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Serialization in Popular Culture PDF

223 Pages·2014·2.288 MB·English
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Serialization in Popular Culture “This collection p resents an ambitious and original intervention in the fi eld of seriality studies. It captures the workings of serialization as a core prin- ciple of modernity by taking stock of a wide range of medial formats and narrative and non-narrative confi gurations from the nineteenth century to the present time.” — Ruth Mayer, University of Hanover, Germany From prime-time television shows and graphic novels to the development of computer game expansion packs, the recent explosion of popular serials has provoked renewed interest in the history and economics of serialization, as well as the impact of this cultural form on readers, viewers, and gamers. In this volume, contributors—literary scholars, media theorists, and specialists in comics, graphic novels, and digital culture—examine the economic, nar- ratological, and social effects of serials from the nineteenth to the twenty- fi rst century and offer some predictions of where the form will go from here. Rob Allen is a lecturer in the Department of English Language and Culture at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Thijs van den Berg is a lecturer in the Department of English Language and Culture at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com 33 Branding Post-Communist 40 Sport Beyond Television Nations The Internet, Digital Media and Marketizing National Identities the Rise of Networked Media in the “New” Europe Sport Edited by Nadia Kaneva Brett Hutchins and David Rowe 34 Science Fiction Film, Television, and Adaptation 41 Cultural Technologies Across the Screens The Shaping of Culture in Edited by J. P. Telotte and Media and Society Gerald Duchovnay Edited by Göran Bolin 35 Art Platforms and Cultural 42 Violence and the Pornographic Production on the Internet Imaginary Olga Goriunova The Politics of Sex, Gender, and Aggression in Hardcore 36 Queer Representation, Visibility, Pornography and Race in American Film Natalie Purcell and Television Melanie E.S. Kohnen 43 Ambiguities of Activism Alter-Globalism and the 37 Artifi cial Culture Imperatives of Speed Identity, Technology, and Bodies Ingrid M. Hoofd Tama Leaver 44 Generation X Goes 38 Global Perspectives on Tarzan Global From King of the Jungle to Mapping a Youth Culture International Icon in Motion Edited by Annette Wannamaker Christine Henseler and Michelle Ann Abate 45 Forensic Science in 39 Studying Mobile Media Contemporary Cultural Technologies, Mobile American Popular Communication, and the iPhone Culture Edited by Larissa Hjorth, Jean Gender, Crime, and Science Burgess, and Ingrid Richardson Lindsay Steenberg 46 Moral Panics, Social Fears, and 55 Transnational Horror Across the Media Visual Media Historical Perspectives Fragmented Bodies Edited by Siân Nicholas and Tom Edited by Dana Och and O’Malley Kirsten Strayer 47 De-convergence in Global 56 International Perspectives Media Industries on Chicana/o Studies Dal Yong Jin “This World is My Place” Edited by Catherine Leen and 48 Performing Memory in Art and Niamh Thornton Popular Culture Edited by Liedeke Plate and 57 Comics and the Senses Anneke Smelik A Multisensory Approach to Comics and Graphic 49 Reading Beyond the Book Novels The Social Practices of Ian Hague Contemporary Literary Culture Danielle Fuller and DeNel 58 Popular Culture in Rehberg Sedo Africa The Episteme of the 50 A Social History of Everyday Contemporary Democratic Media Edited by Stephanie Newell and Jesse Drew Onookome Okome 51 Digital Media Sport 59 Transgender Experience Technology, Power and Culture in Place, Ethnicity, and the Network Society Visibility Edited by Brett Hutchins and Edited by Chantal Zabus and David Rowe David Coad 52 Barthes’ Mythologies Today 60 Radio’s Digital Dilemma Readings of Contemporary Culture Broadcasting in the Twenty-First Edited by Pete Bennett and Century Julian McDougall John Nathan Anderson 53 Beauty, Violence, Representation 61 Documentary’s Awkward Edited by Lisa A. Dickson and Turn Maryna Romanets Cringe Comedy and Media Spectatorship 54 Public Media Management Jason Middleton for the Twenty-First Century Creativity, Innovation, and 62 Serialization in Popular Interaction Culture Edited by Michał Głowacki and Edited by Rob Allen & Thijs Lizzie Jackson van den Berg This page intentionally left blank Serialization in Popular Culture Edited by Rob Allen & Thijs van den Berg First published 2014 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identifi ed as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Serialization in popular culture / edited by Rob Allen & Thijs van den Berg. pages cm. — (Routledge research in cultural and media studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Mass media and culture. 