Convergent Ethnicity and the Neo-platoon Show: Recombining Difference in the Postnetwork Era

摘要

Corresponding to and partially driven by economic and technological convergence in the postnetwork era, American television programming in the past decade has produced a form of ethno-racial convergence in an array of prominent dramatic series such as Boston Public, Lost, Heroes, Grey's Anatomy, and Ugly Betty. Featuring multiracial and multigendered casts, prime-time soap narrative structures, and, most significant, interracial romance, these popular shows are clearly responding to global economic forces, sociocultural changes, and media monitoring pressures. They also have antecedents in the platoon films of World War II and the platoon sitcoms of the 1970s, extending their forebears' capitalist realist tendencies to the point of capitalist surrealism. Offering personal and industrial solutions to the postmodern dissolution of identity and the breakdown in network hegemony, the "neo-platoon" shows present a multicultural and transnational universe in which not only everything is interconnected but also interconnectedness provides the key to salvation.