Narrative Strategies in Television Series

Narrative Strategies in Television Series Edited by Gaby Allrath and Marion Gymnich Narrative Strategies in Television...

Author: Gaby Allrath | Marion Gymnich

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Narrative Strategies in Television Series Edited by Gaby Allrath and Marion Gymnich

Narrative Strategies in Television Series

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Narrative Strategies in Television Series Edited by

Gaby Allrath and

Marion Gymnich

Editorial matter and selection © Gaby Allrath and Marion Gymnich 2005 Individual chapters © the contributors 2005 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–9605–3 ISBN-10: 1–4039–9605–9 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Narrative strategies in television series / edited by Gaby Allrath and Marion Gymnich. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–9605–9 (cloth) 1. Television serials. 2. Narration (Rhetoric) I. Allrath, Gaby, 1971– II. Gymnich, Marion. PN1992.8.S4N38 2005 791.45′6—dc22 2005043428 10 14

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

List of Figures

vii

Acknowledgements

viii

Notes on the Contributors

ix

1 Introduction: Towards a Narratology of TV Series Gaby Allrath, Marion Gymnich and Carola Surkamp

1

Part I Beyond Realism: Authentifying and Subjectifying Narrative Strategies 2 ‘Today is going to be the longest day of my life’: A Narratological Analysis of 24 Elisabeth Birk and Hanne Birk

47

3 Exploring Inner Spaces: Authoritative Narratives and Subjective Worlds in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise Marion Gymnich

62

4 Animated Cartoons and Other Innovative Forms of Presenting Consciousness on Screen: The German TV Series Berlin, Berlin Carola Surkamp

80

Part II Multi-layered Characters, Multi-layered Narratives 5 ‘She’s filled with secrets’: Hidden Worlds, Embedded Narratives and Character Doubling in Twin Peaks Janine Matthees

99

6 ‘This is not happening’: The Multi-layered Ontology of The X-Files Klaudia Seibel

114

7 Life in Doppelgangland: Innovative Character Conception and Alternate Worlds in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel Gaby Allrath

132

v

vi Contents

Part III Narrating Gender/Gendering Narratives 8 Serial Gossip: Gossip as Theme and Narrative Strategy in Sex and the City Esther Fritsch

153

9 Ellen Degenarrated: Breaking the Heteronormative Narrative Contract Dirk Schulz

168

Part IV (Re)Narrating History 10 History and Biography in Die zweite Heimat: Narrative Strategies to Represent the Past Sandra Heinen and Stefan Deines

191

11 History: The Sitcom, England: The Theme Park – Blackadder’s Retrovisions as Historiographic Meta-TV Eckart Voigts-Virchow

211

Index

229

List of Figures 1.1 1.2 11.1 11.2

Auditory and visual channels in audiovisual media The series–serial continuum Narrative structure of TV sitcom TV sitcom stereotypes

vii

2 6 215 222

Acknowledgements Needless to say, this book, like any other, would not exist without the support and encouragement of a large number of people. Among those to whom we are indebted, we would first like to thank Jon L. Erickson for his meticulous proofreading of a substantial part of the manuscript. We really appreciate his enormously helpful comments on language and content. We are also very grateful to Wiebke Blumenthal, Manfred Jahn, Janine Matthees, Inge Molitor-Nehl, Klaudia Seibel, Carola Surkamp and Sara B. Young, who read and commented on parts of the volume, both in the early draft stages and in the final versions. Many other people have helped in various ways: by stimulating discussion, by lending us tapes and DVDs, and by bearing with our obsession with TV series. Thank you to Dorothee Birke, Bertha Chin, Ulrike Fischer, Stefanie Hoth, Elke Klaaßen, Kathrin Ruhl, Ralph Seibel, Nadyne Stritzke and Angela Sumner. Our thanks are also due to Ansgar Nünning, who first introduced us to the study of narrative and encouraged us to contribute to the project of broadening the horizon of narrative theory. Our work would have been much more difficult without the efforts of numerous people who have compiled websites providing episode guides, transcripts, and other helpful information on TV series – carry on your good work! Jill Lake, our editor, and Melanie Blair, both at Palgrave Macmillan, have been a pleasure to work with. And, finally, we would like to thank the anonymous reader who recommended our book for publication. GABY ALLRATH

MARION GYMNICH

viii

Notes on the Contributors Gaby Allrath studied English, German and History at Cologne/Germany, Hull/UK, and Giessen/Germany. In 2003, she received a PhD from the University of Giessen for a thesis on a feminist-narratological reconceptualization of unreliable narration. Her publications include articles on narrative theory, gender theory, gender and narrative in television series, and on the English nineteenth and twentieth-century novel. From 1998 to 2003, she was a teaching and research assistant at the English department of the University of Giessen. At present, she is working as a project manager for a marketing agency. Elisabeth Birk completed her studies of German Language and Literature and Philosophy with a Maîtrise, a State Examination, and a Diplôme d’Études Approfondies (Universities of Toulouse and Strasbourg, France, and Saarbruecken, Germany). From 1999 to 2001, she was in charge of a research project on the acquisition of writing skills in German and Japanese at the University of Aachen, Germany. Since 2001 she has been working as a teaching and research assistant at the Department of Linguistics in Aachen. Her research interests include philosophy of language, semiology and media studies. Her PhD project is a comparative study of rules and samples in Goodman and Wittgenstein. Hanne Birk studied English, German and Philosophy at the universities of Freiburg/Germany and Brock/Canada. From 2001 to 2002 she worked as a teaching and research assistant at the English department of the University of Giessen, Germany. She has been a research assistant at the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Memory Cultures’ (University of Giessen) since 2003 and is currently working on a PhD on ‘remembering’ in contemporary novels by Maori (New Zealand), Aborigine (Australia) and First Nations (Canada) authors. Her research interests include postcolonial studies, narrative theory, theories of memory and metaphor theory. Stefan Deines is teaching and research assistant at the Philosophy department of the University of Frankfurt am Main/Germany. His areas of interest include Critical Theory, the relation between hermeneutics and poststructuralism, aesthetics, and the philosophy of history. He has ix

x Notes on the Contributors

co-edited Historisierte Subjekte – Subjektivierte Historie: Zur Verfügbarkeit und Unverfügbarkeit von Geschichte (2003). Esther Fritsch teaches at the University of Cologne. She studied in Cologne, Glasgow, and Rochester, New York, and holds a PhD from the University of Cologne. She has published articles on ethnic writing and detective novels, and her study Reading Gossip: Funktionen von Klatsch in Romanen ethnischer amerikanischer Autorinnen was published in 2004. Her research interests include Native American, African American and Caribbean literatures, postcolonial theory and cultural studies. Marion Gymnich studied English, German and Slavic Studies at the University of Cologne, where she worked as a teaching and research assistant in the English department from 1994 to 2002. She holds a PhD in English literature from the University of Cologne. Since 2002 she has been coordinator of the International PhD Programme ‘Literary and Cultural Studies’ at the University of Giessen. She has published numerous articles on women’s writing, postcolonial literature, narrative theory, and on the interface between literature and linguistics as well as a study on concepts of identity in novels by twentieth-century British women writers. In addition, she has co-edited three collections of articles. Sandra Heinen studied English and German Literature and Media Studies in Cologne/Germany, Reading and Giessen/Germany and is currently working on a doctoral thesis on authorship in English Romanticism. She has written essays concerned with narrative strategies in film, television and literature and co-edited Krisen des Verstehens um 1800 (2004). Janine Matthees has a Master’s degree in English and German literature and language as well as English and American History from the University of Cologne. Her research interests include detective fiction, narrative theory and contemporary television. She is currently working as project manager at a marketing agency. Dirk Schulz has a degree in Philosophy, German Literature and English/ American Studies and is currently writing his PhD thesis on Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf and queer theory. He works for gender Inn, an online database for literature on Gender Studies and Women’s Studies, and gender forum, an electronic journal. In addition, he teaches English/ American literature and culture at the University of Cologne. His fields

Notes on the Contributors xi

of interest are cultural studies, gender studies with an emphasis on queer theory, poststructuralist theory, as well as semiotics. Klaudia Seibel read English, Spanish and Economics at the University of Giessen/Germany and at the University of St Andrews/UK. From 1998 to 2003 she worked as a teaching and research assistant in the English department of the University of Giessen. She has published on multiperspectivity, hyperfiction and J.R.R. Tolkien and is currently working on her doctoral thesis on hybrid genres in the contemporary British novel. Carola Surkamp received her PhD in 2002 for a thesis on multiperspectival narration in English novels from Victorianism to Modernism. She studied English, Spanish and French language and literature at the University of Cologne/Germany, Nantes/France and Giessen/Germany. From 1997 to 2002, she was a teaching and research assistant at the English department of the University of Giessen. She currently works as lecturer at the University of Giessen in the department of Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Her research interests include narratology, drama and film theories, and their implications for the teaching of literature. Eckart Voigts-Virchow is currently Visiting Professor at the University of Vienna. He also taught English Literature and Cultural Studies at the Universities of Giessen, Frankfurt/Main, Madison and Milwaukee. He has published widely on contemporary drama, film and media studies, and Dennis Potter. His collection of essays on heritage film, Janespotting and Beyond: Recent British Heritage Retrovisions (Narr), was published in 2004. Both his post-doctoral dissertation (on metaphors of technology in Victorian industrial novels and proto-SF) and his Introduction to Media Studies (Klett) are forthcoming.


1 Introduction: Towards a Narratology of TV Series Gaby Allrath, Marion Gymnich and Carola Surkamp

The narrativity of TV and a narratology of TV series As ‘the principal storyteller in contemporary American society’ (Kozloff 1992: 67) – as well as in many other contemporary societies – television is replete with narrative forms and genres. It is not only ‘the sitcom, the action series, the cartoon, the soap opera, the miniseries, the madefor-TV movie’ (ibid.: 68) that clearly show narrative traits. Even types of programmes which appear to be far less likely as narratives – such as advertisements, music videos or nature documentaries – often tell a story, though these stories admittedly vary considerably in terms of how elaborate they are: A commercial for pain relievers may rely on comparison and argument, or an ad for a car may be abstract and descriptive, but a vast number of advertisements offer a compressed narrative exemplifying the products’ beneficial effects. Music videos often enact the storyline of the song’s lyrics. Nature documentaries tend to follow the story of the animal’s life cycle or of the seasonal progression in a geographical area. (Ibid.: 68–9) These different types of programmes depict series of causally connected events and thus tell a story. Given the fact that a remarkable number of TV programmes can be seen as narratives, one can assume that narratology provides an extremely useful toolkit for television studies.1 Most of the categories and concepts which have been developed in the various branches of narratology were designed primarily for the analysis of written narratives, however. The application of the narratological toolkit to other media necessitates 1

2 Towards a Narratology of TV Series

both a modification and an extension of the set of tools. In a number of publications Seymour Chatman (1978, 1980) has pioneered such an approach, applying narratological categories to the medium film. He has demonstrated that many narratological concepts can profitably be applied to audiovisual media, but that, in order to do justice to the forms of presentation in these media, media-specific codes and their correlation with narratological concepts have to be explored.2 One of the defining characteristics of narratives in audiovisual media is their use of ‘two information tracks’ (Chatman 1999: 318), a soundtrack and a visual track. Chatman (1990: 134) argues that the ‘cinematic narrator’, and thus presumably the narrator of television narratives, ‘is the composite of a large and complex variety of communication devices’; he offers the following diagram (Figure 1.1) to ‘demonstrate something of the multiplexity’ (ibid.) of audiovisual narration. The juxtaposition of two information tracks gives rise to the possibility of a tension between visual and sound codes, since the soundtrack ‘can either corroborate the visuals or undercut them ironically’ (Chatman 1999: 321). The relationship

Auditory channel

Kind

Noise

Voice

Point of origin

Off-screen

Music

Earshot

On-screen

Commentative

Visual channel

Nature of image

Actor

Appearance

Location

Performance

Distance

Figure 1.1 Source:

Treatment of image

Prop

Cinematography

Editing

Camera Colour Lighting Mise-en-scène

Type

Straight cut

Fade

Angle

Movement

Auditory and visual channels in audiovisual media

Adapted from Chatman (1990: 135).

Rhythm

Etc.

Gaby Allrath, Marion Gymnich and Carola Surkamp 3

between the two tracks is thus a fundamental consideration for any narratology of audiovisual media. The application of narratological concepts to TV series also involves considerations which go beyond dealing with the binary structure of the information track. TV narratives differ from other types of narratives, for example, by virtue of the fact that they are by definition both preceded and followed by other programmes. According to Raymond Williams (1975), TV programmes are part of a ‘flow’, a continuous sequence of programmes. This attitude has led to a certain reluctance to engage in an analysis of individual TV shows, as Kristin Thompson (2003: 9) observes. The concept of the flow, however, certainly does not adequately describe everyone’s viewing habits, since ‘some viewers do switch on their sets to watch specific programs and switch them off at the end’ (ibid.: 11). A further difference between TV series and most other narratives is the fact that series are by definition ongoing narratives. This leads to a number of formal characteristics, such as a lack of definitive closure, the occurrence of cliff-hangers, and a tendency towards minimal exposition. This volume does not try to develop anything like a fully-fledged narratology of TV series; instead, by making use of the narratological toolkit and by bringing in the formal and institutional characteristics of the audiovisual medium television, we will first introduce some basic categories and concepts for a narratological analysis of TV narratives in the present chapter. The other contributions look closely at some American, British and German TV series in order to explore both the wide range of narrative forms TV series have made use of in recent years, and the complex interplay between form and content. The formal techniques employed in TV series will thus not only be considered as structural features, but as narrative modes which are meaning-producing. The contributions aim at demonstrating that the study of TV series stands to benefit enormously from the application of the narratological toolkit to the audiovisual medium of TV and from the current trend in narratology to move beyond its structuralist beginnings towards a contextualization. The various ‘new’ or ‘postclassical’ narratologies have devised approaches to the study of narratives which take into consideration diverse cultural categories (such as gender or ethnicity) as well as the process of constructing fictional characters and fictional worlds in the reception.3 They take both the semantic content of narrative forms and the contexts of their production and reception into account, thus trying to avoid the neglect of these features that is characteristic of traditional narratological approaches and that has led to a widespread


rejection of what is often seen as narratological formalism in cultural studies and media studies. The analysis of recent TV series is of particular narratological interest, since during the 1990s TV series increasingly began to employ experimental narrative techniques like multiperspectivity and unreliable narration as well as innovative functionalizations of voice-over narration and of audiovisual presentation of consciousness. One can also quite often observe such experimental techniques as intramediality, intermediality and metafictionality. Many of the narrative forms which have come to be used in contemporary television series have been made possible by technological innovations. Present-day TV very much relies on the computerized editing and manipulation of the visual and auditory tracks. Technological innovations not only give rise to such effects as the morphing of the vampires’ faces in Buffy the Vampire Slayer; they also allow storytelling techniques like the insertion of digitally produced sequences of the kind seen in Ally McBeal. The technological possibilities that production teams of TV series have at their disposal today, however, are not the only reason for the development of a new narrative style. The emergence of what Robin Nelson (2000: 111) refers to as ‘a new affective order’ also appears to play an important role in the replacement of more traditional narratives by experimental ones which is currently underway in audiovisual media. According to Nelson, who sees the changing aesthetics of TV series as part of broader ‘cultural shifts’ (ibid.), [t]he new affective order involves a consciousness informed by: short, but intense, sound-vision bytes; non-linearity (in contrast with linear narrative); an information overload; constellatory access to diverse materials; bricolage as its principle of composition; reception- (as much as production-) driven aesthetic; polysemy, in respect of meanings; diversity, in respect of pleasures. (Ibid.: 112) The ‘new affective order’ outlined by Nelson clearly bears the imprint of the aesthetics of postmodernism, in particular of a tendency to favour ‘modes of thinking and representation which emphasise discontinuity, fragmentation and eclecticism’ (Casey et al. 2002: 170). The development of new technologies and the emergence of a new aesthetics are interdependent processes, which jointly have turned the 1990s into a period of major transformations of serialized TV narratives.


‘Series’ vs ‘serials’: a categorization of TV narratives and its shortcomings A tendency towards serialization can be observed in many fictional and non-fictional TV programmes; in fact, serialization is often seen as one of the characteristics of TV in general. John Ellis (1982: 145), for example, points out that ‘[a]fter all, the first true use of the open-ended series format would seem to be the news bulletin, endlessly updating events and never synthesizing them’. One of the most common distinctions one encounters in discussions of fictional TV narratives that tell a potentially endless story, broadcast in daily or weekly episodes, is that between the ‘series’ and the ‘serial’. This distinction is based on the degree of closure individual episodes reach: ‘Series refers to those shows whose characters and setting are recycled, but the story concludes in each individual episode. By contrast, in a serial the story and discourse do not come to a conclusion during an episode, and the threads are picked up again after a given hiatus’ (Kozloff 1992: 91). The distinction between the series, where ‘[t]he outcome of any one episode had no effect on later ones, and it made little difference in what order they were run’ (Thompson 2003: 59), and the serial is far from being clearcut, however. Although one can quite easily find prototypical examples of the serial (long-running daytime soaps) and of the series (crime series like Murder She Wrote), there are also many ‘hybrid’ forms, that is serialized narratives which combine features of series and serials. Sarah Kozloff (1992: 92) argues that already in the second half of the 1980s a blurring of the two categories was underway. Kozloff’s observation certainly also applies to many serialized TV narratives which have appeared in recent years. In Ally McBeal, for example, the individual episodes typically focus on a lawsuit that achieves closure (a verdict) within the episode. This aspect of the show clearly places it in the tradition of the series. But Ally McBeal also deals with the relationships between the lawyers working at the Boston law firm Cage & Fish, which provides storylines that continue well beyond individual episodes and even individual seasons4 and establish the continuity which is characteristic of a serial. A similar juxtaposition of episodic closure and a lack thereof can be observed in The X-Files: in this show episodes often focus on one particular mystery, which is solved within the episode, albeit usually not unequivocally. But there are also episodes which are part of an overarching storyline (in particular the threat of an alien invasion and a government conspiracy trying to cover up this threat). Additionally,


Series Figure 1.2

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Va Bu

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Sh

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the development of the professional and personal relationships between the main characters plays a prominent role in The X-Files, thus establishing a continuity reminiscent of the serial. What was said above suggests that the traditional view of series and serial as binary opposites should be replaced by a conceptualization of the series and the serial as the extremes of a continuum: ‘The dominant form of TV drama today is a hybrid of the series and the serial, aspiring to the soap form’ (Nelson 2000: 111). An analysis of the degree of continuity of serialized TV narratives has to take into consideration such factors as whether overarching storylines are restricted to just a few episodes (for example many of Ally McBeal’s love affairs), to one season (for example the fight against one particular arch-enemy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer) or whether they transcend the season (for example The X-Files). Given the various types of continuity, a continuum between series and serials can be represented by the scale illustrated in Figure 1.2.

Serials The series–serial continuum

Due to the blurring of the boundaries between series and serials, we will use the term ‘series’ as an umbrella term encompassing the traditional series, serials, and all intermediate, hybrid forms.

Authors and viewers The question of authorship clearly distinguishes serialized TV narratives from narratives in the print media. While the latter are typically written by one author, TV series are generally written by several scriptwriters, co-authoring an episode or taking turns at writing episodes. Scriptwriters, moreover, share the creative responsibility with editors, sound directors, directors of photography, director(s), creator(s) and producer(s):


the notion that . . . any long-running series . . . can be said to have one ‘author’ may be an example of what Marshall McLuhan called ‘rearviewmirrorism’ – the application of outdated critical concepts based on the misguided application of the values of a print-based culture to the products of the electronic age. (Gregory 2000: 5) The creator and the producer are the most influential figures among the various ‘authors’ of a series. As Gregory (ibid.) points out, they are the ones ‘responsible for guiding and maintaining its overall “shape”’. The issue of authorship plays a less prominent role for the viewers of a TV show than it does for the readers of a book. As far as the average viewer is concerned, TV series even tend to be received as largely anonymous. Only the most dedicated fans of a particular show are likely to know who an episode was written or directed by and to draw any conclusions as to the episode’s content and/or structure from this information. Possible exceptions are episodes for which a famous guest-writer is responsible (such as The X-Files episodes ‘Chinga’ [5.10] written by Stephen King or ‘Kill Switch’ [5.11] and ‘First Person Shooter’ [7.13] by cyberfiction author William Gibson).5 In contrast to the scriptwriters, the creator or executive producer, who usually also writes at least some of the episodes himself/herself, may be known to a relatively large segment of the viewers. Regular viewers of The X-Files and Millennium are likely to be familiar with the name of Chris Carter, who created these mystery series, just as regular viewers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel in all likelihood know that the creator of these shows is Joss Whedon. The name of the creator of the first Star Trek series – Gene Roddenberry – is presumably even more widely known. The producer may be recognized by the viewers and may evoke expectations as to the ideological orientation of a show. A case in point is Aaron Spelling, producer of series like Dynasty, Beverly Hills, 90210, or Charmed, whose name signals to viewers that the programme’s politics will be rather conservative, for example in terms of the gender roles available to the characters. As far as their reception is concerned, TV series share certain features with both films and books; yet watching a TV series differs from the reading of fictional texts and the movie-going experience in significant ways. Watching TV can be situated between watching films and reading books with respect to the number of viewers participating in the reception process and the environment in which this process takes place: while books are usually read alone, feature films are normally watched in the company of other movie-goers, potentially making for a shared reaction. Television programmes are typically watched at home, either


alone or in the company of friends, family members, or flatmates. TV series are quite often the subject of collective reception, with groups meeting to watch their favourite series or at least discussing it regularly. There may even be an element of peer pressure involved in watching TV series, since the fact that friends, classmates, or colleagues watch a particular series is the reason many viewers start watching the same series. Dorothy Hobson (1989) has shown this phenomenon in her study of the reception of soap operas among female office workers in Birmingham, some of whom stated that they started watching a particular soap because their colleagues discussed it during lunch breaks. A crucial difference between watching TV and watching a film in the cinema is the significantly higher amount of distraction one can expect at home, as Nelson (2000: 113) points out: ‘Given the various attractions of the domestic space, viewers’ attention may be sporadic. Unlike at the theatre or the cinema, where audiences typically sit in a darkened space constructed to focus their attention on the play or film, most people are engaged in other activities whilst watching television.’ Watching TV also differs from reading a book or watching a film in the cinema in that each TV programme is aired at a specific, regular time. Unlike the reading of a book, which can take place at any time, or the viewing of a feature film, which, despite fixed times of presentation at the cinema, still leaves the movie-goer the choice between various screening times, the daily or weekly patterns of television series are meant to force viewers to integrate their viewing into their everyday life. One way to circumvent this, of course, is to videotape the programme in order to watch it at a more convenient time. Moreover, many successful TV series nowadays are available on video/DVD, freeing viewers from the fixed time of viewing. The availability of TV series on video/DVD also implies that viewers can watch the series without commercials, which changes the reception process in so far as it emphasizes the coherence of individual episodes. In addition, viewers can watch several episodes in a row, which to a certain extent counteracts the segmentation characteristic of the series. One can, however, assume that watching the episodes of a series at their original broadcasting time remains the default mode of reception. Videos and in particular DVDs frequently include additional material providing background information, such as interviews, deleted scenes, or a ‘making of’. In addition, many DVDs also offer viewers an alternative auditory track, featuring a commentary of the writer(s), director(s), or actor(s) of a given episode. These commentaries provide viewers with additional information about the production process, anecdotes, or


background knowledge about the series. This kind of information may have a certain impact on the reception process in that it influences which features viewers pay attention to in the show. A further important factor influencing the reception of television series is the viewers’ familiarity with previous episodes. Particularly for those series which have already been running for a number of years, the reception is considerably influenced by whether a viewer watches his/ her very first episode, whether s/he is an occasional viewer, whether s/he has seen the entire current season, or whether s/he is a long-standing fan who is familiar with long-term developments of characters and storyline. The fact that the viewers’ reception of TV series depends to a considerable extent on the amount of background knowledge they have access to can be illustrated by the following example: Viewers who have watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer just occasionally are presumably unable to assign meaning to Willow’s casual utterance ‘We’re still trying to de-rat Amy’ in ‘Consequences’ (3.15). If they have watched the show before, however, they are at least familiar with the fact that Willow is a witch – information that makes plausible the possibility of turning humans into rats (and vice versa) within the universe of the series. But only those who have followed the preceding episodes of the third season know that Amy, who also has powers of witchcraft, has transformed herself into a rat in order to escape from being burnt at the stake in ‘Gingerbread’ (3.11), and that Willow has been trying to reverse this process. Moreover, the episodes ‘Consequences’ and ‘Gingerbread’ are linked by the motif ‘transformation of a human being into a rat’ to the episodes ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’ (2.16), in which Buffy herself is turned into a rat by Amy, ‘Something Blue’ (4.09), in which ‘the Amy-rat’ is briefly transformed back into a girl, and ‘Smashed’ (6.09), in which Amy finally becomes human again for good. Despite these links, the functions of the motif differ significantly in each of the episodes, including coping with jealousy, means of escape, and the demonstration of a witch’s power. The links, moreover, provide longtime viewers with the satisfaction of having spotted the connections. The importance of background knowledge further depends on what kind of serialized narratives viewers are confronted with. A prototypical serial, such as a soap opera, necessitates a large amount of background knowledge on the part of the viewer, whereas an episodic series, for which the viewer only has to be familiar with the general set-up and the character constellation, does not require such knowledge. Therefore, in a TV programme which can be situated at the (episodic) series end of the scale, each episode can be considered a ‘text’ of its own; with


respect to shows in which serialization is of greater importance, however, it is important to discuss individual episodes in the context of preceding or following episodes. In a number of series the tendency toward increasing continuity has led to an extensive use of summaries of past story developments (typically introduced by a formula like ‘previously on . . .’) at the beginning of episodes. This is meant to help viewers recapitulate plot developments and to provide information for those viewers who have missed a couple of episodes. Yet another characteristic of the reception of TV series is the intense and public response of the fan community. For some series, such as Star Trek, the fan culture thrives in the context of ‘conventions’, gatherings where fans have the opportunity to meet other fans as well as actors and actresses. In recent years, a growing number of fans have used the internet to join in a fan community. Not only do internet discussion groups analyze episodes in detail; they also argue in favour of or against certain future developments or unite to support certain storyline developments or the reappearance of favourite characters. A case in point is the (successful) campaign initiated by fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to keep the vampire Spike in the show, who was originally meant to be killed after three to five episodes. Since the demands of devoted fans are certainly noticed, if not always met by the producers of a series, which in turn gives rise to new discussions within the fan community, one could refer to the reception of TV series as successive interactivity. The internet, moreover, offers a forum for fanfiction, where fans elaborate on the situations or character constellations in a series or create new situations involving characters from a show.

