Jason Mittell

Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television

longside the host of procedural crime dramas, domestic sitcoms, and reality competitions that populate the American television schedule, a new form of entertainment television has emerged over the past two decades to both critical and popular acclaim. This model of television storytelling is distinct for its use of narrative complexity as an alternative to the conventional episodic and serial forms that have typified most American television since its inception. We can see such innovative narrative form in popular hits of recent decades from Seinfeld to Lost, West Wing to The X-Files, as well as in critically beloved but ratings-challenged shows like Arrested Development, Veronica Mars, Boomtown, and Firefly. HBO has built its reputation and subscriber base upon narratively complex shows, such as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The Wire. Clearly, these shows offer an alternative to conventional television narrative—the purpose of this essay is to chart out the formal attributes of this storytelling mode, explore its unique pleasures and patterns of comprehension, and suggest a range of reasons for its emergence in the 1990s. In trying to understand the storytelling practices of contemporary American television, we might consider narrative complexity as a distinct narrational mode, as suggested by David Bordwell’s analysis of film narrative. For Bordwell, a “narrational mode is a historically distinct set of norms of narrational construction and comprehension,” one that crosses genres, specific creators, and artistic movements to forge a coherent category of practices. Bordwell outlines specific cinematic modes such as classical Hollywood, art cinema, and historical materialism, all of which encompass distinct storytelling strategies while still referencing one another and building on the foundations of other modes. Kristin Thompson has exNarrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television jason mittell

Film and television narrative

Narrative theory is a flexible tool, useful for analyzing elements of storytelling common across a wide range of media. A detailed vocabulary for the mechanics of plotting or elements of characterization can help us understand a novel, television show, comic book, videogame, film, opera, or any other form of storytelling. Although the concepts explored in this collection can be applied productively to any medium, we must also be aware of the ways that any specific medium creates particular storytelling parameters, constraining some options while enabling others. Thus the goal of this chapter is to outline some of the specific narrative facets that are common to moving-image storytelling as found within film and television, and to explore how these two media function as major narrative forms in contemporary culture. Film and television share a common visual and aural form, and thus many of their specific storytelling practices are similar; however, the two media diverge in crucial ways, with sufficiently different structures that we cannot analyze film and television narratives identically. By examining these media comparatively, we can see how film and television differ from literature in areas such as narration, perspective, temporality, and comprehension, and diverge from each other regarding plot structures and viewer engagement. To explore aspects of moving-image narration and to exemplify the particular ways that film and television narratives function, this chapter explores two popular examples: the film of The Wizard of Oz ; and the television series Lost .

Previously On: Prime Time Serials and the Mechanics of Memory

In recent years, American television has embraced a model of narrative complexity that has proven to be both artistically innovative and fi nancially lucrative. Dozens of series across genres, from comedies like Seinfeld and Arrested Development to dramas like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 24, have explored serialized forms and non-conventional storytelling strategies such as intertwined fl ashbacks and shifting narrative perspectives that had previously been quite rare within mainstream American television. Serialized television has emerged as a vibrant artistic form that many critics suggest rivals previous models of long-form narrative, such as 19th century novels. Television’s poetics of narrative complexity are wide ranging. Series embrace a balance between episodic and serial form, allowing for partial closure within episodes while maintaining broad narrative arcs across episodes and even seasons. Such programs also embrace more elaborate storytelling techniques, such as temporal play, shifting perspectives and focalization, repetition, and overt experimentation with genre and narrative norms. Many contemporary programs are more refl exive in their narration, embracing an operational aesthetic, encouraging viewers to pay attention to the level of narrative discourse as well as the storyworld. In all of these instances, narratively complex television programs both demand that viewers pay attention more closely than typical for the medium, and allow for viewers to experience more confusion in their process of narrative comprehension. In short, television has become more diffi cult to understand, requiring viewers to engage more fully as attentive viewers (see Mittell 2006). In this essay, I want to explore how complex serials strategically trigger, confound, and play with viewers’ memories, considering how television storytelling strategies fi t with our understanding of the cognitive mechanics of memory and highlighting the poetic techniques that programs use to engage viewers and enable long-term comprehension. The television medium employs specifi c strategies distinct from other narrative

Audiences Talking Genre: Television Talk Shows and Cultural Hierarchies

Abstract The author explores how audience members make sense of the talk show genre–from daytime issue-oriented programs to late-night entertainment shows–through a qualitative survey of television viewers. He argues that the genre is linked to assumed notions of identity and hierarchies of cultural value that help explain the genres controversial history.