The Watcher: Cinematography and Empathy in Prestige Television

At the turn of the 21st century, a new type of show emerged that has changed the way we look at our TV sets. Prestige TV was a genre that roughly began in 2000 and ended in 2020. It was the first “Golden Age” of the new millennium. The shows identified as part of this generic period by the new television journalists and scholars of the day share a common cinematographic theme: they all train their viewers in how to look at the TV screen in new ways as well as how to understand the lives of Others both on and off screen. Tracking this pattern across the four main distribution methods (Broadcast, Basic Cable, Subscription Cable, and Streaming Video On Demand), this project looks closely at CBS’s The Good Wife, AMC’s Breaking Bad, HBO’s The Wire, and Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black. At the heart of each disparate series is a focus on what justice looks like and who has access to it in American society.