Structural categories: the schedule, breaks, teasers and opening credits By virtue of the fact that they are television narratives, TV series have a number of special formal characteristics. In particular, as Kozloff (1992: 89) points out, ‘[t]elevision narratives are unique in the fact that all texts are embedded within the metadiscourse of the station’s schedule’. The schedule, the ‘running order in which programmes are placed during a day’ (Casey et al. 2002: 203), has an important impact on the possibilities of telling a story in the framework of a TV series: ‘while individual programmes may be the “building blocks” of television, the schedule is the “architecture”, giving structure and meaning to “blocks” of programmes on a given channel’ (ibid.). By putting together a schedule the broadcaster ‘is effectively responsible for creating a “narrative” of


viewing in which different programmes, old and new, are blended together’ (ibid.: 204). The structure of this ‘narrative’, of course, is mainly guided by financial considerations: [S]cheduling has become increasingly important as an aspect of competitive ‘ratings wars’. For example, by placing popular programmes either at peak viewing time or when a competitor’s programming is poor, or by hiding weaker programmes at quieter times in the schedule, a broadcaster can increase the number of people tuning in to their station. Often, less popular or newer programmes are squeezed between two established programmes in the schedule, a process called ‘hammocking’, in the hope that viewers already tuned in will keep watching. (Ibid.) As a result of the schedule, TV series, unlike cinematic films, have to fit into largely inflexible time slots. On most American, British and German TV channels, series are moreover regularly interrupted by commercial breaks, which have to be granted a fixed amount of time within the series’ time slot. Episodes of American series are particularly inflexible in terms of their length; they are generally broadcast in half-hour or one-hour instalments, five to fifteen minutes of which are taken up by commercials. Most of the half-hour series are sitcoms, whereas ‘dramatic shows of various sorts dominate the hour-long format’ (Thompson 2003: 41). British and German series employ other formats as well (with units of occasionally up to and above 90 minutes, as Die zweite Heimat, for example). They are also more flexible in that the length of individual episodes may vary. Further, the pattern of commercial breaks in European TV is different from that in American TV, partially because public television in European countries tends to be (largely) financed by TV licensing and, thus, uses fewer commercials. Both in American and European series, however, the limited time available in individual episodes has an enormous impact on the way stories are developed and information is provided. In order to continue the narrative beyond a limited time slot, contemporary television series frequently use double episodes. These can often be found at the beginning of a season and as its finale. Occasionally, the last episode of a season is even the first part of a triple episode (as in the episodes ‘Anasazi’ [2.25] and ‘The Blessing Way’/’Paper Clip’ [3.01/3.02] of The X-Files) and thus bridges the gap between seasons. The fact that on most channels individual episodes are segmented into smaller units by commercial breaks means that interruptions are


an inevitable feature of the reception of TV series, unless the viewer makes use of a secondary mode of reception (video/DVD). The segments are normally structured to ensure that viewers continue watching after (and through) commercial breaks, with a climax at the end of each segment. The creation of suspense in TV series differs considerably from that typically found in films: ‘the segmentation of the series narrative interrupts the rising curve of increasingly intensified action that we see in classical cinema and replaces it with portions of narrative equipped with their own miniature climax – in a sense, a series of upward curves’ (Butler 1994: 29). Both the end of a segment and the beginning of a new one (after a commercial break) tend to be marked, as Thompson (2003: 16) points out: Often commercial breaks are prefaced at the end of a segment by an announcer stating, ‘We’ll be right back after this commercial break.’ Fade-outs and fade-ins usually prepare us for the end of the narrative segment that leads into the break and the beginning of the one that resumes afterward. Musical cues, a dramatic high point in the action, or a shot of a familiar locale are other conventional lead-ins to the break and to the resumption of the narrative. TV narratives usually do not spend much time on exposition and instead try to create suspense as quickly as possible so as to secure the viewer’s attention. As Nelson (2000: 113) observes, ‘[i]t is axiomatic in the commercial television industry that the audience must be grabbed in the first forty seconds or it will be lost at the flick of the remote control’. The teaser, a short segment of the episode appearing before the opening credits, tends to play an important role in this context. Here, the subject of the episode may be introduced or an outline of the problem to be solved may be given – a strategy which is meant to rouse the viewers’ curiosity. The teaser often also has an expository function, introducing guest characters and the setting. The opening credits involve a musical theme or a theme song and often show short clips from episodes of the present and/or former seasons or stills of the major characters. Pictures and inserted captions provide viewers with information as to who the actors/actresses and the main characters of the series are. In addition, inserted captions in the opening credits usually indicate the ‘authors’ of the episode – the creator(s), producer(s), writer(s) and director(s). Both the soundtrack and the visual track of the opening credits may indicate the genre (comedy, mystery, and so on) and introduce the general theme(s) of the series.


The opening credits of The X-Files, for instance, contain key phrases which suggest central ideas of the series (‘The truth is out there’, ‘Government denies knowledge’). While in some series, such as Star Trek: Voyager, the opening credits remain basically the same throughout all seasons, significant changes can be observed in others. Variations in the opening credits of series like Buffy or Charmed, for example, reflect changes in who the major characters are within a given season.

Categories of discourse (I): narrating agencies If TV series are narratives, one should be able to identify some kind of narrator, as Kozloff (1992: 78–9), Chatman (1990) and Levinson (1996: 250–1), among others, have argued. In contrast to narrators in written texts, however, audiovisual storytellers typically do not surface as ‘speakers’; TV series (like other types of TV narratives and films) usually have a ‘voiceless’ narrator, and thus normally do not give rise to the illusion that there is a ‘person’ or persona telling the story. Kozloff (1992: 78–9) sees here an ‘agency, that which chooses, orders, presents, and thus tells the narrative before us’. Other film and TV critics have used the term ‘camera’ to refer to such an entity.6 This use of the term ‘camera’ should, however, be thought of as metonymy, because the actual camera during the shooting does not ‘see’ everything that will appear on screen after post-production editing. Since ‘a film [and audiovisual media in general] narrates not by speaking but by arranging and composing information from various sources, sometimes to the extent of including written narrative texts and actual narrative voice’, Jahn (2002: F.4.1.2) refers to ‘a film’s primary narrative instance’ as the ‘filmic composition device’, using a term that has no anthropomorphic overtones. Jahn restricts the term ‘narrator’ to those instances where an actual speaker appears, either as a voice-over narrator or in the guise of an on-screen narrator. This means the narrator in audiovisual media may surface as ‘[a]n unseen narrator’s voice uttering narrative statements (i.e., narration, description, comment . . .)’ (ibid.: F.4.2.1) or as ‘[a] narrator who is bodily present on screen, talking to the (or an) audience, shown in the act of producing his or her narrative discourse’ (ibid.). In Jahn’s (ibid.: F.4.1.4) model of filmic/audiovisual narrative transmission, the narrator thus is an optional element, subordinate to the filmic composition device. The predominant narrating agency in TV series (as in audiovisual media in general) is non-anthropomorphic. It presents the narrated world and thus tells the story, fulfilling the narrator’s function of selecting


what viewers come to know by determining which events, locations or characters are shown. The camera or filmic composition device also determines how the story is presented, whether viewers, for example, see a close-up of a face or the entire person (full shot).7 Further common indicators of the selection of images on the part of the camera are movements, cuts and viewing angles.8 By visually singling out an object or a character the camera draws the viewers’ attention to something or someone and suggests that what/who is shown will turn out to play a crucial role in the unfolding of events. In this way, the camera may produce a discrepancy between the awareness of the viewers and that of the characters. An example of this is a scene in ‘Lord of the Flies’ (The X-Files 9.05), where the camera at one point singles out a minor character, thus suggesting to the viewers that he is going to play a significant role, while the FBI agents in the story do not take any notice of him and, in fact, look in the opposite direction when he passes by on his bicycle. This filmic strategy, which may, of course, also turn out to be misleading, shows that the camera is not just a neutral recording device, but plays an important role in telling the story since it selects what the viewers see. Voice-over narrators seem to constitute the most obvious equivalent of the narrators one encounters in literary texts.9 But there is a crucial distinction between narrators in written narratives and voice-over narrators in that the latter typically cannot be conceptualized as the source of the information conveyed by the visual track, which, after all, constitutes much of the story. Voice-over narrators are thus at best a partial equivalent of literary narrators; they generally have a more limited range of functions, being usually restricted to explaining features of the narrated world, commenting on them, or adding information which is not provided visually. Like narrators in literary narratives, voice-over narrators can be categorized on the basis of whether they double as character on the story level or not (cf. Kozloff 1992: 80). If they do, they are homodiegetic narrators; if they remain restricted to the discourse level, they are heterodiegetic. Voice-over narrators in a film or on TV also differ from narrators in printed narratives in that they use spoken language. They are always to a certain extent individualized by their voice. One also has potentially meaningful features like intonation and pauses in the voice-over narrator’s discourse, which are usually not indicated in a written text. In addition, viewers presumably quite readily categorize most voice-over narrators as male or female simply on the basis of the voice. The degree to which voices conform to stereotypical concepts of masculinity and


femininity may differ considerably, however. One may even encounter voices that deny viewers a straightforward categorization of the voiceover narrator’s sex and gender.10 Such androgynous voices potentially challenge the viewers’ concepts of gender, but they may also fulfil other functions. In ‘Earshot’ (Buffy 3.18), a voice-over speaker announcing his/her plans for a high-school massacre cannot be categorized in terms of his/her gender, which results mainly from the fact that the voiceover is whispered. This creates suspense since the viewers are informed that someone is planning to kill all the students without having any clue as to who the potential assassin might be. The extent to which voice-over narration is employed in TV series varies greatly. It may play a peripheral role, occurring only in the pilot. If used recurrently, it can usually be found at the beginning of individual episodes where ‘the narrative voice-over accompanies the initial sequence of images, explaining them and launching the plot, but then gives way completely to the visuals’ (Chatman 1999: 322). But voice-over narration may also play a more prominent role, thus becoming one of the main structural features of a series, as, for example, in Sex and the City, where Carrie narrates her own flings as well as those of her friends, or in Wonder Years, where the adult Kevin reminisces about his adolescence. Many series, moreover, rely on the technique of providing viewers with a short summary of previous story developments to facilitate their understanding of the current episode. This is usually achieved through audiovisual clips from previous episodes which are introduced by a voice-over narrator (frequently one of the main characters). Voice-over narration may also serve as a means of commenting on the ongoing action. In a number of Buffy episodes, for instance, one of the characters comments on the action from his/her point of view (such as Angel in ‘Passions’ [2.17] or Dawn in ‘Real Me’ [5.02]). In the episode ‘The Stackhouse Filibuster’ (2.17) of The West Wing, there are even three different voice-over narrators who take turns at commenting on the development of the story. Most instances of voice-over narration involve a homodiegetic narrator. Occasionally, however, TV series feature an on-screen heterodiegetic narrator who, in spite of not being part of the story, is intermittently visible to the viewers while narrating and, thus, is both acoustically and visually present. This type of narrator is also referred to as a host-narrator, since the speaker – in a fashion similar to that of news readers or talk show hosts – introduces the story. This narrative situation seems to lend TV series a quasi-documentary feel in that it draws upon the nonfictional frames of the news and the talk show. The suggestion of


authenticity may be at odds with the actual content, though, as in the mystery series Psi Factor, featuring Dan Aykroyd as host-narrator, which focuses on highly implausible occurrences. One may also encounter other instances of narrating agencies in TV series. Intertitles, or inserted captions, are a type of narrating agency which deploys purely visual codes and which relies on verbal modes of expression, thus differing significantly from the visual codes predominant in audiovisual media. Inserted captions are typically used very sparingly. Chatman (1999: 328) considers them to be merely a supplementary means of providing information in films; he points out that their function tends to be restricted to ‘simply naming – introducing a character, a city, the date or amount of time elapsed’. The slightly more important status intertitles seem to have in TV series in comparison to films presumably results from the limited time available for individual episodes. Inserted captions are a highly efficient means of providing information and occur most frequently at the beginning of an episode to supply expository information, but they may also be used to indicate a change of time or place of action in the course of an episode, for example in a number of episodes of The West Wing. Intertitles may even become one of the features viewers recognize as a characteristic element of a particular series. In The X-Files, where inserted captions are routinely employed to indicate the time and place of action, they contribute to viewer recognition. An episode of The Simpsons called ‘The Springfield Files’ (8.10), which is a spoof of The X-Files, illustrates this, since one of the features of The X-Files picked up here is the quasi machine-typed captions. Non-diegetic sound (noise or music), that is sound ‘which does not come from a source located in the current scene’ (Jahn 2002: F.3.2), may also be attributed to a narrating agency (cf. Kozloff 1992: 79; Levinson 1996). Non-diegetic sound may evoke or underscore a particular atmosphere; it may create suspense or interpret the narrated story. The lyrics of vocal music may comment on the story, fulfilling one of the narrator’s usual functions, as in the episode ‘Two Cathedrals’ (2.22) of The West Wing, in which the song ‘Brothers in Arms’ by the Dire Straits, with its emphasis on the idea of standing together even though this requires enormous sacrifices, is used to underline the mood of the President’s staff when he publicly announces that he suffers from multiple sclerosis and has lied about it. If the viewer is familiar with the music that is chosen, the ‘appropriated score’ (Levinson 1996: 249) may bring along ‘associations, deriving from the original context of composition or performance or distribution, rather than just general associations carried by musical style or conventions’ (ibid.).


The theme song is a particularly important piece of music in TV series. It is one of the hallmark features of a series and, thus, a factor in audience recognition. It is also a means of setting the general tone of a series, of introducing its characters, or of underlining its central themes. The expository function of the theme song is obvious in the sitcom Friends, where the song ‘I’ll be there for you’ emphasizes both friendship and expectancies not quite met, with lyrics like ‘your job’s a joke, you’re broke, your love life’s D.O.A. / it’s like you’re always stuck in second gear, when it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year’. The theme song of Married . . . with Children, ‘Love and Marriage’, sung by Frank Sinatra, praises the benefits of married life and thereby stands in stark ironic contrast with the chaotic marriage and disastrous family life of the Bundy family. Television narratives, as Kozloff (1992: 93) observes, have traditionally tended to employ ‘omniscient, reliable narration’, but contemporary TV series occasionally undermine the reliability of the narration.11 An example can be found in the Buffy episode ‘Storyteller’ (7.15), where Andrew, a minor character, functions as embedded narrator during most of the episode. In addition to a videotape he makes of the ongoing events, there are also several memory sequences. Far from sticking to the events as they happened, that is as viewers witnessed them in the episodes ‘Two to Go’ and ‘Grave’ (Buffy 6.21/6.22), Andrew casts his own actions in a much more positive light. For instance, he no longer appears as a scared little boy when confronted with Willow-turned-evil, but as a hero who bravely defends himself and is complimented upon this by Willow. What is particularly interesting in this context is the importance of continuity: only viewers who know the relevant episodes are able to notice that Andrew’s own utterances and actions are changed while the rest of the scene remains exactly the same, that is that Andrew’s presentation is unreliable. A further example of unreliable narration can be found in ‘Bad Blood’ (The X-Files 5.12), where the same story is told twice, once by each of the series’ protagonists. While Scully seeks a scientific explanation for what seems to be vampiric activity in an American small town, Mulder believes in the existence of vampires. The characters’ narratives also differ with respect to the evaluation of the local sheriff (a very attractive man vs. someone with buckteeth), of Scully’s behaviour (as competent or flirtatious), and of Mulder’s behaviour (obnoxious vs friendly and understanding). These differences are not just expressed verbally, but the two contradictory versions are shown to the viewers; they, for example, actually see two different versions of the local sheriff and of Mulder’s and Scully’s


behaviour. This both stresses the subjective nature of what the protagonists perceive and produces considerable comic effect. This episode from The X-Files also shows multiperspectival narration, the presentation of a fictional world from different points of view, where one has two or more extra- and/or intradiegetic narrating agencies (cf. V. Nünning and A. Nünning 2000; Surkamp 2003). ‘Bad Blood’ juxtaposes two contradictory versions of one story, told by two intradiegetic narrators. As Scully’s and Mulder’s perspectives challenge and relativize each other without converging on a single focal point, each version of the fictional world has its own subjective validity: there is not just one interpretation of the events. In this way, the series’ characteristic theme, the tension between two discrepant world models – the search for scientific explanation vs the acceptance of the supernatural – is reflected in the multiperspectivity of the discourse. While multiperspectivity of the type just described can be found very frequently in written narratives, it is unusual in television narratives. Recent conceptions of multiperspectivity also take the relation between frame and embedded narratives and the collage of different genres and text types into account (cf. V. Nünning and A. Nünning 2000). Following these conceptions, one can find many more examples of multiperspectival narration in television narratives. Twin Peaks, for instance, makes use of various embedded verbal and audiovisual narratives (a fictitious soap opera, audio- and videotapes, and a written diary). Another type of audiovisual multiperspectival narration, a media-specific kind of collage, is the use of split screen, which is, for example, one of the hallmark features of the series 24. In addition to such conventional uses of split screens as showing partners of a telephone conversation at the same time, this series also uses the technique of split screens to foreground different aspects of a scene, either by two long shots from different positions or by one long shot and one or more closeups of the same scene. In this way, multiperspectival narration in audiovisual media may confront viewers with more than one version of events simultaneously – an effect that print media can only achieve in a relatively awkward manner, in particular by using parallel columns.

Categories of discourse (II): the narratee The counterpart of the narrator on the reception side of the textinternal communication process is the narratee. Just as in written texts, the narratee in audiovisual media is often little individualized (covert


narratee). However, there can also be explicit addressees (overt narratees) in TV narratives when, for example, an intradiegetic voice-over narrator addresses a ‘you’ situated in the story world. In embedded narratives, which often correlate with flashbacks, the character-narrator tells his/ her tale to a narratee who is another character in the story world. Such intradiegetic narratives can be just verbal, but, more frequently, they are introduced verbally and then shift to an audiovisual mode. An example is the vampire Spike’s reminiscences of his encounters with vampire slayers, which he narrates to Buffy in ‘Fool for Love’ (Buffy 5.07). There are also instances which seem to suggest that the narratee can be some kind of inanimate object, for example a recording device (as when the interviewees in Sex and the City speak directly to the camera). Another, genre-specific, example of an explicit narratee is provided by the laughter and, occasionally, expressions of dismay, or other emotional reactions which accompany many sitcoms, for example The Cosby Show or Ellen. Traditionally, sitcoms have been recorded before a studio audience, whose reactions can be heard, and even today many sitcoms, such as Friends, are recorded before an audience. The tradition of the studio audience has led to the use of a ‘laughtrack’ to suggest the presence of an audience in those cases where there was none during the production. The laughtrack is a straightforward means of directing the viewers’ reception by indicating which scenes are intended to be comic and by influencing the viewers’ reaction to the characters.

Character-focalization and the presentation of consciousness Audiovisual narratives may evoke the impression that recipients are confronted directly with what a character focalizes (perceives, feels, thinks or remembers). The differentiation between narration (the act of ‘speaking’) and focalization (the act of ‘perceiving’) in written narratives was introduced by Genette (1980). Although the technique of character-focalization can be observed in both written and audiovisual narratives, its implications differ as a result of the technical possibilities of the different media, as Deleyto (1996 [1991]: 222) emphasizes: In the novel focalisation is not explicit in the text, but must be elicited by the critic from the information given by the narrator. We read what the narrator says but only metaphorically do we perceive what the focaliser perceives. In film, focalisation may be explicit in the text, in general through external or internal ‘gazes’ and works simultaneously and independently from narration.


A recurrent use of character-focalization, or internal focalization, may even become one of the characteristics of a TV series. Internal focalization can be fixed, variable, or multiple; that is, a series can either concentrate on the thoughts, emotions and visions of only one character or juxtapose those of several characters.12 The former variety highlights a single character-focalizer’s inner life – as in episodes of Ally McBeal and Berlin, Berlin; the latter variety may show a clash of different views of the fictional world or emphasize differences between characters. At the beginning of ‘The One with the Race Car Bed’ (Friends 3.07), five of the six main characters briefly appear as character-focalizers. What they think contributes to their characterization: Chandler, who suffers from feelings of inferiority, for instance, daydreams about being a super-hero. Character-focalization in audiovisual media makes use of either the visual track or the soundtrack or both. The soundtrack grants viewers access to what is going on in a character’s mind by way of presenting speech, sounds, or music according to conventions suggesting that what is heard only reflects mental processes. When viewers see a character and hear him/her speak without seeing him/her move his/her lips, the speech has to reflect the character’s thoughts. Additionally, a filtering of speech may indicate that it is part of internal focalization and not ‘ordinary’ speech, as heard in ‘Grave’ (Buffy 6.22), where Willow’s voice is distorted to indicate that she is giving orders to Anya telepathically. Voice-over commentaries reflecting a character’s thoughts or feelings may either reinforce evidence from the visual track or contradict it. In Ally McBeal, for example, the main character’s thoughts or feelings conveyed by means of voice-over are often in conflict with what she says or does. A straightforward visual device to present a character’s subjective perceptions, what s/he sees, imagines, dreams or remembers, is the use of point-of-view shots, in which ‘[t]he camera assumes the position of a character and shows the object of his or her gaze’ (Jahn 2002: F.4.3.8). But there are also some other methods which, jointly with the pointof-view shot or on their own, can inform viewers about a character’s perceptions and his/her reactions to what s/he perceives. Characterfocalization may be indicated by ‘camera movement, which, in the truly subjective shot, imitates the movement of the character’ (Deleyto 1996 [1991]: 227), or by departing from the default straight-on angle by choosing a high, low, or oblique angle.13 A gaze shot, ‘[a] picture of a character looking (“gazing”) at something not currently shown’ (ibid.), may express the character’s attitude or emotional reaction to what s/he sees, without, however, identifying the focalized object. A reaction


shot, ‘[a] shot showing a character reacting (with wonder, amusement, annoyance, horror) to what s/he has just seen’ (ibid.), also stresses the focalizer’s emotions at the expense of actually showing the viewers what provokes this reaction. An eye-line shot, which results from the combination of a gaze shot and a point-of-view shot, where ‘[s]hot 1 shows the face of a character gazing at something; shot 2 is a POV [point-of-view] shot showing us what s/he is gazing at’ (ibid.), in contrast, provides an identification of both the focalizer and the focalized object. The shot showing the character who is about to become the focalizer can be likened to the formulae often introducing a character’s inside views in written texts, such as ‘s/he thought/wondered/remembered’. The over-the-shoulder shot, in which ‘[t]he camera gets close to, but not fully into, the viewing position of a character’ (ibid.), also identifies both the focalizer and the focalized object. Withholding the character-focalizer’s identity, however, may be a means of creating suspense; viewers may be made aware that someone is present by being shown events from some character’s perspective, without, however, being able to identify him/ her. The presence of an observer frequently is stressed by shooting through some minor obstacle, such as twigs – a device that alerts viewers to the position of the observer. Character-focalization may be indicated by a number of visual techniques and may produce a considerable range of effects. The use of pictures which are blurred or distorted or which differ in terms of colour from what viewers are accustomed to can signal character-focalization. Such visual codes tend to be conventionalized; memory sequences, for example, usually appear in black-and-white or sepia, inserted in the multicolour narrative. This can be seen in the episode ‘Pollo Loco’ of Dark Angel (1.16), where the protagonist’s memories of her friend Ben and of some childhood events are shown in black-and-white. As Branigan (1984: 79) points out, distorted views have traditionally been associated with ‘an abnormal condition’ in audiovisual media, whereas ‘[u]ndistorted vision is often the mark of truth and sanity in the classical text’. A distorted or blurred view might, for example, be associated with druginduced hallucinations. The German series Berlin, Berlin uses the experimental method of granting viewers insight into the protagonist Lolle’s mind by visualizing her feelings, fears and wishes in the form of animated cartoons. Lolle has a cartoon counterpart that, for example, shrinks to the size of a baby when Lolle does not feel very self-confident (‘Ich will Sandra Bullock massieren’/‘I want to give Sandra Bullock a massage’ 1.06), or literally turns into ice when Lolle is aware of a chilly atmosphere between another character and herself (‘Martha’ 1.23). In a very similar


fashion, Ally McBeal uses visual special effects and various sound effects to present the characters’ (and in particular the protagonist Ally’s) fears, wishes or hopes and, for the most part, to create comic effects. A purely comic effect is produced by means of character-focalization in the episode ‘Bart’s Dog Gets an F’ of The Simpsons (2.16), where the family dog intermittently functions as focalizer and the viewers are shown a slightly distorted black-and-white version of the usual cartoon world and hear the characters’ voices reduced to a meaningless ‘blah-blah’ (with the exception of the clearly understandable name of the dogfocalizer, ‘Santa’s Little Helper’). Internal focalization may grant viewers access to the characters’ sensory and imaginary perception (cf. Jahn 2002: N.3.2.2). An extensive presentation of dreams and visions may even turn out to be one of the characteristics of a particular series. Prominent examples are Ally McBeal and Six Feet Under, a series focusing on a family who runs a funeral home. In Six Feet Under the characters’ visions and hallucinations range from sexual fantasies to encounters with those dead people who are currently being prepared for their funeral service. The family’s father, who died in the pilot, is a recurrent character who interacts with his wife and children in a number of more or less bizarre scenes. The visions experienced by Phoebe in Charmed and by Doyle and Cordelia in Angel are likewise characteristic of the two series and often motivate the action. In both cases, the visions are marked by means of distortions of the visual track. The presentation of imaginary perceptions does not necessarily involve point-of-view shots. Quite often viewers actually see the character whose dreams, visions, or memories are presented acting in the world s/he imagines or remembers. In several episodes of Twin Peaks, for instance, the viewers are shown Agent Cooper’s dreams, but they do not, strictly speaking, see through his eyes, because they see him as part of the dream world. Possible-worlds theory, which will be discussed in more detail below, treats instances of imaginary perception as ‘F(antasy)-universes’ (Ryan 1991), which reflect the characters’ mental processes. The notion of the ‘F(antasy)-universe’ allows one to capture the subjective nature of what is shown in scenes depicting dreams, visions, hallucinations or memories without falling back on the concept of focalization.

