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How shifts in time and storyline create narrative intrigue on television With essays by Melissa Ames, Frida Beckman, Lucy Bennett, Molly Brost, Jason W. Buel, Sarah Himsel Burcon, Kasey Butcher, Melanie Cattrell, Michael Fuchs, Norman M. Gendelman, Jack Harrison, Colin Irvine, J. P. Kelly, Jordan Lavender-Smith, Casey J. McCormick, Kristi McDuffie, Aris Mousoutzanis, Toni Pape, Gry C. Rustad, Todd M. Sodano, Janani Subramanian, and Timotheus Vermeulen This collection analyzes twenty-first-century American television programs that employ temporal and narrative experimentation. These shows play with time, slowing it down to unfold narrative through time retardation and compression. They disrupt the chronological flow of time itself, using flashbacks and insisting that viewers be able to situate themselves in both the present and the past narrative threads. Although temporal play has existed on the small screen prior to the new millennium, never before has narrative time been so freely adapted in mainstream television. The essayists offer explanations for not only the frequency of time-play in contemporary programming, but also the implications of its sometimes disorienting presence. Drawing upon the fields of cultural studies, television scholarship, and literary studies, as well as overarching theories concerning postmodernity and narratology, Time in Television Narrative offers some critical suggestions. The increasing number of television programs concerned with time may stem from any and all of the following: recent scientific approaches to quantum physics and temporality; new conceptions of history and posthistory; or trends in late-capitalistic production and consumption, in the new culture of instantaneity, or in the recent trauma culture amplified after the September 11 attacks. In short, these televisual time experiments may very well be an aesthetic response to the climate from which they derive. These essays analyze both ends of this continuum and also attend to another crucial variable: the television viewer watching this new temporal play.
| Acknowledgments | p. xi |
| Introduction: Television Studies in the Twenty-First Century | p. 3 |
| Promoting the Future of Experimental TV: The Industry Changes and Technological Advancements That Paved the Way to "New" Television Ventures | |
| Television's Paradigm (Time)shift: Production and Consumption Practices in the Post-Network Era | p. 27 |
| "A Stretch of Time": Extended Distribution and Narrative Accumulation in Prison Break | p. 43 |
| "It's Not Unknown": The Loose-and Dead-End Afterlives of Battlestar Galactica and Lost | p. 56 |
| Zero-Degree Seriality: Television Narrative in the Post-Network Era | p. 69 |
| "Play It Again, Sam … and Dean": Temporality and Meta-Textuality in Supernatural | p. 82 |
| Historicizing The Moment: How the Cultural Climate Impacts Temporal Manipulation on the Small Screen | |
| Temporality and Trauma in American Sci-Fi Television | p. 97 |
| The Fear of the Future and the Pain of the Past: The Quest to Cheat Time in Heroes, FlashForword, and Fringe | p. 110 |
| Lost in Our Middle Hour: Faith, Fate, and Redemption Post- 9/11 | p. 125 |
| "New Beginnings Only Lead to Painful Ends": "Undeading" and Fear of Consequences in Pushing Daisies | p. 139 |
| The Functions of Time: Analyzing the Effects of Nonnormative Narrative Structure(s) | |
| "Did You Get Pears?": Temporality and Temps Mortality in The Wire, Mad Men, and Arrested Development | p. 153 |
| Temporalities on Collision Course: Time, Knowledge, and Temporal Critique in Damages | p. 165 |
| Freaks of Time: Reevaluating Memory and Identity through Daniel Knauf's Carnivàle | p. 178 |
| The Discourse of Medium: Time as a Narrative Device | p. 190 |
| Moving Beyond The Televisual Restraints of the Past: Reimagining Genres and Formats | |
| Making Sense of the Future: Narrative Destabilization in Joss Whedon's Dollhouse | p. 205 |
| Why 30 Rocks Rocks and The Office Needs Some Work: The Role of Time/Space in Contemporary TV Sitcoms | p. 218 |
| Change the Structure, Change the Story: How I Met Your Mother and the Reformulation of the Television Romance | p. 232 |
| Like Sands through the Half-Hourglass: Nurse Jackie and Temporal Disruption | p. 245 |
| The Television Musical: Glee's New Directions | p. 257 |
| Playing Outside of the Box: The Role Time Plays in Fan Fiction, Online Communities, and Audience Studies | |
| "Nothing Happens Unless First a Dream": TV Fandom, Narrative Structure, and the Alternate Universes of Bones | p. 273 |
| Two Days before the Day after Tomorrow: Time, Temporality, and Fandom in South Park | p. 285 |
| Lost in Time?: Lost Fan Engagement with Temporal Play | p. 297 |
| About the Contributors | p. 310 |
| Index | p. 315 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9781617032936
ISBN-10: 161703293X
Audience:
General
Format:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 338
Published: 2nd July 2012
Publisher: UNIV PR OF MISSISSIPPI
Dimensions (cm): 22.86 x 15.24
x 2.235
Weight (kg): 0.662
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