TV Theory- Postmodernism TV

Twin Peaks: (Two seasons: 1990- 1991)

-Created by film director David Lynch and TV crime genre writer Mark frost for ABC network.

-regarded by critics as one of the most innovative and influential mainstream network programmes of modern TV era.

How can we define experimental?

-Challenges and/or subverts genre codes and conventions.

-Innovations in stylistic presentation (mise en scene, editing, etc.)

-Innovations in narrative (how the story is told: structure and time).

Conventional narrative formats:

-Episodic series- usually long-running (13 or more episodes), primetime, self-contained storylines and closed resolution within each show (e.g., crime procedurals like CSI or sci-fi shows like Doctor Who)

-Continuous serial (soap opera)- traditionally daytime, open-ended storylines with cliff-hangers.

-Episodic serial (miniseries)- short-run drama (more than six hours in two or more parts) which combine the closed resolution of the episodic series with the ongoing multi-arc strands of the soap opera (e.g., roots)

-Sequential series (Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice)- development of the episodic series format which run narrative arcs.

Twin Peaks narrative format:

-First season was short eight hour run similar to episodic serial or miniseries.

-Episodically threaded narrative and cliff-hanger finale of the sequential series (co-creator Mark Frost worked on pioneering police drama series, Hill Street Blues)

-Open-ended multi-character/multi-plotlines of the continuous serial or soap opera (Lynch said of Twin Peaks in a 2014 interview: 'It is a soap opera')

Genre hybridity:

Crime Genre:

-Episodic

-Forensic rationality

-Central detective character

-Crime resolution and narrative closure

Soap Genre:

-Continuing

-Emotional melodrama

-Multiple character arcs

-Crime may take weeks, months or years to be resolved.

Postmodernism:

-Ideologically disruptive.

-Deconstructs form, often in playful way.

-may use elements of high and low culture (usually through homage or pastiche)

-Meta-references or self-reflexivity (intertextuality, self-referentiality)

Mise en scene:

-Pacific North-West small town setting (rather than conventional crime genre urban city locations)

-Costumes, make-up and set design evoke 1950s (though series set in cotemporary timeframe)

-Unconventional lighting and staging (flickering neon in autopsy room, objects framed in long close-ups for dramatic effect)