Categories of story (I): plot structures and the lack of (definitive) closure The plot structure of TV series is affected by the number of episodes they consist of. What episodic series and serials as well as the various


types of series–serial hybrids have in common (with the obvious exception of the mini-series, which consists of just a few episodes and typically reaches closure in the last episode) is that most of them have been designed to run virtually forever, provided the ratings indicate a sustained interest on the part of the viewers. Thus, series are based on the assumption that individual episodes may reach a certain amount of closure, but no definitive closure, which would forestall a continuation of the series (cf. Butler 1994: 29). At the end of an episode, viewers, consequently, can expect only partial closure. Contemporary TV series occasionally even make use of the postmodern strategy of not providing viewers with a single end to an episode, but offering multiple endings instead. In ‘Field Trip’ (The X-Files 6.21), for example, various endings, which are later explained as being the result of drug-induced hallucinations experienced by Scully and Mulder, precede the ultimate outcome, including one in which Mulder shoots his superior, Assistant Director Skinner. At the end of a season viewers often get even a lesser degree of closure than at the end of a regular episode. In order to ensure that viewers will watch the next season, a season frequently ends with a ‘cliff-hanger’, leaving the viewers with all sorts of open questions. The cliff-hangers at the end of a season need to create lasting suspense and instil intense curiosity: Kozloff (1992: 92) observes that ‘[t]he general rule seems to be, “the longer the hiatus, the higher the cliff”’. Even the final episode of the last season of a series often does not provide any definitive closure. This phenomenon is related to economic considerations, as Walker (2000: 97) points out: ‘The fear is that if the audience knows how something is going to end, then they won’t watch re-runs. The audience stopped watching re-runs of The Fugitive, a very popular drama series, once the final episode had been televised on network television and the studio lost a fortune.’ Avoiding definitive closure is also the prerequisite for the production of films based on TV series. Although in many cases films derive from a series (The Fugitive, Charlie’s Angels, The Avengers), the opposite phenomenon can also be observed. ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, ‘Hercules’ and the explorers of Stargate made their first appearance in films, which led more or less smoothly to a series. TV series have traditionally been associated with ‘highly formulaic’ (Kozloff 1992: 72) plot patterns. ‘[T]he series is a repeatable form’ (Butler 1994: 28), which confronts viewers with variations on a particular plot pattern on a daily or weekly basis. One factor that contributes considerably to the formulaic character of a TV series’ plots is its character constellation. In many series, especially in sitcoms, a relatively constant


character constellation triggers the basic and ever recurring conflicts, such as the on-and-off relationship between Rachel and Ross in Friends. The necessary variation in such plot patterns is usually brought about by the appearance of new minor characters: the lawyers in Ally McBeal, for instance, meet new clients in each episode, and the crew of the spaceships in the Star Trek series encounters new alien civilizations. Many series rely on a relatively extensive cadre of recurring characters to guarantee a certain amount of variation. This can be seen most clearly in daily soaps, where ‘[t]he main function of . . . multiple protagonists is to permit a variety of plots within the same environment’ (ibid.: 26). The familiarity with the characters and with the basic plot patterns and conflicts of a series which regular viewers inevitably gain and which is heightened by the series’ formulaic nature is not in and of itself detrimental to a show’s appeal. A certain amount of repetition even enhances the popularity of the genre of TV series: ‘it is crucial to realise that much of what has been criticised about TV – its continual repetition and formulaic nature – is actually an intrinsic part of its distinctive aesthetic, which great numbers of viewers implicitly understand’ (Gregory 2000: 6). Butler (1994: 28) even argues that ‘the program must ask the same question again and again to maintain consistency and viewer interest’ [emphasis added]. The fact that series typically rely both on recurring characters and on recurring situations also ensures that a series can get by with minimal exposition (cf. ibid.: 27) and, thus, meets the demands of the limited time slot. The tendency of TV series to rely increasingly on continuity instead of striving for closure at the end of an episode makes necessary new ways of managing plotlines and has considerably heightened the structural complexity of individual episodes as well as of the series as a whole, as Thompson (2003: 55) observes: ‘There has been a trend in hour-long dramas toward a more dense weave of multiple storylines developing simultaneously. This approach was pioneered by writer/producer Steve Bochco in the much-praised series Hill Street Blues, which ran from 1981 to 1987 and essentially established a new format for scripting in many hour-long series.’ Series with multiple storylines often strike a balance between continuity and closure by achieving episodic closure in one or more plotlines while continuing others beyond individual episodes. The combination of different plotlines can be traced back to the soap opera, which ‘typically keeps eight to ten stories going at once’ (ibid.: 56). A number of series, such as ER or The West Wing, tend to move very quickly from one plotline to another. In series


like these ‘the individual scenes are mostly very short, providing only a slight bit of progression in a given plotline. By moving quickly among plots, the narrative gives the impression of considerable density and “lifelikeness”’ (Thompson 2003: 57). The plot of a TV series not only comprises the events that ‘actually happen’ in a fictional world; the characters’ dreams, wishes, thoughts and memories form an integral part of the story as well. Not only does the presentation of such ‘virtual events’ as dreams or memories explain a character’s behaviour by giving insight into his/her mental processes, but they may also create suspense or produce comic effects. A branch of literary theory that focuses on such virtual events is the possible-worlds theory (see Ryan 1991, 1992, 2005; Surkamp 2002). Originally developed in analytical philosophy to solve semantic problems in modal logic, possible-worlds theory was first adapted by narrative theory for the analysis of written narratives, but it can also profitably be applied to audiovisual genres. Its central idea is that the semantic domain projected in narratives offers a ‘textual actual world’ – which is made up of the factual events in a narrative – and a range of possible worlds, instantiated by virtual events reflected on or imagined by the characters. The textual actual world differs in ontological status from the possible worlds in that it alone exists autonomously, while the possible worlds, as the products of the characters’ mental activities, are subjective constructs. The narrative universe of a TV series contains what Marie-Laure Ryan (1991: 4) calls ‘a number of subworlds’ and ‘a plurality of represented worlds’ (ibid.: 20). One can distinguish possible worlds on the basis of the mental process through which they come into existence: there are worlds of knowledge, of belief, of desires, of intentions, of obligations, and dream or fantasy universes (ibid.: 111–19). In audiovisual narratives such ‘worlds’ can be presented over the soundtrack (by way of voiceover commentaries or in the characters’ dialogues) and/or over the visual track. The content of these subworlds displays relations of contrast or correspondence between the characters and points of conflict in the fictional world. The plot of a narrative is determined by the conflicts that exist both between individual possible worlds and between the possible worlds and the textual actual world. This can be compared to a game whose goal – from the characters’ viewpoint – is: to make TAW [the textual actual world] coincide with as many as possible of their private worlds . . . The moves of the game are the actions through which characters attempt to alter relations between


worlds . . . The alternatives are the forking paths of projections; the strategic situation is the relative position of worlds on the board of the textual universe; and the rule of the game is to move one’s piece closer to the center. (Ibid.: 119–20) Since virtual events influence a character’s decisions, they lead to action. As Ryan (2005: 448) observes, ‘every intent-driven action . . . aims at preventing a possible state of affairs, thus making it forever counterfactual, and at actualizing another state’. Ryan (1991: 109) illustrates this with an example from the soap opera All My Children: an actual event ‘Remy saves Frankie from getting hit by a train’ suggests a nonactual counterpart ‘Frankie gets hit by the train’. Because each event, therefore, raises possibilities in which one action is actualized and alternative actions stay virtual or nonactual, and because this structure of alternative possibilities plays an important role with respect to the recipients’ expectations, Ryan thinks that the existence of a well-ramified network of virtual events parallel to the actual events is a major condition for a story’s tellability (ibid.: 148–66). According to possible-worlds theory, ‘what if’ stories can be described as episodes based on the actualization of events which would otherwise just have the status of nonactual counterparts of actual events in the universe created in the series. In ‘Birthday’ (Angel 3.11), for example, Cordelia gets to experience what her life would have been like if she had not accidentally met Angel at a party three years before: she would have become a famous actress instead of ending up fighting demons along with Angel, Gunn, Wesley and Fred, but her friends would have been much worse off. The episodes ‘The One Where It Could Have Been, parts I & II’ (6.15/6.16) of Friends show that ‘what if’ stories can also occur in TV genres other than science fiction and fantasy. In the teaser of part I, the six protagonists wonder what their lives would look like if they had made different choices in the past. The two episodes then show what their lives would be like if Ross was still married to his first wife, if Phoebe was a successful businesswoman, if Joey was a soap star, if Monica was still overweight, if Rachel was married to Barry, and if Chandler had quit his job to become a writer. Occasionally, episodes even open up two mutually exclusive textual actual worlds, one of which is the universe viewers are familiar with, while the other offers an alternative scenario in which major features of the series – or even its very premise – are questioned. An example of this can be found in the Buffy episode ‘Normal Again’ (6.17), where Buffy is made to believe that she is an inmate in a mental institution and that


her life as vampire slayer is merely the result of hallucinations resulting from schizophrenia. Both the beginning of the episode and the familiar ‘Buffyverse’ suggest that Buffy’s life on the hellmouth is the textual actual world and that Buffy is temporarily trapped in some kind of fantasy universe. The fact that the viewers actually see Buffy’s sojourn in the psychiatric hospital, however, as well as the episode’s final scene, which shows how a schizophrenic Buffy once more retreats into her hallucinations, undermine such a reading and thus lead to the construction of an alternative textual actual world in this episode. The projection of alternative possible worlds in a TV series may fulfil different functions. A clear distinction between one character’s possible world and the textual actual world suggests that the events of the fictional world are not accurately reflected in the character’s mental representations, which may produce comic effects or raise epistemological questions. In the hospital sitcom Scrubs, for instance, the main character J.D.’s frequent hallucinations – featuring his anxiety-ridden relations with superiors, patients and women in general – are highly amusing whilst also revealing the young doctor’s insecurities as well as his wishes. Divergent possible worlds draw attention to the fact that one and the same event can be reflected on and judged very differently by various characters. Especially in the case of multiperspectival narration it can be very difficult and sometimes even impossible for the viewers to decide which events are factual and which ones are only virtual. The above mentioned The X-Files episode ‘Bad Blood’ offers a good example. Blurring the distinction between actuality and possibility leaves the viewers in the dark about what the textual actual world is. This strategy – like the actualization of several possible worlds, which results in the parallel existence of various textual actual worlds (such as the depiction of alternate universes existing simultaneously in science fiction series like Star Trek) – can reflect a specifically postmodern aesthetics and can be an indication of postmodernity’s predominant concern for ontological questions (cf. McHale 1987: 9–10). Such an ontological destabilization of the fictional world may also be staged by a ‘transgression of ontological hierarchies’ (Ryan 1992: 548), for instance by the characters’ reflecting on their own fictionality, in contrast to realistic conventions, where characters are not aware of their being narrated. At the end of an episode of the sitcom Mad About You (‘Moody Blues’ 6.05), for example, the two main characters comment on the closing credits and refer explicitly to the show as having been made by various people, thus emphasizing the fictional status of what the viewers have just seen.


In addition to the possible worlds constructed by the characters, a narratology of TV series also has to consider the possible worlds that viewers imagine, believe or wish in the course of watching a series and that the story either actualizes or runs counter to. Cliff-hangers typically suggest different paths a story might take, thus encouraging viewers both to imagine how the plot will develop and to continue watching the series because they want to know if their possible worlds will be actualized.

Categories of story (II): characters Series differ considerably in terms of how many regular characters they involve. Except for anthology series like Psi Factor, where the episodes are not held together by regular characters, but by a common theme and, possibly, a host-narrator, most series feature at least two or three central characters or even an ensemble cast, consisting of five or more regulars all of whom are granted a considerable amount of attention within the series (Friends, The West Wing), even if one of the characters is singled out as the protagonist (the title characters in Ally McBeal or Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Recurring minor characters are additional assets in many shows, such as the omnipotent alien Q, who appears from time to time in different Star Trek series (The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager), or Janice, whose hallmark exclamation ‘Oh my God!’ all fans of Friends are familiar with. Friends even features a recurring character that is almost exclusively off-screen: ‘Ugly Naked Guy’, a neighbour whose doings are repeatedly commented upon by the six protagonists, does not actually appear on screen – except for a single episode where he can briefly be seen from behind. The presentation of characters in TV series is to a certain extent determined by the changing conventions of the TV series as a narrative genre. There is a relatively straightforward correlation between an emphasis on continuity or a lack thereof, and the possibilities for character development. The episodic closure of traditional series and their lack of continuing storylines offer relatively little room for character development. Thus, ‘[i]n general . ..sitcom protagonists were considered characters who made some sort of mistake each week, learned a lesson, and promptly forgot it and got into trouble again’ (Thompson 2003: 59).14 The traditional tendency towards a presentation of static and onedimensional characters correlates with a neglect of the characters’ past: Series characters have a personal history of which we are usually conscious and to which references are occasionally made . . . On most


series programs, however, these personal histories are rather vague and ill defined [sic]. The past is a murky region in series television. The present tense of a specific episode is usually all that matters. (Butler 1994: 27) This neglect of the characters’ past and of previous plot developments, however, no longer applies to series–serial hybrids. Borrowing the emphasis on continuing storylines from the serial, many series of the 1990s go to great lengths to explore the characters’ pasts and to underline the continuity of the series by means of references to events and characters from earlier episodes. Such references may give rise to insider jokes, but they may also be the basis of a more thorough exploration of a character’s psychology because invoking their past often lends the characters an additional degree of authenticity, turning them potentially into ‘rounder’ characters. The increasing importance of ongoing storylines also means that even series which seem to focus primarily on ‘action’ (crime series, mystery series, and so on) are, as Kozloff (1992: 75) argues, more and more dominated by ‘characters and their interrelationships’. An analysis of TV characters along the lines of the categories of sex, gender and sexuality may also provide important insights into recent developments in TV series. While in earlier series women were more often than not depicted in domestic or professionally subordinate roles, they have increasingly been shown as strong, independent, professionally successful and assertive characters since the early 1990s, thus challenging traditional gender norms. FBI agent Dana Scully (The X-Files), Captain Kathryn Janeway (Star Trek: Voyager), and the female warrior Xena in the eponymous series are just a few examples of this new type of female TV character. The growing authority and assertiveness of female characters quite often corresponds to a tendency towards reversing traditional gender roles. The fact that both Scully and Janeway are very scientifically-minded characters, for example, is highlighted by the fact that they work together with a man (Mulder, Chakotay) who tends to rely on intuition rather than on rationality. Although they depart from female gender roles in many respects, characters like Scully, Janeway or Xena at times still display traditional feminine attributes or attitudes. In all three cases the mother role intermittently positions the female protagonist in a more conventional role pattern. Both Scully and Xena at some point in the series give birth to a son and quite readily adopt the mother role; Janeway intermittently acts as a substitute mother for several crew members. Especially fantasy, mystery and science fiction


series may do more than just undermine traditional gender norms. An episode of The X-Files (‘Gender Bender’ 1.14) introduces aliens who are able to transform their bodies into male and female shape and evoke irresistible sexual attraction in the respective opposite sex. The episode thus undermines the notion of a stable sex while at the same time upholding the heterosexual matrix. In recent years, homosexual relationships have been dealt with increasingly openly on TV. The British series Queer as Folk, which focuses on three gay men living in Manchester, and the American series The L-Word, which centres on a group of lesbian women in Los Angeles, are particularly striking examples of this development. The depiction of homosexual relationships, however, still causes a very divided reaction among viewers. Many fans of Xena demanded that the lesbian subtext of the show should lead to a physical love relationship between the female protagonists Xena and Gabrielle, whereas the first kiss between Willow and Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer led to heaps of hate-mail (despite the fact that the two characters had at that point quite clearly been shown as a lesbian couple for some months). After comedian Ellen DeGeneres had her public coming out on the sitcom Ellen, the ratings of the show dropped dramatically, and it was cancelled in the following season. The problems revolving around male homosexuality and particularly the issue of coming out are portrayed in great detail throughout the first season of Six Feet Under, where David, one of the protagonists, struggles with conflicts deriving from the clash between his rather conservative values and religious beliefs on the one hand and his sexual orientation on the other. Male homosexual characters have often been portrayed as ‘figures of fun, usually mincing and effeminate and generally figuring in the context of comedy programmes’ (Casey et al. 2002: 219). This tendency at times leads to a situation where shows ‘offer an antihomophobic position but at the same time frame this from a heterosexual perspective’ (ibid.): ‘In the popular television comedy Friends, for example, the “boys” frequently engage in playful banter that could be read as having homoerotic connotations. But the characters always make it clear that they are neither gay nor homophobic. Their heterosexuality is central’ (ibid.). The categories of race and ethnicity constitute further important criteria for an analysis of characters and character constellations in TV series. In recent years, TV series have increasingly featured multiracial/ multiethnic casts while pursuing a number of different approaches to dealing with issues of race and ethnicity on the story level. In many series there are episodes which address racial or ethnic discrimination


explicitly. The episode ‘Far Beyond the Stars’ of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (6.13), which juxtaposes the racial segregation and discrimination in the United States in the 1950s with a vision of racial equality in the twenty-fourth century, is an example of this approach. As a result of social changes in the United States in the last decades, American TV series show more and more non-white characters in influential professional positions, and interracial love relationships are apparently in the process of becoming a perfectly ordinary feature of American TV series. Both Ally McBeal and Angel, for example, suggest that in the love relationship between a white woman (Ally, Fred) and an African American man (Greg Butters, Gunn) racial difference simply is not a relevant factor. Racial and ethnic clichés and prejudices nevertheless in many cases still inform the ways in which TV characters are constructed. With respect to the depiction of social class in TV series, one can identify tentative differences between American and European series. In American series there is a certain tendency to present socially more or less homogeneous groups of characters, instead of addressing social differences or even social conflicts. Moreover, a ‘persistent underrepresentation of working-class/“blue-collar” occupations and concomitant over-representation of professional and managerial occupations’ (Casey et al. 2002: 26) has been observed. American soaps tend to feature ‘largely middle-class or monied communities’ (ibid.: 26); American professional dramas and sitcoms also usually focus on middle-class characters, although there are exceptions, such as Roseanne and Married . . . with Children. British series, in contrast, pay more attention to the issue of class, which is not only reflected in soaps featuring ‘imaginary working-class communities’ (ibid.), like Coronation Street or Eastenders, but also in comedy series like Blackadder, which address class differences explicitly. In contemporary TV series the presentation of characters is frequently at odds with traditional notions of stability and coherence, reflecting a more playful and postmodern approach instead. In fantasy or science fiction series, a doubling or tripling of familiar characters in individual episodes may be brought about. For instance, one of the protagonists is magically ‘cloned’ into three different alter egos in the Charmed episode ‘Which Prue Is It, Anyway?’ (1.16) to fight a demon, and an alien species transforms into various characters, including Scully and Mulder, in later seasons of The X-Files. There are also several occurrences of ‘body switching’, that is of two characters finding themselves in each other’s body, in The X-Files, Charmed, Buffy and Angel.


Categories of story (III): time and place The relation between story time and discourse time is a central consideration both in written and in audiovisual narratives, and the model developed by Genette to describe this relationship is applicable to both media (cf. Kozloff 1992: 85–9). However, while written texts tend to make extensive use of summaries (where discourse time is shorter than story time), audiovisual narratives mainly use scene and ellipsis. In scenic presentation, story time and discourse time are identical; in ellipses, some events of the story are omitted in the narrative presentation. TV, which stresses showing rather than telling, is more suited to scenic presentation than to summary; the latter, as Kozloff (ibid.: 87) points out, ‘proves slightly awkward because time condensation is more difficult without verbal tenses’. Ellipses, especially an omission of unimportant occurrences and routine events, are essential in TV series, given their fixed slot in the network’s schedule. Television series may also make use of fast and slow motion, thus using a much more literal kind of speedup and stretch than literary narratives are capable of. In Ally McBeal, for example, these devices are occasionally used to produce comic effects, to emphasize a scene, or to present a character-focalizer’s impression of how fast or how slowly something is happening, thus highlighting the character’s subjective perception of events or his/her emotional state. Contemporary TV series employ several strategies to indicate time and its passing. In The X-Files, for example, the time is often given in inserted captions, and in Angel, the sun rising and setting over Los Angeles indicates the passing of a day. Both Angel and Ally McBeal also depart from the default procedure of using ‘invisible’ cuts, instead employing visible cuts showing the city where the series is set in order to mark the passing of time. Departures from the chronological order of events (flashbacks and flashforwards) may be presented verbally as a voice-over or in a dialogue between the characters, or they can be presented visually, where the actual story pauses and earlier or future events are shown. One way of marking flashbacks and flashforwards is the use of intertitles – a method used in The X-Files episodes which have an inverted, analytical time structure. In episodes like ‘Gethsemane’ (4.24) or ‘Release’ (9.17), the teaser shows a scene or event which ultimately proves to have been misleading. The teaser of ‘Release’, for example, suggests that Scully’s son William has been kidnapped. After the opening credits, inserted captions inform the viewers of a shift backwards in narrative time. When the story up to the supposed outcome (here: the kidnapping of


William) is told, however, the viewers’ assumptions are proved wrong and a different explanation of the events in the teaser is offered. Voiceover narration is a strategy for indicating simultaneity or ordering. In Sex and the City ‘Carrie’s voice-over narration almost invariably establishes the time frame of each new scene (“Meanwhile,” “two hours later,” “the next night,” and so on)’ (Thompson 2003: 52). Flashbacks and flashforwards may also be part of character-focalization. Examples of flashforwards in the context of character-focalization are the visions experienced regularly by central characters in Angel and Charmed. Flashbacks are conventionally marked through the use of monochrome or sepia. One aptly named episode from Friends, ‘The One with the Flashback’ (3.06), however, demonstrates that flashbacks (and, potentially, flashforwards) may also be indicated by what the characters say, how they behave, and what they look like. In part of this episode the main characters look different from the way they usually do, having different haircuts and wearing a different style of clothes; additionally, it is made clear that some of them do not know each other, which suggests that the scenes are set before the first episode of Friends. A departure from chronology, thus, may also be indicated without any recourse to camera techniques. One may occasionally encounter more extreme examples of departures from chronology, which radically undermine the linearity of the story. In time loops the action keeps going back to where it started, thus forcing the characters to experience the same period of time over and over. This can be seen in ‘Monday’ (The X-Files 6.15), where Mulder and Scully keep experiencing the same day with subtle, but significant changes in the way events unfold. Experiments in departing from strict linearity also occur in ‘Redrum’ (The X-Files 8.06) and in the Star Trek: Voyager episode ‘Before and After’ (3.21). In both episodes one of the characters is shown to experience time ‘backwards’. In ‘Redrum’, which is ‘murder’ spelled backwards, however, only a relatively short period of time is involved, whereas in ‘Before and After’ the journey backwards in time takes the character Kes from the moment of her death back to the time before she was born. Experiments with time structure often take on genre-specific forms. In the Charmed episodes ‘Déjà Vu All Over Again’ (1.22) and ‘All Hell Breaks Loose’ (3.22) a demon, who is aptly named Tempus, interferes with the time-line, and in the Buffy episode ‘Life Serial’ (6.05) time anomalies occur as the consequence of a spell. In some Star Trek episodes characters travel (voluntarily or involuntarily) into the past or into the future as a result of space anomalies, wormholes or technological devices. Time travel, a popular subject in science


fiction series, has a number of potential implications for the presentation of time structure since it typically involves the notion that by going back to the past you may change the future, which undermines the idea of a chronological, irreversible time line. The place of action may be indicated by visual or verbal means in TV series. As with time, the place of action is sometimes indicated by inserted captions (for example in The X-Files) or referred to by a character or voice-over narrator. Landmarks shown in the course of an episode or in the opening credits may also inform viewers about the setting. In the opening credits of Charmed the viewers see landmarks of San Francisco, and Sex and the City shows extreme long shots of New York City in the opening credits. What the locations of a series look like depends to a certain extent on the genre. Many science fiction and fantasy series create their own space, suggesting, for example, the existence of alternate, parallel universes, the existence of various hell or heaven dimensions (Charmed, Buffy, Angel, Xena), or the possibility of reaching faraway planets and galaxies within seconds or minutes (the ‘wormholes’ in Star Trek or the ‘stargate’ in the eponymous series). Sitcoms typically involve very little variation in terms of their place of action. This is in particular a consequence of how they are produced: ‘Many sitcoms are shot on three sideby-side standing sets in front of a live audience, making scenes in other locales – especially outdoors – difficult’ (Thompson 2003: 39). An enormous number of sitcoms share a living room and a kitchen as basic places of action (The Cosby Show or Married . . . with Children). These rooms tend to look very much alike from one series to another, showing viewers what amounts to a stereotypical version of ‘the American home’ (cf. Walker 2000: 98). The ‘Central Perk’ café, where many of the scenes in Friends are set, is clearly a variation on the usual American living-room – a fact that is underlined by the prominence of a large sofa and armchairs. The choice of an unusual place of action may turn out to be a characteristic of a particular TV series. This is the case with the unisex toilet in the office of Cage & Fish in Ally McBeal, where a considerable part of the action takes place – a choice of setting that comically undermines the convention of showing a place of action ‘appropriate’ to the genre and, thus, testifies to the general eccentricity of the series. The setting is often more than a mere place of action; it frequently carries meaning in and of itself in that it contributes to characterization, to the creation of a certain atmosphere, or to the representation of a character’s mood. One of the factors that have a significant impact on the atmosphere of a place of action is the lighting. In comparison to the


earlier Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine is generally a darker, less optimistic series, and, according to Gregory (2000: 68), this ‘is reflected in its visual tone, which eschews the “clean”, brightly-lit look of the Starfleet ships and uses subdued lighting in the form of a diffusion filter, as well as a great deal of high-contrast shadow’. Another strategy that turns the location into more than a place of action is the correspondence between spatial and semantic oppositions (cf. Pfister 1991 [1977]: 257). In Berlin, Berlin, for example, the contrast between Lolle’s place of origin, the countryside village Malente in northern Germany, and the city of Berlin is meaning-producing: Malente is associated with backwardness and a petty bourgeois lifestyle; Berlin, in contrast, stands for open-minded and easy-going people, freedom, adventure and a fresh start in life.

