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Course Title Comfort Viewing
Language English Instruction and Assessment
Instructor Richard Nowell Ph.D.
Email 516779@mail.muni.cz
Structure Six Seminars (21.09; 5.10; 26.10; 9.11; 30.11; 14.12)
Semester Fall 2023
Time Thursdays, 12:00–13:50
Location Lecture Theater, C34
Office Hours Online, by appointment, at a time of mutual convenience.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
With hostility routinely directed at its alleged aesthetic, political, and moral shortcomings, it
is easy to forget that filmed entertainment is oftent intended primarily to bring us joy.
Accordingly, this course offers insights into an extreme manifestation of this culturally
important but under-examined phenomenon, now typically known as “Comfort Viewing”.
The six sessions comprising the course aim to conceptualize and historicize Comfort Viewing
as a calculated content-tailoring strategy, one that aims to generate a combination of themes
and audience affects, including uplift, connection, and nostalgia. Students will examine how
such phenomena are fostered across a range of case-studies drawn from American media of
the last half-century: 1980s Feelgood like E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Metamodernism
like Community (2009–15), Nerdom like The Big Bang Theory (2007-19), Tourist Movies like
Leap Year (2010), and even Geriaction like Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Through analyses of
such case-studies, the course aims to furnish students with transferable concepts and
frameworks that promise to enrich their understandings of how and why audiovisual
entertainment often tries to make us feel better.
COURSE AIMS
This course uses the case of Comfort Viewing to promote critical and revisionist
understandings of audio-visual formats, considering their industrial, aesthetic, and sociocultural
dimensions. The course familiarizes students with transferable frameworks,
approaches, and skills that promise to deepen their engagement with media formats on and
beyond this course. By the end of the course, students will be expected to demonstrate a
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capacity to synthesize in argument-driven fashion their engagement of scholarly frameworks
and textual and contextual analyses. Their proficiency in such areas shall be assessed with an
original essay, one requiring direct engagement with the constitute discourses of Comfort
Viewing. All of this requires students develop insights into the following areas:
• Comfort Viewing as a mode of media assembly
• Comfort Viewing and industry history
• Comfort Viewing and cultural history
• Comfort Viewing and character-types
• Comfort Viewing and media formats
• Comfort Viewing and media politics
For learning outcomes specific to each topic, please see individual session outlines below.
TEACHING METHODS
This course is built around six sessions combining elements of both traditional seminars and
lectures, with student-focused discussions supported by brief framing, summarizing, and
contextual “lecturettes”. As preparation, students are expected to study the provided
scholarship and the home screenings in relation to questions included in the syllabus; these
will form the basis of discussions, to which students are invited actively to contribute. Such
an approach is intended to maximize students’ engagement and comprehension of the learning
outcomes for each session.
SCREENINGS
Whenever possible, the example screenings included on this course should ideally be
analyzed in conditions approximating students own favored circumstances of Comfort
Viewing, such as in bed with your cat or curled up on the sofa in a beloved hoodie or with
their favorite viewing companion.
ASSESSMENT
At the end of the course, students are to submit one circa. 1500–2000-word essay written in
response to one of five prompts derived from the topics introduced on the course.
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Value: 100% of Final Grade
Due Date: Midnight CET Sunday 14 January 2024
Note: examples screened on this course may NOT be used for final papers.
Advice and Learning Outcomes: Towards the end of the course, an advice sheet will be
issued spotlighting the general qualities graded highly on this course. Time will also be set
aside towards the end of the final session to discuss these matters.
Prompt A
Hollywood of the 1980s is typically presented in supremely cynical terms; as a cold corporate
machine churning out mindless trash. However, as Noel Brown’s work suggests, much of the
most high-profile and enduring output of this decade was assembled to could now be
considered the Comfort Viewing Mode. Accordingly, consider how an example of ‘80s
Feelgood positions itself as Comfort Viewing.
Targeted Learning Outcomes/Areas of Assessment
1. 1980s Hollywood as soulless corporate machine.
2. Feel-good as a part of 1980s American culture.
3. 1980s feelgood as Comfort Viewing.
Prompt B
While postmodern irony, distance, and apathy are often cited as the preeminent mode of the
last half century, Gry C. Rustad and Kai Hanno Schwind argue that a significant cultural
variant is in fact characterized by oscillations between apparently incompatible ideas,
especially ironic distance with emotional sincerity. Accordingly, consider how an example of
Metamodern entertainment uses this approach to Comfort Viewing in order to raise serious
issues within an audiovisual safe space.
