1st Year Essay

Do new media technologies make watching a television series more like watching a film; or is this due to more complex narratives in modern television drama?


Television drama series have become more popular than ever recently, and it seems to have made the experience of watching more like a film, this could be down to the new levels of narrative being achieved in television writing. It could also be the advances in technology that are allowing people to watch television series in completely different ways, and so the aim of this essay is to find out.

The essay will be divided into three main sections. The first of these sections will be a very short piece focusing on film. It will concentrate on traditional narrative structure of films, and some films that have attempted to subvert that tradition. The second main section will be concentrating on television drama series, beginning with a brief definition of what is meant by television drama. This will be followed by a more in depth look into various narrative structure types within television series, including the difference between series and serials. Then the final point of this section will focus on the new media technologies, and advances in Internet downloading and streaming. The third and final main section will be a look at the psychology of television and film, and a more direct look at the differences and similarities between the two. It will all focus on comparisons, firstly on the approaches of audiences, then on the way television and film are viewed, and finally on the audiences themselves. All of this will be with respect to the new ways television is received by audiences.

This essay is about comparisons between television and film, and one of the main differences is narrative structure. Tvzetan Todorov’s theory of equilibrium manages to sum up film narrative very neatly. The idea is that in all films there is, at the beginning, equilibrium, in that everything is balanced and how it should be. There is then disruption, or disequilibrium, which will take up the majority of the film. Finally the equilibrium is restored at the end of the film, but the situation is slightly better than it was to start with. The theory states that narrative structure is circular rather than liner, as the plot is made up of attempts to restore equilibrium.

There are certain films that play with the chronology of the story; the order in which the events appear on the screen is different to the order that they happened in. For example, amnesia-and-murder thriller ‘Memento’ (2000) uses the technique of playing the scenes in the reverse order, however you can still apply Todorov’s theory. It takes a while to make sense, but the first equilibrium is the situation at the start chronologically, but we only know this at the end, once the narrative circle is complete. In Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic ‘Pulp Fiction’ (1994) there is an even more obscure chronology, as three stories are told from different viewpoints, and the same characters appear in more than one story. However, Todorov’s theory still applies here, as it is again just the chronology that has been adjusted in such an interesting way. This is only the method in which the story is told, rather than the narrative itself, which would remain the same if the film were played in conventional chronological order.
(Todorov, T.)

Television drama can be in the form of a series, serial, or one-off special. Television drama is fictional, like a film, but comes in episodes, commonly one hour long. Television drama is considered different from soap opera as the episodes come in series, rather than continuing indefinitely. It is also different from sitcom, as, although often funny in places, television dramas are not written purely as comedy, like ‘Friends’ for example. There are different narrative structures within television drama, and terms for these different types. In America the television networks use the term ‘season’, because of tight controls on scheduling, meaning all the shows will be one hour in length, and twelve episodes to a season. However, for the purposes of this essay, the term ‘series’ will be used from now on, as an umbrella term for series and serials.

Here is a sliding-scale diagram of series and serials, it spans across various genres of television, it comes as part of the essay “Narrative Strategies in Television Series” by Gaby Allrath, Marion Gymnich and Carola Surkamp.

Series
The Simpsons
Murder She Wrote
Ally McBeal
The X-Files
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Soap operas
Serial

The term series in this context is simply a number of episodes of the same programme played in sequence, generally once a week. There are no ongoing plot lines whatsoever, as in ‘The Simpsons’ (1989), and every episode follows Todorov’s narrative structure theory, where everything is fine, something changes, and then it’s back to normal by the end. In ‘The Simpsons’ this is particularly true, so much so that they once cleverly came out of context, and made a joke about it.

“Don't worry, Bart. It seems like every week something odd happens to the Simpsons. My advice is to ride it out, make the occasional smart-alec quip, and by next week we'll be back to where we started from, ready for another wacky adventure.”

(Groening, M. 1994. ep. 1F14)

A serial is the opposite of a series in terms of narrative structure. The word serial comes from literature; famously Charles Dickens first released many of his novels in magazines, each episode would then become a chapter in the complete published book. The way the narrative was structured there is similar to that of modern television serials, with many ongoing plot strands, and cliffhanger endings to each episode.

In ABC’s ‘Lost’ (2002) there is a definite new level that could never be achieved in literature. The show is definitely towards the ‘serial’ end of the scale, but also has elements of inner-episode narrative like in a series. In each instalment of ‘Lost’ there is a focus on one character, revealing elements of their life before the show’s start. These are displayed as a series of flashbacks, and take up just under half of the total screen time of an episode. There are then, in the present, a huge number of mysteries and unanswered questions. These questions take various amounts of time to be resolved, for example, there was a question first posed on the first episode that has only just been answered mid-way through series three. There is then the extra level of narrative structure that ‘Lost’ achieves; this is also true with other television dramas, albeit with a more subtle approach. Similar to elements of the story being contained within an episode, there are also inner-series plot structures. The basic form of this is, as in ‘Lost’, is to have a cliffhanger at the end of each episode, and a huge double cliffhanger at the end of each series. The new series then instantly resolves the cliffhangers, and reveals something so big, it gives the show a whole new dimension, which then opens up the plot for potential developments in this new environment. This layered narrative structure also can help secure the ratings craved especially in American television, as there is a direct ratio between size of cliffhanger and time until next airing.

