VOLUME 8 | ISSUE 1 | 2023 | Seriality
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“Introduction”, Ronald Geerts, Anneleen Masschelein, Ernest Mathijs, Bart Nuyens, pp. 1-7.
“Reshaping the Dystopia through Seriality and the Sentimental Narrative in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale”, Fernanda Nunes Menegotto and Elaine Barros Indrusiak, pp. 8-33.
“’Nous sommes à la même place’, Gender as Seriality in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait de la jeune fille en feu”, Lena Meyskens, pp. 34-54.
“More than Three Times: The Lord of The Rings and the Fundamental Structure of the Trilogy Form”, Stefanie Johnstone, pp. 55-78.
“To Be Continued…on the Football Pitch: Seriality, Transmedia Storytelling, and Viewer Engagement with Non-Fictional Television Characters”, Oliver Kröner, pp. 79-99.
“Seriality and Bridging Gaps in Interrupted Narrative Linearity”, Edward Larkey, pp. 100-132.
“How to End Complex Serial Drama? Mystery and Monologues in The Leftovers”, Bart Nuyens, pp. 133-152.
Ronald Geerts, Anneleen Masschelein, Ernest Mathijs, Bart Nuyens, “Introduction”
Fernanda Nunes Menegotto and Elaine Barros Indrusiak, “Reshaping the Dystopia through Seriality and the Sentimental Narrative in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale”
This paper analyzes the dystopian television serial The Handmaid’s Tale (2017-), adapted from the homonymous 1985 novel by Margaret Atwood, by centralizing the intersection of the characteristics of the dystopian genre and the rhythms and features of American serial television. The primary question is whether understanding the serial format of contemporary American television can help explain some of the choices that were made in the Hulu adaptation regarding Offred’s characterization when compared to Atwood’s novel, as well as to the larger literary dystopian tradition that inspired it. Drawing on the contributions of scholars who discuss the centrality of target-context conditioners in the process of adaptation, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale is examined against a corpus of scholarly writing that attempts to describe the characteristics of U.S. serial television storytelling. Following Mittell’s discussion of “serial melodrama” in Complex TV, the episodic and seasonal structure of The Handmaid’s Tale is examined considering the way it interacts with Robyn Warhol’s conception of the sentimental narrative and with Linda Williams’s approach to melodrama. The argument defended in this paper is that the episodic rhythm of the television serial, combined with its subscription to an “infinite model” of storytelling, transforms the classic dystopian structure in significant ways.
Keywords: dystopian television, serial television, adaptation, dystopia, The Handmaid’s Tale
Lena Meyskens, “’Nous sommes à la même place’, Gender as Seriality in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait de la jeune fille en feu”
In 1995 Iris Marion Young developed the concept of gender as seriality drawing from Sartre’s Critique de la Raison Dialectique (1960). Instead of considering women as a group by means of shared attributes, she explores how to regard them as a collective, interconnected by external circumstances: “seriality is lived as medium or as milieu, where action is directed at particular ends that presuppose the series without taking them up self-consciously” (Young 203). In doing so, she moves away from the idea of grouping women by certain identity-traits which leads to exclusion rather than differentiation (e.g. queer women). Applying the concept of gender as seriality can help us understand the different and/or shifting power dynamics between women amongst themselves. The latter strongly resonates with Céline Sciamma’s movie La Portrait de la Jeune Fille en Feu, which she herself described as a manifesto about the female gaze. There are no men in sight throughout the film; they are merely present through their steering absence (e.g. the deceased father, the future husband). Three women: Héloïse, Marianne and Sophie, each from a different social class with their own desires, dominate the screen with their presence. When the matriarch is out of town for a few days, they form a collective, bound together by both love and death (e.g. the relation between Héloïse and Marianne, the abortion of Sophie). By analysing these female characters as a series, linked by their activities rather than their identities (e.g. setting the table, camp fire) I will demonstrate how Sciamma attempts to do away with the asymmetric power relations between artist and muse, two lovers, master and servant, etc. and instead represents the embodiment of sorority and mutuality.