Targeted Learning Outcomes/Areas of Assessment
1. Characteristics of Metamodernism.
2. Metamodernism as coping strategy.
3. Metamodern entertainment as Comfort Viewing
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Prompt C
As Christine Quail’s work indicates, the figure of the “nerd” or “geek” is pathologized for a
variety of reasons including its supposedly unhealthy relationship to media products.
However, it is clear that the cultivation of this high-investor audience has incentivized more
flattering portrayals of the nerd. Accordingly, consider how an example of nerd-centered
entertainment uses Comfort Viewing to offer support to the nerd (in all of us).
Targeted Learning Outcomes/Areas of Assessment
1. Characteristics of the nerd/geek.
2. The logics of cultivating nerd consumers.
3. Nerd media as Comfort Viewing.
Prompt D
Diane Negra’s analysis of 1990s women’s tourist movies, suggests that such films promote
expatriation as a fantasy solution to middle-class problems. However, it is clear that this
format often promotes media depictions of tourism as a preferable alterative to the real thing.
Accordingly, consider how an example of tourist media uses the Comfort Viewing Mode to
invite audiences to reflect on the relative merits of home and abroad.
Targeted Learning Outcomes/Areas of Assessment
1. Tourist movies as fantasies of retreat.
2. Tourist movies as reflexive allegories.
3. Tourist movies as Comfort Viewing.
Prompt E
By reading Geriaction in relation to extremist political rhetoric, Gregory Frame and others
have argued that this format amounts to little more than inflammatory reactionary
propaganda. However, the concept of Comfort Viewing suggests that this format is oftentimes
used to encourage aging conservative American men graciously to accept their diminishing
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social and economic status. Accordingly, consider how an example of Geriaction encourages
this target audience to adapt to progressive social changes.
Targeted Learning Outcomes/Areas of Assessment
1. Geriaction as reactionary hate.
2. Geriaction and inclusivity.
3. Geriaction as Comfort Viewing.
All Essays are to be submitted in PDF or word format to MS TEAMS or to
516779@mail.muni.cz. Please include your name and the course title in the name of the
file.
NB: Extensions can be arranged with the instructor in advance, based on health, humanitarian,
and other grounds.
Tutorials
Students may arrange one-on-one tutorials to discuss any issues arising from the course,
including the assessment. Meetings can be arranged by email and will take place online at a
time of mutual convenience or after a teaching session.
Feedback
Each student will be emailed individually with detailed personal feedback on their paper. This
feedback is designed to be constructive, so will spotlight strengths, shortcomings, and
suggestions on how the paper might have been elevated.
Plagiarism Information
It is the duty of every student to ensure that s/he has familiarized him- or herself with the
following details pertaining to plagiarism.
(A) Any use of quoted texts in seminar papers and theses must be acknowledged. Such use
must meet the following conditions: (1) the beginning and end of the quoted passage must be
shown with quotation marks; (2) when quoting from periodicals or books, the name(s) of
author(s), book or article titles, the year of publication, and page from which the passage is
quoted must all be stated in footnotes or endnotes; (3) internet sourcing must include a full
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web address where the text can be found as well as the date the web page was visited by the
author.
(B) In case the use of any texts other than those written by the author is established without
proper acknowledgement as defined in (A), the paper or thesis will be deemed plagiarized and
handed over to the Head of School.
General Evaluation: Grades from A-F will be awarded based on the following general
criteria. Please see above for the specific areas of assessment for each prompt. Please note
that appropriate leeway will be afforded to students using a second language.
Argumentation/Understanding Sources/Evidence Communication
A
90<
Insightful, vigorous, and
demonstrating considerable depth
of understanding and a significant
amount of original thought;
addressing prompt directly
through a wholly coherent
synthesis of ideas; demonstrating a
degree of mastery over subject;
demonstrating a deep and
thorough understanding of key
concepts.
Full range of set
resources consulted;
sources employed
with significant
discrimination and
sound judgment;
thorough
assessment of
evidence; use of a
broad range of
examples.
Near-Faultless
typography and layout;
near-flawless turns of
phrase and expression;
sophisticated and precise
vocabulary; clear
structure; exemplary
citation and bibliography.
