It's Not Television - It's Theatre!

The PBS series “Masterpiece” (formerly “Masterpiece Theatre”) is an anthology format program that has been produced by WGBH in Boston since 1971, giving it the title of America’s longest-running primetime drama.  The programming largely consists of British-produced period pieces and literary adaptations, though the heading has come to encompass the PBS series “Mystery!” as well, adding that genre to its repertoire. After a PBS rebranding in the mid-2000s, the show has taken aim at a wider audience through a diversification of its programming, so shows like “Downton Abbey” and “Sherlock” are both included under the “Masterpiece” anthology heading.  With regard to “taste,” there is much to be said about the development of “Masterpiece” throughout its 40-year run, though I wish to speak to what was most striking for me in viewing the show for the first time in over a decade – the iconic opening titles had been dramatically changed. 

Britta made a great point about “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” in that “it is the framing of the show as 'bad taste' that makes it so, not the family itself.”  Considering that “Masterpiece Theatre” primarily featured adaptations of high literature, it hardly needed to frame itself as appealing to those with good taste.  Yet, this 1983 opening sequence went to great – almost comical – lengths to brand itself as such:

Through posh production design and calculated, delicate camera movements, “Masterpiece Theatre” links great works of literature, high-class iconography, and images of British nobility (lingering especially over Henry VIII and Elizabeth I) all within the same space, bringing the viewer into a physical realm of good taste, albeit a very specific one: old world, upper class, and British.  These particular tastes are reflected in the show’s title as well, as it calls attention to both the unquestionable artistic quality of the featured works – the “masterpieces” – and also to the fact that they are British, through the spelling of “theatre.”  The show offers art objects to be enjoyed by an American audience, but ones that have originated from and have been approved by an impossibly and fantastically high class, with a corresponding position of cultural and economic capital.  If, as Bourdieu says, taste often manifests itself through a negation, a disgust at something else, elevating and emphasizing British high-class drama as the epitome of taste seems to be a negation of domestic content and forms of representation.  Just as the low classes act as a foil in Bourdieu’s model, “Masterpiece Theatre’s" opening titles seem indicative of the American petit bourgeois anxiety of seeing America as Britain’s cultural foil, as well as a desire to separate from the general (low class) television viewing public.  Viewing the works of upper class Britain allowed the “Masterpiece Theatre” audience to separate itself from the general American viewing public and legitimize the act of watching television.  That very notion of pretentiousness was targeted in one of the great “Sesame Street” sketches, “Monsterpiece Theatre:”

When Cookie Monster proclaims “It don’t get classier than this,” his sentiments seem to echo both the thoughts of “Masterpiece Theatre’s” American curators and the show’s viewing audience.  The “Sesame Street” gag pokes fun at petit bourgeois pretentiousness, taking the most lowbrow character on the show (whose taste can essentially be defined with a single object) and placing him in the fantastical realm of upper class taste created by the “Masterpiece Theatre” opening.  On one hand Cookie Monster is fitting in smashingly: dressed the part, poshly renamed, commenting on his cookies’ “good texture,” excusing himself when he belches.  On the other, he is getting crumbs all over the leather-bound books.  Even a child can understand the joke: cookie monster is pretending.  “Sesame Street” calls attention to the fact that “Masterpiece Theatre” offers viewers the opportunity to perform high class.

“Masterpiece Theatre” operated as an access point to a particular type of taste for those that wanted it and a barrier for those that couldn’t be bothered.  After the PBS rebranding, the opening was changed significantly:

Apart from a slight musical nod to the original opening, the new opening has removed nearly all indications of class and Britishness that so characterized the original.  The turning pages and images of faces seem to suggest less of a connection between the show’s content and “literature,” but instead with more human “stories.”  In order for the PBS network rebranding to be successful, it required the shedding of a particular type of taste for another.  I wouldn’t suggest that period dramas like "Downton Abbey" no longer invite status striving, but perhaps that the newly rebranded “Masterpiece” makes status striving more accessible than it once was.