There are also, as shown in the diagram, various hybrids which form the scale. Using the same examples, ‘Murder She Wrote’ was simply one murder case per episode, however there were occasionally some background plot lines. ‘Ally McBeal’ was also one case per episode, this time in a lawyer’s firm, but there were a lot more complicated love stories and character deaths, which had a lasting effect. The scale then continues up from there.
(Allrath, G. et al, 2005. p.6)

Some different modern examples are harder to place. With ‘Lost’, as previously mentioned, it could be argued that it could be placed anywhere on the scale. Award-winning HBO series’ ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘Deadwood’ are just as difficult to define, with less rigid structures, and complicated narratives. Mafia-based and heavily ‘Goodfellas’ inspired ‘The Sopranos’ (1999) switches between having episodes containing a narrative of their own and ongoing storylines. There are also rarely cliffhangers, especially at the end of a series, which means the writers sometimes abandon a plot strand just as you know the direction it is heading in, and start a new one. This results in a vast quantity of storylines that inevitably collide, and create immense tension, and in the case of ‘The Sopranos’; violence. The equally bloody, and Wild West-themed ‘Deadwood’ is again totally different for narrative. Firstly, the events and nearly all the characters are based on real life, and are much more accurate than your average Hollywood take on historic events. This means there are plenty of predetermined plot junctures, leaving the writers the job of the script, and where to place these events within an episode, and within a series. The writers use elements of poetic justice to do this, for example in the last episode of series two, they bring at least four major storylines together, where is real life, the events probably happened weeks apart.


In recent years, the popularity of ‘box sets’ has increased drastically with the introduction of DVDs, this means viewers take in multiple episodes of a series in one sitting. There has also been a huge amount of illegal downloads, this began with people using the same peer-to peer software that they use for their music, but now a type of network and file type known as torrents have made it even easier. In a recent BBC News interview, Dr David Price, head of piracy intelligence at web monitoring firm Envisional, stated that television is now the most pirated asset on the Internet. He then went on to estimate that a new episode of ‘Lost’ for example, would receive a million illegal downloads, compared to 150,000 a few years ago.

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6151118.stm. 2007)

On the back of successful sites such as ‘YouTube’, there has been a recent increase in people streaming videos from the Internet rather than downloading them. This method sacrifices quality, but the videos are instantly available, and so it seems viewers are becoming too impatient for full downloads. The most popular of these sites is alluc.org, a site containing no content, but links to various clips on other sites. Recent figures show this site alone has 450,000 visitors a day, and that now, nine percent of the British population are watching television online. That number is set to increase, as Apple, along with television networks, have begun offering legal television and film downloads. More figures from BBC News show that Apple’s legal online store for television shows is selling over a million downloads a week, and this is only a year after it’s launch.

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6176906.stm. 2007)

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/features/story/0,,2018909,00.html. 2007)

The majority of illegal television downloads are from people outside of America not wanting to wait until their favourite show is aired in their country, the shows are only online once they have been on television somewhere. This means, despite the increase in numbers, most people are still watching one episode a week; the only potential psychological effect brought on by internet downloads would be if a viewer was new to a show, downloaded all the episodes at once, and watched them back-to-back like they would with a DVD box set.

The main structural difference between a film and a television series is closure; television shows, especially those from America, run the risk of being axed at any point. One might think this fact would cause television audiences to avoid getting fully attached to the characters and storylines, however this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Denis McQuail is a leading academic and author of over a dozen books on the subject of Mass Media, in an extract from “Mass Communication Theory”; McQuail takes the ‘Uses and Gratifications theory’ model (Katz et al 1974), and sorts audiences’ uses and gratifications into four types. Firstly there is ‘information’, those who use media to obtain knowledge. Secondly, ‘personal identity’, meaning people who relate to a character they see from an experience of their own, or people who aspire to be those they are watching. The third type is ‘integration and social interaction’, meaning those who wish to gain insight into other people’s situations or to get the latest ‘water-cooler talk’. The fourth type is ‘entertainment’, sometimes referred to as ‘escapism’. This group contains those who watch to be transported away from their lives for the length of a film or television episode. All of these categories are for ‘uses and gratifications’ and so a person can only be in one category per media usage, however they can switch categories when faced with a new media text.

(McQuail, D. 2000)

The real psychological issue for this essay is whether the same viewer would approach, for example, ‘A Fist Full of Dollars’ and the first series of ‘Deadwood’ in the same way, even if they were aware it would get axed after three series. The content of the two is pretty similar in terms of genre, however the ‘uses and gratifications’ for the viewer would be the same for both, as watching anything with a Wild West theme is for entertainment purposes only, this wouldn’t change if the media was television or film.

