The Philosophy of Television Series

3 83
The Philosophy
Ťť

II

of Television Series
advisory editors
Mario Slugan
Enrico Terrone
DIRETTORE
$/8%88%(%8
PRESIDENTE DEL COMITATO SCIENTIFICO
>8 -/+*--8-!
COMITATO SCIENTIFICO
8(8>8%(-/*'*;!9 Uniwersytet Warszawski
8&*!!8%(-8-. Université de Strasbourg
>8-#.*&,&$ Università di Bergamo
>8 -#8-.%* Université “Jean Moulin” Lyon 3 France
(8:(#8--*- Indipendent scholar
-.*-$#8!8$ Institut Jean Nicod Paris
!$*,*%(8:*! The University of Auckland
>8-(*#8- Università di Roma Tre
,%8(*& #8 Università di Salerno
+8.-/(*!(*- Università di Firenze
) !*,,*()8#> Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
)¬%$*-+)8&University of Friburg
)-8>8->8%American University in Cairo
,*$-9.8  Università di Torino
'*--&(&*:%!% University of Maryland
):8%%&>.8-( Università di Messina
8->8%(>8!!8-*%$ Università di Bologna
):8%%>8$$* ## Università di Bologna
,*$->%$8% Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
'8#" *!>-/$ Université de Provence
+-©(©-#%*+ École des Hautes Études en Science Sociales Paris
%#&8,*- && Università di Scienze Gastronomiche Pollenzo
-)*-, :*$ Université de Nancy
!8&:8$-*$*(*!# Università di Palermo
8>*$>8!!% University of Miami
8#&&*:8-/ Columbia University New York
%#&8:8!!8&& Università di Genova
!$*+8%:*&$$ Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
REDATTORE CAPO
#8-&8.8-.*-
REDAZIONE
+-8%#*!##8>.%
(8:(*(8&!8!!
)8.-*&*)8:8
*-#8%%!
)&-8!8%!Ò
) &8%$--*%)
SEGRETERIA DI REDAZIONE
*&*%8#8!*$$8:*-8$-,(
n.s., n. 83 (2/2023), anno LXIII
The Philosophy of Television Series
Advisory editors: Mario Slugan, Enrico Terrone

Mario Slugan, Enrico Terrone, Introduction 3

Paolo Babbiotti, A Missed Education: Avoiding the Ordinary in The Sopranos 5
Héctor J. Pérez, Aesthetic Interactionism and My Brilliant Friend 16
Carlo Chiurco, Technics and the Sacred: The Path to Freedom and Authenticity
in American Gods 27
Marco Segala, Epic Performed: The Poetic Nature of TV Series 39
Iris Vidmar Jovanović, Glancing, Gazing and Binging: On the Appeal
of Contemporary Television Serials 57
Angela Maiello, TV Series: A Form of Adaptation to the Contemporary
Media Condition 74
Dario Cecchi, Seriality as a Chronotope 89
Osman Nemli, Mukasa Mubirumusoke, After Black(ness) 105

Varia
Chiara Scarlato, Michel Foucault e“Raymond Roussel” 121

Recensioni
Alberto L. Siani, Human Landscapes. Contributions to a Pragmatist Anthropology
di Roberta Dreon 139
Gregorio Fiori Carones, A Philosophy of Luxury
di Lambert Wiesing 141
‘””‹•’‘†‡œƒĦŽƒ˜‘”‹’”‘’‘•–‹’‡”Žƒ•–ƒ’ƒĦ
Ž‹„”‹’‡””‡ ‡•‹‘‹‡”‹˜‹•–‡‹ ƒ„‹‘‹†‹”‹œœƒ”‡ƒĨ
RIVISTA DI ESTETICA
‹˜‡”•‹–†‹‘”‹‘Ħ‹’ƒ”–‹‡–‘†‹ ‹Ž‘•‘ˆ‹ƒ‡ ‹‡œ‡†‡ŽŽIJ†— ƒœ‹‘‡
˜‹ƒ•ƒ–IJ––ƒ˜‹‘ŤŢĽţŢţŤŦ‘”‹‘
–‡ŽĩŵťūĩŢţţĩŨũŢťũťŪ
”‡†ƒœ‹‘‡”‹˜‹•–ƒ†‹‡•–‡–‹ ƒœ‰ƒ‹Žĩ ‘
Š––’•ĨĻĻŽƒ„‘–ĩ‹–Ļ’—„Ž‹ ƒ–‹‘•Ļĭ źĻ”‹˜‹•–ƒĽ†‹Ľ‡•–‡–‹ ƒĻ

AbbonamentiŤŢŤť

8 npacking the Social orld roups and Solidarity


edited y ra es o a o i a a i a eria arti o

83 The Philosophy of Television Series


edited y ario a ri o erro e

8 ntology of inance

edited y oria a s arry it
ITALIA ESTERO
EDIZIONE CARTACEA €ĦŢŢ €6ĦŢŢ
EDIZIONE DIGITALE €6ĦŢŢ €6ĦŢŢ
EDIZIONE CARTACEA + DIGITALE €26ĦŢŢ €36ĦŢŢ

er i or a io i abbonamenti rosenbergesellier.it
I singoli fascicoli sono acquistabili dal sito www.rosenbergesellier.it
sia in versione cartacea sia in versione digitale.
Sul sito sono acquistabili anche i singoli articoli in versione digitale,
al pre o di ,
Per richiedere annate e fascicoli arretrati non ancora disponibili sul sito
clienti rosenbergesellier.it
a ivista di estetica presente anche sulla piattaforma penEdition ournals
all indiri o https ournals.openedition.org estetica
er o i teriore i or a io e rivo ersi a
osenberg Sellier tel. 3 . . 8 rde rosenbergesellier.it

