Serialization in Popular Culture

223 Pages·2014·2.288 MB·English

by  Rob Allen, Thijs van den Berg

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
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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
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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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,