as dolly and zooming, while also using the movements of its characters in the frame to establish another layer of narration.
The broadcast ways of these two media also tend to be quite different. To watch a film is a one off business. One pays money in advance to get the tickets. Even if you hated it, you have already given your share of cost, and it normally only waste two hours of your life on average. To watch a TV show, on the contrary, can be regarded as free - the fee will be amortized into subscription fee and inevitable commercials. It is actually more time consuming, considering the time one spends on watching an entire season of a 40 minute TV show will cost nearly 10 hours, not to mention the waiting days in between. If a viewer gets bored in the middle of the season, he or she will simply drop out and never return in order to save time. Thus, the script is about life and death to a TV show, being the ultimate approach to intrigue the audience from day one to the season finale. Since its inherent vice is the relatively small budget, it cannot expect to allure its audience with dazzling CGI effects like a film can do. If the episode in this week is not as good as the last one, the show’s ratings will drop, and perhaps get it canceled eventually. However, TV’s low budget has become its edge. Its dependence on ratings force the producers to make progressive explorations in plots, which may be an an antidote to the film scripts’ decrepit status.
This schizophrenia can be easily spotted in the divergence between the production of Marvel’s TV shows and films. As the influence of Marvel Cinematic Universe increases with each passing day, the constitution of its fanbase is also experiencing a dramatic change. A survey in 2014 reveals that over 24 million Facebook users are self identified comic fans and 46.67% of them are women. While the number of female audience continues to grow, there is still no leading female superhero characters to fulfill these fans’ anticipation.
Being a thriving entertainment enterprise, Marvel Studios is notorious for the lack of diversity in its cast. The gender issue has long been raised, for the female heroines in Marvel films are usually considered with not enough subjective agency. That’s why Marvel’s Agent Carter is widely considered as Marvel Studios’ ultimate redemption. On air since last year, this TV show survives and has just broadcast its second season finale on March 1st 2016. By featuring Captain America’s wartime lover Peggy Carter, an English agent who serves in the United States, this show tends to depict a woman’s social status in New York and Los Angeles right after World War II. Quite different from her part in Captain America: The First Avenger, which is overshadowed metaphorically by the male hero after he experiences dramatic physical change in the Super Soldier program and gradually becomes a war hero, in the TV show Carter is always in the center of the camera, surrounded by her male counterparts. Being the leading role of the show, Carter appears constantly in the middle of the frame when she is among the male colleagues in the medium shots. When she is alone in close up shots, the angle tends to tilt up, portraying her not just a lover of the Superheroes, but actually one of them. For most time she is holding a gun or her fists, ready to fire a shot or punch at those villains. Meanwhile, her male counterparts are hesitating, slow in action, waiting for our protagonist to pull the trigger.
Why does Marvel Studios decides to test the water by making a TV show with leading heroin instead of a film? There are probably a couple of reasons involved. On the one hand, a TV show on national network ABC with a female leading cast is much cheaper and more expandable than a high budget film. Even if the show is not as good as the films in Marvel Cinematic Universe, it can be canceled with small economic losses. On the other hand, a Marvel entertainment product with a leading lady can stop those criticisms on feminist issues acutely. And what does female audience love most? A woman to be successful in her working field and a bunch of women babbling with each other, both are perfectly suitable for a TV production. No matter they are fat or thin and what line of work they are in, different kinds of female characters is represented and are offered far more time to express themselves than those in films.
The feminist issue in the show about how women achieve their positions in the maledominating world is quite inspiring to some audience, especially the young ladies. Among all the films and TV shows in Marvel Cinematic Universe, the gap in IMDB user grading between male and female is biggest when it comes to Agent Carter. While 25703 male audience only give it 7.9, 9215 female audience’s grading reaches 8.6. Among 334 females under 18, the grading reaches a 9.1 high. In one way, Agent Carter seems to be working.
However, this political correctness does not guarantee a market success. Unfortunately, the ratings of its pilot in Season 1 is the highest of the entire show, reaching only 1.93, while normally a trendy show will need to have a ratings over 2.0. Worse still, the ratings of the show continue to drop, and the ratings of Season 2 is only 0.79 on average, quite a tragic if not disastrous. Its cool reception is quite opposite to the popularity of Marvel films that are earning over 9 billion dollars around the world. However, this political correctness does not guarantee a market success. Unfortunately, the ratings of its pilot in Season 1 is the highest of the entire show, reaching only 1.93, while normally a trendy show will need to have a ratings over 2.0. Worse still, the ratings of the show continue to drop, and the ratings of Season 2 is only 0.79 on average, quite a tragic if not disastrous. Its cool reception is quite opposite to the popularity of Marvel films that are earning 9 billion dollars around the world. Raymond Williams reminds us to think of technology determination “not as a single force, or a single abstraction of forces, but as a process in which real determining factors—the distribution of power or of capital, social and political inheritance, relations of scale and size between groups—set limits and exert pressures, but neither wholly control nor wholly predict the outcome of complex activity within or at these limits, and under or against these pressures. (133)” With the case of Agent Carter, it seems that the similar appearance of Marvel’s TV show and films due to the development of digital photographic machine does not guarantee a satisfactory audience reception.
How so? A couple of reasons can be thought of. First, Agent Carter is treated as a bridge show when Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D is offseason, and the two shows cannot really interact with each other since they are set in different era. Second, most audience who will consume comics adaptations are male, and Agent Carter lacks the choreographed action scenes they desire. Third, to some audience and critics, the show is just not that feminist in its plots, considering there is no unity in the female group, and those friends who help Carter out are nearly all male. Besides, women in the show are depicted as dummies and threats toward technology, similar to what Donna Haraway describes in “Cyborg Manifesto”. Although Carter has been using hightech weapons, those who invent them are male scientists. When woman with talent in scientific area like Whitney Frost has access to technology, she becomes out of control and exploit the conquer the world.
Despite these not so cheerful news, we can still see some positive points in the show. Apparently, the lower pressure on profits allows the production crew to explore more possibility in plots when developing a TV show, while films need to play the safe game to be popular worldwide. Much to the supporters’ relief, it looks like the show will remain alive for the sake of diversity, since the newly minted ABC president Channing Dungey has said that she is deeply committed to it. Additionally, the broadcast of Agent Carter has heralded a new trend of women leading comics adaptations, including Jessica Jones, Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel in the near future.
Agent Carter's 'Fine' Audience Reception?
A War Time Hero Lover/ A Peace Time Guardian Angel
Refernece:
Williams, Raymond. 2003. Television: Technology and cultural form. London & New York: Routledge.
Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century'.” The Cybercultures Reader, London: Routledge, 2000.