Television and Empathy

What is television’s capacity to elicit empathy?

This book, Television and Empathy, brings together responses from a range of international scholars and interdisciplinary approaches.

Television’s serialised form, ensemble casts and depth of storytelling has long granted viewers extended access to a diversity of perspectives. Meanwhile, interactive online technologies and platforms increasingly promise more personal and collective relationships with the small screen than ever before. With chapters exploring series from the UK and US, Australia, Iceland, Netherlands, South Korea and Spain, this cutting-edge collection responds to this juncture of television and affective theory.

This collection is essential reading for upper undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers working in screen studies and audience studies, cognitive media theory, digital and cultural studies and psychology

Chapter 1. Still Moments in Contemporary Dramas — Dr Michael Samuel.-Chapter 2. Netflix’s Arcane and Trauma — Laura Cesa and Hubbiah Rafaqat.-Chapter 3. “By what right does the wolf judge the lion?”: Using televisual moments to create empathy in Game of Thrones (2011-9) — Louise Coopey.-Chapter 4. Cracked Landscapes on Beautiful Islands: How Empathy Addresses the Social Fissures in Trapped (Ófærð) and Hierro — Dr Jesse Barker.-Chapter 5. Ted Lasso’s Threat to Toxic Masculinity — Professor Scott F. Stoddart.-Chapter 6. Death, Controversy and Empathy Deficit in Squid Game — Dr Bethan Michael-Fox.-Chapter 7. Beyond the Personal: History, Culture and Empathy in Mystery Road — Dr Matthew Cipa.-Chapter 8. Empathy and the Miniseries and Docuseries formats: The Case of the Opioid Epidemic Drama — Dr Jan Beneš.-Chapter 9. Atypical and Empathy — Professor Nigel Morris.-Chapter 10. Ghost in the Machine: Grief, Catharsis and Television Memory in WandaVision — Dr Leanne Weston.-Chapter 11. Petty Fights and Futile Disputes: Neighbour Quarrels in Dutch Reality TV — Dr Josette Wolthuis.-Chapter 12. Online Fandom’s Empathetic Response to Death Anxieties and the Afterlife in Sherlock — Professor John Murray.-Chapter 13. Who do you watch with?: The effect of social interaction on empathy and television — Dr Kate Ngai.-Chapter 14. The Crown and Digital Commemorative Culture — Esther Wilson.-Chapter 15. Sensation Training in Kamen Rider Saber: Affective empathy in Japanese children's television — Sophia Staite and Dr Ruth Barratt-Peacock.-Chapter 16. Constructing Empathic Narratives: Empathy, Identification and Gender in Euphoria’s Marketing and Online Paratexts — Dr Theresa Trimmel.-Chapter 17. Squid Game: Universal Narratives and Affective Transculturation — Dr B. G.-Stolz

Michael Samuel is a Lecturer in Digital Film and Television and Co-Director of the Bristol Digital Game Lab at the University of Bristol, UK. He is the author of Northern Exposure: A Cultural History and co-editor of Streaming and Screen Culture in the Asia-Pacific and True Detective: Critical Essays on the HBO Series.

Theresa Trimmel?is a Lecturer in Film and Television at the University of Bristol, UK. Her research focuses on gender and television and her writings have been published in Mai: Feminism & Visual Culture, New Review of Film and Television Studies, and Communication, Culture, and Critique, among others.