If there were a different psychological approach to watching television and film, then the ‘TV mini-series’ would surely fall on the film side, as it is much shorter, and there is only ever one series, so viewers are aware from the beginning that there will be closure. If this type of show somehow bridges the structural gap between television series and films, then the next step towards a regular film is the British ‘One-off drama’ or American ‘Made for TV Movie’. This is a ‘mini-series’ of one episode, which is feature length, for example the brilliantly gritty recent Channel 4 and Irvine Welsh project ‘Wedding Belles’. These are not released in cinemas, and are therefore considered television, however in terms of all psychology they are films.

This must mean there is a sliding scale, similar to the one between ‘serial’ and ‘series’, and that the modern methods are pushing television further from it’s original form, and in the direction of film. The way they do this, all technological advances aside, is make it possible for viewers to watch as many episodes as they wish back-to-back. So with, for example, ‘The Sopranos’ reaching it’s scheduled end this year, a viewer new to the show could potentially watch all six series in a row, creating an epic film, approximately eighty hours in length. Any cliffhangers would be almost non-existent as they would be instantly resolved, even those between series’. There would also be less subtlety in slow burning plots, as things that cropped up briefly once an week would be appearing just under once an hour, and immediately more obvious.

“Colossal shifts are taking place in the way television is produced and consumed. Television studios are making shows more cinematic in writing, producing and acting, and more and more people are watching television on their computers -- and these shifts complement each other brilliantly. All the good things about watching television are slowly being faded out of existence and all the great things about television are being amplified.”

(Leroy, E. 2006)

There is another theory on narrative that can pull television and film together, as mentioned by Marie-Laure Ryan in her article ‘On Defining Narrative Media’. To define a narrative medium you must take into consideration three “grammatical domains” - semantics, syntax and pragmatics – and for a media form to become distinct, it must offer different narrative on one of those levels. Semantics is the study of story, and so a medium might create a different plot structure. With syntax, it is all about interactivity, and so there might be new ways in which the user interprets the plot. Finally, pragmatics is to do with levels of human participation in the story, and so there might be different amounts of user involvement.
(Ryan, M. 2003)

Using this theory, television and film are certainly their own media, but film is probably closer to television than any other media. The two are certainly different on the semantic level, as mentioned earlier with narrative structure. They also differ when it comes to syntax, as a modern television series with a multi-layered structure, such as ‘Lost’, would be interpreted in a different way to the more straightforward film form. The pragmatics, or the amount of user interaction, is also changing with the new levels of television writing being reached in series like ‘Lost’. This point is also made by American author and university lecturer Jason Mittell in his book ‘Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television.’

“Narratively complex programming invites audiences to engage actively at the level of form as well, highlighting the conventionality of traditional television and exploring the possibilities of both innovative long-term storytelling and creative intraepisode discursive strategies.”

(Mittell, J. 2006 p.18)

From what has been found out, it seems that watching a modern television series is more like an old fashioned trip to the cinema. This is due to the new ways that television is being received, allowing viewers to watch many episodes in one sitting, this is bringing film and television form closer together. There are also much higher budgets in current American drama series’ like ‘The Sopranos’, ‘Deadwood’ and ‘Lost’, which makes them visually more like films. However, the latest generation of television writers have discovered a new dimension of narrative complexity only possible in the medium of television, which is making it not only better, but also very different to film.



References

Memento. 2000. [DVD: Region 2 encoding]. NOLAN, C.

Pulp Fiction. 1994. [DVD: Region 2 encoding]. TARANTINO, Q.

Deadwood. 2004. [DVD: Region 2 encoding]. MILCH, D.

Lost. 2004. [DVD: Region 2 encoding]. ABRAMS, J.J.

The Sopranos. 1999. [DVD: Region 2 encoding]. CHASE, D.

The Simpsons. 1989. [DVD: Region 2 encoding]. GROENING, M. ep.1F14, 1994.

ALLRATH, G., Gymnich, M., & Surkamp, C. 2005. Narrative Strategies in Television Series [PDF]
http://www.palgrave.com/pdfs/1403996059.pdf

LEROY,E. 2007. Better programming, new technology lighting up TV. [WWW]http://www.uwire.com/content//topae031207003.html
RYAN,M. 2003. On Defining Narrative Media. [WWW]http://www.imageandnarrative.be/mediumtheory/marielaureryan.htm
MITTELL, J. 2006. Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television [PDF]
https://seguecommunity.middlebury.edu/index.php?&site=jmittell&section=978&page=3072&action=site WISEMAN,E. 2007. TV Quick!. [WWW]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/features/story/0,,2018909,00.html WAKEFIELD,J. 2007. Millions turn to net for pirate TV. [WWW]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6151118.stm BIDDLECOMBE,E. 2007. Online TV a reality in the US. [WWW]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6176906.stm KATZ, E., BLUMLER, J., & GUREVITCH, M. (1974). The Uses of Mass Communications: Current Perspectives on Gratifications Research. Beverly Hills & London: Sage Publications. McQUAIL, D. (2000). McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory. 4th edn. London: Sage Publications.