ŔŤŢŤť‘•‡„‡”‰Č‡ŽŽ‹‡”

‘•‡„‡”‰Č‡ŽŽ‹‡”°—ƒ” Š‹‘”‡‰‹•–”ƒ–‘
—–‹Ž‹œœƒ–‘’‡” ‘ ‡••‹‘‡†‡ŽŽƒ•‘ ‹‡–”ƒ—ƒ•ĩ•ĩ

‡‰‹•–”ƒœ‹‘‡’”‡••‘‹Ž”‹„—ƒŽ‡†‹‘”‹‘ĦĩŤŪŦŧ†‡ŽũĩŤĩţūũū
”‘’”‹‡–ƒ”‹‘Ĩ‰‘ ‹ƒ‹‘•‡„‡”‰
‹”‡––‘”‡”‡•’‘•ƒ„‹Ž‡Ĩ‹œ‹ƒƒ†‹ƒ
†‹–‘”‡Ĩ ‘’ƒ‰‹ƒ†‹–‘”‹ƒŽ‡‹‘”‹‘•”ŽĦ˜‹ƒƒ”Ž‘Ž„‡”–‘ŧŧĽţŢţŤť‘”‹‘
  ĩĩĩĽ   ĽĩĩťŧťĻŤŢŢťŃĩ ĩŤũĻŢŤĻŤŢŢŦĩŦŨńĩţţĦ ĩťĦŤŢŤť

™™™ĩ”‘•‡„‡”‰‡•‡ŽŽ‹‡”ĩ‹–

 ŢŢťŧĽŨŤţŤ
ūũūţŤŧūūťŤŦţū

 :8&*-8(8>
 Ļ,,8&B$
50C

83
It is often said that television series are now-
DIRETTORE
$/8%88%(%8

INDICE adays as good as films, or even better than

>8-!& )8%C*%-#$*--%*C
Introduction
them, but the philosophical inquiry into the
,8&.8..$$CA Missed Education:
Avoiding the Ordinary in The Sopranos
former remains much less developed than
©#$-'B,©-*/C Aesthetic Interactionism the philosophy of film. A handful of recent
books have tried to fill the gap, but there is
and My Brilliant Friend
#8-&# -#CTechnics and the Sacred:
The Path to Freedom and Authenticity in
American Gods much work still to be done. Significant con-
>8-#!*)8&8CEpic Performed: The Poetic
Nature of TV Series
tributions to the aesthetics of television series
-!:(>8-':8%:*, Glancing, are coming from television studies and film
studies, raising issues which philosophers
Gazing and Binging: On the Appeal of
Contemporary Television Serials

are challenged to address. This special issue

8%)*&8>8*&&C TV Series: A Form of
Adaptation to the Contemporary Media
Condition
(8-#*##C Seriality as a Chronotope
aims to offer philosophical perspectives on
!>8%%*>&C > 98!8> .- > !9*,
After Black(ness)
television series that are meant to explore
this new area of research in which aesthetics
and media studies can fruitfully interact.
VARIA
#8-8!#8-&8$CMichel Foucault e
“Raymond Roussel”

RECENSIONI
8&.*-$&B!8%CHuman Landscapes.
Contributions to a Pragmatist 8
Anthropology di Roberta Dreon Ť
)-*)-+-#8-%*!C A Philosophy of
Luxury di Lambert Wiesing
Angela Maiello
TV SERIES: A FORM OF ADAPTATION TO THE
CONTEMPORARY MEDIA CONDITION

Abstract
The article connects the forms of contemporary TV series with the narrative and partici-
patory logics of contemporary media. In particular, the author proposes to consider the
wide diffusion and popularity of TV series as a form of response and adaptation to the
contemporary media condition. The article proposes an analysis of the ways in which
the human instinct for storytelling finds form in contemporary participatory media
practices. This reflection is situated within the broader debate on post-cinema and the
ways in which new technologies have transformed cinema and audiovisual products.
This theoretical perspective is related to the well-known twentieth-century philosophi-
cal reflection on the status of narration. TV series, therefore, are a response to the “call
for concordance” (Ricœur) that is nowadays more evident than ever. Yet there seems
to be a sort of paradox here, that characterises the TV series aesthetic experience: in
the process of accomplishing this concordance, by creating solid and unitary world,
TV series adapt that transmedia aesthetic (Jenkins) of fragmentation that is typical of
contemporary media logic. At the end the author discusses some examples.