Intramediality, intermediality and metafictionality It is part of the increasing playfulness and the postmodern tendencies one can observe in recent TV series that they often make use of intramedial references, that is allusions to other TV programmes, and of intermediality, that is references to literary texts and to films. The titles of episodes of TV series often pick up titles of or famous lines from literary or audiovisual texts, as with: ‘Through the Looking Glass’ (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 3.19), ‘We’re off to see the Wizard’ (Charmed 4.19), ‘Sex, Lies, and Ed’s Tape’ (Northern Exposure 1.06), ‘Sense and Senility’ (Blackadder 3.04), ‘Apocalypse Nowish’ (Angel 4.07), and ‘A Streetcar Named Marge’ (The Simpsons 4.03). Intramedial and intermedial references may also play a prominent role on the story level. The cartoon series The Simpsons derives a considerable part of its appeal from its ubiquitous intramedial and intermedial references, which are typically highly ironic comments on the various pre-texts. In the five Star Trek series a wide range of literary texts are toyed with, ranging from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories (‘Elementary, Dear Data’, Star Trek: The Next Generation 2.03) to the Old English epic Beowulf (‘Heroes and Demons’, Star Trek: Voyager 1.11). In the Charmed episode ‘Chick Flick’ (2.18) characters literally step out of and into the movie screen in a way which became famous in Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo. Many recent TV series also allude to real or fictitious TV shows. In the episode ‘The Power of Two’ of Charmed (1.20), for example, one of the protagonists of the series asks the rhetorical question ‘Where’s Buffy when you need her?’ In the Buffy episode ‘The Pack’ (1.06) Buffy’s complaint about her mentor Giles’s attempt to explain strange incidents rationally – ‘I cannot believe that you of all people are trying to Scully me!’ – evokes


the sceptical, scientifically oriented FBI agent from The X-Files. A fictitious series within a series can function as mise en abyme, such as in Twin Peaks, in which the events in the fictitious soap opera Invitation to Love provide a commentary on the events of the primary series, or in The Simpsons, where Lisa and Bart Simpson are regular viewers of The Itchy and Scratchy Show, a cartoon resembling Tom and Jerry. A special type of intramediality or intermediality is ‘genre crossing’, that is episodes that depart significantly from the genre conventions otherwise adhered to. Among the most striking examples of genre crossing are episodes of Xena (‘Bitter Suite’ [3.12] and ‘Lyre, Lyre, Hearts on Fire’ [5.10]) and Buffy (‘Once More, With Feeling’ 6.07) which take over the format of the musical. Seeing the protagonists of these fantasy series burst into song certainly strains the viewers’ willing suspension of disbelief to a more than usual degree, even if the singing and dancing is motivated within the universe of the series (in Buffy, for instance, it is shown to be the result of summoning a demon). The X-Files is another series that recurrently toys with genre crossing. The episode ‘X-Cops’ (7.12) presents the main characters Scully and Mulder as the involuntary ‘heroes’ of the reality TV crime series Cops. In this episode a plot that is typical of The X-Files (the hunt for a werewolf) is presented by means of the conventions of reality TV. The episode shows features like statements by the local sheriff and by witnesses (spoken directly into the camera), visible movements of a hand-held camera, loud background noise, and main characters looking directly into the camera in a manner that makes viewers aware of its existence. The violation of genre conventions in episodes like these draws the viewers’ attention to the very conventions and, of course, is often enormously entertaining. Two other, increasingly frequent types of intramediality on TV are spin-offs and crossovers, which create links between two (or more) series. Popular TV series sometimes give rise to another series which focuses on a particular segment of the original series, on some of its characters, or at least on the same fictional universe. Such offshoots of a series, which are referred to as spin-offs, may be very short-lived (The Lone Gunmen, a spin-off of The X-Files, or Crusade, a spin-off of Babylon Five), but they may also become very successful series in their own right (Angel, a spin-off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer). A special kind of spin-off is a series like Queer as Folk that exists in a European and an American version: whereas the original British Queer as Folk consists of only 10 episodes, however, the American series, which starts off with almost exactly the same story filmed in almost exactly the same way, then goes on to develop the story further. Crossovers, where characters of one


series appear in another, are characteristic of spin-offs, but occasionally crossovers also link series which are not related. Examples of the former type are seen in Buffy – Angel and Hercules – Xena crossovers; an example of the latter type are crossovers between Ally McBeal and The Practice in the episodes ‘The Inmates’ and ‘These Are the Days’ of Ally McBeal (1.19; 1.23). The basic prerequisite for the ‘migration’ of characters from one narrative universe to another is institutional: usually crossovers only involve series that are broadcast on the same TV network. Crossovers also seem to require that the universes involved are more or less compatible. Crossovers may fulfil different functions. Their primary aesthetic function seems to be adding to the complexity of the fictional universe created in the series by weaving their characters and their worlds into a coherent fictional universe. This effect can be observed in the various Star Trek series, where crossovers contribute to the construction of a distinct ‘Star Trek universe’. Crossovers are also employed thematically, for example when in an episode of The X-Files broadcast shortly before the year 2000 (‘Millennium’, first broadcast on 28 November 1999) a crossover with the series Millennium occurred. The characters that appear in another series as a result of a crossover are typically ‘transworld-identical with their prototype’ (McHale 1987: 36), but there are also rare instances of characters being ‘merely homonymous’ (ibid.). An example of the latter type of crossover can be found in the series Friends, where Phoebe, one of the main characters of the sitcom, played by Lisa Kudrow, in ‘The One with the Two Parts, Part I’ (1.16) encounters her identical twin Ursula, played by the same actress. While the introduction of long-lost siblings is far from being unusual in TV series, it is here motivated by the fact that Kudrow plays the character of Ursula in the sitcom Mad About You. The fictional universe of Mad About You, however, is not evoked in the episode of Friends, which means the crossover is mainly an insider joke for viewers familiar with both series. An increasing use of metafictional elements can be observed in contemporary TV series. Metafictional features may bare the artificiality of the narration. An interesting example of this is ‘War of the Coprophages’ (The X-Files 3.12), where a cockroach runs across the camera lens, thus reminding viewers of the presence of the camera. In the Buffy episode ‘Normal Again’, which was mentioned above, the very existence of the ‘universe’ of the series with all its vampires, demons and slayers is called into doubt. The understanding that everything in Buffy’s world is just a figment of someone’s imagination is moreover supported by the actual viewers’ knowledge that it is exactly that: the


result of the imagination of a group of Hollywood writers and producers. Episodes which are structurally very similar to ‘Normal Again’ can be found in other TV series as well. In ‘Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man’ (The X-Files 4.07) Scully and Mulder appear to be but characters invented by the Cigarette-Smoking Man, and in ‘Far Beyond the Stars’ (Deep Space Nine 6.13) Captain Sisko wonders right up to the end of the episode whether he is not just imagining the space station Deep Space Nine and his life in the twenty-fourth century. Another way of undermining the fictional illusion is explored in episodes of the fantasy series Xena such as ‘Déjà Vu All Over Again’ (4.22) or ‘Send in the Clones’ (6.16) which do not present the usual setting (a pseudo-mythological ancient Greece), but instead tell stories set during the production of the series or focusing on the fandom (with the actors who usually play the roles of Greek heroines, heroes, Gods and Goddesses appearing as members of the production team or as fans of the show). Titles directing the viewers’ attention to structural features of the episode are further metafictional devices employed in contemporary TV series (cf. titles such as ‘The One With the Flashback’ [Friends 3.06] and ‘Really Big Season Opener’ [Sabrina, the Teenage Witch 6.01]). Finally, the patterns within the seasons of TV series themselves can become the implied target of metafictional comments by the characters: thus, when Buffy observes in ‘Get it Done’ (Buffy 7.15) that there is a biannual heightening of activities of the Hellmouth and a recurring peak in May, this reference can be related to the tendency of the producers of American TV series to place particularly exciting episodes in rating weeks and at season finales. *

*

*

As the preceding argument has shown, contemporary TV series make use of a wide range of innovative narrative techniques. The narrative strategies used in a particular TV series shape its overall aesthetics and determine how the series approaches its thematic concerns. The following 10 chapters, thus, do not just pay attention to the formal features of selected American, British and German TV series. Instead, they regard structure as a carrier of meaning and seek to capture the interplay between form and content. The series discussed in Part I, ‘Beyond Realism: Authentifying and Subjectifying Narrative Strategies’, are informed by a tension between strategies stressing the authenticity of what is shown on the one hand and by techniques emphasizing the subjectivity of the audiovisual


narrative on the other. The thriller series 24 claims to turn viewers into witnesses who see everything that is going on. Elisabeth Birk and Hanne Birk, however, argue that much of this supposed authenticity is an illusion and that subjectivity, in particular the strategy of privileging the perspective of agent Jack Bauer, plays an equally important role. The science fiction series Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise, which are discussed by Marion Gymnich, are shaped by an overall narrative style that lends the narratives a high degree of authority. Yet the series, time and again, tell stories that show characters trapped in fantasy universes generated by genre-specific features, such as hallucinations induced by alien life forms. In her article on the German series Berlin, Berlin, which was awarded an Emmy in 2004, Carola Surkamp explores in particular the innovative forms of presenting the main character’s consciousness, which are one of the distinctive features of the series. The chapters subsumed in Part II under the heading ‘Multi-layered Characters, Multi-layered Narratives’ focus on narrative strategies that undermine concepts of coherent TV characters and unified fictional worlds. Janine Matthees shows that a tendency to create multi-layered characters and narratives can already be seen in Twin Peaks, a series that has pioneered strategies of presenting novel concepts of characters and fictional worlds, such as doppelgangers or places that only exist in a dream universe. Klaudia Seibel’s analysis of The X-Files focuses on the issue of the ontological status of the various fictional worlds constructed throughout the series and on the narrative strategies of their ontological destabilization. In her chapter on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Gaby Allrath discusses how the unity of character is disrupted in more and more fundamental ways in the two series and how their fictional worlds are rendered increasingly complex by being linked with each other and with permeable layers of alternate dimensions. In Part III, ‘Narrating Gender/Gendering Narratives’, the chapter on Sex and the City and Ellen look at the narrative presentation of gender and sexuality in two TV series whose popularity seems to hinge upon their depiction of these very issues. Esther Fritsch shows that the social practice of gossiping is used in Sex and the City to approach sexuality in the open manner the series has become famous for. In Ellen, in contrast, the departure from the heterosexual matrix that sitcoms have traditionally adhered to led to the end of what once was one of the most popular American sitcoms. Dirk Schulz traces the development of Ellen from the time when its plots were still driven by the problems associated with heterosexual dating to the protagonist’s coming out as a lesbian, which was preceded by a considerable amount of hedging and equivocations.


The two chapters in Part IV, ‘(Re)Narrating History’, emphasize the relationship between TV series and their cultural context. What the German series Die zweite Heimat (discussed by Sandra Heinen and Stefan Deines) and the British series Blackadder (analysed by Eckart VoigtsVirchow) have in common is that they approach the audiovisual presentation of history in innovative, at times even iconoclastic ways. Die zweite Heimat tells individual histories, stressing the subjective nature of experiencing and constructing what is seen as ‘History’, whereas the alternative history told in Blackadder makes fun of common assumptions about particularly prominent periods in British history. Analyses of the narrative techniques in the two series reveal how TV series can re-narrate history in very different, though equally non-documentary, styles, inviting viewers to consider how narratives about history are constructed – both culturally and medially. Notes 1 2 3

4

5

6

7

For an outline of television studies, see Allen (1992) and Butler (1994). For narratological approaches to film studies, cf. also Kozloff (1988), Deleyto (1996 [1991]), Branigan (1992) and Jahn (2002). For an overview of the various new narratologies, see Fludernik (2000), Nünning (2000), and the volumes of articles edited by Grünzweig and Solbach (1999), Herman (1999), A. Nünning and V. Nünning (2002) and V. Nünning and A. Nünning (2002). Long-running American weekly series are structured in terms of ‘seasons’. Typically, a season consists of about 22–25 episodes and begins towards the end of September. Episodes focusing on dates such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas or Valentine’s Day coincide with those dates in reality. For British TV series the term ‘season’ is not usually used, but rather the term ‘series’ to refer to the episodes broadcast in one sequence. Normally a British series consists of considerably fewer episodes than a season of an American series. Episodes of American series are referred to by indicating the title of the episode, the season it belongs to and its position in the season. If not otherwise indicated, this system of referencing is used throughout the volume. Not all critics, however, agree that the camera can be classified as a narrating agency. Deleyto (1996 [1991]), for example, argues that the camera does not narrate and should be seen as an external focalizer. For a typology of shots on the basis of the camera’s distance from the object shown, see, for example, Jahn (2002: F.2.2): ‘detail/extreme close-up . . . A small object or part of an object shown large . . . close-up, close shot . . . Full view of, typically, a human face . . . medium shot . . . A view of the upper half of a person’s body, showing his or her bodily stance . . . American shot . . . A three-quarter view of a person, showing her or him from the knees up . . . full shot . . . A full view of a person . . . long shot . . . A view from a distance, of a large object or a collection of objects . . . extreme long shot . . . A view from a considerable distance.’

Gaby Allrath, Marion Gymnich and Carola Surkamp 41 8 For a typology of dynamic shots, resulting from different kinds of camera movement, cuts and camera angles, see Jahn (2002: F.2.3–F.2.5). 9 Jahn (2002: F.3.2) points out that the technique of voice-over may be either an act of narration (the ‘[r]epresentation of a non-visible narrator’s voice’) or a way of presenting a character’s mental processes, the ‘representation of a character’s interior monologue (the character may be visible but her/his lips do not move)’. For an exploration of the structural and aesthetic possibilities of voice-over narration, see also Kozloff (1988) and Chatman (1999). 10 On the difference between sex and gender, cf., for example, Casey et al. (2002: 103–4). 11 On unreliable narration in TV series, see also Kozloff (1992: 84), whose definition, however, remains indebted to traditional structuralist concepts of unreliability. For revised definitions, which conceptualize unreliable narration in fictional narratives with an eye to the cognitive processes underlying the attribution of unreliability, see Nünning (1999), Zerweck (2001) and Allrath (2005). 12 On the difference between ‘fixed focalization’, ‘variable focalization’ and ‘multiple focalization’, cf. Stam et al. (1992: 90): ‘Internal focalization can be FIXED – limited to a single character; VARIABLE – which occurs when the focalization shifts within a scene or a film from one character or [sic] another: [sic] or MULTIPLE – in which one event is viewed from several different perspectives.’ 13 For a definition of these angles, see Jahn (2002: F.2.5). 14 This entire lack of change is the subject of a metafictional comment in The Simpsons (‘Homer Loves Flanders’ 5.14), when Lisa reassures her brother Bart that there is no danger of their obnoxious neighbour Flanders actually developing a close friendship with their father: ‘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.’

References Allen, R. C. (ed.) (1992) [1987] Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism. London/New York: Routledge. Allrath, G. (2005) (En)Gendering Unreliable Narration. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Branigan, E. (1984) Point of View in the Cinema: A Theory of Narration and Subjectivity in Classical Film. Berlin/New York/Amsterdam: Mouton. ——(1992) Narrative Comprehension and Film. London: Routledge. Butler, J. G. (1994) Television: Critical Methods and Applications. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Casey, B., N. Casey, B. Calvert, L. French and J. Lewis (2002) Television Studies: The Key Concepts. London/New York: Routledge. Chatman, S. (1978) Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY/London: Cornell University Press. ——(1980) ‘What Novels Can Do That Films Can’t (and Vice Versa)’. Critical Inquiry 7.1: 121–40. ——(1990) Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY/London: Cornell University Press.

42 Towards a Narratology of TV Series ——(1999) ‘New Directions in Voice-Narrated Cinema’. In D. Herman (1999), op. cit.: 315–39. Deleyto, C. (1996) [1991] ‘Focalisation in Film Narrative’. In S. Onega and J. Angel Garcia Landa (eds), Narratology: An Introduction. London/New York: Longman, 217–33. Ellis, J. (1982) Visible Fictions: Cinema – Television – Video. London/New York: Routledge. Fludernik, M. (2000) ‘Beyond Structuralism in Narratology: Recent Developments and New Horizons in Narrative Theory’. Anglistik 11.1: 83–96. Genette, G. (1980) Narrative Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell. Gregory, C. (2000) Star Trek: Parallel Narratives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Grünzweig, W. and A. Solbach (eds) (1999) Grenzüberschreitungen: Narratologie im Kontext/Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Context. Tübingen: Narr. Herman, D. (ed.) (1999) Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. Hobson, D. (1989) ‘Soap Operas at Work’. In E. Seiter et al. (eds), Remote Control: Television Audiences and Cultural Power. London: Routledge, 150–67. Jahn, M. (2002) Poems, Plays, and Prose: A Guide to the Theory of Literary Genres. English Department, University of Cologne. (http://www.uni-koeln.de/~ame02/ ppp.htm) Kozloff, S. (1988) Invisible Storytellers: Voice-Over Narration in American Fiction Film. Berkeley: University of California Press. ——(1992) ‘Narrative Theory and Television’. In R. C. Allen (1992) [1987], op. cit.: 67–100. Levinson, J. (1996) ‘Film Music and Narrative Agency’. In D. Bordwell and N. Carroll (eds), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 248–82. McHale, B. (1987) Postmodernist Fiction. London/New York: Routledge. Nelson, R. (2000) ‘TV Drama: “Flexi-Narrative” Form and “a New Affective Order”’. In E. Voigts-Virchow (2000), op. cit.: 111–18. Nünning, A. (1999) ‘Unreliable, Compared to What? Towards a Cognitive Theory of Unreliable Narration: Prolegomina and Hypotheses’. In W. Grünzweig and A. Solbach (1999), op. cit.: 53–73. ——(2000) ‘Towards a Cultural and Historical Narratology: A Survey of Diachronic Approaches, Concepts, and Research Projects’. In B. Reitz and S. Rieuwerts (eds), Anglistentag 1999 Mainz: Proceedings of the Conference of the German Association of University Teachers of English. Vol. XXI. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 345–73. Nünning, A. and V. Nünning (eds) (2002) Neue Ansätze in der Erzähltheorie. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Nünning, V. and A. Nünning (eds) (2000) Multiperspektivisches Erzählen: Zur Theorie und Geschichte der Perspektivenstruktur im englischen Roman des 18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. ——(eds) (2002) Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Pfister, M. (1991) [1977] The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ryan, M.-L. (1991) Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Gaby Allrath, Marion Gymnich and Carola Surkamp 43 ——(1992) ‘Possible Worlds in Recent Literary Theory’. Style 26.4: 528–53. ——(2005) ‘Possible-Worlds Theory’. In D. Herman, M. Jahn and M.-L. Ryan (eds), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London/New York: Routledge, 446–50. Stam, R., R. Burgoyne and S. Flitterman-Lewis (1992) New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics: Structuralism, Post-Structuralism and Beyond. London/New York: Routledge. Surkamp, C. (2002) ‘Narratologie und possible-worlds theory: Narrative Texte als alternative Welten’. In A. Nünning and V. Nünning (2002), op. cit.: 153–83. ——(2003) Die Perspektivenstruktur narrativer Texte: Zu ihrer Theorie und Geschichte im englischen Roman zwischen Viktorianismus und Moderne. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Thompson, K. (2003) Storytelling in Film and Television. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press. Voigts-Virchow, E. (ed.) (2000) Mediated Drama – Dramatized Media. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Walker, C. (2000) ‘A Funny Business: Producing Situation Comedy’. In E. Voigts-Virchow (2000), op. cit.: 95–100. Williams, R. (1975) Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken Books. Zerweck, B. (2001) ‘Historizing Unreliable Narration: Unreliability and Cultural Discourse in Narrative Fiction’. Style 35.1: 151–78.


Part I Beyond Realism: Authentifying and Subjectifying Narrative Strategies


2 ‘Today is going to be the longest day of my life’: A Narratological Analysis of 24 Elisabeth Birk and Hanne Birk*

The first season of 24 TV series are almost as old as the medium television itself and have often been held to be particularly conservative in content and simple in form. Recent years have, however, seen an emergence of formally innovative US productions, which toy with the conventions of the genre and recycle some of the more creative storytelling devices in cinematic history. 24 (2001–), created by Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran for the Fox Entertainment Group, is an example of this development. One of the many novel narrative devices is the time structure: in this espionage thriller about a US federal agent who tries to prevent a terrorist assassination attempt, ‘events occur in real time’, as the show’s leitmotif has it. The 24 one-hour episodes are supposed to add up to one very long day in the life of the characters. An analysis of 24 from the point of view of narratology, as it is pursued in this chapter, has to draw on the categories developed by film narratology while also taking into consideration the specific constraints of TV productions. Particular attention will be paid to those features of 24 that exploit media-specific possibilities of representation. Regarding the narrative devices employed in 24, we focus on the correlated workings of seriality and time structure, and narrating agencies and split screens. As a medium, television has perfected serialization.1 For a narratological approach this raises the question of what can be considered the basic unit of analysis: one episode, all episodes of a season, or all episodes of a

* The authors would like to thank Janet Dearden and Sara B. Young for their very helpful comments and suggestions. 47

48 A Narratological Analysis of 24

series that have been broadcast? Television studies try to cope with this problem by means of the distinction between ‘serials’ (in which episodes lack narrative closure), and ‘series’ (in which episodes are largely independent narrative units). While many serialized TV narratives feature characteristics of both types, 24 is a typical ‘serial’ as there is no closure to the individual episodes; on the contrary, episodes routinely end in a cliff-hanger. The defining idea of the show – strict unity of time – demands that the 24 hours of season one constitute a single narrative. In 24 it is thus clearly the season that should be regarded as the basic unit of narratological analysis.2 The paper focuses on season one since the formal characteristics remain largely the same in the later seasons: the relation between the three seasons so far is mainly one of parallelism and intensification. In season one, terrorists are plotting to assassinate the first African American presidential candidate on the day of the presidential primary in Los Angeles. The action sets in at midnight as federal agent Jack Bauer, who works for the government’s Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU), is assigned the task of preventing the assassination. The main action is divided into several storylines: in addition to Jack’s professional endeavour, there is the story of his teenage daughter Kimberley being kidnapped and trying to escape from her captors while his wife Teri, who is trying to find her daughter, is herself targeted by the kidnappers. Thus Jack has to save both his wife and his daughter and to avert the assassination attempt. Meanwhile, Senator Palmer, the presidential candidate, has to face the fact that his son might have been involved in the death of the man who raped Palmer’s daughter and that his aides and his wife are trying to cover up the whole affair. Jack’s task is further complicated by the problem that there is at least one mole within the agency. These storylines converge when the viewer comes to realize that the terrorist attack is not politically motivated, but constitutes a personal vendetta directed against Senator Palmer and Jack Bauer: ‘So correct me if I’m wrong, but what this day basically boils down to is a personal vendetta against you and Palmer by the family of Victor Drazen’ (George Mason to Jack in 1.18; quoted from Hark 2004: 131). The reason for this is that two years before, Palmer had authorized a secret military operation against the mass murderer Victor Drazen in Serbia. It was Jack Bauer who led ‘Operation Nightfall’, in the course of which Drazen’s wife and daughter were accidentally killed. Without Palmer’s and Jack’s knowledge – who believe Drazen to be dead – the latter is held captive in a secret subterranean prison near Los Angeles. The driving force behind the current plot are Drazen’s sons, who want to free their father and avenge their family. Meanwhile, Palmer and his

Elisabeth Birk and Hanne Birk 49

son decide to reveal everything they know about the rapist’s suspicious death to the public, and their honesty is rewarded by Palmer’s success at the polls. Jack finally tracks down the terrorists and – believing that the terrorists killed his daughter – takes revenge, killing both Drazen and one of his sons. Nina Myers, Jack Bauer’s chief of staff, whom he had an affair with while temporarily separated from his wife, turns out to be the traitor within CTU. Not only does Nina, who is really ‘Yelena’, work for the Drazen brothers but also for an enigmatic German criminal organization, whose identity is never revealed. While Kimberley arrives safely at CTU, Teri, who has accidentally discovered Nina’s real identity, is killed by Nina. Fox also produced an alternative ending, featuring the reunification of the happy family, which has been added for distribution on video/DVD. Season two – again with 24 one-hour episodes – depicts another day in the life of the protagonists, about 18 months later. Jack, who is still grieving over the death of his wife, returns to work for CTU, this time to save not the life of a single individual but millions of lives – namely the entire population of Los Angeles, which is threatened by a nuclear bomb that a Middle Eastern terrorist group has planted. As Palmer is now President of the United States, he and Jack work together again. Other main characters also reappear: Nina/Yelena turns out to be the only one who can give Jack vital information as to where the bomb is hidden, while Kimberley has to flee the police as well as her former employer after having been wrongly blamed for the death of the latter’s wife. Throughout most of the second season, Jack once more does not know whether his daughter is safe or still within the range of the bomb. Season three, set three years later, is about the development of a deadly virus by Ukrainian scientists. The most characteristic formal features can be found in all three seasons and the plot proceeds along similar lines. The main storylines of 24 – as well as the numerous twists and turns in the subplots – are held together by the idea that time is running out: the assassination attempt is to happen within the 24 hours of the day of the presidential primary in California, which coincides with the second anniversary of ‘Operation Nightfall’. Accordingly, the outstanding formal features of the series are its time structure and the use of split screens that indicate the simultaneity of the unfolding storylines.

The time structure: 24 hours In the introductory part of each episode viewers are told that ‘events occur in real time’ and that ‘this is going to be the longest day of my life’ (repeated by Jack Bauer in an introductory voice-over narration).


This makes for a fast-paced narrative; the action is spurred on by the mere knowledge that time is running out.3 This effect is heightened by frequent references to time, not only in the title of the series but also in regularly inserted captions and subtitles indicating the time with the image of a digital clock ticking away. The beginning of each episode follows a fixed pattern: the title of the episode, that is solely the time caption (for example ‘1 p.m. – 2 p.m.’), is followed by the title, presented as the display of a digital clock racing in crackling blips to the number ‘24’. From episode 1.08 onwards, a longer expository comment by Jack is inserted between the title and a ‘Previously on 24’ sequence consisting of clips from earlier episodes. In every episode the viewer is told by an off-screen voice that can be identified as Jack’s: ‘The following takes place between x a.m./p.m. and y a.m./p.m. on the day of the California presidential primary. Events occur in real time.’ Since each episode ends with the digital clock counting out the last few seconds of the hour, the time captions provide a frame for the episodes. The ticking of the clock, sometimes made to resemble a heartbeat, sometimes verging on a kind of mechanical screeching, is also the only motif 24 features in the way of a theme song. Frequent allusions to the idea that events will unfold and be completed within 24 hours as well as to the characters’ growing exhaustion in the course of more than 24 sleepless hours also contribute to the pace of the action. As the action sets in at midnight, the waking hours add up to almost 36. In episode 1.09 Jack can hardly keep himself awake while having to keep an eye on a woman he is holding hostage. He tells her that he has not slept for 24 hours.4 Although the viewer is thus constantly reminded of the fact that story time and discourse time are supposed to correspond, there are a few obvious exceptions to this rule: the summaries in the introduction, which can be interpreted as flashbacks, the commercial breaks, a single flashback in the last episode, and a few slips. Interruptions for commercials are an important feature of TV series, since a series is always embedded in a schedule, which determines the length of individual episodes as well as the duration and frequency of the commercial breaks (cf. Kozloff 1992 [1987]: 89ff). Just like in other American TV series, there are four commercial breaks in each (US) episode of 24. Unlike in other series, however, a commercial break in 24 is neither a simple halt nor a ‘pause’ in the sense defined by Chatman (1978: 74), where the story time is zero while the discourse time runs on. What is remarkable about the breaks in 24 is that the time that elapses during the break in the viewers’ reality is also supposed to have elapsed in story time. This illusion is mainly created by the clocks


routinely shown before and after commercial breaks. As the story time in 24 is supposed to continue while the discourse time is zero, the commercial breaks seem to constitute a kind of ‘ellipsis’ rather than a ‘pause’. This is a highly unusual feature, prompted by the basic idea that an episode corresponds exactly to an hour in the characters’ lives. As a result the viewer sees only approximately 17 hours of the promised 24. In the course of certain episodes, however, the action seems to ‘freeze’ and the story time comes to a halt during a commercial break and both continue after the break as if no time had elapsed. For example, Teri and Kimberley are left hugging in precisely the same position for about four minutes in 1.08. Since this is exactly the kind of interruption viewers are accustomed to, these mistakes are not very conspicuous, though. Despite the fact that deviations from the (supposed) unity of time are as a rule glossed over as much as possible in 24, there is a single flashback, positioned prominently in the very last episode of the first season. At the end of the day a black-and-white flashback shows Jack’s memory of the beginning of the day (depicted in 1.01), when his wife was still alive. The position of the flashback referring to the beginning of the series suggests that time has come full circle. Moreover, it invites the viewer to feel sympathy for Jack, who remembers a family life that is irrevocably lost. Jack, who after all has just committed a murder (Victor Drazen), is thus cast as a victim and the story is, once more, clearly marked as his. Even if one sets aside these exceptions, the show’s time structure is not as straightforward as the introductory leitmotif – ‘events occur in real time’ – suggests. It is true that events follow a strictly chronological order; we never see events narrated in succession that happen simultaneously. The use of split screens (see below) and the entire narrative presentation create the impression that the viewer is constantly witnessing the events in each of the storylines, but this is of course misleading. The show switches constantly between storylines, and with respect to each single storyline the narration thus is in fact highly elliptic. This must be the case as there simply can be no unity of time in the strict sense if there is no unity of action. But the medium film has technical means that can create an exception to this rule: split screens do offer the possibility of simultaneous narration. A case in point is Mike Figgis’ Time Code (USA/Fox 2000), where a split screen with four frames shows the four storylines simultaneously throughout the film. 24 makes regular use of split screens in order to contribute to the impression that the different storylines are progressing simultaneously. The split screens invite the viewer to forget that s/he has in fact not been shown


everything, that is that s/he has ‘missed’ scenes. The viewer tends to accept the illusion, as s/he seems to witness everything that is important to the development of the plot. There are only two instances (both in the last episode of season one) where the viewers realize retrospectively that crucial information has been withheld: firstly, when the camera left Nina and Teri, so that the viewer only discovers that Teri is dead at the same time as Jack himself does. Secondly, only with the revelation that Nina is a traitor do viewers conclude that she must have been busy making phone calls and transferring data to the Drazens while the viewers were being shown another storyline. This phenomenon is akin to a type of analepsis that can be found in detective stories following the Sherlock Holmes pattern, according to which the ending of a narrative provides the readers/viewers with information that helps to fill the gaps left by the preceding tale. The time structure of 24 features a whole range of devices that create the illusion of an almost documentary type of representation. These authentification strategies are one of the main sources of suspense since they aim at involving the viewer in the story. These features, streamlined to create the impression of events being depicted in ‘real time’, usually coincide with a low degree of intervention by the narrating agency: ‘The closer the discourse approaches to congruence with storytime through presenting singulative scenes in chronological order, the less interventionist and the more invisible is the narrator’ (Kozloff 1992 [1987]: 88). The invisibility of the narrator is another authentification strategy and invites the viewer to feel part of the narrated world. Another factor conducive to the creation of an almost documentary effect is the lack of playfulness that characterizes the series as a whole: there are no intertextual references or metafictional jabs and there is a complete absence of anything resembling a sense of humour.

