NARRATIVE COMPLEXITY IN 30-MINUTE DIGITALLY DISTRIBUTED TV SERIES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24193/subbeph.2018.2.01Keywords:
Netflix, TV series, comedy series, sitcom, narrrative structures, narrative complexity, streaming, media serializationAbstract
The rise of VoD services on the media market has produced key mutations in the television series industry at all levels. The dynamics of the tripartite relation between production, distribution and consumption gains new ground when a series of digital media distribution portals break the traditional linearity of television and adopt the aesthetics of media catalogs that users can access whenever and wherever they want. This new form of distribution allows the development of complex narrative structures, which were difficult to put into practice in traditional television, a medium whose evolution was defined by its own time constraints. This paper explores the main narrative features of 30-minute series distributed by Video-on-Demand (VoD) portals over the past five years and explores the narrative differences between linear and digital shows, with a special focus on Netflix original productions.References
Allrath, Gaby, Marion Gymnich, and Carola Surkamp. 2005. “Introduction: Towards a Narratology of TV Series.” In Narrative Strategies in Television Series, edited by Gaby Allrath and Marion Gymnich, 1–43. Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230501003.
Bamman, David, Brendan O’Connor, and Noah A Smith. 2014. “Learning Latent Personas of Film Characters.” Proceedings of the 51st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2013), 352–61.
Booker, Christopher. 2005. Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. Continuum International Publishing.
Britni, Danielle. 2018. “Here’s The Story Behind Netflix’s ‘New Day In Hollywood’ Campaign.” Essence. 2018. https://www.essence.com/entertainment/netflix-new-day-hollywood-campaign-photo/.
Brojakowski, Benjamin. 2015. “Spoiler Alert - Understanding Television Enjoyment in the Social Media Era.” In Television, Social Media, and Fan Culture, edited by Alison F. Slade, Amber J. Narro, and Dedria Givens-Carroll, 404. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.
Buckley, Cara. 2018. “Film Study Finds Number of Female Protagonists Down 5 Percent.” New York Times. 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/movies/women-hollywood-study.html.
Campbell, Joseph. 2004. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/537371.
Diez, Jean Pierre. 2014. “Complex Narratives: 6 Series That Revolutionized Television in the Digital Age - PopOptiq.” Pop Optiq. 2014. https://www.popoptiq.com/complex-narratives-how-the-digital-age-revolutionized-serialized-television/.
GLAAD Media Institute. 2018. “Where We Are on TV ’17-’18.” http://glaad.org/files/WWAT/WWAT_GLAAD_2017-2018.pdf.
Innocenti, Veronica, and Guglielmo Pescatore. 2015. “Changing Series: Narrative Models and the Role of the Viewer in Contemporary Television Seriality.” Between 4 (8). https://doi.org/10.13125/2039-6597/4.
Jenner, Mareike. 2015. “Binge-Watching: Video-on-Demand, Quality TV and Mainstreaming Fandom.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 20 (3): 304–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877915606485.
Kallas, Christina. 2010. Creative Screenwriting: Understanding Emotional Structure. Palgrave Macmillan.
Lamb, Nancy. 2011. “The Art And Craft Of Storytelling: A Comprehensive Guide To Classic Writing Techniques.” Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books.
Lauzen, Martha. 2017. “What We Know for Sure about Women in Television.” Women’s Media Center. 2017. http://www.womensmediacenter.com/news-features/what-we-know-for-sure-about-women-in-television.
Lotz, Amanda D. 2014. The Television Will Be Revolutionized, Second Edition. 2 edition. New York: NYU Press.
———. 2017. “Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television.” Maize Books, February. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9699689.
Mittell, Jason. 2015a. Complex TV - The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling-. Ebook. New York: New York University Press.
———. 2015b. “Why Has TV Storytelling Become so Complex?” The Conversation. 2015. https://theconversation.com/why-has-tv-storytelling-become-so-complex-37442.
Mohdin, Aamna. 2018. “TV Is Ahead of Hollywood Movies on Diversity in Casting.” Quartzy. 2018. https://qz.com/quartzy/1217950/tv-is-ahead-of-hollywood-movies-on-diversity-in-casting/.
Newman, Michael Z. 2014. Video Revolutions : On the History of a Medium. Columbia University Press.
Newman, Michael Z, and Elana Levine. 2012. Legitimating Television - Media Convergence and Cultural Status. New York: Routledge.
Pedersen, Lina Thierry. 2016. “Narrating Netflix.” Aalborg University.
Price, Basil. 2016. “Butting Heads: Roleplay and Conflict.” Medium. 2016. https://medium.com/dice-addicts-weekly/butting-heads-roleplay-and-conflict-a7d4d06a6879.
Propp, Vladimir. 1968. Morphology of the Folktale. University of Texas Press. https://doi.org/10.15713/ins.mmj.3.
Romano, Andrew. 2013. “Why You’re Addicted to TV.” Newsweek. 2013. https://www.newsweek.com/2013/05/15/why-youre-addicted-tv-237340.html.
Stuckey, HeatherL. 2015. “The Second Step in Data Analysis: Coding Qualitative Research Data.” Journal of Social Health and Diabetes 3 (1): 7. https://doi.org/10.4103/2321-0656.140875.
Thomas, David R. 2006. “A General Inductive Approach for Analyzing Qualitative Evaluation Data.” American Journal of Evaluation 27 (2): 237–46. https://doi.org/10.1177/1098214005283748.
Tobias, Ronald B. 1993. 20 Master Plots (And How to Build Them. Writer’s Digest Books.
Tryon, Chuck. 2015. “TV Got Better: Netflix’s Original Programming Strategies and Binge Viewing.” Media Industries Journal 2 (2): 104–16. https://doi.org/10.3998/mij.15031809.0002.206.
VanDerWerff. 2017. “The Best Antihero Dramas Aren’t Vicarious Thrill Rides. They’re Morality Plays in Reverse. - Vox.” Vox. 2017. https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/8/7/16030036/antihero-drama-best-tv.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2018 Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Ephemerides
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