1. Beyond television

Over the last 20 years, media theory and film studies have dealt with two
important transformations. The first transformation stems from the technological
acceleration that has led to the development of new media devices and practices,
which are reshaping our lives and the environment in which we live; in particular,
the audiovisual field. The other transformation is from the increasing popularity
and cultural importance that a specific audiovisual format has gained in the
contemporary media productions; namely, the TV series. In this essay, I argue
that the relationship between the technological transformations, that marked
the beginning of the new millennium, and the simultaneous proliferation of

Rivista di estetica, n.s., n. 83 (2/2023), LXIII, pp. 74-88 © Rosenberg & Sellier

74
TV series, is not accidental. TV series are a form of adaptation to the hybrid
media environment in which we live.
The theoretical premise for my argument is that the study of contemporary
seriality should not be framed uniquely within the history of television, but
more generally within the analysis of those technological and media innovations
that marked the 20th century, initiating a significant transformation of both
formats and forms of moving images. Cinema theory introduces the paradigm
of post-cinema to analyse and describe this new media condition.1 Rather than
identifying what comes before or after the cinema – and rather than pronounc-
ing the end of cinema altogether – this paradigm works as a heuristic concept
to trace the wide perimeter of the contemporary mediascape,2 in which dif-
ferent media, devices, forms, formats, and techniques of moving images are
converging. In this media environment, which De Rosa and Hediger refer to
as “living multiplicity”3 the distinction between what is and is not cinema – or
between what is and is not media – becomes increasingly blurred.4 Our media
environment is the result of a continuous remediation process,5 understood not
only as a process that affects media formats and the social practices connected
to them, but also as a radical movement6, which creates an always new and re-
newable mediascape that redefines the relationship the human being maintains
with the world. In this new mediascape, images – and the technologies linked
to them – are no longer confined in a specific area of experience, for example,
the creation of symbolic forms, which from modernity onwards have tradition-
ally been referred to as “art”. Today, images and technologies deeply permeate
everyday life, continuously overlapping planes: the truth and the fiction, the
reality and virtuality, for example.
Given the way technology has been shaping everyday life, we find ourselves
living in a post-cinematic space, a hybrid space in which experience is increas-
ingly fragmented, through multiple media and devices, which lose their indi-
viduality. Television, for example, is no longer solely a centralised system for
the transmission of images. Similarly, the Internet is no longer simply a device
for connecting and sharing data. It is precisely in this new media space, where
each single medium loses its traditional framework, that seriality is spreading
and emerging as the audiovisual form that, perhaps better than others, is able
to occupy and exploit this new media condition. On one hand, there is cinema,

1 Shaviro 2010; Denson, Leyda 2016.

2
Montani et al. 2018.
3 De Rosa, Hediger 2016: 16.
4
Denson 2016.
5
Bolter, Grusin 1999.
6
Grusin 2015.

75
with its tradition of genres, authors, and forms. On the other hand, there are
streaming platforms, social networks, and the participatory culture of the web.
TV series fall somewhere in the middle.
Following Benjamin’s argument that sensitivity is historically determined, we
can affirm that during the 20th century, cinema – understood as an epistemologi-
cal device – not only represented the course of the short century, but has also
been its eye,7 the medium in which the gaze of an era has embodied itself. In
other words, cinema has been our way of looking at the world and experiencing
it. In the post-cinematographic era, new or renewed media are emerging, and it
is through them that we interact with each other and build our environment.
The argument of this paper is that in this scenario, TV series intercept and give
answer to a need that is closely related to this new media condition and to the
resulting transformations in the field of the audiovisual narrative.

2. Digital media and the instinct for storytelling

In I live in the future, Bilton8 explains how digital media and technologies
are transforming the habits and rituals related to the creation, distribution,
and consumption of media content. Bilton envisages a new era of storytelling:
storytelling permeates every activity of our daily life and each of us, in more or
less structured and codified forms, becomes a narrator. The emergence of what
we could define as widespread narrativity is to be attributed, once again, above
all, to the new media conditions.
Of course, the instinct for storytelling9 transcends the boundaries of narrative
forms – in the narrowest sense, literature, theatre, or cinema – and this attitude
is not necessarily a specific feature of the era in which we live. Storytelling not
only shapes the most varied forms of communication or entertainment, from
advertising to sporting events, but it plays a decisive role in the development
of the child. More radically, narrative is a distinctive element for the survival of
our species. The most recent studies in the field of so-called Literary Cognitiv-
ism tend to agree on the hypothesis that narrative ability is a decisive factor in
Homo sapiens’ cognitive development and that it precedes the very development
of language, as is demonstrated by the creation of technical artefacts and by
the ability of transmitting the techniques for creating such artefacts.10 In other
words, not only do we live surrounded by stories and tales,11 but we can affirm,

7
Casetti 2008.
8
Bilton 2011.
9
Cfr. Gottschall 2012.
10
Cometa 2017.
11
Rose 2011.

76
with a fair degree of certainty, that the attitude to narration is something deeply
rooted in human behaviour, or rather that it codetermines it.
If the ability to create stories is a distinctive trait of the human beings, which
ensures their ability to adapt to the environment around them,12 the question
arises as to whether or not it is then possible to identify specificities of the
storytelling in the post-cinematographic era.13 More specifically, is it possible
that the rapid and intense diffusion and proliferation of series narratives is
nothing more than a form of adaptation to the hybrid, trans and post media
environment in which we live? We cannot here outline and discuss the variety
of narrative forms and formats that have been developed with the diffusion of
digital technologies, from hypertexts to video games. Rather, I propose to take
into analysis those media forms in which narration is the result of a process of
exaptation, so to speak; that is, those forms of media in which narration is not
the programmed end, but the result of the technological development linked
to that specific medium. Thus, I will move from the analysis of the narrative
functioning of social networks because I believe it can help to understand the
“need for narrative” that characterises our age and to identify ways to respond to
it. The spontaneous narrative forms that emerge from social media participation
condense that tendency toward fragmentation that has marked the evolution of
media, from the birth of cinema to social networks. During the 30s of the last
century, Benjamin described the image of the cameraman, as opposed to that
of the painter, as a composition “of multiple fragments which are assembled
under a new law”.14 This fragmentation, that can be traced back to the age of
mechanical reproduction, becomes “modularity” and “variability” within the
digital transformations.15 Digitization, in other words, maximises a tendency
already inherent in analog media, and the fragmentation of post-media and post-
cinematic storytelling is the downstream result of more general, older tendency,
inherent in the very functioning of media, which finds clear manifestation today
in the narrative enabled by social media.
Now, one way to understand the impact that social media has on com-
munication – and more generally, on the design of the environment in which
we live – is to embrace the hypothesis that social media are identitary media.16
This hypothesis proposes that social media enable new ways of externalisation,
through which we create our own identity. This is a very controversial subject,
because facing the most radical forms of self-promotion or self-exposure that