Split screens One of the defining formal characteristics of 24 is its use of split screens. This device, which is employed in a variety of ways and fulfils different functions, can regularly be found directly before and after each commercial break, after the ‘previously on 24’ sequence at the beginning of each episode, and before the cliff-hanger at the end of each episode. In addition to these recurrent patterns, split screens appear in varying contexts. Split screens at the beginning and at the end of episodes or sequences serve as a reminder of the different loose threads with which the previous episode or sequence left us, or they illustrate the unresolved


problems the current episode has introduced. The two main functions of split screens in 24 are to compensate for a necessarily elliptic narration and to maintain the illusion that the viewer is continually witnessing all events. Split screens thus provide a media-specific means of emphasizing the parallelism of events that can otherwise only be shown in anachronic succession. This contributes to the overall impression of accelerated action in the race against the clock. ‘Managing’ multiple storylines by the use of split screens also helps to prevent viewers from confusing the time structure of 24 with the time structure they are used to from other shows, where they usually are confronted with simultaneous events presented in succession. Other possibilities of linking storylines are technical devices such as mobile phones, tracking devices or surveillance cameras. Mobile phones in particular are essential to a plot where storylines often have geographically distant settings, and partners in a telephone conversation are regularly shown in split screens. This mode of presentation is routinely used to create suspense: in episode 1.10, for instance, Teri has called Jack on a mobile phone she has taken from one of her kidnappers. When the kidnapper comes back to look for it, Jack (in one frame) eavesdrops on the conversation in the terrorists’ hideout (in the second frame). In 1.15 the viewer sees a man Jack hopes to obtain information from being strangled while talking to Jack on the phone. At the beginning of the following episode a sequence of split screens first shows the corpse and the mobile phone in two separate frames, then a cut to the phone and Jack who asks his interlocutor to pick up the phone. As examples like this illustrate, split screens can give the viewer the chance to catch glimpses of simultaneous events in different storylines. Sometimes it is the transition from one storyline to another, rather than the link between two separate storylines, that is marked by split screens. This transition usually follows the following pattern: first the full frame is minimized and shown on a black background. Then one or two (rarely three) other frames appear. The frames are arranged in various patterns and sizes, the design varying without a recognizable pattern. The transition to the next sequence might be marked by a simple cut or by maximizing or zooming into a frame. Examples can be found at the end of 1.03, when Janet (Kimberley’s friend), who was left for dead by the kidnappers after a road accident, is shown to open her eyes. This cliff-hanger is resolved in 1.04, which begins with the following sequence of split screens: Janet lying on the pavement (full shot; upper frame) / her face in close up (lower frame); her face in close up (main frame); her face in close up (upper frame) / Janet lying on the pavement


(full shot; lower frame); Janet lying on the pavement (full shot; upper frame) / Kimberley (lower frame). Frames may thus show scenes from different storylines as well as from the same storyline (for example when the audience sees Teri hitching a ride in one frame and the car of her pursuer turning around in the other frame in 1.16). They may also show the same event from different angles or distances (for example when half of the screen shows Jack on the phone from the left side and the other half shows him from the right side, also in 1.16) or any combination of these. In a strict sense, the split screens showing the same event from different angles are the only instance of multiperspectival narration in 24, as they are the only possibility for multiperspectival representation in an otherwise strictly chronological narration. Such a restriction is not specific to the medium, but to the time structure of 24: a Rashomon-style narration might of course show different versions of the same event in succession (cf. Griem 2000). 24 may also be said to offer an interesting instance of two-track (audiovisual) multiperspectivity – depending on what one accepts as the ‘same’ event. Episode 1.10, for instance, contains the very rare example of a split screen with a corresponding ‘split’ soundtrack: in one of the frames we see Jack or the stairs he is running down in order to catch up with a suspect in the descending elevator, the interior of which we see in another frame. We hear the conversation of people in the elevator and Jack’s steps on the stairs simultaneously. Split screens in 24 thus have a variety of functions, but the creation of contrasting points of view is not among them. Split screens are rather used to create suspense or to contribute to the speed of action. Furthermore, they allow the viewer to be in different settings at the same time, thereby counterbalancing an otherwise highly elliptic narrative sequence.

The narrating agencies 24 features two narrating agencies: the ‘camera’ (in the metaphorical sense) and Jack Bauer as an overt narrator in the episodes’ introductions, the only instance of voice-over narration in 24. The ‘camera’ acts largely as an extradiegetic and heterodiegetic narrating agency. The regular use of time captions and the occasional use of captions specifying the place are also indicative of an extradiegetic narrating agency. Furthermore, such captions can be seen as an allusion to a different genre, the documentary; as such they certainly qualify as authentification strategies.


From 1.08 onward, Jack appears as a voice-over narrator in a very brief expository frame between the title and the summary of previous episodes. The audience sees him and then the other protagonists briefly as he outlines the plot in the following words (with minor variations as the plot unfolds): ‘Right now terrorists are plotting to assassinate a presidential candidate; my teenage daughter is missing; and people that I work with may be involved in both. I’m federal agent Jack Bauer. Today is going to be the longest day of my life.’ Jack’s voice-over gives an – admittedly very basic – outline of the plot, but serves primarily to privilege Jack’s voice. Jack seems to ‘host’ the show and thus can be seen as a character-focalizer, though not in the literal (perceptual) sense, but on the ‘ideological’ level – a type of focalization that, according to Stam et al. (1992: 89), ‘concerns the character whose perspective could be said to express the general system of values’ of the text. In this way, Jack is endowed with authority and credibility. This is a device of ‘personalization’ that serves to channel the viewers’ sympathies and attention before the beginning of the action. This function of show hosts and frame narrators (cf. Kozloff 1992 [1987]: 81–2) is all the more important since there is no fixed character-focalization in the subsequent action. Various forms of perceptual focalization are frequently used, ranging from classic over-the-shoulder shots to complex and innovative arrangements. Protagonists as well as the odd assassin who survives for no more than half an episode appear as perceptual focalizers. Since there is no hierarchy or continuity in the choice of focalizers, perceptual focalization contributes to speed, suspense and emotional intensity rather than to an identification with the characters. A mode of perceptual focalization that is frequently used in 24 are the classic over-the-shoulder shots, which have been used in audiovisual narratives since the 1930s to ‘perk up’ dialogues or scenes of encounter in a shot/counter-shot technique. In an over-the-shoulder shot we see part of a character’s head or shoulder (or even the tip of a nose or an ear) in the margin as well as a frame that corresponds approximately to his/her field of vision. Over-the-shoulder shots are a very common device that fulfils a range of different functions. They may be used to emphasize the emotional potential of a confrontation, as for example in episode 1.20, when Kimberley tries to convince a policeman of her innocence in the course of an interrogation. In this instance alternating over-the-shoulder shots stage the conflicting perspectives of the two characters. In contrast, over-the-shoulder shots may also create an atmosphere of friendship and understanding. In 1.15, for instance, an


encounter between Palmer and Jack Bauer, in which Palmer apologizes to Jack for his false suspicions, is filmed using this technique. Another type of perceptual focalization are eye-line shots, where we see a character’s gaze and then its object (or the other way round). Eyeline shots occur in many variations, and the information that cues us to identify a take as a character’s point of view is not always the classic close-up of her/his face or eyes. In 24 there are many innovative variations of eye-line shots. The viewer might see a character from the back sitting at her/his computer, followed by a cut to the PC screen. An eyeline shot might be followed by a swish pan copying the movement of a person’s head. The cue might also consist in a technical device, such as a black ‘mask’ that indicates that someone is watching Jack through binoculars (1.20). In this instance viewers only realize several takes later whose point of view this must have been. The lines indicating the target in a rifle’s telescopic sight are sufficient to make the audience realize that they see what the assassin sees. Or the viewer sees Teri, her head covered with a sack, followed by a cut to a view through the sacking (1.08). In 1.06 the audience sees one of the kidnappers, who is burying his accomplice, briefly framed by the walls of the grave, as if from the dead man’s point of view. The gaze may also be reflected by a mirror: in 1.20, when Sherry Palmer closes the door on her husband, who has just decided to leave her, a mirror fastened to the reverse side of the door shows the viewers that they have been watching her through Palmer’s eyes. A particularly remarkable variety of eye-line shot can be found in 1.06, when Kimberley’s friend Janet is hospitalized after an accident. What viewers see is a man whom they believe to be Janet’s father (and therefore trustworthy) enter Janet’s room. As he appears in Janet’s field of vision (which we recognize as such solely by the camera angle and the initially blurred vision of the prostrate and only half-conscious girl), however, she asks him where her father is. Only at this moment do viewers realize that she is in great danger, and in fact the man brutally murders Janet shortly afterwards. It is a matter of debate whether such eye-line shots should be regarded as focalization or as instances of homodiegetic narration. Whichever category is chosen for these instances of ‘subjective camera’, the important fact is that these relatively short focalizations seem to necessitate a cue or marker if they are to be recognized as such. Deleyto (1996 [1991]: 227) mentions, for example, ‘editing, movements of the camera, framing and mise-en-scene’ as possible ‘clues’ to focalization. Another feature in 24 are takes that seem to be marked as ‘subjective’ when in fact there is no one ‘there’ to whom the viewer could ascribe


this ‘point of view’. One such cue may be the frame of the take, for example when a scene is shot through the back window of a car (1.17). The movement and angle of the take can also indicate a subjective perspective, when a hand-held camera at eye-level follows or precedes a character. In 1.19, for instance, the camera follows Jack and a colleague through the woods. All of these instances of perceptual focalization contribute to the overall illusion of the viewer’s immersion into the narrated world, because techniques such as over-the-shoulder and eye-line shots create the illusion that the viewer is present in the events, that s/he is almost part of the action. But we have to keep in mind that these techniques of immersion might add up to a work of complete and obvious artificiality – or just as well to a representation that approaches the form of a documentary.5 In 24, techniques that create the impression that a character or another subjective instance is the focalizer of individual sequences have an effect similar to the strategies of authentification delineated above: 24 relies so heavily on the ‘real time’ effect that it takes a step in the direction of a ‘live’ representation (with ‘real time’ suggesting a fictive simultaneity of the events on screen). The series’ setting also mainly serves the purpose of authentification. The representation of Los Angeles in 24 has been praised as realistic (Gallo 2001). Yet some scenes are remarkable for ‘surreal’ lighting and colour: steeped in sickly greens or yellows a scene in broad daylight might take on a nightmarish quality. Furthermore, there are spatial oppositions that are heavily charged with meaning. The windowless CTU building in the centre of L.A. could be opposed to the terrorists’ hideouts somewhere in the surroundings; the CTU building is designed as a reliable, never-changing centre/vantage point in that it is often kept in bluish-greenish light independent from the light of day.

Plot and characters The overall structure of the plot is determined by the logic of the series’ time structure on the one hand and the genre-specific necessity of presenting a plot with a conclusion on the other hand. In accordance with the generally accelerated rhythm of the action, 24 begins in medias res. The storylines that have some bearing on the ‘espionage’ aspects of the plot (such as the identification of the traitor, the death of the villain) lead to a closed ending; ‘human interest’ developments, such as Jack’s professional future, the results of Palmer’s campaign, or the penal consequences for Palmer’s son are left pending. Thus the first 24 hours


present both a satisfying conclusion to the action and an invitation for the second season, the next 24 hours. Due to the constraints imposed by the time structure and the rhythm of the action, 24 offers little information about the characters’ past and little to flesh out their relationships. Fox tries to compensate for this by an elaborate internet presentation.6 It features short profiles of actors and characters (mainly of their professional and/or academic backgrounds); an ‘episode guide’; a ‘character guide’, where only events that have some bearing on the character are presented; ‘research files’ containing information on the weapons and technical devices used in 24; a ‘Palmer for President’ poster; and Kimberley’s and Jack’s ‘desktops’ with incoming mail. Kimberley’s desktop also offers information on the music and books she is interested in. This can be regarded as another instance of character ‘rounding’, even if some of the choices (Sartre, Brett Easton Ellis) hardly tie in with her character’s profile in the first season. Although the ‘rounding’ of characters is certainly its main function, the website also includes authentification strategies: Nina’s character profile is marked ‘confidential – to be used for internal investigation – suspect is in custody’, while Teri’s is accessible, but stamped ‘deceased’. Despite these efforts to depict individual traits, the characters in 24 remain to a certain extent typified: Jack – the ‘cop’ with high moral standards who cares little about rules; Teri – the victim; Nina and Palmer’s wife – the temptress/traitor; Tony – Jack’s colleague, who plays things by the book; Palmer – the series’ irreproachable übervater; Drazen – Palmer’s ‘eerie doppelgänger’ (Hark 2004: 133), the villain whose brutality does not even stop at his friends and allies. This results in a number of obvious constellations: Teri and Nina are antagonists and rivals for Jack’s affection; Tony and Jack are guided by similar moral imperatives, yet are widely different in character and compete for Nina’s affection. The female protagonists in 24 are not simple ‘housewife’ or ‘femme fatale’ stereotypes (Teri is a resourceful woman, Nina appears professional rather than cold-blooded); nevertheless the logic of the plot demands a high degree of typification. The most interesting comparison is that between Jack and Drazen, as it is their antagonism that fuels the action: ‘the violence in 24 has narrow, personal motivations and results from the activities of competing state intelligence operatives . . . [E]verything that initially seems political is actually personal’ (Hark 2004: 122–3). Drazen and his sons are motivated by the desire for individual revenge – in fact the entire plot is based on this motive; Jack kills Drazen for exactly the same reason.


While this might have caused a certain amount of moral ambiguity, in 24 this question is glossed over by various means. Those aspects of focalization that mark the series as a whole as Jack’s story and Drazen’s one-sided portrayal as an unscrupulous and cold-blooded murderer contribute to the lack of ambiguity. Furthermore, it is Palmer’s approval – that is the approval of someone who is presented as absolutely incorruptible – that sanctions Jack’s actions as well as the blackmail perpetrated by US agencies, their secret prison and the complete disregard for the protection of data privacy. In 24 these questions are not addressed (Drazen himself is the only one who criticizes ‘Operation Nightfall’); on the contrary, there is an obvious use of clichés when villains can be recognized by their nationality (Serbs in season one, Arabs in season two) and their (fake) accent.7 Thus 24 features opposing tendencies: on the one hand Palmer, the only irreproachable character, the very personification of honesty and uprightness, is African American and will possibly become the first African American president. In this way, the USA is presented as a haven of racial integration and equal opportunities. On the other hand, what is perceived as national interest is enforced in contempt of human rights and with the utmost violence aimed at individuals clearly marked as foreign to the USA. It should also not go unnoticed that the only homosexual characters in the entire series are a pair of greedy and bloodthirsty lesbian terrorists, a fact that has rightly been criticized (cf. Sangster 2002: 51). Any resulting doubts, which could and should have been discussed or dealt with in the series, are covered up for the sake of suspense and speed: there is no time for ambiguity in 24. Accordingly, 24 is characterized by a fundamental tension, namely that a politically conservative content is conveyed by formally innovative techniques.

Conclusion The formal characteristics of 24 – mainly the fictive ‘real time’ and the split screens – are a highly efficient means of creating suspense and of providing the narrative with a sense of urgency and acceleration. Sophisticated technical and narratological means are successfully grafted onto a stereotyped constellation of characters and a stereotyped and – at times – contrived plot. These formal characteristics are also examples for an unexpected correlation of form and function: in the context of a convoluted and fast-paced espionage plot shaped by the powerful expectation of ‘real time’ drama a highly ‘unrealistic’ feature like the use of split screens, which might easily have created the


impression of irreality by drawing attention to the medium film and its selective gaze, ends up contributing to our sense of involvement in the course of events. A narratological analysis of 24 not only foregrounds the complex correlations of formal aspects and their functionalization, but also provides a way to describe media-specific modes of representation; it can thus be seen in the larger context of current media debates: such descriptive approaches are a necessary prerequisite for discussing whether and how media can be thought of as the very mould of our reality. Notes 1

2

3

4 5

6

There are, of course, instances of serialization in audiovisual media besides TV, such as follow-ups to successful films or new ‘mini-series’ like Matrix, where serialization is an integral part of a huge merchandising campaign. TV series should nevertheless be considered as specific phenomena if only for the sheer number of episodes that might be produced and for their integration into a schedule. This format entails a certain commercial risk, as it demands a high degree of fidelity on the part of the viewers. The summaries provided at the beginning of each episode are far too general and too short to counterbalance the rigid sequentiality of 24. For these reasons, Fox ‘aired concerns over potentially alienating the audience by expecting them to watch every episode’ and ‘commissioned an initial series of 13 episodes with an option to extend the run to the full 24 that Surnow and Cochran had envisaged’ (Sangster 2002: 21). Thus, the plot reaches a tentative ending after 13 episodes and has to be re-launched by the arrival of a second assassin and Kimberley’s second kidnapping. See also Surnow’s comment in Rothkerch (2002). If this is any indication of the sheer drive of the action, the series’ overall death toll is impressive, with 47 dead (not counting the passengers of a hijacked plane) in 24 hours, 11 in the last episode alone. A collection of all time references in 24 can be found in Sangster (2002). The most cautious approach to the question of ‘realism’ seems to be to delineate the strategies that contribute to a sense of presence in the events themselves. Critics of the medium have often held an inherent ‘realism’ of TV responsible for any number of devastating consequences – from Günther Anders, who in the 1950s voiced his concern that television might damage our relation to reality as such, to Pierre Bourdieu’s recent remarks on television, where he establishes a link between the political power of television and its ‘effet de réel’ (cf. Bourdieu 1998). In order to prove or disprove this kind of assumptions it is indispensable to describe the media-specific means and strategies that produce this ‘effet de réel’ in the first place. Cf. http://www.fox.com/24/season1/home.html (11 February 2003). Additionally Fox provides the members of ‘The Fox 24 Fan Club’ with ‘relevant’ news. In the newsletter from 19 February 2003 the latest publication on the series was presented: 24: The House Special Subcommittee’s Findings at CTU ‘compiled’ by Marc Cerasini. It is supposed to provide the reader/viewer with information on the time that elapsed between season one and two and


7

contains, for example ‘Jack Bauer’s complete Grand Jury Testimony’, ‘Teri Bauer’s medical records’, ‘Autopsy reports’ and ‘Campaign finance records’. The authentification strategy is taken so far as to state that ‘the testimony from these closed hearings was leaked to investigative journalist Marc Cerasini, who then ran with it to publisher HarperCollins’ (http://www.fox.com/24/ fanclub/book_main.htm [21 February 2003]). Only parts of the first season of 24 were produced before 9/11: ‘In what appeared in retrospect an eerie sort of precognition, the television networks scheduled three new dramatic series about intelligence operatives (24, The Agency and Alias) for the fall 2001 television season, to debut during the last week of September and into October. Of these, the Fox series 24 had on the surface the most disquieting convergences with the events of September 11. Its pilot episode ended with the explosion of an airliner in flight, killing all aboard, as part of a terrorist plot. The scenes of the plane’s explosion, although not the fact of its explosion, were edited out of the premiere episode that aired on October 29’ (Hark 2004: 121; cf. also Weinraub 2002).

References Bourdieu, P. (1998) On Television. New York: New Press. Chatman, S. (1978) Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY/London: Cornell University Press. Deleyto, C. (1996) [1991] ‘Focalisation in Film Narrative’. In S. Onega and J. Angel Garcia Landa (eds), Narratology: An Introduction. London/New York: Longman, 217–33. Fox Entertainment Homepage: http://www.fox.com/24/season1/home.html (11 February 2003). Fox 24 Fan Club: http://www.fox.com/24/fanclub/book_main.htm (21 February 2003). Gallo, P. (2001) ‘24’. In Variety, 5 November 2001. (http://www.findarticles.com/ cf_0/m1312/12_384/80162865/p1/article.jhtml?term=Gallo%2C+Phil [28 February 2003]). Griem, J. (2000) ‘Mit den Augen der Kamera? Aspekte filmischer Multiperspektivität in Bryan Singers The Usual Suspects, Akiro Kurosawas Rashomon und Peter Weirs The Truman Show’. In V. Nünning and A. Nünning (eds), Multiperspektivisches Erzählen. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 307–22. Hark, I. R. (2004) ‘“Today Is the Longest Day of My Life”: 24 as Mirror Narrative of 9/11’. In W. W. Dixon (ed.), Film and Television after 9/11. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 121–41. Kozloff, S. (1992) [1987] ‘Narrative Theory and Television’. In R. C. Allen (ed.), Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism. London/New York: Routledge, 67–100. Rothkerch, I. (2002) ‘A Day In The Life’. (http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/int/ 2002/02/05/surnow/index.html [28 February 2003]). Sangster, J. (2002) 24: The Unofficial Guide. London: Contender Books. Stam, R., R. Burgoyne and S. Flitterman-Lewis (1992) New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics: Structuralism, Post-Structuralism and Beyond. London/New York: Routledge. Weinraub, B. (2002) ‘Its Been A Long Day’. In The Observer Online, 3 March 2002. (http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4366403,00.html [1 March 2003]).

3 Exploring Inner Spaces: Authoritative Narratives and Subjective Worlds in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise Marion Gymnich

Star Trek narratives The five Star Trek series – the original Star Trek (TOS, 1966–69), The Next Generation (TNG, 1987–94), Deep Space Nine (DS9, 1993–2000), Voyager (Voy, 1994–2001) and Enterprise (Ent, 2001–) – are beyond doubt among the most well-known American TV series. By now Star Trek, which started out as a cult phenomenon with a small but dedicated following, has for a considerable time been ‘an integral part of US popular culture’ (Rey 2001: 139). Star Trek has become a ‘multimedia saga’ (Thompson 2003: 79), consisting of ‘many interlinked Star Trek tales told in television, film, print, and the Internet’ (ibid.). In addition to the five Star Trek series just mentioned, there are also Star Trek films, an animated Star Trek series (1973), numerous Star Trek novels, internet fan fiction, and a vast range of merchandise. The prominent status Star Trek has among TV series is attested to by its ‘continuity, longevity, and the academic interest it has generated’ (Rey 2001: 139), but also by intramedial references that turn up in countless TV series (ranging from The X-Files to Friends). Having been produced over a period of more than 35 years, the five Star Trek series reflect a number of changes – changing technological possibilities as well as changing gender and racial politics.1 When one compares the five series, however, one notices features which create a remarkable coherence between the five series and weave them into a whole that has given rise to a recognizable ‘Star Trek universe’, which is marked by technological characteristics (beaming, the holodeck), by institutions (the Federation of Planets, Starfleet), and by recurring alien 62

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species (Vulcans, Klingons, and Ferengi, to name just a few). The five series are also linked by crossovers, the most famous and most innovative of which is presumably the DS9 episode ‘Trials and Tribble-ations’ (DS9 5.06), which digitally combines material from an TOS episode (‘The Trouble with Tribbles’, TOS 2.15) with new material, thus creating the impression that the characters of the old and the new crew actually interact. Moreover, Star Trek has largely held on to a distinctive narrative style which was developed in TOS: right from the beginning Star Trek has made use of a type of voice-over narration which bears a number of characteristics that distinguish it from instances of voiceover narration in other series. One of the aims of this chapter is to explore this narrative feature and its implications. The prime interest of Star Trek has always been the exploration of unknown regions of space. In TOS, TNG and Ent the exploration of space – ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’ – explicitly provides the unifying, overarching plot pattern. Although DS9 focuses on a space station and, thus, on a fixed location and Voy deals with the voyage home of a spaceship that is stranded in a faraway region of space, the two series are still very much concerned with the exploration of space and with encounters with alien civilizations. Yet, the five series generally appear to have been just as much interested in the exploration of inner spaces. Many episodes focus on individuals who discover new mental capacities or who are subject to visions, hallucinations, and other types of imaginary perception. This interest in psychological and mental phenomena and processes, which can already be seen in TOS, has become even more pronounced in the more recent Star Trek series, where it has entailed an increasing use of the technique of characterfocalization, adding to the structural complexity of Star Trek’s narrative style. Some of the questions that are raised by the various inner spaces in DS9, Voy and Ent both in terms of the structure and with respect to the narrative contents will be discussed in this chapter.

‘Captain’s log . . .’ – voice-over narration and its implications One of the hallmark features of Star Trek is the regular occurrence of ‘log entries’, short passages in which a voice-over narrator who is identical to one of the characters (that is, a homodiegetic narrator) provides the audience with information about the time and place of action, about characters and events. Barrett and Barrett (2001: 12) point out that the concept of a log – as opposed to a diary or a record – is part of the nautical terminology and imagery that is omnipresent in Star Trek. The log

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entries constitute the most straightforward and most frequent instances of an overt narrator’s discourse in Star Trek. They can be found in all of the Star Trek series, where they occur in a considerable number of episodes, though by no means in all of them. Quite frequently, two or more log entries appear in the same episode, which means that the log entries are one of the narrative strategies that create coherence within an episode. Moreover, and more importantly, the recurring structural feature of the log entries lends a certain amount of coherence to Star Trek in general. In the log entries information is provided according to a stable formula, which increases the recognizability of this structural device. The following passage from ‘Phage’ (Voy 1.03) exemplifies the pattern most log entries adhere to: ‘Captain’s log. Stardate 48532.4. We’re on our way to a rogue planetoid which Mr Neelix tells us is an extremely rich source of raw dilithium. If he’s right this could go a long way toward easing our power shortage.’ Log entries typically begin with an identification of the log keeper, with an indication of his/her rank or function, and with the date of recording. The latter piece of information, however, is likely to remain enigmatic, since the time is indicated in the guise of a stardate in all but the most recent Star Trek series. The fact that Ent uses ordinary dates results from its status as a prequel to the other Star Trek series; Ent is set approximately a hundred years before TOS and thus many of the technological features, of the laws and conventions that have become hallmark features of Star Trek are still non-existent or are in the process of being developed. For most viewers the stardate, which is used in the other Star Trek series, is presumably nothing but a random sequence of digits, even though there are explanations for this system of temporal reference in the fandom and in merchandising products. In addition to the identification of the log keeper and the time of recording, the log entries provide basic information about the constituents of the story (characters, setting, events), which is expressed in an extremely concise manner. As the example above shows, log entries typically do not exceed two or three sentences. Their concise style and matter-of-fact tone suit Star Trek’s rational, ‘scientific’ orientation very well. The concise nature of the log entries, moreover, turns them into an ideal vehicle for providing information in a highly efficient manner. In other words, the log entries are a means of meeting the demands imposed on information management by the rigid onehour format of the series. Log entries occur particularly often at the beginning of an episode or immediately after the teaser, where they clearly fulfil the function of supplying expository information, but they

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are also frequently used in the course of an episode to summarize events not shown to the audience. The latter type of log entry is often explicitly introduced as supplemental by the voice-over narrator/log keeper. As far as their content is concerned, the log entries may also turn out to be a means of characterization. This is in particular true for the various personal logs and special logs (security log, medical log, and so on), which surface in the series on an irregular basis. The distinction between the official log and the personal log, which is indicated by the designation personal log in the passage below, is not always clearly marked. In addition to providing factual information, the personal logs grant viewers insight into a character’s mind, as the following example from ‘The Cloud’ (Voy 1.04) shows: Personal log. Stardate 48546.2. Our journey home is several weeks old now and I have begun to notice in my crew and in myself a subtle change as the reality of our situation settles in. Here, in the Delta Quadrant, we are virtually the entire family of man. We are more than a crew and I must find a way to be more than a captain to these people. But it’s not clear to me exactly how to begin. At the Academy, we are taught that a captain is expected to maintain a certain distance. Until now, I’ve always been comfortable with that distance . . . Maybe this is just the way it works. Maybe the distance is necessary. Maybe more than ever now they need me to be larger than life. I only wish I felt larger than life. Computer, delete last sentence. This passage, which differs from the average official log entry in terms of both its content and its length, shows Captain Janeway pondering her role as captain and reveals her worries and doubts, thus contributing to a more complex depiction of one of the central characters in Voy. The effect created by Captain Janeway’s voice-over narration in Voy is also influenced by the quality of actress Kate Mulgrew’s voice. Although her voice certainly could not be mistaken for that of a man, it does not sound like a prototypically feminine voice either, being relatively dark and somewhat harsh. The narrator’s voice, thus, in and of itself defies traditional gender concepts to a certain extent. This effect is underlined by the generally curt tone adopted by Mulgrew/Janeway in the voiceover narration. Both the quality of Mulgrew’s voice and the tone in which she delivers the log entries correlate with the overall depiction of Janeway as a character who transgresses traditional gender roles, being cast as ‘a decidedly “post-feminist” combination of the macho leader


and traditional femininity’ (Barrett/Barrett 2001: 118). She holds the traditionally male position of captain and does not hesitate to use the power that comes along with that position. In addition, she displays a number of stereotypically masculine attributes, such as toughness, rationality, and a considerable amount of aggressiveness. But the way Janeway defines her role as captain is also reminiscent of stereotypically feminine attitudes, since she tends to see herself as a mother – both for the crew as a whole and for individual crew members. The use of voice-over narration in the guise of log entries is motivated within the Star Trek universe – a feature that distinguishes Star Trek from other series using voice-over narration. The existence of official log entries in Star Trek is shown to be a result of Starfleet regulations. In ‘Necessary Evil’ (DS9 2.08) a very disgruntled Odo (the security chief of the space station) comments on the Starfleet regulations that require him to keep a log: Command Station, security log. Stardate 47282.5. At the request of Commander Sisko I will hereafter be recording a daily log of law enforcement affairs. The reason for this exercise is beyond my comprehension, except perhaps that humans have a compulsion to keep records and lists and files . . . so many in fact that they have to invent new ways to store them . . . microscopically. Otherwise their records would overrun all known civilization. My own very adequate memory not being good enough for Starfleet I am pleased to put my voice to this official record of this day. Everything’s under control. End log. This passage is an example of the self-referentiality that can increasingly be found in recent Star Trek series, where characters comment on features and conventions that have become accepted as normal by regular viewers of Star Trek. Being the official record of the spaceship/space station, the log entries also constitute an archive within the universe of the series. In ‘Flashback’ (Voy 3.02), for example, Captain Janeway consults log entries recorded by Captain Sulu a century before, and in ‘Scorpion I’ (Voy 3.26) she reads one of Captain Picard’s old log entries. Episodes like these, where the functions of the log entries within the Star Trek universe are commented on, situate the log entries firmly in the world constructed in the series. The references to Sulu, who also appears in person in ‘Flashback’, and to Picard, two characters from previous Star Trek series (TOS and TNG), contribute to the coherence of the Star Trek universe.