2. Serial publications. I. Allen, Rob, 1976– editor of publication. II. Berg, Thijs van den, 1977– editor of publication. P94.6.S464 2014 302.23—dc23 2013040878 ISBN: 978-0-415-70426-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-76215-8 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents Foreword ix CHRISTOPH LINDNER Introduction 1 ROB ALLEN AND THIJS VAN DEN BERG PART I Victorian Serials 1 The Unruliness of Serials in the Nineteenth Century (and in the Digital Age) 11 MARK W. TURNER 2 “Pause You Who Read This”: Disruption and the Victorian Serial Novel 33 ROB ALLEN 3 “ Split [. . .] Peas”: Mrs Beeton and Domestic Time, Decomposed 47 MARIA DAMKJÆR PART II Serialization on Screen 4 The Logic of the Line Segment: Continuity and Discontinuity in the Serial-Queen Melodrama 65 SHANE DENSON 5 “ Is It True Blondes Have More Fun?”: Mad Men and the Mechanics of Serialization 80 J OYCE GOGGIN viii Contents 6 The Walking Dead : Quality Television, Transmedia Serialization and Zombies 91 DAN HASSLER-FOREST 7 Ingmar Bergman, Showrunner 106 SEAN O’SULLIVAN PART III Serialization in Comic Books and Graphic Novels 8 Serialization and Displacement in Graphic Narrative 125 JASON DITTMER 9 The Issues Issue: A Series of Thoughts on Seriality in Daniel Clowes’ Eightball 141 A NGELA SZCZEPANIAK PART IV Digital Serialization 10 The Sense of an Ending: The Computer Game Fallout 3 as a Serial Fiction 157 ALISTAIR BROWN 11 Circling the Infi nite Loop, One Edit at a Time: Seriality in W ikipedia and the Encyclopedic Urge 170 ERINÇ SALOR 12 The Serialization Game: Computer Hardware and the Serial Production of Video Games 184 THIJS VAN DEN BERG List of Contributors 201 Index 205 Foreword Christoph Lindner THE SERIAL DRIVE Serialization is an endemic feature of our twenty-fi rst-century, hyper- mediated world. The seriality of contemporary, globalized culture is per- haps most visible in the sphere of popular media, where television shows such as Lost (2004–2010), The Sopranos (1999–2007), M ad Men (2007–), Breaking Bad (2008–2013) and The Wire (2002–2008), to name just a few, have not only inaugurated the return of complex narrative, but also recon- ditioned viewing publics for extended, immersive serial experiences. The rhythmic, durational logic of the serial, however, extends far beyond what some critics are calling “quality television” (Jancovich and Lyons) to many other areas of creative practice and cultural production. We see the logic of the serial, for instance, in the rhetoric of the update sur- rounding computer software and hardware design; it increasingly pervades the packaging and presentation of the news, including its cyclical dissemi- nation; and it informs artistic responses to mass culture in works ranging from early pop-art innovations like Andy Warhol’s iconic silk-screen print- ing to more recent aesthetic interventions such as Damian Hirst’s lucrative series of color dot paintings (which includes hundreds of interrelating works controversially produced under quasi-industrial conditions by a coterie of assistants). These are only a few examples, and if we widen the scope fur- ther to consider the franchise mania gripping contemporary Hollywood or even the progressive algorithmic narrativization of social media, it becomes clear that serialization has become much more than a trend in contempo- rary cultural practice. The drive to serialize is now a compulsion, perhaps an addiction. Of course, serialization itself is nothing new—even if it has achieved new levels of cultural embedding and new forms of technologized expres- sion. As this book rightly reminds us from the outset, we owe the phenom- enon of the serial to Victorian England, where the rise of mass production,

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