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In this article, I scrutinize the much-discussed "walrus scene" from Netflix's nature documentary Our Planet (2019) for its formal and thematic similarities to weird fiction. I argue that these similarities reveal tensions in how we conceptualize the environment, the human, and the nonhuman. By comparing the narrative strategies in the walrus scene to similar strategies in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy (2014), I problematize the emergent crosstalk between the weird and the Anthropocene, and the ways in which it mediates the environmental crisis, via concepts such as "Anthropocene horror," "worldwithout-us," and "global weirding.". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents a criticism of the Norwegian television program "SLAM." She mentions the use of social media both within and regarding the program about the lives of teenagers, how the narrative strategy works to include the audience, and the sense of group belonging as a theme in the show.

Westworld (2016-present) is one of the most popular and complex television narratives in recent years. Based on the classic 1973 science fiction film of the same title, the show's first two seasons are set in a technologically advanced Western-themed Park where human guests pay to interact in any way they wish with the hosts/androids that populate its world. Yet, unlike the robots of the 1973 version who easily betrayed their mechanical origin, this time the hosts blur the boundaries between human and machine, real and fabricated, thus posing significant questions about posthumanism. Furthermore, the depiction of the hosts as specifically embodied and gendered artificial beings, also raises questions surrounding postfeminism. These two concepts, namely posthumanism and postfeminism, are interwoven in the representation of two of the show's main protagonists, Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maeve (Thandie Newton), two female androids that begin to realize their fabricated reality and develop a new subjectivity. The article argues that despite the emancipating possibilities that an emergent posthuman subjectivity suggests, the show's posthuman heroines are finally constrained by the text's humanist and postfemininst limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outlining key elements of folk horror, this article discusses the influence of British 1970s television upon post-2000 folk-horror revivalists, arguing that television is of vital importance to social and cultural folklore. With reference to Mikel Koven's 'mass-mediated ostension', this study brings together folkloristics and screen studies, and proposes 'wyrd' as a term to apply to eerie, hauntological media with folkloric themes. Supernatural tropes are examined alongside a case-study analysis of the BBC series Ghost Stories for Christmas to illustrate how folkloric content is represented on screen, and how the eerie atmosphere of 1970s television was created. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how audience members relate to and vicariously interact with multiple characters while viewing a narrative. Under the framework of the theory of situation models, we applied a real-time thought-listing technique that incorporated Twitter and focused on three debuting TV dramas to explore how the participants followed multiple characters while watching prime-time television dramas. We examined 3,274 tweets across the three TV series and found that monitoring a greater diversity of characters is associated with an increased number of questions asked and more accurate predictions of future events. The participants who made more accurate predictions had higher narrative engagement. In addition, the participants who had more thoughts about the self tracked a greater diversity of characters and made more accurate predictions about the plot. The results are discussed in terms of the developing literature on narratives in mass communication and entertainment research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tagline for Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story: Freak Show (AHS: Freak Show) is 'Wir Sind Alle Freaks', a German phrase that clearly signals the show's 'freaktopic' intention. 'We are all freaks' introduces a narrative that promises to collapse boundaries between the self and other, allowing viewers to see themselves as more like the freakish characters at the heart of Elsa Mars' Cabinet of Curiosities than the outsiders threatening their lives. However, this invitation, combined with the narrative focus on normate characters instead invokes the countercultural appropriation of 'freak' as an anti-establishment rebellion. These narratives provide not a 'freaktopia', but rather an escape, both temporary and permanent, from 'normative' values for non-freakish characters, and an outright rejection of those norms. While this choice seems in some ways informed by contemporary notions of social justice, access, and inclusion, in which the 'normative' characters act in alliance with their underprivileged 'freak' peers, Ryan Murphy's AHS: Freak Show ultimately troubles its very tagline. Through an analysis of the AHS: Freak Show's narrative structures surrounding capital, family, and consumption, I argue that the myth of a 'freaktopia' collapses under the weight of its own neo-liberal dream, and is ultimately consumed by mainstream capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents a criticism of Australian films and television programs depicting World War I. He discusses the focus on the campaign in Gallipoli, Turkey, the issue of masculinity as representing the nation in the films and programs, and the sense of subversion in the narrative form.

The author discusses the Norwegian teen television program "Skam." He mentions the production and storytelling of the program which is formatted to be viewed on smart phones, how the program fits into the social media you of teenagers, and the development of new media habits.