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The narrator who appears in the guise of the official log keeper may claim a double authority – the authority that is by default attributed to narrators in narratives (cf. Lanser 1999: 171), and the authority that comes along with the task of being the keeper of the official records, which construct an authoritative version of events. The authority associated with voice-over narration in Star Trek is also the result of a configuration of the visual track and the soundtrack that is typical of log entries in the series. Usually the viewers see the spaceship (or the space station Deep Space Nine) from outside while listening to the (homodiegetic) voice-over narrator located inside the ship/space station who records a log entry. The perspective of the camera, thus, clearly is not identical to that of the voice-over narrator. This perspectival split between the visual track and the soundtrack, which is typical of the log entries, has significant implications for the authority attributed to these narrative passages. The perspective rendered in the visual track is at odds with that of the voice-over narrator; yet, it seems to lend the voice-over narration overtones of an authorial, omniscient narrator, since it denies the spatial limitations associated with homodiegetic narrators, who, being identical to one of the characters, by definition do not share the heterodiegetic narrator’s spatial, temporal and psychological privileges. The split perspective, thus, underscores the authority attributed to the log keeper. Generally, the officer with the highest rank appears as log keeper. The authority attributed to the voice-over narrator thus ties in with the chain of command. In most cases it is consequently the captain’s voiceover narration that provides the viewers with information; the captain is not only granted a special status on the story level, but also in terms of narrative structure. When a character other than the captain appears as log keeper, this may signal to regular viewers that they are watching a shuttle mission, the purpose of which is then typically explained in the log entry, for example at the beginning of ‘The Swarm’ (Voy 3.04): ‘Helmsman’s log. Stardate 50252.3. While Voyager takes on supplies, Lieutenant Torres and I are investigating some intermittent sensor readings we picked up this morning.’ The appearance of a log keeper other than the captain may even suggest to viewers who are familiar with Star Trek’s narrative conventions that something is amiss in the normal routine. In the opening scenes of ‘Night’ (Voy 5.01), Captain Janeway is conspicuously absent from the Voyager’s bridge and it is once more the first officer who is heard as voice-over narrator. Here the mere appearance of a narrator other than the default one may alert seasoned viewers to the fact that there is a problem – a suspicion that is confirmed when


they learn that Janeway is temporarily unable to fulfil her duties because of a serious depression. First Officer Chakotay also appears as voice-over narrator after the captain has been forcefully removed from the ship in ‘Threshold’ (Voy 2.11), and Major Kira functions as log keeper when Commander Benjamin Sisko is absent from the space station (‘Emissary’, DS9 1.01). In TOS, TNG and Ent the characters who are granted special (narrative) authority as default voice-over narrators (Captain Kirk, Captain Picard and Captain Archer) being white men are representatives of a traditionally privileged group. In DS9 and Voy, in contrast, the default voice-over narrators belong to traditionally marginalized groups. The attribution of special narrative authority to an African American (Commander Benjamin Sisko, DS9) and to a woman (Captain Kathryn Janeway, Voy) is one of the devices used to project future racial and social equality. The egalitarian view of the future projected by the recent Star Trek series is also expressed on the story level, where both women and non-white characters have been assigned more and more important roles in the history of Star Trek. Both DS9 and Voy present very assertive female characters who are also important in terms of the storylines (in particular Major Kira, science officer Jadzia Dax and Ezri Dax in DS9, Captain Janeway, Chief Engineer B’Elanna Torres, Kes and Seven of Nine in Voy). In Ent the captain is once more a white American man, but the second in command is a very assertive woman. Moreover, the Asian communications officer Hoshi in Ent plays a much more significant part than her predecessor, the legendary African American communications officer Ohura in TOS.

Visualizing inner spaces – special sensory capacities, telepathy, mind melds Throughout its history, Star Trek has devoted a considerable number of episodes to the exploration of inner spaces, that is to psychological and mental phenomena. The countless alien species in Star Trek not only differ with respect to their external characteristics and their cultures; many of them are also endowed with special sensory and cognitive capacities (cf. Sekuler and Blake 1998). The sensory system of an alien species may simply be depicted as being more refined than that of human beings. The Ferengi, for example, have a much more acute sense of hearing than humans (‘Darkness and the Light’, DS9 5.11), and in the pilot of Ent (‘Broken Bow’, Ent 1.01) viewers learn that Vulcan females have a heightened sense of smell. Yet, there are also alien species

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in the Star Trek universe that differ much more radically from human beings as far as sensory and cognitive capacities are concerned. Kes (Voy), who belongs to the species of the Ocampa, gradually discovers that she possesses cognitive capacities that are much more enhanced than those of the rest of the crew. In ‘Cold Fire’ (Voy 2.06) she displays the ability to see particles at the subatomic level, to see what solid and liquid matter consists of. At the same time she becomes able to change matter by means of her mental powers. Furthermore, the species Kes belongs to is one of the numerous alien species in the Star Trek universe who are telepaths. The expansion of Kes’ sensory and cognitive capacities reaches its climax in ‘The Gift’ (Voy 4.02), when she transforms into an enormously powerful energy being. While the sensory characteristics of the Ocampa, the Ferengi and female Vulcans are explained as a consequence of their (alien) genetic endowment, the (human) sensory equipment of the character Seven of Nine (Voy) has been enhanced by implants (relicts of the time when she was part of the Borg collective). The Borg, who already appear in TNG, are a collective of cyborgs, creatures who are half organic and half mechanical and who aggressively assimilate other species, replacing part of their body by mechanical implants and linking their consciousness to the collective Borg consciousness. Seven of Nine is a (human) woman who was assimilated by the Borg when she was a child. Having been released from the collective, she has retained some of her Borg implants. These allow her to perceive things others cannot perceive. Characters like Kes and Seven of Nine, whose perception differs from that of ordinary humans, occasionally appear as alien character-focalizers. Quite frequently such instances of alien focalization are not visually or acoustically marked; thus, often it is simply what is shown that tells viewers that they see what a character perceives. In ‘Cold Fire’, for example, the viewers see coloured dots whirling around, when Kes learns to look inside solid and liquid matter. The soundtrack may also be used to present alien perception and cognitive capacities. In particular, the soundtrack conveys telepathic communication, which a number of alien species in the Star Trek universe are capable of. In Star Trek telepathic communication is generally indicated by a kind of voice-over in which the characters’ voices are filtered to make them sound hollow. The crucial difference between scenes depicting telepathic communication by means of voice-over and instances of voiceover narration is that telepathic communication is clearly located on the story level rather than on the discourse level, since it involves two or more characters interacting in the narrated world. Telepaths often


appear to communicate in a manner which – except for the medium used (mental transmission vs sound waves) – is identical to ordinary communication. From the point of view of narrative structure, however, instances of telepathic communication are examples of characterfocalization. Since the viewers are granted access to the mental processes of two or more characters simultaneously, such scenes suggest a kind of collective internal focalization. Telepathic communication is often presented in a negative light in Star Trek, since it is shown to threaten the mental integrity of individuals. The mental link between two (or more) individuals that is established in telepathic communication frequently appears to make individuals susceptible to infiltrations and mental intrusions. ‘Random Thoughts’ (Voy 4.10) features telepaths that use their cognitive capacities to extract thoughts from a person without his/her consent. In ‘Cold Fire’ (Voy 2.06), Kes, who is generally very friendly and gentle, becomes extremely destructive when she is telepathically taught by another member of her species to expand her cognitive capacities. The negative view of telepathic communication is underscored by the fact that some of the archenemies of the Federation communicate telepathically: the Borg communicate telepathically by means of implants, and the Founders, who are the masterminds behind the war against the Federation and its allies in DS9, are mentally connected in the great link. In ‘Unity’ (Voy 3.17) a group of Borg who have left the larger Borg collective, but who have still maintained a mental linkage among themselves, temporarily include Chakotay in their telepathic union without his consent. This deprives him of his free will and brainwashes him into doing what they wish him to do. The predominantly negative attitude towards telepathy correlates with the positive view of individuality characteristic of Star Trek. There are, however, also a few episodes depicting telepaths as victims, who are persecuted by non-telepaths (‘Rogue Planet’, Ent 1.18; ‘Counterpoint’, Voy 5.10). A specific variety of mental/telepathic linkage between (two) individuals, which is frequently referred to in Star Trek, is the mind meld, a technique used by Vulcans to establish a temporary mental connection with another (humanoid or non-humanoid), giving them access to the other’s thoughts, emotions and memories. The more recent series increasingly employ character-focalization to visualize what those involved in the mind melding perceive. In TOS viewers still invariably see the individuals who are mentally linked from the outside; the (mental) effects of the mind meld thus have to be portrayed by showing the characters’ facial expressions or body language or by their comments on

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their experiences. In Voy and in Ent, in contrast, the mind meld may involve character-focalization, which may be presented, for example, with visual sequences interrupted by frequent visible cuts. In terms of its desirability, the Vulcan mind meld is presented somewhat ambivalently in Star Trek. In TOS, where it is repeatedly applied by Vulcan science officer Spock, the mind meld is mainly used to establish a communication with beings who cannot be reached by means of ordinary (vocal) communication. Spock, for instance, uses the mind meld to communicate with a sentient rock, the Horta, and, in this way, manages to end a serious conflict with the rock creature (‘The Devil in the Dark’, TOS 1.25). In a similar manner, in Voy a mind meld between the Vulcan Tuvok and a wounded member of the non-humanoid species 8472 leads to a more tolerant, even compassionate attitude towards the heretofore vilified creature (‘Prey’, Voy 4.16). Adopting the other’s perspective in the course of the mind meld in cases like the ones just described is shown to foster tolerance – an idea that is in accordance with Star Trek’s humanistic ethos. But the mind meld may also backfire in various ways, even when it is initiated for a purely benevolent purpose. In ‘Meld’ (Voy 2.12) Tuvok mind-melds with crewman Suder, a psychopathic murderer, to help him by transferring some of the Vulcan capacity to control one’s aggressions onto him. The process is successful in so far as Suder really becomes more emotionally balanced, but it also causes Tuvok to suffer from extremely violent bouts of aggression, something that indicates that part of Suder’s psychological disposition has been (temporarily) transferred to Tuvok as a result of the mind meld. Other sinister implications of the mind meld are explored in ‘Fusion’ (Ent 1.17). When the Enterprise encounters a group of Vulcans who have strayed from the Vulcan principles of logic and asceticism, one of the crew members of the Enterprise, Vulcan sub-commander T’Pol, is introduced to the technique of mind melding by one of the uncharacteristically hedonistic Vulcans. At this point on the internal timeline of the Star Trek universe (a hundred years before TOS and two hundred years before TNG, DS9 and Voy) the mind meld clearly is not generally practised by Vulcans, since T’Pol is unfamiliar with it. The mind meld turns out to have a devastating effect on her; when the (male) Vulcan visitor telepathically enters her mind this is clearly reminiscent of rape. The male Vulcan’s reactions during the mind meld indicate that he derives a pleasure from the mental link that is quite overtly sexual. Moreover, T’Pol’s attempts to free herself from his (mental) grip as well as her subsequent plea for medical help recall the horrible experience of


a rape victim. In the episode ‘Stigma’ (Ent 2.14), the incident is referred to again. T’Pol is shown to suffer from a potentially fatal disease clearly reminiscent of AIDS which she contracted during the mind meld. The way the mind meld is dealt with in the two episodes is representative of the sceptical attitude towards telepathic linkage which is predominant in the recent Star Trek series and has replaced the faith in telepathy as a means of establishing mutual understanding which can be seen in particular in TOS.

Trapped in inner spaces – hallucinations, memories and visions What was just said about telepathic communication has already shown that the mind generally is not conceptualized as a closed system in Star Trek. Countless episodes suggest that it can be accessed by others, no matter whether or not the individual whose thoughts, emotions, perceptions or memories are probed (and, more often than not, tampered with) consents to this mental invasion. A conceptualization of the mind as something that others can have access to is also apparent in many episodes in which alien or human characters are subject to imaginary perceptions, that is in which their visions, hallucinations and even memories are induced by others. Memories quite often turn out to be unreliable in Star Trek. In ‘Flashback’ (Voy 3.02) Tuvok is haunted by the memory of a young girl falling over a precipice because he cannot hold on to her to keep her from falling. This is visually presented several times in the course of the episode, and the onset of the memory sequence is marked by a flash of light. What Tuvok at first considers to be a real memory he has suppressed for a long time, however, turns out to be false; it is actually a virus that has hidden in his brain, disguised as a memory. In ‘Ex Post Facto’ (Voy 1.07) and ‘Hard Time’ (DS9 4.18) the manipulation of memories is depicted as a particularly sophisticated method of punishment. ‘Ex Post Facto’ shows Tom Paris, the pilot of the Voyager, falsely accused of murder by the inhabitants of an alien planet. On this planet the punishment for murder is the implantation of a memory engram in the culprit’s mind that forces the murderer to relive the victim’s last moments visually and emotionally at regular intervals. The process of ‘remembering’, which is very painful for Tom, is rendered visually in sequences that are set apart from the rest of the episode chiefly by colour coding (black-and-white). In ‘Hard Time’ memories of 20 years spent in prison are implanted in the brain of chief engineer O’Brien. Although O’Brien never actually has spent any time in prison, the false memories, which are experienced

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as authentic, torture him. In addition to episodes dealing with the implantation of false memories, there are also episodes focussing on the effects of deleted memories. In ‘Workforce I & II’ (Voy 7.16/7.17), for example, the memories of several characters are wiped out by a drug which is used to deprive them of their identity and to enslave them. ‘Latent Image’ (Voy 5.11) deals with the reaction of the Voyager’s holographic doctor to the fact that his memory has been tampered with. There are also episodes where false memories ultimately prove to fulfil an important purpose, since they turn out to be a means of preserving the collective memory of a civilization. The aptly named episode ‘Remember’ (Voy 3.06) shows chief engineer B’Elanna Torres experiencing a series of dreams which are so vivid that she finds it hard to believe that they are just dreams. In the course of the episode it is revealed that in her dreams, the onset of which is marked both in the soundtrack (by a specific sound effect) and in the visual track (by a brief flash of white light), B’Elanna is actually (re)living telepathically transmitted memories. The reason for this mental transmission is a female telepath’s wish to keep alive her memories of crimes which have been suppressed in the collective memory of her culture. In her youth the woman fell in love with a man who belonged to a group of people who, because of their rejection of technological progress, were socially ostracized as regressives, persecuted, and finally killed. By transferring her memories to B’Elanna the woman wants to leave behind some remembrance of the holocaust in the planet’s past. The manipulation of B’Elanna’s dreams thus turns out to be a strategy for correcting the manipulation of history. The question of whether it is morally justifiable to transfer traumatic memories to others in order to make sure that the past is not forgotten is specifically addressed in ‘Memorial’ (Voy 6.14). Here crew members hallucinate about terrible crimes during a war. At first they are convinced that they themselves actually committed these crimes, but then it is revealed that they are tormented by memories of a war that happened on a nearby planet several hundred years before. A monument on this planet sends out a signal that causes the crews of passing spaceships to experience the memories of this war as if they were their own ones. Captain Janeway decides to refrain from shutting down the memorial when she has the opportunity to do so, because she believes it to be important to preserve the collective memory of past crimes as a warning for future generations. The Voyager, however, leaves behind a warning signal that will inform future passing spaceships that the memories are not their own so as to lessen the traumatic effect of the


memorial. The episode thus stresses the importance of collectively remembering, while acknowledging the pain that may be caused by remembering. In a number of Star Trek episodes, characters appear to be caught in subjective worlds that, according to possible-worlds theory, can be categorized as F(antasy)-universes.2 F-universes, ‘dreams, hallucinations, fantasies, and fictional stories told to or composed by the characters’ (Ryan 1991: 119), are seen by Ryan as ‘complete universes’ (ibid.). These ‘are reached by characters through a recentering’ (ibid.), in which the F-universe comes to be perceived as reality. The F-universe may be in and of itself highly complex: ‘By virtue of the inherent recursivity of recentering, the members of F-worlds have at their disposal the entire array of world-creating activities: the characters in a dream may dream, the heroes of fictional fictions may write fictions’ (ibid.). Someone who is hallucinating or someone who is dreaming typically is not aware that s/he is experiencing an F-universe. This autonomy of F-universes is particularly apparent in Star Trek episodes in which characters who are trapped in an F-universe are not aware of being in anything but the textual actual world. A considerable number of episodes, however, show characters slowly realizing that they are in an F-universe and trying to escape from this inner space. A further characteristic of the F-universes presented in Star Trek is that they may be shared by several characters. That characters are trapped in F-universes is accounted for in various genre-specific ways in Star Trek. In ‘Projections’ (Voy 2.03) the Voyager’s holographic doctor is trapped in an F-universe where he is convinced that he is a creature of flesh and blood and the Voyager is just a holographic projection – an experience that is ultimately accounted for by a computer malfunction. ‘Nemesis’ (Voy 4.04) shows First Officer Chakotay trapped in a simulation generated by one of the war-faring groups on a planet in order to instil a virtually unquenchable hatred of their opponents, whose ‘abominations’ the recruits are confronted with. In a number of episodes characters are caught in such hallucinatory F-universes which are telepathically projected by alien beings (for example ‘If Wishes Were Horses’, DS9 1.15; ‘Persistence of Vision’, Voy 2.08; ‘Coda’, Voy 3.15; ‘Bliss’, Voy 5.14). In ‘Strange New World’ (Ent 1.04) several members of the Enterprise crew fall prey to hallucinations that are caused by alien spores. Episodes like the ones just mentioned often derive a considerable amount of their effectiveness from the fact that they do not make use of any kind of visual or acoustic marking of the F-universes. By avoiding devices which would indicate the subjective nature of what is shown, the episodes leave viewers to wonder whether what is shown is real,

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that is can be regarded as a visual presentation of the textual actual world, or not. According to Wagner/Lundeen (1998: 194): [o]f the more than 500 Trek episodes to date, a substantial portion (easily one fourth) revolve around the problem of distinguishing reality from illusion or deception . . . The reality-play genre is developed with increasing complexity in the later series, culminating in some of Star Trek’s most artful tales. Whether viewers accept what they see at face value depends to a certain extent on their knowledge of previous episodes. When the Voyager’s doctor believes that he is human (‘Projections’), regular viewers, who know very well that the doctor is a hologram, can easily see through the illusion and are likely to start wondering what has caused the F-universe the character is obviously trapped in. In ‘Nemesis’, however, even regular viewers may easily take at face value what they see. They are likely to participate in the temporary reality shift experienced by the character and to become unable to identify the F-universe as different from the textual actual world. F-universes in Star Trek often appear to be virtually hermetically sealed off and, thus, it typically takes a great effort to rescue characters trapped in them. Quite often, the characters who are inside the F-universe are incapable of freeing themselves. In such cases the task of releasing them from the F-universe usually falls to characters who are immune to being drawn into the F-universe for one reason or another. In ‘Persistence of Vision’ (Voy 2.08) hallucinatory F-universes are created by an alien being that, having access to the characters’ minds, generates for each of the characters an F-universe that reflects the character’s desires. These F-universes turn out to be sealed in the sense that the characters cannot leave them of their own free will. As they enter their respective F-universes, the characters fall into a catatonic state and become entirely inaccessible to anything or anyone in the textual actual world. Since the F-universes are not visually distinguished from the textual actual world in ‘Persistence of Vision’, viewers in some cases are likely to miss the exact onset of the hallucination. Thus, at least intermittently, the dividing line between the textual actual world and the F-universe is blurred for the viewers as well as for the characters. Kes is the only character who remains capable of distinguishing between the textual actual world and hallucinations, although she has to struggle hard to keep from being drawn into a hallucination. It is only by virtue of her special mental powers that she manages to stay in


the textual actual world and, ultimately, to defeat the telepathically endowed alien responsible for the hallucinations. The characters’ ability to free themselves or others from an F-universe is generally shown to be based on cognitive, psychological, technological or cultural features associated with a particular character. In ‘Coda’ (Voy 3.15) it seems to be sheer will-power which enables Captain Janeway to shake off the mental grip of an alien being that temporarily makes her believe she has died. In ‘Killing Game I & II’ (Voy 4.18/4.19) at first only the holographic doctor is exempt from being drawn into a holographic simulation of Second World War France, where the crew is held captive by aliens who make the crew members believe that they are French resistance fighters or American soldiers. The doctor, however, frees Seven of Nine from this F-universe by contacting her via one of her remaining Borg implants and, subsequently, the two characters manage to rescue the entire crew from the simulation. In ‘Bliss’ (Voy 5.14) it is again Seven of Nine who can free the rest of the crew from an F-universe. This time, however, Seven proves to be resistant to the hallucinations created by an alien not because of her implants but because her mental predisposition differs from that of the other members of the crew: Since in ‘Bliss’ the F-universes the characters are trapped in are connected to their wish to return to earth, Seven, who has no memories of earth and, thus, does not share this desire, is not affected by the alien’s mental powers. The only other character who is not susceptible to the hallucinations is the child Naomi, who has spent her entire life on Voyager and, consequently, has no memories of earth, either. In ‘Waking Moments’ (Voy 4.13) First Officer Chakotay struggles against being trapped in an F-universe generated by aliens who hold the rest of the crew captive in an inner space. Chakotay, who is depicted as a descendant of Native Americans, manages to distinguish between the F-universe and the textual actual world with the help of strategies he has acquired in previous experiences with spiritual trances. He can fall back on a ritual associated with his Native American cultural heritage to save both himself and the crew. In contrast to the other Star Trek series, in which visions, on the whole, play a relatively marginal role, DS9 assigns a very prominent role to them; they even constitute one of the recurring and unifying features of the series. The visions in DS9, which are generally associated with the religion of the inhabitants of a planet close to the space station (Bajor), are often presented visually, in which case they are marked by a number of visual and acoustic devices, such as colour coding (a dominance of red and yellow, of colours associated with the Bajoran religion), white fog, diffuse pictures, visible camera movements, the sound of a beating

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heart. The prominence of the visions underlines the focus on spirituality which is characteristic of DS9 and which is completely at odds with the rational and scientific outlook that was characteristic of the earlier Star Trek series, where visions were ultimately always explained in a rational manner – something that DS9 refuses to do. In DS9 many of the characters experience visions triggered by one of the orbs, sacred objects of the Bajoran religion, or by an encounter with the wormhole aliens, who are revered by the Bajorans as gods (for example Quark in ‘Prophet Motive’, 3.16 and Major Kira in ‘Wrongs Darker than Death or Night’, 6.17). What undermines the rational foundation of the series most radically, however, is the fact that the highest ranking Starfleet officer on the space station, Benjamin Sisko, is also repeatedly visited by visions and is chosen by the prophets as their emissary already in the pilot of DS9.3 Sisko gradually learns to accept his role in the Bajoran religion and begins to cherish his visions (cf. in particular ‘Rapture’, DS9 5.10) and, thus, adopts an attitude that Starfleet captains like Kirk or Picard would have been horrified at. Finally, the visions in DS9 repeatedly raise the question of what is real. This question is, for example, at the core of ‘Far Beyond the Stars’ (DS9 6.13), an episode in which Sisko alternates between being the Commander of the space station Deep Space Nine in the twenty-fourth century and being an African American science fiction writer called Benny Russell in the 1950s who is driven to despair by the racial discrimination he encounters everywhere. Sisko’s alter ego in the 1950s writes about an African American commander of a space station: he writes about Sisko, whom he sees in visions. When the publishers refuse to print Benny Russell’s story because of the prominent role it assigns to an African American, the writer collapses and is taken to a psychiatric hospital. Sisko, who keeps going back and forth between the two universes in the episode, in the end is not sure which of the two worlds is the real one. Hence, he says to his father: ‘I’ve begun to wonder. What if it wasn’t a dream? What if this life we’re leading, all of this, you and me, everything, what if all this is the illusion?’ This question expresses an awareness of ontological instability that is characteristic of quite a number of recent Star Trek episodes.

The juxtaposition of objective and subjective views of the world The narrative style that is characteristic of Star Trek incorporates strategies which appear to be almost diametrically opposed; it combines devices which suggest an objective kind of storytelling and techniques


which emphasize the subjective nature of inner spaces. In the guise of log-keepers who record facts for the official records, voice-over narrators regularly supply the viewers with information that is reliable and that, moreover, has clearly authoritative overtones. This authoritative narrator’s discourse, however, is juxtaposed against an emphasis on the highly subjective nature of individual ways of experiencing the world. The presentation of alien perception and the F-universes projected in many episodes undermine the idea that there can be a single, authoritative view of the world, suggesting instead a highly subjective approach to reality. By alternating between objective and subjective ways of storytelling, Star Trek repeatedly confronts viewers with ontological questions about the nature and the reliability of experience. In particular the Star Trek series of the mid and late 1990s – DS9 and Voy – suggest that there is no single reality but alternative time lines, mirror universes, and spiritual, timeless levels of existence. This view of reality has much in common with the attitude toward reality that is characteristic of mystery or fantasy series of the 1990s, such as The X-Files or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which often explore very similar themes. Compared to Voy and in particular DS9, the Star Trek series of the twenty-first century – Ent – is more rationally minded. In general, Ent favours action-oriented stories rather than probing alien psychological or cognitive dimensions. Notes 1

Changes with respect to the representation of race and gender in Star Trek have been the subject of a number of studies. On race, see for example Wagner and Lundeen (1998: 161–82), Gregory (2000: 181–5), Kanzler (2000), Barrett/ Barrett (2001: esp. 78–95) and Kanzler (2004); on gender, see for instance Wilcox (1992), Heller (1997), Wagner and Lundeen (1998: 81–96), Roberts (1999), Gregory (2000: 185–9) and Rey (2001). 2 For a discussion of possible-worlds theory, see the introductory chapter and in particular Ryan (1991) and Surkamp (2002). 3 Cf. Gregory’s (2000: 73) comment on the pilots of TNG and DS9: ‘Whereas in TNG’s pilot, “Encounter at Farpoint”, Picard’s meeting with a “higher being” had stressed the value of the “human factor” . . . here Sisko’s encounter with the “prophets” is the prelude to a series that will give increasing credence to the “reality” of Bajoran spiritual beliefs.’

