“Regression/Progression: Two Cases of COVID Television”

Abstract

Televisual dynamics have, in some ways, mirrored and modeled pandemic dynamics, with both involving moves between public and private, inside and outside. Yet the ensuing crossings, confusions, and reactions may yield quite distinct results, as demonstrated by two cases of U.S. television that engaged COVID-19: the Fox News program Tucker Carlson Tonight (which makes claims to the “real” yet produced paranoid fantasies around the pandemic and the “others” with whom it was associated) and the Showtime comedy-drama Work in Progress (scripted yet based on the “true life” of co-creator/star Abby McEnany, which revealed how thinking about COVID cannot be separated from thinking about gender, sexuality, race, ability, and media fact and fantasy themselves). As both programs enact and respond to television’s and the pandemic’s challenging of boundaries (public/private, inside/outside, self/other, fact/fantasy) but do so in very different ways, they highlight limitations and possibilities of media logics in this pandemic age.