Keywords: gender as seriality, female gaze, character construction, Portrait de la jeune fille en feu
Stefanie Johnstone, “More than Three Times: The Lord of The Rings and the Fundamental Structure of the Trilogy Form”
J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is not structured as a trilogy. It is a three-volume novel, that is a single novel split into three for the purposes of publication. Three in Tolkien is a publishing format. Conversely, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings is structured as a trilogy. The filmmakers Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson made key alterations to the three films to transform a single novel into a set of three films connected as a single whole. This raises the question, what is a trilogy? While Perkins and Verevis in their edited volume Film Trilogies note that ‘within the broad category of sequels and series, the film trilogy is a form that is practiced and perceived as distinct’ (1), they do not explicitly distinguish the form from other multi-text narratives. In this paper, I will analyse the difference in narrative structure between Tolkien’s and Jackson’s work to establish the key differences between the three-volume novel publishing format and the trilogy as a storytelling form. In doing so, it offers a new definition of the trilogy form that can be useful to critics and creative practitioners alike.
Keywords: trilogy narrative, adaptation, seriality, The Lord of the Rings
Oliver Kröner, “To Be Continued…on the Football Pitch: Seriality, Transmedia Storytelling, and Viewer Engagement with Non-Fictional Television Characters”
The relationship between television viewers and characters from serialised ‘quality’ TV dramas has generated substantial academic attention in recent years. Media scholars have been particularly fascinated with the ways in which viewers relate to the morally “complex” (Mittell 2015) characters that are prominently featured on contemporary TV dramas (e.g. The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones). In comparison, not much research has been undertaken on the relationship between television viewers and characters from non-fictional TV genres including news programmes, documentaries, and sports broadcasts. This article argues that contemporary sports programmes frequently adopt elements of serial television drama to deepen the viewer’s engagement with the characters that are featured on them. Referring to studies on television sports, popular seriality, and viewer engagement (Blanchet and Vaage 2012, Bryant, Comisky and Zillman 1977, Kelleter 2017), this article uses the example of Lionel Messi—one of the most popular professional footballers in the history of the sport—to trace how seriality and transmedia storytelling increasingly shape viewer engagement with non-fictional television characters. My analysis in this article fills a gap in the current academic discourse on seriality, which is still dominated by fictional genres, while also offering a new approach to study non-fictional television characters.
Keywords: television, seriality, non-fictional characters, viewer engagement
Edward Larkey, “Seriality and Bridging Gaps in Interrupted Narrative Linearity”
This article discusses how gaps in a putative linear narrative have been bridged in a transnationally distributed television sketch comedy series, which has been transformed into an episodic situation comedy. Within a dialectic of narrative continuity and interruption exhibited by the television series Un gars, une fille (Quebec CA, 1997-2002), I will multimodally examine primarily the original version of this series to illustrate how setting, characters, and storyworld configuration, along with formal devices such as credits, logos, transition graphics, camera position, and music cues serve to bridge gaps in a presumptive narrative linearity. The investigation will focus on a series of segments in which the main characters, a young-ish heterosexual couple, i.e., the only permanent cast members representing the main protagonists of the entire series, pays a conflict-laden visit to the mother-in-law of the boyfriend/husband staged in two separate episodes. Narrative ruptures, along with the above-mentioned interwoven narrative continuity devices, achieve a tenuous interplay whereby time and space for audience interaction and interpretation are opened up in anticipation of evolving opportunities for digital interventions of audiences throughout the twenty years of continuing transnational productions.
Keywords: narrative gaps, narrative continuity, television serial, Un gars, une fille
Bart Nuyens, “How to End Complex Serial Drama? Mystery and Monologues in The Leftovers”
How to end a complex drama series in an artistically successful way is one of the major questions that writers around the world are addressing. Traditionally, the commercial success of a TV series is measured by the number of seasons and thus serial drama invests heavily in the "infinite middle" of a story (Mittel 2015). In other words, the end must be postponed as long as possible to keep the audience glued to the screen for years. How can you let the demanding and diverse audience of today say goodbye to their beloved characters and story world, which seemed infinitely expandable, especially when the openness and the lingering mystery was one of the essential attractions of the series? Tying all the ends neatly together, if possible, clashes with that specific viewing pleasure of increasing complication that viewers were addicted to for years. All this makes plotting the finals extremely challenging for writers. This article looks at the case of writer-producer Damon Lindelof, who caused a lot of controversy with the 'failed' finale of his successful series Lost (ABC 2006-2011) but received praise for the finale of his next series, The Leftovers (HBO, 2015-2017). In the finale of The Leftovers, Lindelof and his team of writers make ingenious use of plotting and visual storytelling to create an ambiguous ending that adequately answers the core mystery of the series, while at the same time opening the door to a completely opposite interpretation to take a - in a very idiosyncratic way - metafictional look at the series. In this way, this ending stimulates the viewer's imagination as well as the exegetical discussions of the fan community.
Keywords: complex series, narrative ending, metafiction, The Leftovers