12
Gottschall 2012.
13
Pearson 2015; Ryan, Thon 2014; Page, Thomas 2011.
14
Benjamin 1936a, Eng. trans. 1968: 234.
15
Manovich 2001.
16
Casetti 2011.

77
take place on social media, it is common to understand them as a simple dem-
onstration of an increasingly diffused narcissism. We do know, thanks to the
theory of extended mind, that within the process of self-construction it is not
possible to separate what happens inwardly (in the brain) from what happens
outside in our body’s relations with external objects. As Cometa suggests, “the
Self does not exist except in the act (enactment) of confrontation, dialogue with
things, with the outside world and with others”.17
With this hypothesis in mind, it seems that social media augment a crucial
moment in the individuation process, in the self-construction that takes place
through forms of externalisation. It is therefore possible that the extraordinary
ability of social media to influence human behaviour depends precisely on
their essential rootedness in this species-specific human trait. This process of
externalisation mainly follows two often intersecting paths: the iconic and the
textual. We could thus say that the development (and posterity) of social media
depends essentially on how these two trends – which can be traced back to the
evolution of human cultures18 – hybridise themselves more and more effectively.
In an early phase of social media development – for example, the early versions
of the Facebook profile – the networked space functions as a kind of database
in which users can put their own data and return to from time to time to share
their thoughts and moods. The Facebook social page offered the semblance
and experience of an identity card to be updated from time to time and used
to get in touch with the inhabitants of the web world. The rapid evolution
and massive expansion of Zuckerberg’s social network, which today has over
two billion users, has been made possible by a progressive redesign of the user
experience: on one hand, enhancing the visual aspects on the other, providing
more tools for the creation of actual stories, as in the case of the nowadays more
popular Instagram.
The possibility of inserting images and videos in our own profile, along with
sharing links and other audiovisual materials, leads to a more immediate social
media experience. However, this seems to be at the expense of a more articulated
and inclusive public discourse. The image tends to progressively gain ground on
text, as demonstrated by the creation of emoticons to comment on other users’
posts, giving a standardised shape to emotional reactions. At the same time, while
the immediate and extemporaneous nature of participation increases, prompted
by the use of the images, social media users experience the emerging of the need
of “collecting in a story” the traces of their online activity. The transformation
of Facebook’s profile, starting in 2012 and continuing to the present, reflects
the following trend: the creation of the timeline, characterised by an intrinsic

17
Cometa 2017: 107.
18
Antinucci 2011.

78
openness but also by limited interactivity. This paradigm shift seems to be an
answer to the need of creating a unified story of our social media life.
The immediacy of social media experience and the possibility of playing with
images prevail, not only over the idea of articulating a discourse using the writ-
ten world, but also over the idea of linearity, which is historically connected to
it. One of the most significant moments in this brief history of social media is
the introduction of the Stories by Instagram. If up to that moment the social
network, taken over by Zuckerberg, struggled to take off, carving a space be-
tween the already known Flickr and the participatory version of a mood board,
the Stories represent a powerful new model of self-storytelling. This model is
comprised of short videos, composed with images, sequences, texts, gifs, music,
and other visual elements or with spoken words that we address to ourselves.
The circulation of these videos is in some ways very limited because one of
the peculiarities of this social network is that it is difficult to link to content
outside the social bubble. Even with this potential constraint (which may not
be perceived as a constraint by all users), these videos can gain great popularity
and catalyse the attention and participation of thousands and thousands of us-
ers due to their immediacy. In other words, we could say that Instagram is the
new TV, a new million-channel system to share audiovisual content, and each
of us can organise its schedule.
But what kind of stories are Instagram Stories? And what does the rapid
and intense evolution of social media tell us about storytelling in the post-
cinematographic era? Let’s try to answer these questions using some keywords:
shareability, fragmentation, openness.
The most evident consequence of the evolution of social media is the fact that
the sphere of the shareable is now wider or, more properly, that we live in the
continuous overlapping of the shared experience with the so-called real experi-
ence. Events do not take place in one sphere (what we call reality) and then they
are “represented” in another, the web. Life happens exactly at the intersection
of these two worlds, which continuously exceed their “natural” borders, which
are becoming thresholds of interchange instead. There is not first the “fact”,
reality, and then its narrative-media representation, but the exact synchrony, and
therefore also reciprocity, of these two moments. If Ricœur argues that “time
becomes human time to the extent that it is organised after the manner of a
narrative”19, then social media seem to have introduced a new way of thinking
and practising this organisation. If this statement is accurate, on what terms
today is it true? The forms of widespread narrativity, enabled by social media,
are characterised by their intrinsic fragmentary nature. The moments of our
life that we share in the form of 15-second videos – the culinary experiences
we make and transform into photographs, the places we visit by informing our

