ABSTRACT
Television series are one of the most popular and sophisticated narrative artworks of our time. Like most narrative artworks, television series deal with complex questions, many of which are of an ethical nature. This has been noticed in the academic literature, which has focused on the prevalence of antiheroes or ‘rough heroes’ on television, and the capacity of television to elicit positive responses to such characters. What has remained largely unexplored, however, is the role that such series and characters can play in our moral thinking and in enhancing our character. This chapter proposes that television series can enhance ethical reflection by making us both more aware of and sensitive to the multifarious ways in which character is shaped and subsequently manifested, and more reflective vis-à-vis our own moral judgement of character. I focus on televisual rough-hero works, broadly conceived, which do so in a distinctive way. Specifically, they not only provide us with complex characterological landscapes, and elicit our emotional engagement and investment in several characters, but crucially also engage us in what I will call an elenctic pattern: a sustained sequence of affirmation and questioning of both the moral dimensions of characters and events, and our own reactions to them. This enriches our thinking about character by getting us to examine the workings of our own moral judgement, notice inconsistencies and biases, and appreciate the richness and complexity involved in such judgements and their objects. Although the elenctic pattern is not unique to television, television series provide a distinctively suitable medium and format for it, lending it unprecedented power and scope. I argue that this is because of their length, serialised structure, and what I call their narrative malleability. Ultimately, then, though much of my argument focuses on a particular genre, this chapter points to the broader potential of television for character education.
