Reading Contemporary TV Series

Reading, Watching, Consuming

When we write of “reading” TV series as opposed to merely “consuming” them, we want to highlight both the differences in structure, rhetoric and thematic preoccupations of contemporary, twenty-first century series as opposed to the majority of twentieth-century texts and the efforts and competences required from the audience in the process of watching, understanding and following TV series in these two critically different periods. When we write of “reading” TV series as opposed to “watching” them, in turn, we stress the cognitive effort required today of television audiences to decode the unobvious networks of meanings contained in the artistically organized, sophisticated, compositionally complex texts. We are, at the same time, offering a contribution to a growing body of academic studies that have attempted to study selected TV series with as much attention to detail in compositional complexity and thematic profundity as would be applied in the study of more traditionally respected forms of cultural production (literature, film, theatre, fine arts, etc.). Thus, we claim that the TV series might be considered as a legitimate artistic form which has contributed to global culture not only by adding to it simplistic forms of entertainment but also by offering a large body of ambitious, and often experimental, texts. Acknowledging the fact that contemporary television narratives have not only forsaken their own medium-specific origin (as “television” content is frequently not related to traditional television institutions anymore) but also dissociated from the relatively humble aesthetic origins of the serialized televisual form, we maintain that the significant increase in complexity and aesthetic and thematic ambitions encourages audiences to consider their experience with the TV series as important and rewarding as their experience would be with the novel (or the short story, the sonnet, or perhaps a piece of drama). In our “reading” of contemporary TV series, therefore, the juxtaposition with literary texts serves to highlight an interpretive legacy the audiences and critics of the TV series might draw from their experience with literature in particular and with the literariness of Western culture in general. This approach is partly reflected in our methodological choices, which quite directly point to theories well anchored in the study of literary narratives: narratology and reader response theories. These methodological choices inform our readings in different ways in different chapters of the book, depending on which of the three areas they are concerned with.

Aesthetics, Themes, and Reception

The book is divided into three sections: the first one is devoted to aesthetics, the second one to thematic preoccupations, and the third to reception practices. In the first section, Miłosz Wojtyna claims that aesthetic means employed by contemporary TV series are not only a means of composing attractive, valuable artefacts that audiences enjoy, but also of constructing spectacle-based mechanisms of control that exploit audience curiosity, time, engagement, emotional responses, and cognitive effort as part of contemporary “attention economy.” He argues, therefore, that the fantastic power of the TV series (and of any compelling narrative in general) – the power to suspend some of our real-life activities for the sake of what the narratives offer in exchange – is an aesthetic phenomenon characteristic of the operations of the cultural industry. The control effect results from the technological affordances of what Netflix, Amazon, HBO, Apple and other streaming platforms have built as the primary providers of video content, as much as from the very impact the composition of the video material has on us when we watch a given TV series (and perhaps long after). Part of larger trends in contemporary culture and economy (such as cognitive labour, 24/7 consumption, attention economy, algorithmic selection and adjustment of content, as well as increasing focus of consumers on simulations and virtuality), the control effect relies on the use of specific aesthetic strategies and techniques aimed at managing audience attention and engagement.

The third section of this book is devoted to reception and audience practices. In that section, Roksana Zgierska furthers the claim that it is necessary to acknowledge that contemporary TV series, figuratively referred here as “audio-visual novels,” are as complex in their poetic signification as literary works can be. Thus, it seems justifiable to expand the application of literary studies to the analysis of these texts and to recognize them as relevant subjects of research. Zgierska suggests, therefore, that complexity of the multi-layered narratives presented in contemporary TV series, their developing aesthetics and thematic variety seem to draw heavily from literature. Textual organization of the two forms – the traditional (verbal) and the new (audio-visual) novel – therefore appears to rely on similar patterns. That being the case, it might be safe to assume that the cognitive processes associated with textual interpretation of literature will be, to certain extent, mirrored by the ones observed in the reception of contemporary TV series. Proposing the argument that the entire act of watching is remarkably close to the act of reading, Zgierska believes it is well founded to emphasize the similarities between the terms “audience/viewer” and “a reader,” or even go as far as to replace the first with the latter. The main purpose of the third section is thus the presentation, discussion, and analysis of the role of reader/viewer and their competences that have developed in response to contemporary TV series as well as to compare them to the reception and interpretation practices required by traditional narrative forms.