B
80 – 89.99
Perceptive and insightful; some
evidence of original thought; for
the most part addressing prompt
directly; mainly coherent synthesis
of ideas; thorough and somewhat
critical understanding of key
concepts.
A fairly wide range
of set resources
consulted; solid
assessment of
evidence;
sophisticated use of
a fairly broad range
of examples.
Very Solid typography
and layout; few errors in
grammar; mainly
sophisticated turns of
phrase and expression;
mostly clear structure;
strong citation and
bibliography.
C Solid understanding addressed, for
the most part, to the prompt; good
Some sources
consulted; evidence
Good typography and
layout; comprehensible
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70 – 79.99
synthesis of ideas; reasonably
solid understanding of key
concepts; evidence of gaps in
knowledge and some minor
misunderstandings of key
concepts.
of some assessment
of evidence; use of
mostly workable
examples.
and largely error-free
grammar, turns of phrase,
and expression;
reasonable clearly
structured; some attempt
to provide citation and
bibliography.
D
60 – 69.99
Indirectly addressed to prompt; no
real synthesis of ideas; mainly
descriptive rather than analytical;
patchy understanding of key
concepts; significant gaps in
knowledge.
Restricted range of
sources consulted;
superficial
understanding of
evidence; limited
range of examples,
many of which are
inappropriate.
Poor typography and
layout; numerous errors
of grammar; limited
vocabulary; ambiguous or
inaccurate turns of
phrase; weak or missing
citations and
bibliography.
E
50 – 59.99
Barely addressed to the prompt;
largely disconnected series of
points; poor understanding of key
concepts; major gaps in
knowledge.
No sources
consulted; poor
understanding of
evidence; few
useful examples.
Poor typography and
layout; numerous errors
of grammar; limited
vocabulary; ambiguous or
inaccurate turns of
phrase; no citations or
bibliography.
F
<50
Not addressed to the prompt;
largely incoherent; little evidence
of an understanding of key
concepts; demonstrating little
knowledge of subject.
No sources
consulted; poor
understanding of
evidence; no useful
examples.
Poor typography and
layout; numerous errors
of grammar; limited
vocabulary; ambiguous or
inaccurate turns of
phrase; no citations or
bibliography.
ZERO No paper submitted; Plagiarized submissions; or paper showing little or no effort
to respond to the prompt.
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COURSE OUTLINE
SESSION 1 THE COMFORT VIEWING MODE 21 SEPTEMBER
While Comfort Viewing is typically ascribed to consumer choices – viewers decide what
constitutes their own personal Comfort Viewing – it is important to remember that Comfort
Viewing is also a form of content-tailoring. This session invites students to consider how the
Comfort Viewing Mode summons a cluster of interlocking themes to encourage audience
responses. Conceptualizing Comfort Viewing in this way furnishes students with a flexible
and transferable framework in which to imbed their analyses of the five case-studies
introduced in subsequent sessions.
Targeted Learning Outcomes
A sound understanding of:
1. Comfort Viewing as a critical category.
2. Comfort Viewing as a mode of assembly.
Preparation
Reading: Egan & Mackley: 127–144.
1. Why do the interview subjects consider Mamma Mia! a feelgood film/experience?
2. Do these qualities also characterize your own experiences of Comfort Viewing?
3. What other qualities characterize the content and consumption of Comfort Viewing?
Home Screening I: Mamma Mia! (Phyllida Lloyd, 2007)
Available at: https://m4uhd.tv/watch-movie-mamma-mia-2008-9531.html
Home Screening II: Joe Pera Talks with You, Season 1 (9 x 10 Minute Episodes,) (Marty
Schousboe, 2018)
Available at: https://m4uhd.tv/watch-tvseries-joe-pera-talks-with-you-2018-2021-
269194.html
Questions:
1. How does these media texts position themselves as Comfort Viewing?
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2. Who do you think is the prime target audience for them?
3. To what extent did you experience these media texts as Comfort Viewing?
SESSION 2 1980s FEELGOOD 5 OCTOBER
An appreciation of the Comfort Viewing Mode helps us to revise our understandings of media
history. Accordingly, this session focuses on an industrially important instance of historical
Comfort Viewing: Hollywood’s feelgood cinema of the 1980s, and in particular the flagship
output of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. Students consider how this company’s
tales of troubled Americans transformed by remarkable events reinstates the importance of
emotionality into a period typically associated with cold, corporate profiteering.