19
Ricœur 1983, Eng. trans. 1984: 3.

79
followers through geolocalization, the songs we listen to, the memories we dig
from a past and transform into digital files, the opinions in video-selfie and all
other contents we share through social media – are all isolated moments, clip-
pings of a life (or of a story) that doesn’t have a completed sense. Looking for
the construction of what is called self-branding – the representation of our own
life as a brand – in the overlap between the online and offline spheres,20 our
existence becomes a sort of mosaic; we create the pieces, while the technologi-
cal infrastructure provides the layout. Within this storytelling format, life time
becomes a highly fragmented series of time slots, 15-second frames that last
only 24 hours. This creates, at most, a heterogeneous image, but not a story
organised as a flowing narrative with an overarching theme. To use a term that
Ricœur borrows from semiotics,21 we find ourselves in the paradigmatic order,
in which terms related to a given action (e.g., dinner, concert, trip) are all
synchronic and the relationships of intersignification are continuously variable
and interchangeable.

3. The contemporary “call for concordance”

If what was previously discussed is true, that the instinct for storytelling is
something deeply rooted in human behaviour, then these individual, isolated,
fragmented moments require a configuration; that is, they require an act of
mediation that gives them an intelligible unity. The web is rich in tools and
software, inside or outside of the technical infrastructure of social media. There
are several examples of social media platforms and apps which permit this
“storytelling” operation. These include the Facebook timeline; the “Archive”
function of Instagram, which allows you to collect in a single “chapter” several
Stories; or Storify, the platform through which you could create a story, using the
content shared on different social media. Last but not least, the most spontane-
ous forms of reuse of web contents, stored mainly in that great archive of our
times that is YouTube, where previously shared images and videos find a new
form and life. The pivotal aspect of these forms of stories is their total openness;
these contents are available for a continuous work of writing and rewriting and
editing and reassembling. In this way, they acquire different configurations each
time. These configurations are always temporary and always redefinable. The
final work is always in process, yet to come.22

20
Floridi 2015.
21
Ricœur 1984, Eng. trans. 1985: 56.
22
A different approach is required to understand the very recent success of TikTok and Reels,
the Instagram response to it. In these cases it seems in fact that the functioning of the participa-
tory mechanism is based on the idea of self exposure through a performance that repeats itself
always the same, rather than on the impulse to storytelling. In these cases, therefore, the engine

80
 Are we facing the end of the narrative? The reasons for this question can be
traced back to the origin of the contemporary media age. In the essay The Story-
teller Benjamin (1936b, en. tr. 1968) argues, “the art of storytelling is reaching
its end”.23 He identifies two events that announce this end: 1) the rise of the
modern novel; and 2) the spread of information. For Benjamin, the novel marks
a clear change in the narrative tradition, dominated by the epic. The novel is a
form of individual and not collective storytelling. In addition, while the epic
offers a representation of a collectively shared wisdom, the novel puts into prose
“the profound perplexity of the living”.24 From this point of view, Benjamin’s
arguments are in agreement with those of Bakhtin. Even for Bakhtin epic has as
its object the nation’s past; it is rooted in the national tradition; and it creates a
world totally separate from the present. In contrast, the novel completely upsets
these temporal coordinates, giving birth to characters that are extremely close
to the present. So if the narrative coincides perfectly with the epic, the rise of
the novel marks its end.25
However, Benjamin argues there is a much more dangerous form of storytell-
ing than the novel and it is information, which has a more immediate nature
and aspires to be understandable in itself, reaching everyone. Information used
to be more reliable, Benjamin continues, but today it is more pervasive, able to
cover every event around the world, although no story emerges as significant.
Once again it seems surprising how the reflections of the German philosopher
can to some extent prefigure a situation that finds fulfilment in our age. But
even in this case, as in his thesis on art, Benjamin’s argument is anything but a
conservative reflection on the decadence of a value, but rather a lucid analysis
of a process in progress in which different components and forces take part
and which requires new paradigms and new theories. Benjamin’s reflection is
echoed by Ricœur):

Perhaps, in spite of everything, it is necessary to have confidence in the call for con-
cordance that today still structures the expectations of readers and to believe that new
narrative forms, which we do not yet know how to name, are already being born, which
will bear witness to the fact that the narrative function can still be metamorphosed,
but not so as to die.26

of participation seems to lie more in the performative act than in the narrative one, although
it would certainly be productive to analyse the modalities of storytelling enabled by these new
social interactions.
23
Benjamin 1936b, Eng. trans. 1968: 87.
24
Ibidem.
25
Bakhtin 1975, Eng. trans. 1982.
26
Ricœur 1984, Eng. trans. 1985: 28.