To speak about the horror of the Holocaust is still extremely difficult. An exploration of our data, a video testimony of a female survivor of the Ghetto in Łódź, showed that she employs certain styles of narration (narrative motifs). This paper first examines some of those motifs and suggests that they might function as a means of self-regulation. In our data they either assist in preventing retraumatization or facilitate the re-experiencing of the dreadful past. The features of those motifs are analysed on a semantic, a prosodic and an embodied level through the usage of Conversation Analysis, PRAAT and Multimodal Analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The TVmoji is a pictorial visual device that captions or interprets television footage. It is widely used in many non-scripted television shows, particularly in East Asia. Using a Goffmanian footing analysis, this study categorizes TVmojis as blurted expressions, soliloquies, captions, narration, fictive viewer’s talkbacks, and fictive viewer’s comments. The author argues that by playing various roles, TVmojis help construct the viewer’s sense of being a bystander while concealing the producers’ manipulations of the media’s interactive roles vis-à-vis the viewers. The author contends that to improve the understanding of this editorial manipulation-in-disguise, the media should be conceptualized as retellers, rather than representers, of narrative using footage and visual devices such as TVmojis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have demonstrated the power of entertainment narratives to influence attitudes and behaviors; fewer have examined the effects of TV portrayals on attitudes toward marginalized groups. The present study is among the first to explore how entertainment narratives depicting transgender individuals influence viewers’ attitudes toward transgender people and related policies. The study examines the impact of exposure to a TV storyline on Royal Pains (USA Network) and cumulative effects of viewing other TV series featuring transgender individuals. An online survey of 488 U.S. viewers of Royal Pains was conducted (391 had seen the relevant episode). ANCOVAs revealed exposure to both the Royal Pains’ storyline and other storylines portraying transgender individuals were associated with more supportive attitudes toward transgender people and policies. Mediation models revealed that for viewers of the Royal Pains’ storyline, the relationships between political ideology and attitudes toward transgender people and policies were mediated by identification with the main characters and the emotion of hope. Disgust mediated viewers’ attitudes toward transgender people, but not policies. Post hoc analyses revealed that exposure to transgender narratives reduced the influence of viewers’ political ideology on their attitudes. The attitudes of more conservative viewers became increasingly positive as they saw more media portrayals of transgender individuals. These findings highlight the potential for entertainment narratives to influence attitudes toward marginalized groups, and they demonstrate the importance of emotion in the context of divisive topics. Social, political, and public health implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jason Mittell argues that contemporary television narrative is marked by degrees of both structural and consumptive complexity. One way he addresses this complexity is through the concept of drillability, which he describes as “a mode of forensic fandom that invites viewers to dig deeper, probing beneath the surface to understand the complexity of a story and its telling.” This essay analyzes a particular episode of CBS’s The Good Wife (2009–2016) to extend Mittell’s concept of drillability and to explore its theoretical links to Mikhail Bakhtin’s “dialogic imagination.” In doing so, the essay argues that “producer-fans” model modes of critical media consumption required by an informed and engaged citizenry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of a 'paratext' has become widely accepted and used within fan studies, as an all-encompassing term for both official and unofficial productions associated with contemporary transmedia productions -- to the point where some scholars are arguing for the dissolution of the boundary between 'text' and 'paratext'. But although some excellent empirical work has been and is being done on the range and operations of particular paratextual networks, not many people adopting the concept have considered its meaning and implications in the work of its originator, Gerard Genette. This essay looks back at Genette's work, and contrasts his ideas with a number of contemporary uses, before outlining (via some test cases from materials associated with Game of Thrones) a working conception of 'paratextuality'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the character Illyria (Amy Acker) from the television series Angel (1999–2004). It examines Illyria as a representation of the ‘cult’ action heroine, and as a means of creating visual pleasure within the television narrative. In exploring her function within the narrative of Angel, in which her characterisation undercuts some common ways in which the female body is represented on-screen, the essay compares the character with other female action heroes of 1990s to 2000s television series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affective disposition theory explains well the process of enjoying hero narratives but not the appeal of narratives featuring antiheroes. Recent antihero studies suggest that character identification and moral disengagement might be important factors in the enjoyment of such fare. The current study builds on this work. A sample of 101 self-identified fans and nonfans of the television series 24 viewed a condensed version of Season 1, providing evaluation of various protagonist perceptions, moral judgments, and emotional responses to the narrative, as well as overall enjoyment. As expected, fans reported greater liking of the protagonist and greater enjoyment. But more importantly, regression analyses illuminated key differences between the groups in terms of the factors predicting enjoyment, providing a clearer picture of how we enjoy antihero narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zer: Journal of Communication Studies / Revista de Estudios de Comunicacion / Komunikazio Ikasketen Aldizkaria is the property of Universidad del Pais Vasco and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the 2000s RAI television drama makes a temporal turn that coincides with Second Republic's revisionism of the divided memory of crucial episodes in post-Unification Italian history. This article examines two historical mini-series on Italian migration in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Il Grande Torino/The Great Torino (2005) and Marcinelle/Inferno Below (2003). In both narratives the microhistory of migration lived and performed by ordinary people is coupled with the macrohistory of disaster: respectively the 1949 Superga airplane crash, which brought an end to the Grande Torino football team, and the Marcinelle coalmine fire of 8 August 1956, which killed 136 Italian workers. These historical narratives work within transmedial constellations of cultural memory and interact with institutionalized collective memory. In both cases the model image of the Italian migrant worker as a redemptive figure of Italy's post-war regeneration in television documentaries of the 1950s and 1960s is replaced by a contemporary ambivalent representation of the paradoxes of migration, and redemption is activated instead by the story of disaster and as a specific quality of Italian character. Both episodes can be seen as a homage to the sacrifice of labour of the Italian worker with the difference that the main character of Il Grande Torino/The Great Torino sacrifices his individual migrant story to the memory of the Superga disaster, while Marcinelle's hero becomes the redemptive figure of the Italian migrant worker thanks to the exceptional circumstances created by the mine catastrophe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the turn of the century, serial television drama is increasingly associated with quality. This reappraisal has been widely documented, but such accounts are strongly Anglocentric. Is this rise (or return) of 'quality TV' an international trend? Is it also present in smaller markets with lower budgets? To answer these questions, this article focuses on the small television market of Flanders (Dutch-language North Belgium). Nine successful productions are discussed, also their reviews. The core of the analysis is constituted by interviews with people involved in the production of these dramas, trying to understand how they define and aspire to produce 'quality drama'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes multi-genre television series oscillating between fantasy, mystery, and horror with regard to their self-referentiality. The author discusses the interplay between a series' plot elements and narrative techniques and its active reception by its viewers in creating this self-referential system and, as examples, provides interpretations of the U.S. television programs "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Supernatural."