Targeted Learning Outcomes
A sound understanding of:
1. 1980s Feelgood & Hollywood History
2. Amblin and the Comfort Viewing Mode
3. The Commercial Logic of 1980s Feelgood
Preparation
Reading: Brown, 269–286.
Questions:
1. To what social phenomena does Brown link Hollywood feelgood films of the 1980s?
2. What does he suggest feel-good cinema meant to stakeholders at this time?
Home Screening I: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)
Available at: https://m4uhd.tv/watch-movie-et-the-extraterrestrial-1982-9482.html
Home Screening II: The Goonies (Richard Donner, 1985)
Available at: https://m4uhd.tv/watch-movie-the-goonies-1985-21941.html
Questions:
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1. What issues complicate the lives of the protagonists in these films?
2. How do encounters with remarkable phenomena change them as individuals?
3. How does this material suggest the films can improve viewers’ lives?
SESSION 3 METAMODERNISM 26 OCTOBER
An appreciation of the Comfort Viewing Mode also enriches our understandings of cultural
history. Accordingly, this session focuses on a most culturally important recent iteration of
Comfort Viewing: Metamodernism – an approach distinguished by oscillations between
detached irony and immersive sincerity that has gathered momentum in the last twenty years.
Students consider how the mobilization of the Comfort Viewing Mode sets apart
Metamodernism from the postmodernism dominating the late twentieth century.
Targeted Learning Outcomes
A sound understanding of:
1. The roots of Metamodernism
2. The textual dynamics of Metamodern media
3. Metamodernism as an industry strategy
Preparation
Reading: Rustad & Schwind, 131–146.
Questions:
1. What sets apart metamodern sitcoms like Community from earlier ones like Seinfeld?
2. How do metamodern sitcoms handle emotional material?
Home Screening I: Community, Season 1, Episodes 1, 3, and 10 (Anthony Russo, 2009)
Available at: https://m4uhd.tv/watch-tvseries-community-2009-2015-224622.html
Home Screening II: The Muppets (James Bobin, 2011)
Available at: https://m4uhd.tv/watch-movie-the-muppets-2011-21061.html
Questions:
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1. To what extent do these media texts thematize cynicism?
2. To what extent do they remind you are watching a television show or a film?
3. How do they use sincerity to position themselvs as Comfort Viewing?
SESSION 4 THE NERD (IN ALL OF US) 9 NOVEMBER
An appreciation of the Comfort Viewing Mode also helps us to better understand charactertypes
used across media formats. Accordingly, this session focuses on a much maligned and
misunderstood staple of Comfort Viewing of the last forty years: The Nerd. Students consider
how Comfort Viewing invites us to view nerds less as symbols of failed psychosocial and
sexual development, than as vanguards in a media environment where high-investor fandom
is nurtured as an optimal form of consumption.
Targeted Learning Outcomes
A sound understanding of:
1. The construction of the nerd.
2. The economics of nerd cultivation.
3. Nerd media as Comfort Viewing
Preparation
Reading: Quail, 460–482.
Questions:
1. What traits constitute US media depictions of nerds?
2. How is this social type related to US media depiction of other groups of people?
3. What changes do nerds often undergo in Quail’s examples?
Home Screening I: Paul (Greg Mottola, 2011)
Available at: https://m4uhd.tv/watch-movie-paul-2011-21545.html
Home Screening II: The Big Bang Theory, Season 1, Episodes 1-3 (2007)
Available at: https://m4uhd.tv/watch-tvseries-the-big-bang-theory-20244.html
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Questions:
1. What issues do nerds face in these media texts?
2. What roles do nerds’ special interest play in their lives?
3. To what extent do these examples suggest nerds are really the “cool” people?
SESSION 5 TOURIST MOVIES 30 NOVEMBER
An appreciation of the Comfort Viewing Mode also enriches our understandings of industry
formats; those loose frameworks upon which producers draw to marshal the creative and
commercial dimensions of media. Accordingly, this session focuses on one of the most
enduring comfort viewing formats: tourist movies. Students will consider how the Comfort
Viewing Mode invites us to reconsider the themes of such films, from a promotion of real-life
tourism as life-changing tonic to the real-world benefits of tourist movie consumption.
Targeted Learning Outcomes
A sound understanding of:
1. Tourist movies and fantasies of repatriation.
2. Tourist movies as vacation substitute.
3. Tourist movies as Comfort Viewing.
Preparation
Reading: Negra, 82–97.