References Barrett, M. and D. Barrett (2001) Star Trek: The Human Frontier. Oxford: Polity Press. Gregory, C. (2000) Star Trek: Parallel Narratives. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Heller, L. E. (1997) ‘The Persistence of Difference: Postfeminism, Popular Discourse, and Heterosexuality in Star Trek: The Next Generation’. Science Fiction Studies 24: 226–44.

Marion Gymnich 79 Kanzler, K. (2000) ‘“A Cuchi Moya!”: Star Trek’s Native Americans’. American Studies Journal 45: 44–50. ——(2004) ‘Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations’: The Multicultural Evolution of Star Trek. Heidelberg: Winter. Lanser, S. S. (1999) ‘Sexing Narratology: Toward a Gendered Poetics of Narrative Voice’. In W. Grünzweig and A. Solbach (eds), Grenzüberschreitungen: Narratologie im Kontext/Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Context. Tübingen: Narr, 167–83. Rey, J. M. (2001) ‘Changing Gender Roles in Popular Culture: Dialogue in Star Trek Episodes from 1966 to 1993’. In S. Conrad and D. Biber (eds), Variation in English: Multi-Dimensional Studies. Harlow: Longman, 138–56. Roberts, R. (1999) Sexual Generations: Star Trek: The Next Generation and Gender. Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Ryan, M.-L. (1991) Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Sekuler, R. and R. Blake (1998) Star Trek on the Brain: Alien Minds, Human Minds. New York: W.H. Freeman & Co. Surkamp, C. (2002) ‘Narratologie und possible-worlds theory: Narrative Texte als alternative Welten’. In A. Nünning and V. Nünning (eds), Neue Ansätze in der Erzähltheorie. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 153–83. Thompson, K. (2003) Storytelling in Film and Television. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press. Wagner, J. and J. Lundeen (1998) Deep Space and Sacred Time: Star Trek in the American Mythos. London/Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 81–96. Wilcox, C. (1992) ‘To Boldly Return Where Others Have Gone Before: Cultural Change and the Old and New Star Treks’. Extrapolation 33.1: 88–100.

4 Animated Cartoons and Other Innovative Forms of Presenting Consciousness on Screen: The German TV Series Berlin, Berlin* Carola Surkamp

Lolle’s world When the German TV series Berlin, Berlin was launched with 26 episodes in the spring of 2002, it was quite a sensation because of its innovative use of narrative strategies. The 20 episodes of the second season confirmed that the recurrent and varied use of internal focalization via both the visual track and the soundtrack is one of the hallmarks of this series. The protagonist Lolle’s inner life is presented by means of dream sequences in blurred pictures and animated cartoons, resulting in an insertion of cartoon sequences in the real film in a manner similar to Tom Tykwer’s famous film Run Lola Run (1998). Furthermore, voiceover commentaries and music are used to reveal what is going on in Lolle’s mind. These different techniques of presenting consciousness on screen are not entirely new, but are reminiscent of such series as Ally McBeal. What is remarkable, however, is such an extensive use of these techniques in a German TV series that they are becoming one of its staple features. Critics were full of praise for Berlin, Berlin and welcomed the series because it stood out from the usual uniformity of German daily soaps. The formation of a large number of Berlin, Berlin fan clubs as well as the awarding of the ‘Deutscher Fernsehpreis’ (German Television Award) to Felicitas Woll (Lolle) in the category of best actress in

* I would like to thank Gaby Allrath, Claire Annesley, Marion Gymnich, Ellen Surkamp and Sara Young for their very helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter and for valuable stylistic emendations. 80

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a series (2002) and to the series as a whole in the category of best sitcom (2004) further testify to the great success of Berlin, Berlin. On the international level, the series was even awarded an Emmy in the category of best comedy (2004). Berlin, Berlin portrays the life and loves of 19-year-old Lolle, who in the first episode moves from Malente, a small town in the north of Germany, to the city of Berlin. At first she follows her boyfriend Tom, who has fallen in love with another girl. Yet although Lolle does not succeed in winning him back, she stays in Berlin, jumping at the chance to escape from her provincial life and to leave behind her parents’ petty bourgeois lifestyle as well as a job she hates. Her cousin Sven offers Lolle a room in his nice flat in an old building with a roof garden. As Sven’s wife Silvia has just moved out with their son Daniel, there is still one more room available to let. Thus, lesbian Rosalie, whose ex-girlfriend is now Tom’s lover, moves in with Lolle and Sven, and the three of them rapidly become close friends. The fourth central character is Hart, Sven’s neighbour and business partner, a computer specialist constantly displaying macho behaviour. The first season covers the time span of one year – Lolle’s first year in Berlin. The episodes are part of an overarching storyline focusing on the development of the relationships among the four main characters. Lolle, in particular, is desperately looking for love (with a capital L). That is why topics such as (un)faithfulness, one-night stands, sexual identity and flings play an important role throughout the series. Moreover, all of the characters are trying to make their professional dreams come true: Lolle wants to become a cartoonist, Rosalie an actress, and Sven and Hart are working hard for the success of their start-up company. The general attitude to life in this series is highlighted by the musical theme in the opening credits. The song lyrics run as follows: ‘Never give up the dreams you have, never stop living for yourself, always believe in what you are.’ The second season depicts Lolle’s second year in Berlin and introduces two new central characters: Lolle’s and Sven’s new flatmate Sarah, a bisexual photographer and very unconventional woman, and Alex, an art student and cartoon lover like Lolle, who becomes Lolle’s boyfriend. Berlin, Berlin can be seen as a story of initiation, that is a story about a young person’s introduction into a new sphere of experience. Having just finished school, Lolle at the beginning of the series has only very vague ideas about what to do with her newly gained freedom and how to organize her life. On a more general scale, the series presents a picture of life in Berlin at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Editor

82 Animated Cartoons: Berlin, Berlin

Elke Hillebrand points out in an interview that Berlin, Berlin ‘is the first German series that really narrates Berlin. We don’t want to show the touristic side of Berlin, but its people.’1 To Lolle Berlin is fascinating and threatening at the same time. She gazes in wonder at the city. Some episodes and some of the minor characters, however, are rather stereotypical, such as the ill-humoured baker apparently typical of Berlin and the taxi driver sporting dreadlocks and smoking hashish. Yet, the outstanding feature of the series is its unusual strategies of presenting consciousness on screen, many of which produce comic effects. This chapter aims at identifying the different techniques of internal focalization and at analysing both their functions within the story and their effects on viewers.

The use of the visual track (I): animated cartoons Short animated cartoons constitute the most conspicuous technique of presenting consciousness in Berlin, Berlin. Lolle and some of the other characters in the series exist in two versions, that is they have cartoon counterparts that appear in short animated sequences which are woven into the ongoing story. These cartoon sequences are generally introduced by a reaction shot showing, very briefly, Lolle’s joy, annoyance, fear and so on in reaction to what she has just experienced and thus indicating that she is about to become the focalizer of the animated cartoon. Viewers can then witness both Lolle’s inner reactions to the events and her opinions of other characters in an animated cartoon. In this way, the cartoon sequences evoke the impression that viewers are confronted directly with what Lolle perceives, feels or thinks. As far as their content is concerned, there are, however, significant differences between the various cartoon sequences. One can distinguish at least three recurring means of providing viewers with insights into Lolle’s inner life. The first type consists in the use of a single symbol to represent Lolle’s feelings at a certain moment. When, for example, Lolle comes to Berlin to talk to her boyfriend Tom and sees him kissing another woman, the animated cartoon shows a big red heart breaking into a thousand pieces (1.01), thus visualizing Lolle’s broken heart. Another instance of such a symbolic presentation of Lolle’s feelings can be found in the episode ‘One Million’ (‘Eine Million’ 1.25), where a screaming baby with an oversized mouth appears several times in Lolle’s thoughts, hinting at her fear of being pregnant by her cousin Sven. In other animated sequences ‘cartoon Lolle’ is seen to act. For instance, when Lolle meets Rosalie again after having pushed her into a stack of eggs at the market the day before, she feels so ashamed that

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she would like to disappear into thin air. In the animated cartoon following the meeting viewers see Lolle transform into a soap bubble, which then bursts (1.01). Another example of this technique is the depiction of cartoon Lolle as a baby when Lolle feels belittled by her mother after the latter has found out that her daughter does not work as a graphic designer in Sven’s company, as she had claimed, but that she just has a job in her Vietnamese friend Tuhan’s snack bar (1.06). A recurrent image is cartoon Lolle hammering herself into the ground whenever Lolle is particularly upset with herself (1.02, 1.08). When very happy, however, she explodes like fireworks (1.24). A third kind of animated cartoons shows Lolle interacting with cartoon versions of one or more of the other characters. In the episode ‘Red Alarm’ (‘Rotalarm’ 1.05), for example, Lolle’s parents visit her in Berlin for the first time. No sooner has Lolle’s mother arrived than she starts criticizing her daughter’s perfume, her drawings and so on. Lolle is so disappointed and infuriated by her mother’s solely negative reactions that cartoon Lolle flings the mother through the air, throws her into a cupboard, closes the door, and nails it shut with planks. Another example of this type of cartoon can be found in the episode ‘Cousin and Cousin’ (‘Cousin und Cousine’ 1.21), in which Lolle falls more and more in love with Sven and becomes increasingly jealous of his ex-wife Silvia, who is trying to win him back. This jealousy is reflected in a cartoon sequence in which Lolle runs Silvia over with a steamroller. In the episode ‘Positive is Negative’ (‘Positiv ist negativ’ 1.26), Lolle overhears Silvia telling Sven to call her. Lolle reacts by imagining a cartoon version of Silvia lying on a couch in the manner of a prostitute in a telephone sex commercial, inviting men in front of the TV to have telephone sex with her. As this last example illustrates, the animated cartoons primarily provide viewers with information about Lolle’s feelings, without, however, presenting a reliable picture of the other characters. Silvia, for example, is anything but sexually provocative; she is, on the contrary, rather conservative and down-to-earth. Thus, the main function of animated cartoons in Berlin, Berlin is to visualize Lolle’s thoughts, emotions, wishes, fears and hopes. With their help viewers get access to something they normally cannot see: the inner life of a character. The series, consequently, narrates two stories at the same time: on the one hand the actual events in the fictional world and on the other hand much of what happens in Lolle’s ‘inner world’. Since the cartoon sequences are used solely to present Lolle’s consciousness and since viewers are not given any insights into the minds of the other characters, the fictional world of Berlin, Berlin is


dominated by one subjective point of view.2 By means of the animated cartoons the series thus stages a very individual way of experiencing the world. Within the story, the cartoon sequences fulfil the function of creating a kind of counter world to the textual actual world. In her thoughts Lolle imagines herself as a different person, the person she wants to be. Thus, cartoon Lolle shows traits which are in stark contrast to Lolle’s real character. Sometimes, for example, cartoon Lolle is much more courageous and consistent than the real Lolle, who often does not act upon her feelings and impulses. In terms of possible-worlds theory, this means that the textual actual world is corrected and replaced in Lolle’s ‘wish world’ by a new reality, as becomes particularly obvious in the episode ‘Lolle versus Fatman’ (‘Lolle gegen Fatman’ 1.17), in which Lolle tries to advance her career as a cartoonist.3 However, she is too nice to her competitors, who trick her and finally win all of the contracts. Rosalie tries to help Lolle alter her image by changing her clothing, hairstyle and make-up. In the following cartoon sequence Lolle appears as Superwoman (a female counterpart to the legendary Superman), who asserts herself against others and achieves her goals. The discrepancy between Lolle’s wish world and the textual actual world indicates that her character is not accurately reflected in her mental representations. There is a clash between her actual behaviour and her intention to be a powerful businesswoman who will stop at nothing. In reality, Lolle not only pitches her own drawing to the manager of the advertising agency, but, after a moment’s hesitation, also shows him the sketch made by her competitor, ‘Fatman’, despite having the opportunity to withhold it. As a consequence her competitor wins the contract thanks to his more original storyboard. The general effect of the animated cartoons in Berlin, Berlin is to evoke comic reactions. Cartoon Lolle expresses her feelings and wishes in a way that would be inappropriate or even impossible in real life.4 The treatment of Lolle’s mother in many cartoon sequences is a case in point: cartoon Lolle does what other people – including the real Lolle – only think about. Comic effects are, moreover, produced by the discrepancy between the contents of the cartoons and the facts of the textual world. In the episode ‘On the Run’ (‘Auf der Flucht’ 1.04), for example, Lolle and Rosalie are pursued by neo-Nazis, but are saved by a Greek man called Dimitri. When he looks at Lolle encouragingly, she interprets his look as budding love, as the following cartoon sequence discloses: Lolle is given a rose, smells it, and floats through the air in a dazed state. In another cartoon sequence, Dimitri gives Lolle a huge

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birthday cake from which he emerges like a prince and whisks her away in a big car. That Lolle’s ideas present only a wish world that will not be realized becomes apparent a few scenes later when the viewer learns that Dimitri is in fact a bisexual transvestite. A further means of producing comic effects is the design of the cartoon images itself. As Grünewald (2000: 6) explains, one can distinguish between different drawing styles in accordance with the connotation ‘comic’, ‘serious’, or ‘adventurous’. The heavily reduced and simplified drawings in Berlin, Berlin and, above all, their exaggerations (for example Lolle’s oversized eyes) point to a comic drawing style. It is remarkable that actress Felicitas Woll has enormous eyes as well, which she sometimes opens very wide so that the real Lolle resembles her cartoon counterpart.

The use of the visual track (II): Lolle’s dreams, visions and memories Besides the use of animated cartoons, another way of presenting Lolle’s inner life via the visual track is by means of the visualization of her dreams, visions and memories in real-film sequences. To indicate that the viewers are in the process of witnessing what is going on in Lolle’s mind, the quality of the pictures is manipulated. In Lolle’s dream sequences, for example, the colours are less intense and show fewer contrasts than in those sequences that present the textual actual world. Sometimes the picture is even slightly blurred. In other cases, a subjective camera is used as a means of indicating that the viewers are in the process of experiencing Lolle’s point of view. In the episode ‘SelfExperiment’ (‘Selbstversuch’ 1.07), for instance, Lolle faints in her Capoeira class, and the viewers see the fictional world from a worm’s-eye view when Lolle regains consciousness. In addition to these visual signals of character-focalization, the characters’ voices sound like echoes, thus indicating that what the viewer hears is part of internal focalization and not ‘ordinary speech’ in the textual actual world. Whereas the animated cartoons mainly grant viewers access to Lolle’s feelings, fears, pleasure and so on, digitally manipulated pictures are used to present her imaginary perceptions, that is her memories, dreams and visions. At the beginning of the episode ‘Dreams’ (‘Träume’ 1.09) – the title refers explicitly to imaginary perceptions and directs the viewers’ attention towards specific structural features of the episode – the viewers see Lolle lying in bed and hear her say in a voice-over commentary that the man of one’s dreams only exists in one’s dreams. The following scenes, which differ in terms of their colours from what


the viewer is accustomed to, depict one of Lolle’s dreams. On the roof garden she and Rosalie are discussing whether the man of Lolle’s dreams exists. While Lolle is convinced that sooner or later her ‘prince’ will come through the hatch onto the roof garden, Rosalie totally rejects the mere idea of his existence. As Lolle does not want to be stripped of her hopes she snaps her fingers to make Rosalie disappear and then stares at the hatch full of expectation. The camera focuses on the hatch in a point-of-view shot that adopts Lolle’s position and shows the object of her gaze. The viewer’s suspense rises when the hatch actually opens: Who will be coming out onto the roof? But Lolle – and with her, the viewer – can only see a very blurred picture of the man. What she – and the viewer – can hear, however, is Sven’s voice calling her again and again until Lolle wakes up to find Sven standing beside her bed and waking her because she has overslept. The overall effect of this transition from dream to reality and of Lolle’s dream in general is that the viewers construct a possible world as well. They are enticed into imagining the further development of the plot: is her cousin Sven the prince Lolle is looking for? Is there more than friendship between them? Will they get together in the end? In the same episode, Lolle has another, very similar dream. She is on the roof garden again, this time with her Vietnamese friend Tuhan, and she is still waiting for the man of her dreams to appear. All of a sudden, Sven comes through the hatch, so that the viewer feels encouraged to think of him as the prince of Lolle’s dreams. But Sven is only there to tell her that her prince will arrive very soon. Then the hatch opens again, the picture once more becomes blurred, and the viewers see a shadowy man walking towards Lolle and starting to caress her face. When he tries to kiss her she opens her eyes and starts screaming because now the picture is no longer blurred, and ‘the man of her dreams’ turns out to be her new employer Moshe, the owner of a Jewish restaurant, with whom she has only quarrelled so far. After having woken up, Lolle wonders if dreams reveal the truth, if she has fallen in love with Moshe without having realized it. Her dream and her speculations about its meaning again stimulate the viewers’ expectations concerning future events: will Moshe and Lolle become lovers? Will the story actualize Lolle’s possible world or will it run counter to it? Lolle’s behaviour after the dream proves that she creates a dream universe in Marie-Laure Ryan’s (1991) terms, which influences her decisions and thus affects the plot. Since Lolle is now convinced that Moshe is in fact the man of her dreams, she tries to make the textual actual world coincide with her dream universe. When she sees Moshe again,

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the viewer can hear her heart beating loudly while all other noises in the restaurant are cut off. In a cartoon sequence Lolle’s eyes rotate like the wheels of a gambling machine until they stop to show two red hearts. And when she and Moshe shake hands after a quarrel, cartoon Lolle is electrified in the true sense of the word. Finally, Lolle’s dream universe is actualized: Moshe becomes her lover. Thus, the possible world constructed by the viewers is confirmed by the development of the story. Likewise, the possible world in which Sven is the man of Lolle’s dreams is actualized in the last episodes of the first season. Lolle’s dreams in Berlin, Berlin generally fulfil the function of suggesting different plot possibilities and of arousing the viewers’ expectations. There are, however, also dreams that disclose Lolle’s feelings. In the episode ‘Lolle and Prince Charming’ (‘Lolle und der Traumprinz’ 1.10), for example, one of Lolle’s dreams reflects her horror about finding out that Moshe is married with two children. When she is confronted with Moshe’s wife in her dream, she perceives her as a bimbo with 20 children, whom she makes disappear by snapping her fingers so that there is nothing standing in her and Moshe’s way. By contrast, the presentation of Lolle’s memories primarily establishes a better understanding of her character. The memory sequences are marked by slightly paler colours and look like old video recordings inserted into the usual multicolour presentation. In several episodes of the first season (cf. 1.11, 1.19, 1.20), there are flashbacks showing incidents from Lolle’s past, for example events from her childhood and her youth. In the episode ‘Not Quite Kosher’ (‘Nicht ganz koscher’ 1.11), for example, the story pauses and the viewers see Lolle as a small girl in a flashback that is meant to explain why Lolle believes in the existence of Prince Charming. Lolle and her friend Taddi are watching Lolle’s favourite movie, the animated cartoon The Little Mermaid, which ends with the protagonist marrying the prince of her dreams. In the episode ‘Best Friends’ (‘Beste Freunde’ 1.19) Lolle is again shown with Taddi, at the age of six and at the age of 16. In each scene the two girls are in the middle of a pillow fight and really seem to be enjoying themselves. These memory sequences reveal that Taddi and Lolle are very close friends and that Taddi, who is about to come to visit Lolle in Berlin, has played an important role in Lolle’s life. In several episodes of the second season, memory sequences are a means of explaining and emphasizing Lolle’s melancholy mood. In the first episode of the second season, ‘Home Alone in Berlin’ (‘Lolle allein in Berlin’ 2.01), for example, Lolle feels very lonely, because Sven has decided to leave her and to go back to living with Silvia and Daniel,


and Rosalie has moved to New York without saying a word, passing her room on to Sarah. From one day to the next Lolle’s life in Berlin has changed completely, and she misses her former life with Sven and Rosalie in their flat. That she hangs on to her memories is illustrated for the viewers by showing pictures of Lolle wandering about in Berlin and by time and again inserting pictures of various scenes from episodes of the first season, in which Lolle can be seen together with Rosalie and/or Sven.

The use of the soundtrack: voice-over commentaries and music One of the functions of the soundtrack of Berlin, Berlin is to support the visual track in presenting Lolle’s inner world on screen. In the dream episode mentioned above, for example, the characters’ voices sound like echoes, thus setting the scenes apart from the textual actual world. By means of voice-over commentaries, the soundtrack, moreover, is in and of itself an important device for character-focalization. Besides the animated cartoons, the dream sequences and the memories, voice-over commentaries as well as music are important techniques to emphasize Lolle’s point of view. During the entire first season, Lolle as a voice-over speaker accompanies the viewers with commentaries from the off. They hear her speak without seeing her lips move, so that the speech is clearly meant to reflect Lolle’s thoughts and emotions. The frequent use of this technique heightens the viewers’ identification with Lolle and, for the most part, also produces comic effects. In general, Lolle’s voice-over commentaries provide information about her mental processes, which, however, is only accessible to the viewers, since the other characters cannot hear what she is saying. These discrepancies in the level of information available to viewers and to the other characters create comic effects because the viewers learn exactly those things that are not meant for the public or the characters around Lolle. The viewers consequently know more than the characters due to various means of presenting consciousness on screen: they know what is really happening in Lolle’s inner world; they know her thoughts and feelings. At the beginning of the first episode, for instance, the viewers see Lolle, her parents and her schoolmates attending the official graduation ceremony at Malente highschool. While Lolle’s parents are giving her proud and encouraging looks and she is smiling back at them, the viewers can hear what she is really thinking: she is longing for this – in her eyes – very boring event to end, and she wishes to be spared from her mother’s nerve-racking advice or her father’s worries. Similar to the animated cartoons, the voice-over commentaries become

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a means of presenting two stories at the same time: on the one hand, the events that are shown on screen and, on the other hand, the story as it unfolds in Lolle’s head. As this example illustrates, Lolle’s voice-over commentaries reflecting her thoughts and feelings sometimes contradict the information provided by the visual track. The main function of such discrepancies between her thinking and her acting is to produce comic effects. Through Lolle’s voice-over commentaries in the episode ‘Happy Birthday, Lolle’ (‘Happy Birthday, Lolle’ 1.03) the viewers get to know that she is really looking forward to her birthday and that she wonders how Sven and Rosalie will surprise her. However, contrary to her expectations, absolutely nothing happens; they all seem to have forgotten her birthday and when she reminds them no-one can find the time to celebrate with her. We can hear Lolle’s voice-over protesting again and again that she is not disappointed, but her very sad face shown in various reaction shots discloses that she is actually quite upset by her friends’ behaviour. There is, however, a significant difference between the function of the soundtrack in this scene and in the scene of the official graduation ceremony at Malente highschool: Lolle’s voice-over commentaries in the first example reveal that the visual track (her smiling back at her parents) provides viewers with an untruthful image of Lolle’s actual emotional state, whereas in the birthday episode the soundtrack is unreliable and the visual track (Lolle’s facial expression) gives away her real feelings. Another example of a discrepancy between Lolle’s thoughts (which we can hear in voice-over commentaries) and her verbal behaviour can be found in the episode ‘Extreme Situations’ (‘Extremsituationen’ 1.22), when she is talking to Sven after they have kissed for the first time: Lolle thinks: ‘I’m really jealous of that cow Silvia’. But she says: ‘I’ve been a bit touchy lately’. Then she thinks: ‘And I’m always thinking about kissing you’. But she says: ‘And I’ve had this twitch all day long’. Lolle is unable to admit her feelings for Sven, because she fears that a love relationship will be the end of their friendship. But in her voice-over commentaries Lolle gives herself and her love for Sven away – at least to the viewers. Similarly, in the episode ‘Frog Princes’ (‘Froschkönige’ 2.04), Silvia, Sven and Lolle happen to bump into each other shortly after Sven and Lolle have broken up. The ensuing conversation runs counter to their thoughts, which are presented this time by means of subtitles. Lolle asks Sven, for example: ‘How are you?’, but the subtitle reads: ‘Do you miss me?’ Silvia greets Lolle with the following words: ‘Hi Lolle, what a coincidence!’ But she thinks: ‘Oh no, her


again!’ And when they part, Silvia says: ‘We’re sure to meet again’, but she thinks: ‘Hopefully never again’. The viewers’ recognition of such examples of self-deception accounts for many of the comic effects in Berlin, Berlin. One has to note, however, that the technique of voice-over in Berlin, Berlin is not only a means of presenting consciousness on screen. At the beginning of each episode, before the opening credits, Lolle also appears as voice-over narrator by offering a short spoken summary of events in previous episodes. She selects and arranges some of the earlier events and comments on them, familiarizing viewers who have missed one or more episodes with previous events and at the same time introducing the topic of the current episode. Additionally, she provides viewers with a subjective interpretation of the fictional facts, thus adding information which is not presented visually. Her function as homodiegetic narrator in these sequences again accentuates her individual view of the fictional world. The soundtrack also grants viewers access to what is going on in Lolle’s mind by way of presenting music in line with Lolle’s perceptions and feelings. In the episode ‘Singles’ (‘Singles’ 1.13), for example, Lolle takes part in a matchmaking show on the radio, and her very first date turns out to be a complete disaster. Even though she and the candidate, Olaf, go to a nice restaurant, he brings along a rose for her, and he pays her a number of compliments, he speaks about nothing but his former girlfriend during the entire evening. Lolle is bored to death, as the viewers can guess both from her facial expression and from the fact that the classical music, which is repeatedly used as an acoustic background to the scene, soon departs from its originally jubilant mood to be played more and more slowly until it nearly dies away.5 In addition to the speed of the music, the lyrics of a song may also reflect what is going on in Lolle’s mind. When she is on her way to her interview in the advertising agency in the episode ‘Lolle versus Fatman’ (1.17), for example, and tries to brace herself for the interview, her mood is highlighted by the Jimmy Cliff song ‘You can get it if you really want’, which contains the following lines: ‘You can get it if you really want. You can get it if you really want. You can get it if you really want, but you must try, try, and try, try and try. You’ll succeed at last. . .’

