Visual Effects and Visceral Affect: ‘Tele-Affectivity’ and the Intensified Intimacy of Contemporary Television

Abstract

This article considers television special effects which reveal the human body in visceral, affecting detail. Building on John Caldwell's work on ‘televisuality,’ this paper uses the term ‘tele-affectivity’ to describe the self-conscious foregrounding of the body as site of affect in three television dramas Grey's Anatomy, House and Fringe.