81
 I propose that TV series answer the “call for concordance”, theorised by Ricœur,
which is particularly strong in our media age. In the post-cinematographic era,
the proliferation of serial audiovisual stories seems to be a response to the me-
dia fragmentation of our life and to the intrinsic openness of the discourses we
make to present and tell our stories, to others and to ourselves. TV series are a
form of cultural adaptation to this new hybrid media environment, and in so
doing they participate in the continuous flow of production and consumption
of media contents. This seems to lack a unitary framework, something like a
story, that gives a meaningful sense to our experience, regardless of the mere
technical infrastructure.
The series do exactly that for us: they create unitary and highly recognizable
worlds. Moving from a concept, they nourish it, with variations27 that derives
from it and, at the same time, they augment it. Yet there seems to be a sort of
paradox here that characterises the TV series aesthetic experience: in the process
of accomplishing this, of creating a unitary and meaningful narrative world, TV
series use those media logics to which they are a response; that is, the continu-
ous openness and always refreshing organisation of the narration. The result is
a virtuous circle between narration and the enrichment of the narrative world;
between the open evolution of the story and the unity and recognizability of
the world it creates. The strength, power, and posterity of the serial device do
not lie in its ability to develop a narrative arc, but in its ability to build worlds
that surround the spectator, generating a very strong feeling of adherence to
it. To simplify: we don’t watch TV series because we want to know how they
end, we watch and love TV series because we want to know how they work,
how those worlds are built, in the awareness that their meaning far exceeds the
simple story, which, however, gives them a shape.
In the TV series, therefore, the storytelling has the task of creating the world
of the story, defining its rules; the result is the activation of a mutual relationship
between the definition of the rules that make up that world and the fact that
they are repeatedly questioned by the narration itself. Serial storytelling is the
result of a continuous, and potentially endless, act of montage of the narrative
world,28 which does not proceed linearly towards an end. In TV series, the nar-
ration can continuously reopen new paths, able to enrich the story with new
rules and events without undermining the unity and recognizability of its world.
There are many examples, which draw from the enormous number of TV
series produced only in the last 20 years. However, I think that the series Lost
(2004-2010), anticipates and exemplifies in an almost too explicit way the
argument that I am presenting here. With its puzzling storylines, its unsolved
enigma, and its disappointing and controversial series finale, Lost is the most

27
Bandirali, Terrone 2021.
28
Cfr. Boni 2017; Wolf 2011.

82
powerful example of the fact that the process of serialisation is prompted by
the enrichment of the narrative world and not by the evolution or resolution
of one or more storylines. As already argued, we do not watch TV series to
see how the stories end, but rather to understand how they work – and more
precisely to understand how their world works – to decipher its meaning. This
cognitive involvement is what Mittell terms operational aesthetics: the pleasure
of complex serial narration lies in the continuous repositioning of the specta-
tor’s attention on the mechanisms of storytelling in order to understand their
rules, “enough to follow their narrative strategies but still relish in the pleasures
of being manipulated successfully”.29
The last episode of the third season, Through the Looking Glass, is paradigmatic.
On an isolated street along the Los Angeles airport, Jack, in an inexplicable state
of confusion, tells Kate that he wants to go back to the island. At first sight, the
scene is totally inexplicable and it acquires a kind of intelligibility possible only
if the viewers tune themself to the narrative twist that the series is working on.
If up to that moment the storytelling was organised through the intersection
of past and present, a new temporality breaks into the narrative, the future, in
which for some reason Jack and Kate have managed to escape from the island;
for some other even more incomprehensible reason, Jack wants to go back. The
season ends by using the king-expedient of seriality, the cliffhanger, the basic
tool of serial writing that originates every addiction, fueling the spectator’s de-
sire to continue the vision, and then ferrying them into a new season. In this
case, the cliffhanger does not surprise the spectator only because it envisages
an unexpected evolution of the storylines. This kind of curiosity certainly plays
an important role: the viewers want to know how Jack and Kate escaped from
the island and why Jack wants to go back. However, in this case the cliffhanger
generates a surprise effect because it puts into question the general strategy of
the narration, which after three seasons the spectator has internalised. The de-
sire, then, is also to understand how this new temporality is part of the world
of the series.30
If we watch TV series to understand the rules of the game, so to speak, this is
even more true for Lost. The protagonists move in an enclosed space, the island,
which they will progressively explore trying to understand how the island works,
its secrets, and its story. Over the course of six seasons, the characters explore
new places, facing physical and mental challenges (for example, the button to be
pushed every 108 minutes) without fully understanding their logic; this is akin
to the traditional pattern of videogames, where the player proceeds by trial and
error. The resolution of the enigmas that the island presents is necessary for the
evolution of the narrative, and that is why the storylines of each single charac-

