“Television Culture”: literature, television and sociocultural influence

Television as a writerly medium

4Claire Cornillon emphasizes the transmedial nature of television in her analysis of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (Internet, 2008). This is of course already present in the nature of the fiction, a web series: the titular vlog (video-blog) becomes the contemporary version of epistolary narrative, and the episode is no longer dependent on imposed network criteria, but rather recreates serial storytelling for its own sake. Well-known writer / showrunner / director Joss Whedon applies serial storytelling and the stage musical to the premise of the comic book, emphasizing the artifice in each of these types of fiction – only to go on to recount their collapse, making the end of the series all the more poignant. In so doing, Whedon ultimately foregrounds the importance of television as a writerly object, which draws from all sources.

5Vanessa Loubet-Poette takes advantage of her reading of Sons of Anarchy (F/X, 2008-2014) to make clear the attachment the series has to text as such, through narration, through the diary written by a recently deceased father for his son, the protagonist, which then inspires him in turn to write to his own children. The idea of writing as a means of transmission through the generations suggests a way for television, one of our newer arts, to connect to its own version of tradition, linking back to the eighteenth century novel’s attempts at realism through found manuscripts of letters and journals. It may be that television relates to this older form of expression of the individual experience (rather than that of nobles around him), though of course the loose allegory of the series is of our protagonist Jax as Hamlet, dealing with the death of his father and his stepfather as head of the motorcycle gang. Loubet-Poette makes much of the importance of these texts in the narrative, but also of the paradoxical relationship between text and character: these are forbidden, incomplete texts – but which may reveal a truth otherwise unknown. They initially are the impetus of all the action, but slowly fade away to allow the narrative to predominate. If the diary writing of the series eschews predeterminism, as Vanessa Loubet-Poette posits, the same can undoubtedly be said of the TV series, which both acknowledges its textual predecessors and ultimately frees itself from them in its closing moments.

6Florent Favard’s work on Battlestar Galactica (Sci Fi, 2003-08), the most recent iteration of Dr Who (BBC1, 2005-) and Babylon 5 (PTEN, 1994-97, TNT, 1998) explores how science fiction’s version of a quest narrative with an unknown but supposedly pre-determined ending relates to its reliance on both intra- et extra-diegetic texts. Flavard relates this promised ending to the Genettian idea that a novel is written from its intended conclusion, essentially an impossibility in the American television industry. This paradox between text and series, seriality and predetermined endings seems to be broached by Dr Who’s use of the Pandorica myth, River Song’s notebook, and Amy Pond’s novel, where writing causes the future to happen, in a mise en abyme of the act of screenwriting. Likewise, the Pythia Scrolls, Battlestar Galactica’s Hitchcockian macguffin which drives the quest forward, but allows sufficient leeway for innovation in a unknown both within the series and within the show’s production constraints, while the sacred texts of Babylon 5 mimic the series’ reliance on the show “Bible”, and its fidelity to its own mythology. It is these sacred texts, Flavard suggests, that ultimately allow the series to straddle the genres of fantasy and science fiction.

7Benoît Verdier’s discussion of French series Ainsi soient-ils (Arte, 2012-15) discusses the extent to which the sacred texts of Christianity are systematically criticized and distanced from the characters, be it through cultural constraints (only men have access to the Word), critique of content, or simply ignorance of said content; in so doing, the series ultimately challenges the idea of a source text, insisting instead on television’s faculty for reinterpretation (notably through serial storytelling). Though this is a series constructed around the sacred text, just like the religion it depicts, Verdier suggests that both are readings of an original text, where the homily serves not just as an interpretation of the text, but of the circumstances in the lives of the character (and in the structure of the narrative).

8Charles Joseph and Delphine Letort too suggest the complexity of the relationship between television and literature through the profanation of sacred texts. The Leftovers (HBO, 2014-17) is primarily an adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s novel, which itself seeks to desacralize both Scripture and its popular use in Rapture literature like the Left Behind series, set in a world where 2% of the population disappear without any justification, religious or otherwise. The series appears to go a step further: by associating even the first season, which hews most closely to its source text, with other literary influences, the show creators recreate the series, rewriting the source text and dramatizing its plot (both through the change of medium and through the heightening of conflict in the television version) just as it has rewritten its own sources. Using diverse texts like Yeats, the legend of Saint Hubertus, or a specific issue of National Geographic, the series posits its adaptation as both “readerly and producerly”, for creators and viewers, creating new intertexts in its small screen iteration.

9Ultimately, all of these interpretations of sacred texts end by questioning the possibility of an immutable, immovable text: as a postmodern art form, whose incremental nature is necessarily fluid until completed, it is perhaps inevitable that television would mistrust this sort of metanarrative.

Beyond adaptation, beyond television: Allusion and transmediality in serial fiction

10The chiasmus present in the bilingual title of this special issue of TV/Series, “Literature and series/séries et littérature” is no accident; rather, it signifies a refusal to create a hierarchy between the two media evoked. Rather than see literature as a yardstick by which adaptations must be measured, or as a “high-culture” inspiration for the popular media of television, this collection seeks to show the intricate and complex relationship between the written text and the small screen, each polysemic, mutable forms that influence one another as well as their readers/viewers.

11Thus in the final part of this special issue, our authors insist on the multiplicity of source texts in series generally considered adaptations: though the titles of shows like Sleepy Hollow (FOX, 2013-17) and Game of Thrones may initially cause motivated viewers to go back to the short story by Washington Irving or the series of novels by George R.R. Martin, Julie Richard and Justine Breton suggest that these series are not just transformative, but palimpsestic works, where Sleepy Hollow adapts not just Irving’s tale, but Tim Burton’s feature film adaptation, and indeed the Biblical Book of Revelations. By proposing its protagonist, Ichabod Crane as a master adapter – whose attempts to adapt to the present remind us of the distance from the ostensible source text, and inversely whose investigations or translations allow the 21^st century to make sense of relics of the past – the series expands understanding of what adaptation may be.

12Likewise, Justine Breton suggests that the contemporary success of HBO’s Game of Thrones may in fact hide a sustained allusion to what is arguably the founding myth for the fantasy genre. Arthurian legend was rewritten in The Once and Future King for a younger audience, with what Breton posits are more clearly didactic and political aims. By focusing on this intertextuality, she offers not only a possible winner to this game of thrones, highlighting bastard Jon Snow’s “Wart”-like characteristics (and thus his imminent transformation into a Targaryen ruler, much as Wart becomes King Arthur), but she also offers a new perspective onto the driving narrative of the series’ sprawling epic storytelling.

16In a world where storytelling is increasingly transmedial and multiplatform, analyzing the interactions between two of the world’s oldest and newest media provides the means to better understand their commonalities and specificities, but also to pinpoint the complexity of narrative fiction as a whole. The variety of texts analyzed here, and the plethora of intertextual references they use, imply that this new Golden Age is not just for television (or “post” television), but for storytelling as a whole. As our appetite for narrative grows, one could argue that the complexity of those narratives grows as well – and so I can only conclude this introduction to our special issue by wishing readers / viewers bon appétit for the Pantagruelian feast that follows.

17This special issue contains one of Isabelle Périer’s last published articles, as she passed away shortly before publication. We would like to dedicate this issue to her.