The article analyzes the narrative structure of the opening sequence of the pilot episode of the television series "Game of Thrones," starring, among others, Peter Dinklage, Emilia Clarke, and Kit Harington, and developed by showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Issues addressed include the adaptation of the literary basis for the episode, the prologue of the novel "Die Herren von Winterfell" by George R. R. Martin, to television, cold opens, and strategies of narrative exposition more broadly.

The article discusses the formats, narrative techniques, and production processes of television shows and their evolution over time. The author outlines the history of television series, emphasizing that the early twenty-first century witnessed a significant increase in plot complexity and drawing on examples from the United States and Germany. The implications of these trends for children's television are also commented on.

This article summarizes an evidence-based study that adapts a breakpoint approach to investigate how elements of television narratives (two half-hour episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents: 'Lamb to the Slaughter' and 'The Case of Mr. Pelham') were considered meaningful to viewers. Actions considered meaningful were found to be high in informational and emotional content, and primarily consisted of plot points where changes in narrative direction and protagonist's goals were perceived as interpretively salient. Viewers also registered as meaningful those scenes that were character centered and provided subjective access to the main characters. The article reviews segmentation behavior in the relevant film theory literature to contextualize study, and concludes by summarizing other potential applications of an adapted breakpoint approach beyond the investigation of dramatic structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the slash community surrounding the television series Smallville. Utilizing textual data, audience survey responses, and fan ethnography, I locate the performance of homoeroticism in Smallville and highlight important (sub)textual moments of the series as recounted by participants. These observations reveal important implications concerning the performative capabilities of narrative, the cultural significance of this particular Superman retelling, and the influence of textual intent on subcultural practices related to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. In essence, slash fans create an alternative vision of television narrative by marking each characters' actions as homoerotic, which is rearticulated by the writers, directors and actors of the series. This interplay illustrates the changing nature of television narrative, where text, audience and production are inseparable when analyzing media artifacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contracampo: Brazilian Journal of Communication is the property of Revista Contracampo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This research explores the role of cultural diversity in the construction of consumer identity, and in particular, how cultural diversity is appropriated through television viewing. Data based on depth interviews and surveys of young adults who created brand collages centered on a television-based character reveal that viewers identify and engage with television narratives through a process of 'homophilization'; that is, they actively envision various features of television narratives as similar to themselves and their own lived experiences. The data also show that homophilizing processes are enacted primarily by customizing the narrative, or textual poaching, in which the consumers insert themselves and their experiences into the narrative, and that consumption choices serve as primary mechanisms for poaching. Because media narratives are important in the formation and maintenance of consumer identity, the authors strongly recommend vigilance in the production and dissemination of socially conscious narratives that allow prosocial and realistic characters with whom consumers can actively engage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a call for submissions of articles to be published in the number 10 issue of the journal with a focus on the relationship between television narrative and literary narrative, including topics such as television seriality, transmedia, and self-reference in television series.

The article introduces this issue of the journal, which contains contributions on, among other things, the narrative structure of television series, the use of nerds, freaks, and geeks as identification figures in the television show "The Big Bang Theory," and the use of surprise and irritation in literary analysis for students.