29
Mittell 2015: 134.
30
Mittell 2009.

83
ter – and their possible development – is of secondary importance to the general
understanding of the functioning of that world, of that unity to be discovered
and deciphered.31 Just as in a videogame, each puzzle solved will unlock a new
level of the game, which will always present a new goal to achieve. While at
the beginning the viewers thought the purpose of the game was to escape from
the island, during the evolution of the narration it is revealed that the task is
becoming more and more challenging. The pivotal aspect of Lost’s game-world
is that each new level of narration corresponds to new temporalities that end up
converging and blasting any reality principle while still managing to maintain
a form of truthfulness that makes the spectator want to continue in the vision.
Lost is probably the most advanced and perhaps unsurpassed example, that
anticipates the way the narrative seriality embeds the contemporary media logic
of openness and fragmentation32, without renouncing to create a unitary and
recognizable world. This logic, indeed, can be traced in other narrative forms
and solutions that we can find in more traditional or linear series (Maiello
2020), from Mad Men (2007-2015) to Breaking Bad (2008-2013), from Game
of Thrones (2011-2019) to the most recent The Marvelous Mrs Maisel (2017-).
However, there are many as yet unexplored potentialities as to how this serial
logic meets and integrates new technologies and new media practices. I am
referring to the so-called transmedia storytelling, through which the same world
is presented and displaced on different media formats.
In the early 2000s, Henry Jenkins33 introduced this concept to describe what
he himself calls the “art of world making,” moving from the analysis of The
Matrix franchise (Lana and Lilly Wachowski 1999). Transmedia storytelling is
a new aesthetic, which has emerged in response to the media tendency to con-
vergence and is based on the participation of users and on the distribution of
narrative worlds on multiple formats. Each different media, in its own specificity,
offers a new and different way of access to the world that the storytelling builds.
When the transmedia art of world making meets the peculiar configuration of
serial storytelling, it gives birth to what can be defined as an extended serial
narrative ecosystem. In the transmedia model, the distribution of storytelling
is organised through narrative extensions of different media, and all of them
contribute to the creation of the sense and the world of the story. The design
of the transmedia system, therefore, has a decisive importance, as it defines
the narrative’s coherence and completeness. All products and formats become
necessary for the understanding of the whole world.
In the extended serial narrative ecosystem, what matters most is not the design
of the entire transmedia project; rather, it is the core of the narrative world,

31
Pearson 2009.
32
Planes et al. 2022.
33
Jenkins 2006.

84
which must be, on the one hand, strongly iconic and recognizable in order to
be developed or increased through other media formats while preserving its own
identity. On the other hand, the narrative world must also be flexible enough
to allow the adaptation of the narrative to new formats.34 The extensive capac-
ity of the ecosystem precisely depends on the autonomy of its parts. For this
reason, it can only partially be controlled because it can develop extensions that
are not necessarily foreseen in the design itself, although it can still guarantee
the coherence and enjoyability of the narrative world. In other words, starting
from convergence, divergent forms can also develop.35
In recent production, one of the most successful and advanced examples of
extended serial narrative which has created a powerful transmedia ecosystem is
Skam. Skam was originally produced in Norway in 2015. After achieving great
success, seven national versions have been produced, including one in Italian
(Skam Italia 2018-2020). The series, which tells the story of a group of teenag-
ers, was created precisely to address the audience of young people, who do not
contemplate, among their viewing habits, watching TV in the traditional way.
To meet this need, the narration is distributed in real time on several platforms.
Videos are released every day, and at the end of the week, they will compose the
whole series episode. The result is the complete overlapping between the time
of the narration and the time of the viewing experience. In order to amplify
the reality effect of storytelling, WhatsApp screens are shared on Instagram and
other social networks with text messages, vocal messages, images, and videos.
These are contents that characters share with each other but which do not ap-
pear in the filmed episode. In this way, the social media experience integrates
the experience of the series and the narrative itself.
Because of its transmedia format and its specific organisation of the temporal
flow of the story, Skam applies in an unprecedented and absolutely innova-
tive way the aesthetics of fragmentation that characterises our post-media and
post-cinematographic age. This is an aesthetics which is considered natural
by the so-called digital natives. It is no longer the world of storytelling that is
distributed over different media products, opening up new narrative horizons
that find their legitimacy in the unitary of the world; rather, it is the narrative
itself that is articulated over several formats, which are integrated and at the
same time call for the interactivity of the spectator-user. In this sense, we can say
that the narration includes in itself the “media engagement”36 that characterises
our relationship with media devices and practices but which is also increasingly
important in the series experience. This is currently considered the result of the
convergence of diversified media experiences. Within what we can define as me-

34
De Pascalis, Pescatore 2018.
35
Innocenti 2018.
36
Hill 2019.

85
diaphilia, TV series are “by far the most discussed, shared and loved objects”,37
and Skam capitalises on this shared feeling and integrates the user experience
not only in the articulation of the storytelling world, but in the narration itself.
The haptic pleasure of scrolling is added to the pleasure of vision, along with all
those practices and media gestures that have become natural for us.
The aesthetic of fragmentation, therefore, is no longer reconstructed through
the articulation of the narrative world, but it is rendered as such, generating a
complete and immersive melting between the world of the story and the world
of the viewer, as evidenced by the real time that the narrative follows. Even
watching the episodes in their entirety, fragmentation remains a dominant feature
of the aesthetics of the series. The transmedia ecosystem of the series comes to
coincide perfectly with the media environment in which we live, activating a
new mode of relationship with the viewers, which enhances the desire for ap-
propriation that binds them to the series.
The future challenge of seriality seems to be the possibility of combining the
unity and richness of the narrative world with the pleasure of the narration and
the open and fragmented aesthetics that is dominant in today’s media culture.
In other words, to integrate the diversified media experiences within the narra-
tive, without renouncing the call for concordance, which is very strong today
more than ever.