Questions:
1. What problems facing American women does Negra suggest tourist movies address?
2. What solutions do 1990s tourist films offer their primary female audience?
3. How does the Comfort Viewing Mode help us better to understand these films?
Home Screening I: Leap Year (Anand Tucker, 2010)
Available at: https://m4uhd.tv/watch-movie-leap-year-2010-4419.html
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Home Screening II: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
Available at: https://m4uhd.tv/watch-movie-the-secret-life-of-walter-mitty-2013-21986.html
Questions:
1. What problems are the protagonists of these films facing?
2. What solutions do the films offer to these problems?
3. What do they say about the role tourist media might play for actual viewers?
SESSION 6 GERIACTION 14 DECEMBER
And lastly, the Comfort Viewing Mode enriches our understandings of media politics.
Accordingly, this session focuses on format typically discussed as far-removed – at odds to a
greater extent – from the values and qualities of Comfort Viewing: tales of older American
men taking up arms, known otherwise as geriaction. Students consider how the Comfort
Viewing Mode invites us to rethink the politics of a format routinely lambasted as reactionary
and hateful, considering how such fare typically encourages aging men to adapt to a rapidly
changing world.
Targeted Learning Outcomes
A sound understanding of:
Questions:
1. Geriaction as a supposedly reactionary format
2. Geriaction as Comfort Viewing
3. The economics of cultivating older viewers
Preparation
Reading: Frame, 168–180.
Questions:
1. How does Frame read the politics of Geriaction?
2. How does this reading characterize the films prime target audience?
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3. How does the concept of Comfort Viewing challenge Frame’s ideas about Geriaction?
Home Screening I: Nobody (Ilya Naishuller, 2021)
Available at: https://m4uhd.tv/watch-movie-nobody-2021-254776.html
Home Screening II: Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinsky, 2022)
Available at: https://m4uhd.tv/watch-movie-top-gun-maverick-2022-266912.html
Questions:
1. What challenges do the aging male protagonists of these films face?
2. How do the films suggest this demographic might adapt to social changes?
3. Are these films as hateful as Frame suggests?
READINGS:
Brown, Noel. “The Feel-Good Film: A Case-Study in Contemporary Genre Classification”,
Quarterly Review of Film & Video, 32.3 (2015): 269–286.
Frame, Gregory. “Make America Hate Again? The Politics of Vigilante Geriaction”, Journal
of Popular Film & Television”, 49.3 (2021): 168–180.
Negra, Diane. “Romance And/As Tourism: Heritage Whiteness and the (Inter)National
Imaginary in the New Women’s Tourist Film”. In Keyframes: Popular Cinema and Cultural
Studies. Eds. Matthew Tinckom and Amy Villarejo. London, Routledge: 2002: 82–97.
Egan, Kate, and Mackley, Kerstin Leder. “The Same Old Song: Exploring Conceptions of the
‘Feelgood’ Film in the Talk of Mamma Mia!’s Older Viewers”. In Mamma Mia! The Movie:
Exploring a Cultural Phenomenon: London: I.B. Tauris, 2013: 127–144.
Quail, Christine. “Nerds, Geeks, and the Hip/Square Dialectic in Contemporary Television”,
Television and New Media 12.5 (2011): 460–482.
Rustad, Gry C., and Schwind, Kai Hanno. “The Joke that Wasn’t Funny Anymore:
Reflections on the Metamodern Sitcom”. In Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, and Depth
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After Postmodernism. Eds. Robin Van Der Akker, Alison Gibbons, and Timotheus
Vermeulen. London, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017: 131–146.
SCREENINGS:
Big Bang Theory, The, Season 1, Episodes 1-3 (James Burrows; Mark Cendrowski, 2007)
Community, Series 1, Episodes 1, 3, 10 (Seth Gordon; Anthony Russo, 2009)
E.T.: The Extra-terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)
Goonies, The (Richard Donner, 1985)
Joe Pera Talks with You, Series 1 (Marty Schousboe, 2018)
Leap Year (Anand Tucker, 2010)
Mamma Mia! (Phyllida Lloyd, 2007)
Muppets, The (James Bobin, 2011)
Nobody (Ilya Naishuller, 2021)
Paul (Greg Motolla, 2011)
Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The (Ben Stiller, 2013)
Top Gun: Mavrick (Joseph Kosinsky, 2022)