References

Antinucci, F.
– 2011, Parola e immagine. Storia di due tecnologie, Roma-Bari, Laterza.
Bakhtin, M.
– 1975, Voprosy literatury i estetiki, Eng. trans. by M. Holquist, The Dialogic Imagina-
tion, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1982.
Bandirali L., Terrone E.,
– 2021, Concept TV. An Aesthetics of Television Series, Lanham, Lexington Books.
Benjamin, W.
– 1936a, L’œuvre d’art à l’époque de sa reproduction mécanisée, Eng. trans. by H. Zohn,
The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, in H. Arendt (ed.), Illuminations.
Essays and Reflections, New York, Schocken Books, 1968: 217-251.
– 1936b, Der Erzähler. Betrachtungen zum Werk Michail Lesskows, Eng. trans. by H.
Zohn, The storyteller. Reflections on the works of Nikolai Leskov, in H. Arendt (ed.),
Illuminations. Essays and Reflections, New York, Schocken Books, 1968: 83-110.
Bilton, N.
– 2011, I Live in the Future and Here’s How it Works. Why Your World, Work and Brain
are Being Creatively Disrupted, New York, Crown Publishing Group.

37
Menarini 2018.

86
Bolter, J.D., Grusin, R.
– 1999, Remediation. Understanding New Media, Cambridge, The MIT Press.
Boni, M. (ed.)
– 2017, World Building, Transmedia, Fans, Industry, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University
Press.
Casetti, F.
– 2008, Eye of the Century. Film, Experience, Modernity, New York, Columbia University
Press;
– 2011, I media nella condizione post-mediale, in A. Campo, D. Cecchi, D. Guastini
(eds), Alla fine delle cose. Contributi a una storia critica delle immagini, Lucca, La
Casa Usher: 162-170.
Cometa, M.
– 2017, Perché le storie ci aiutano a vivere. La letteratura necessaria, Milano, Raffaello
Cortina.
Denson, S.
– 2016, Speculation, transition, and the passing of post-cinema, “Cinéma & Cie”, XVI/26-
27: 21-32.
Denson, S., Leyda, J. (eds)
– 2016, Post-Cinema. Theorizing 21st-Century Film, Sussex, Reframe Books.
De Pascalis, I., Pescatore, G.
– 2018, Dalle narrazioni estese agli ecosistemi, in G. Pescatore (ed.), Ecosistemi narrativi.
Dal fumetto alle serie TV, Roma, Carocci: 19-30.
De Rosa, M., Hediger, V.
– 2016, Post-what? Post-when? A Conversation on the ‘Posts’ of post-media and post-cinema,
“Cinéma & Cie”, XVI/26-27: 9-19.
Floridi, L.
– 2015, The Onlife Manifesto. Being Human in a Hyperconnected Era, Berlin,
Springer.
Gottschall, J.
– 2012, The Storytelling Animal. How Stories Make Us Human, Boston, Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt.
Grusin, R.
– 2015, Radical mediation, “Critical Inquiry”, 42, 1: 124-148.
Hill, A.
– 2019, Media Experiences. Engaging with Drama and Reality Television, New York,
Routledge.
Innocenti, V.
– 2018, Convergenza e divergenza negli ecosistemi narrativi, in G. Pescatore (ed.), Eco-
sistemi narrativi. Dal fumetto alle serie TV, Roma, Carocci: 213-227.
Jenkins, H.
– 2006, Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide, New York, New York
University Press.
Maiello, A.
– 2020, Mondi in serie. L’epoca postmediale delle serie TV, Cosenza, Pellegrini.
Manovich, L.
– 2001, The Language of New Media, Cambridge, The MIT Press.

87
McLuhan, M.
– 1964, Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man, New York, McGraw-Hill.
Menarini, R.
– 2018, Il discorso e lo sguardo. Forme della critica e pratiche della cinefilia, Parma,
Diabasis.
Mittell, J.
– 2009, Lost in a Great Story. Evaluation in Narrative Television Studies, in R. Pearson
(ed.), Reading Lost, New York, Tauris: 19-138.
– 2015, Complex TV. The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling, New York,
New York University Press.
Montani, P., Cecchi D., Feyles, M. (eds)
– 2018, Ambienti mediali, Milano, Meltemi.
Page, R., Thomas, B. (eds)
– 2011, New Narratives. Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age, Lincoln-London,
University of Nebraska Press.
Pearson, R.
– 2009, Chain of events. Regimes of evaluation and Lost’s construction of the televisual
character, in R. Pearson (ed.), Reading Lost, New York, Tauris 141-158.
Pearson, R., Smith, A.N, (eds).
– 2015, Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age. Exploring Screen Narratives, New
York, Palgrave Macmillan.
Planes, J.A, García, A.N, Pérez-Morán, E.,
– 2022, Flashbacks in Netflix original TV series (2013-2017): Predominant categories,
formal features, and semantic effects, “International Journal of Communication”, 16:
3443-3469.
Ricœur, P.
– 1983, Temps et Récit. L’Intrigue et le Récit historique, Eng. trans. by K. Mclaughlin
and D. Pellauer, Time and Narrative. Volume 1, Chicago, The University of Chicago
Press, 1984.
– 1984, Temps et Récit. La configuration dans le récit de fiction, Eng. trans. by K. Mc-
laughlin and D. Pellauer, Time and Narrative. Volume 2, Chicago, The University of
Chicago Press, 1985.
Ryan, M.L., Thon, J.N. (eds)
– 2014, Storyworlds Across Media. Toward a Media Conscious Narratology, Lincoln-Lon-
don, University of Nebraska Press.
Rose, F.
– 2011, The Art of Immersion. How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood,
Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories, New York, Norton & Company.
Shaviro, S.
– 2010, Post-Cinematic Affect, Winchester, O-Books.
Wolf, M.J.P.
– 2012, Building Imaginary Worlds. The Theory and History of Subcreation, London -
New York, Routledge.

88