Dialogic forms of presenting consciousness on screen In the second season a new technique of presenting consciousness on screen comes into play, namely the dialogization of Lolle’s thoughts

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and feelings. Whereas in the first season Lolle’s inner world is presented in monologic form by means of animated cartoons and Lolle’s voiceover commentaries, the second season of Berlin, Berlin introduces three new, dialogic forms of revealing what is going on in Lolle’s mind. The first one consists of Rosalie appearing in Lolle’s imagination in the first two episodes of the second season. After having been left by Sven and Rosalie, Lolle is really depressed. She desperately needs someone to talk to, so Tuhan advises Lolle to imagine Rosalie in her thoughts and to talk to her as she used to do in reality. And this is what Lolle does: in the episode ‘Home Alone in Berlin’ (2.01), she imagines Rosalie close to her and pours her heart out to her. To the other characters in the series this looks very much as if Lolle were talking to herself, but the viewers can actually see Rosalie standing or sitting next to Lolle and telling her what to do in her usual blunt manner: ‘Stop crying, look for a new flat, and give Sven a kick in the butt!’ The way Rosalie is presented in this scene, however, emphasizes that Rosalie is not really there, but only exists in Lolle’s imagination. The pictures look as if Rosalie had been inserted into them later; she is surrounded by a glow, and her voice sounds like an echo. A second means of dialogizing Lolle’s thoughts is the ‘magical’ existence of a wise man in Lolle’s mirror in the episodes ‘Here Today, Gone Tomorrow’ (‘Ex und hopp’ 2.15) and ‘Mirror, Mirror on the Wall’ (‘Spieglein, Spieglein’ 2.16). In these episodes, Lolle is very jealous because Alex’s ex-girlfriend Francesca has come to Berlin and is trying to win him back. Lolle suspects Alex of still being in love with Francesca. Like in the fairy tale Snow White, she asks her mirror who is the most beautiful woman in Alex’s country (‘Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand, wer ist die Schönste im Alexland?’ 2.15). All of a sudden, an old man with long, white hair appears in the mirror and tells her that Francesca is a thousand times more beautiful than Lolle, thus accentuating her fear of losing Alex. In the course of the following episode, the wise man turns up in Lolle’s mirror again and again whenever she considers her suspicions and possible reactions to Alex’s behaviour. The wise man suggests, for example, going back to the restaurant where Alex and Francesca have arranged to meet and making a scene. Lolle, however, wants to trust Alex and believe in their love. But the mirror makes her feel unsure of herself time and again by mentioning that Francesca is more attractive, single-minded and resolute than she is. The third dialogic form of presenting consciousness on screen in Berlin, Berlin is Lolle’s splitting into two persons: into the real Lolle and a Lolle who exists subconsciously. In quite a few scenes of the last two episodes


of the second season, ‘I Don’t Love You – You Don’t Love Me’ (‘Ich lieb dich nicht – du liebst mich nicht’ 2.19) and ‘I See’ (‘Aha’ 2.20), the viewers see two Lolles on the screen at the same time: Lolle and her personified subconscious, which differs from the real Lolle only in the clothes it is wearing. Lolle talks to her subconscious, trying to convince it that she has absolutely no feelings for Sven. But her subconscious talks back and laughs at her while pointing out that she and Sven have been kissing again and that Lolle is deceiving herself. Lolle’s splitting into two persons thus fulfils functions similar to Rosalie’s appearance in Lolle’s thoughts and the wise old man’s appearance in the mirror: the three dialogic forms of presenting consciousness on screen are a means of confronting split feelings, depicting possible actions, and interpreting Lolle’s own behaviour and/or the behaviour of the other characters. Beyond that, they contribute to a visualization of Lolle’s inner conflicts, representing something on screen which normally cannot be seen or witnessed.

The effect of presenting consciousness on screen: an invitation to identify with Lolle or a postmodern game with the viewer? As has been demonstrated, the staple features of Berlin, Berlin include an extensive use of various innovative narrative strategies of presenting consciousness on screen. Not only the visual track but also the soundtrack provides the viewers with insights into the protagonist’s inner life. The main function of animated cartoons, voice-over commentaries, music, digitally manipulated pictures and dialogic forms of presenting consciousness on screen is to grant viewers access to Lolle’s sensory and imaginary perception. As Lolle is the only character-focalizer, internal focalization in Berlin, Berlin is monoperspectival; that is, the series concentrates on the thoughts, emotions, dreams and visions of only one character. Consequently, the viewers get to know one specific perspective of Berlin and its people, whose lives are presented as Lolle sees them. Lolle’s subjective worldview is staged with filmic techniques, and because of her exceptional position as the sole character-focalizer the viewers are invited to identify with Lolle. The different techniques of internal focalization in Berlin, Berlin fulfil various functions and produce a considerable range of effects. In contrast to other series, such as, for example, The X-Files, or to many Star Trek episodes and even some Ally McBeal episodes, where the projection of possible worlds leads to an ontological destabilization of the fictional world, the distinction between the textual actual world and the various

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possible worlds constructed by Lolle is never blurred. The clearly marked discrepancy between Lolle’s perceptions and the ‘facts’ of the fictional world instead primarily gives rise to comic effects: viewing pleasures are founded on the experience of viewing against or beyond Lolle’s perceptions. In this respect, the discrepant awareness between the viewers and the characters, which results from the viewers’ privileged insight into Lolle’s inner world, plays an important role as well. But the series’ comic effects are not meant to result only from slapstick, or from the mere discrepancy between Lolle’s thinking and her acting in the fictional world. Headwriter David Safier and producer Bernhard Gleim rather see Berlin, Berlin as a ‘dramedy’, that is, as a mixture of drama and comedy, in which serious topics are approached as well. Therefore, they expect viewers to laugh about ‘dramatic stories’. They argue that many young women can relate to Lolle’s adventures and thus identify with what is happening in Lolle’s life. Although the series cannot do away with the viewers’ problems, sorrows and fears, it can help them to deal with their problems by inciting them to laugh about similar experiences in Lolle’s world. The use of different narrative techniques and genres in Berlin, Berlin as well as its mixing of real film and cartoon can furthermore be associated with a specifically postmodern aesthetics. In addition to its innovative filmic strategies, the series’ many intramedial and intermedial references testify to the general playfulness of Berlin, Berlin. The series derives a considerable part of its appeal and its comic effects from its frequent references to other TV or film texts, to other TV formats, or to other media, providing highly ironic comments on the various pretexts, on Berlin, Berlin itself, and on TV in general. In the episode ‘How Can I Win Back My Boyfriend?’ (‘Wie bekomme ich meinen Freund zurück?’ 1.02), for example, there are several references to the genre of the Western. In an attempt to win Tom back, Lolle wears a bear costume, sprays it with perfume, walks towards Tom in the street, and hugs him so that he will smell of a woman’s perfume afterwards, which is meant to make his new girlfriend jealous. The viewers first see Lolle (in her bear costume) and Tom walking towards each other (full shot), but then there are only medium shots showing the opponents’ feet and the lower part of their legs – similar to the shots often used in the duels typical of the Western. A further reference to this genre is the music that highlights this scene, taken from the legendary Italo-Western Once Upon a Time in the West (1969). The image that is evoked by the intramedial references and that reminds the viewers of the serious character of duels in Westerns and of the growing suspense that is normally provided by


Western music stands in stark contrast to the somewhat ridiculous scene in Berlin, Berlin, thus producing a comic effect while at the same time pointing at the general playfulness of the series. Further intramedial and intermedial references that entail similar effects occur throughout the series: for instance, there are allusions to the German daily soap Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten (1.05), to the TV show All you need is love (1.08),6 as well as to a TV programme called Big Sister (something similar to the famous show Big Brother), in which Rosalie’s sister takes part (1.12). TV formats of various kinds thus serve as an ongoing reference point throughout the entire series Berlin, Berlin.7 The third season has now been shot with 26 new episodes, which are to be aired in the spring of 2004. It remains to be seen if the production team of Berlin, Berlin will manage to perpetuate the series’ successful mixture of different narrative techniques and genres, of real film and cartoon, of drama and comedy in the following seasons. An even more courageous use of different forms of presenting consciousness on screen would be, in any case, desirable. Notes 1 2

3

4

5

6

7

The original quotation is: ‘Das wird die erste ARD-Serie, die wirklich Berlin erzählt. Wir wollen nicht das Touristische zeigen, sondern die Menschen.’ In the entire first season there is only one episode (‘Best Friends’ 1.19) in which a character other than Lolle appears as focalizer when some of Lolle’s ex-boyfriend Tom’s memories are shown in black-and-white. On the terms ‘textual actual world’ and ‘wish world’ as well as on other concepts of possible-worlds theory, cf. the introduction of this volume as well as Ryan (1991) and Surkamp (2002). The cartoon format in general seems to be used to express feelings and thoughts that are otherwise socially unacceptable or even politically incorrect. In the USA it seems to be just about the only acceptable way to make jokes about violence or disability, as, for example, the cartoon series South Park shows. It seems that a cartoon creates enough distance and unreality to remove the element of danger or threat from such emotions. (I am indebted to Claire Annesley for pointing this out to me.) It is a funny detail of this scene that Lolle’s boredom and her impression that she does not get enough attention are also illustrated by a semantic loading of the setting. The rose Olaf has brought along for her and that the waiter has put into a vase withers as Olaf’s boring monologue continues endlessly, thus contributing to the expression of Lolle’s mood. This show resembles the real German TV show Nur die Liebe zählt. It exists as a TV show within the universe of Berlin, Berlin, and Sven is even shown watching this programme when Lolle appears as a candidate in the show. Cf. also Lolle’s comment on Alex’s confession that he has feelings for both Lolle and his ex-girlfriend Francesca: ‘You sound like someone in a really bad TV series’ (2.16).

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References Grünewald, D. (2000) Comics. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Ryan, M.-L. (1991) Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Surkamp, C. (2002) ‘Narratologie und possible-worlds theory: Narrative Texte als alternative Welten’. In A. Nünning and V. Nünning (eds), Neue Ansätze in der Erzähltheorie. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 153–83.


Part II Multi-layered Characters, Multi-layered Narratives


5 ‘She’s filled with secrets’: Hidden Worlds, Embedded Narratives and Character Doubling in Twin Peaks Janine Matthees

Introduction When Twin Peaks was aired in 1990, it soon acquired a reputation as being one of the most innovative TV series ever. It offered a large number of bizarre characters, a complicated puzzle involving the murder of a pretty young girl, and various absurd features like FBI agent Cooper’s recurrent praise of the local cherry pie. These features soon established the cult character of the series. The initial enthusiasm of the viewers lessened quickly, however, after it became clear that Twin Peaks was not just a new detective series. The postmodernist features of the series, especially its tendency to abandon traditional narrative structures and to go off into a new, unexpected direction every few episodes, proved too much to secure the public’s lasting interest.1 In addition to the viewers’ expectations derived from the genre of detective series, one can also assume that viewers were going to form certain expectations on the basis of the name David Lynch. This director, who is well-known for the high level of absurdity and the lack of closure in his feature films, could be expected to use similar features when he created Twin Peaks. While the viewers’ response was generally enthusiastic during the first season, ratings dropped dramatically in the second season once Laura’s murder had been solved, and the series finally came to an abrupt end after 29 episodes.2 Set in a small town of the same name, somewhere in the northwest of the United States close to the Canadian border, Twin Peaks starts off with the discovery of the body of Laura Palmer, a local high-school girl, and the series’ initial focus is on the investigation into Laura’s death. Since the local police are baffled by the murder, Special Agent Dale Cooper of the FBI is called in to assist Sheriff Harry Truman. The 99

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circumstances surrounding Laura’s death become more and more complicated, and solving the crime does not become any easier when various subsequent murders occur. During the second season it is revealed that Laura was killed by a demon named Bob, who took possession of the body of her father, Leland Palmer. Thus, the detective plot is apparently brought to an end – albeit a somewhat unusual one. The second season then goes on to deal with Cooper’s attempt to untangle the mystical forces at work around Twin Peaks, which are represented by two huts in the woods, the White Lodge and the Black Lodge. At the end of the series, Cooper gains access to the magic realm in which these places exist, but he ultimately fails to overcome the evil force of the Black Lodge and is consumed by it – or is he? Although Twin Peaks is mostly referred to as a television series, it has many of the characteristics of a serial, according to the distinction between series and serial made in the introduction to this volume. Both the relatively large group of regulars and many of the plotlines (will Big Ed and Norma ever get together? will Shelley leave Leo for Bobby?) suggest that Twin Peaks is more of a soap opera – the prototypical serial – than a crime series. A further element reminiscent of the serial is the lack of closure in the individual episodes. It is difficult to answer the question whether closure is ever attained because the series was never aired in its full length due to the aforementioned rapidly dropping ratings during the second season. However, an important characteristic of the series in Twin Peaks is its subject: a crime and its solution are classic subjects for a series, not a serial, because the story reaches closure with the solution of the crime. As this is not the end in Twin Peaks – the show does not end with the solving of the crime – I agree with Gregory’s (2000: 53) classification of Twin Peaks as ‘surrealist soap opera’. Whereas most articles on Twin Peaks discuss psychoanalytic or symbolic elements of the series or its reception,3 I would like to examine some of its narrative features. My focus in the following discussion will be on the constant transgressions of viewers’ expectations by means of various narrative strategies. First, I take a closer look at the genre transgressions in Twin Peaks, that is at how the show plays with the conventions of detective fiction and the detective series and then abandons them at will. The second part will deal with the various kinds of embedded narrative in the series and demonstrate how they are used to structure the plot. Finally, the third part will examine various types of character doubling and the recurring doppelganger motif and take a closer look at what narratological functions these fulfil.

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From an amusing version of the detective series to hidden worlds and supernatural evil: narrative strategies which transgress genre conventions At the beginning of the series, Twin Peaks is presented as the prototypical idyllic small town. This is already suggested by the opening credits, which in every episode show the mill, the waterfall, miles of woodland and so on. Agent Cooper, moreover, explicitly comments upon the idyllic character of Twin Peaks: when he arrives in the town, he states that he has ‘never seen so many trees in [his] life’ (pilot); he exclaims over ‘ducks on the lake’ (episode three),4 and he later explains to FBI forensics expert Albert Rosenfield that: ‘Life has meaning here. Every life’ (episode three). Up to this point, viewers see the classic setting for a detective series: a basically good world disrupted by a murder; and viewers are led to believe that once the crime is solved, the narrative world will be perfect again. Quite in keeping with this set-up is the conception of Laura Palmer as a ‘paragon of fifties’ high school virtue’ (Deutsch 1993: 137). Although the positive image is ultimately undermined, among the first things we learn about Laura are that she helped organize the Meals on Wheels programme for delivering food to the elderly and that she instructed the mentally retarded Johnny Horne (episode two), which makes it seem that she can only be an innocent victim of pointless brutality. This view is reinforced by the closing credits, which almost always show ‘the photo of Laura as prom queen, an image . . . so iconic in the world of “Twin Peaks” that we might call it the show’s totem’ (Deutsch 1993: 144). The idyllic setting is disrupted by various bizarre incidents occurring in the first few episodes, however. There is, for example, Laura’s funeral in episode three, which is attended by just about every major character. The scene is very solemn and touching, until Laura’s boyfriend, Bobby Briggs, starts screaming at the assembly: ‘You make me sick. You damn hypocrites make me sick. Everybody knew she was in trouble, but you didn’t do anything. All you good people. You wanna know who killed Laura? You all did. We all did.’ From this outburst, viewers are given a very obvious clue that Laura was not as good as she seemed and that almost everybody in the town knew this. Since Bobby’s outburst seems to suggest a conspiracy – ‘we all did’ – we get a first glimpse of the fact that many of the respected townspeople know that Twin Peaks is far from being as idyllic a place as is suggested in the beginning, that there is a darker ‘underworld’.


Viewers’ expectations are moreover violated when it comes to Cooper’s investigative methods, which sometimes border on the bizarre. Unlike the traditional detective TV series – from The Streets of San Francisco to Murder She Wrote – which rely exclusively on rational means for finding the culprit,5 the main detective character of Twin Peaks uses various extraordinary, in some cases downright magical, methods in his investigations.6 One particularly striking example of Cooper’s unconventional methods can be found in episode two, when he assembles all employees of the sheriff’s office in the woods. Here he has set up a blackboard on which he has written the names of all persons involved in the case whose last or first names begin with the letter J. This list of suspects has been suggested by a chapter in Laura’s diary in which she refers to a meeting with ‘J’. At the beginning of the scene Cooper explains that the idea for this experiment came to him in a dream and reflects on his empathy for the oppressed country of Tibet. He says he believes that through this empathy he has gained access to higher levels of intuitive deduction. Sheriff Truman then reads the names out loud, explaining each suspect’s relationship to Laura. After each name has been read, Cooper tries – blindfolded – to hit a nearby glass bottle with a stone. If he manages to do this, he explains, he has identified the killer. The bottle finally breaks after the naming of Leo Johnson, who, up to this moment, had no known connection to Laura at all. The experiment thus seems at first to have been entirely pointless, but as soon as it is revealed that both Leo and Laura were involved in the distribution of cocaine, the effectiveness of Cooper’s deductive techniques is confirmed. During the experiment Cooper’s behaviour exactly follows the typical scenario of a detective conducting an experiment, but the tenor of what he says and his wholehearted belief in supernatural forces do not belong to the classical FBI agent at all.7 It must also be noted that even though all members of the sheriff’s office go along with Cooper’s experiment, Sheriff Truman at one point during the experiment says: ‘Cooper, tell me. The idea of all this really came to you in a dream?’, thus underlining the unusualness of the scene for the benefit of the viewers. A further element which partially reaffirms and partially transgresses the rules of the genre of the detective series is the introduction of the Bookhouse Boys. In episode three, Cooper is taken into confidence by this group, which includes Sheriff Truman, Deputy Hawk and Ed Hurley, the owner of the local gas station who is often referred to as Big Ed. The first hint as to the existence of this club given to the viewers is a remark by Laura’s secret lover James Hurley in episode one. After having

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been threatened by Laura’s boyfriend Bobby Briggs and his friend Mike, he tells his uncle, Big Ed: ‘Gonna need a hand from the Bookhouse Boys. Somebody’s gotta watch my back.’ The identity and goals of the Bookhouse Boys are revealed in episode three, where Cooper is asked to attend one of their meetings at the local diner. When explaining the necessity for a secret society, Truman tells Cooper: ‘Twin Peaks is different . . . There is a sort of evil out there . . . Something very very strange in these dark woods. Call it what you like, a darkness, presence . . . It takes many forms. But it’s been around here for as long as anyone can remember, and we’ve always been here to fight it.’ The tradition of secret, non-official investigative units has a firm place in crime series, but what viewers witness here is a clear break with the generic conventions. The quote makes obvious that what this group claims to fight is not a human culprit, but an occult force. As the series progresses, the conventions of the detective series fade more and more into the background while the plot becomes increasingly absurd. In episode nine, for instance, Laura’s best friend Donna Hayward meets old Mrs Tremond and her grandson while Donna is delivering food for Meals on Wheels – a job she has taken to do some detection on her own. When Mrs Tremond complains about the creamed corn in her meal, her grandson magically transports the offending food from the plate to his hands. Later, in episode 16, when Donna tries to contact the Tremonds again, she meets a younger woman at the house, who tells her that she has lived in the house for years. Donna is clearly shocked by this experience, which is thus presented as unusual to the viewers. There are also examples of supernatural incidents that are accepted by Sheriff Truman and other characters in a matter-of-fact way. Cooper’s visions, which I will discuss in detail below, play a major part in the investigation; clues come to him in his dreams – his encounter with the dancing dwarf in the Red Room at the end of episode two is an example of this – and on several occasions he actively seeks a setting where he can be contacted by supernatural forces. Such an occasion occurs in episode 16, when he assembles a group of men at the roadhouse and tells them: ‘In the pursuit of Laura’s killer I have employed bureau guidelines, deductive technique, Tibetan method, instinct and luck. But now I find myself in need of something new . . . which for lack of a better word we shall call . . . magic.’ In this scene, we learn that Cooper was told by a doppelganger of Laura in his vision: ‘My father . . . killed me.’ Although Sheriff Truman is clearly suspicious of this information, he never really questions Cooper’s acting on this knowledge or prevents him from arresting Leland Palmer.


The behaviour of the ‘Log Lady’, one of the more absurd inhabitants of Twin Peaks, is a further example of the generally accepted supernatural features of the series. This elderly lady, who is called Margaret, but is more commonly referred to as the Log Lady, carries a log around with her and passes on messages that she claims this log has given to her. These messages are never straightforward. An example of this is a scene in episode one: Truman and Cooper are having coffee in the Double R Diner when the Log Lady comes up to them saying she has overheard them talking about Laura’s murder. She then goes on: ‘One day my log will have something to say about this. My log saw something that night’, and she asks Cooper to interview the log. In spite of his wholehearted belief in the supernatural, Cooper is obviously puzzled by this request and looks quizzically at Truman. Seeing his reaction, the Log Lady marches off with the words ‘I thought so’. In the tradition of classic crime fiction, this strategy helps to create suspense – the witness is about to talk, but is hindered by circumstances. The unexpected happens, however, when Cooper ultimately hears what she has to say, takes it perfectly seriously, and starts to integrate it into his investigation. In episode 14, for instance, the Log Lady comes to the sheriff’s office and tells Cooper: ‘You must go to the roadhouse. Everything points that way’. When Cooper asks for a reason, she answers with a gesture to her log: ‘It won’t say. But it insists’. Arriving at the roadhouse, Cooper then has a vision featuring the Giant, who gives him important clues for his investigation. As these examples show, the viewers’ trust in supernatural clues is strengthened in the course of the series, since such clues are repeatedly shown to contribute to the solving of the puzzle. Even seemingly rational characters show highly unusual behaviour and clearly believe in the supernatural. Major Briggs, father of Bobby Briggs and a member of a secret government project, also serves as a messenger for the occult forces. In episode nine, for instance, he delivers a message to Cooper – which the viewers are left to assume comes from aliens – consisting of the sentence ‘The owls are not what they seem’ and the word ‘Cooper’ repeated three times. Cooper receives the message with unquestioning seriousness and thus shapes the viewers’ reception of the scene. On a fishing trip with Cooper in episode 17 – and just when he is about to reveal some valuable information as to the nature of his work – Major Briggs is kidnapped by an unknown force. When he is released, he has no memory of what has happened to him. He is marked, however, by a tattoo in the shape of three triangles, which suggest a link between his kidnappers and the source of the Log’s messages, for the Log Lady bears a mark in the same style, consisting of

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two diamonds, one above the other. As an aftermath of this abduction the viewers learn that the project the Major is involved in is concerned with finding the White Lodge and harnessing its positive force. By means of the connection between him and the Log Lady, a pattern among the characters emerges in the mind of the viewers: on the one hand, there are those linked to the White Lodge, who are trying to help Cooper; on the other hand, there are characters who seem to work against this endeavour even though no connection between these characters can be established.

Recorded messages, dreams and visions: embedded narratives in Twin Peaks In Twin Peaks, embedded narratives are employed in a number of different forms and with a wide variety of functions. Generally speaking, the embedded narratives in the series can be divided into two categories, namely realistic narratives such as Laura’s diaries or the tapes Cooper records for Diane and supernatural ones like Cooper’s dreams and visions. Among the realistic embedded narratives in Twin Peaks, the most prominent are Cooper’s tapes for Diane. These recordings are made both when Cooper is alone and in the presence of others, with their frequency decreasing towards the end of Twin Peaks. The exact identity of Diane is never revealed, although one can deduce from Cooper’s thanking her for the earplugs she sent him (episode seven) that she is some kind of secretary. Nevertheless she is mainly a name, an addressee for Cooper. On his small hand-held tape recorder he tells her everything, from his daily schedule to house-buying plans; his messages always start with ‘Diane, (time), (date) . . .’. From a narratological point of view, these tapes fulfil several purposes. First of all, they give structure to the plot and introduce some of the characters, such as when Cooper tells Diane that he is due to meet Sheriff Truman (pilot). Second, they serve as a means of recapitulating the results of his investigation. In the pilot, for example, Cooper summarizes his findings at the hospital on tape. The third purpose of these tapes is to characterize Cooper: his insistence on having eaten at a reasonable price (pilot), for instance, underlines his desire to obey the rules of the FBI. His asking Diane to look into his pension plan for the possibilities of acquiring property (episode three), by contrast, shows an important shift in his loyalties, since it is made clear to the viewers that from this moment onwards Cooper is no longer the detached observer, but more and more has become


a member of the Twin Peaks community. Likewise, the decreasing frequency of the recordings correlates with the increasing individuality of Cooper: he stops being an outside FBI agent and becomes a member of the town’s community. Another type of realistic embedded narrative in the series is Laura’s diary, passages of which are read out by other characters. By means of this diary viewers are granted a glimpse into Laura’s darker side. In the pilot, for example, a passage from the diary reveals her fear of meeting a person who is only referred to as ‘J’. The excerpts from this diary are used to show facets of Laura’s life, but do not convey a full picture. In episode 11 we learn that Laura kept a second, secret diary, which is guarded by Harold Smith, one of her Meals on Wheels customers. Donna persuades him to read to her passages from this diary, in exchange for her own personal confessions. Like the first one, this secret diary is only ever presented in short, mysterious sections, which are not used as a means of clarifying the hidden sides of Laura’s personality, but in fact rather make them more mysterious.8 Another example of embedded narratives of a realistic kind are the tapes Laura Palmer made for her therapist, Dr Jacoby. The viewers learn of these tapes in episode one, where Dr Jacoby is shown listening to one of them. At first, we hear Laura’s voice-over talking about James Hurley and dropping strange hints: ‘I just know I’m gonna get lost in those woods again tonight.’ Then Jacoby puts on headphones, and Laura’s voice is cut off for the viewers. Again, this form of embedded narrative is used as a means of characterization by offering glimpses of Laura’s secret life while at the same time dropping clues as to the nature of the crime for the viewer. A videotape is also used as a realistic form of embedded narrative in the series. This tape, which the police find in a camera among Laura’s possessions (pilot), figures prominently in the solution of the murder. It shows Laura and her best friend Donna out in the woods dancing and prancing in front of the camera. The function of this videotape is thus to establish Laura’s good-girl identity by showing her having harmless fun with a friend. Since the tape offers no clue as to who recorded it, it also provides an occasion to establish Cooper’s credentials as an investigator: from the shape of the headlights of a motorcycle mirrored in Laura’s eyes, he is able to conclude the type of motorcycle it might be. A special form of embedded narrative is the soap opera Invitation to Love, ‘a show which describes itself as narrative without end’ (Deutsch 1993: 143). Series co-creator Mark Frost explains that the soap was born partly out of the wish to give the Twin Peaks community a sense of

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bonding: ‘I think that watching television is a big part of people’s lives in this country and you very rarely see that treated in television. We thought it would be kind of fun for the folks up there to have one favourite show that they were always tuning in for’ (Altman 1990: 37). This ‘series within the series’ is used in various ways to mirror or comment on the plot of Twin Peaks. In episode three, Invitation to Love is used to mirror the series’ events: Sarah and Leland Palmer are shown watching the soap’s opening credits, and the viewers see that Emerald and Jade, two of the soap’s characters, are played by the same actress. At this moment, the Palmers’ doorbell rings and Laura’s cousin Madeline Ferguson (played by the same actress as Laura herself) enters the scene. In other episodes, however, the soap is used to comment on the events in the series in a more contrastive way. In episode two, for example, Shelley Johnson is shown watching TV, and the voice-over at the beginning of Invitation to Love announces that ‘each day brings a new beginning and every hour holds the promise of an invitation to love’. Before this scene, Shelley has obviously been beaten up by her brutal husband Leo and her face is still bruised. Her response to the alluring promise of the soap is a sarcastic ‘Right’, uttered as she switches off the TV.9 Supernatural embedded narratives in Twin Peaks often take the form of dreams and visions, most of which are experienced by Cooper. At the end of episode two, Cooper is shown falling asleep in his hotel room, with the camera slowly closing in on his sleeping face. His dream begins with a dwarf dancing in a room with red curtains. Then images of Laura’s mother Sarah, of Bob and of Bob’s partner Mike flash across his vision. Cooper listens to Mike explaining how he turned away from Bob’s evil schemes and hears Bob’s threat ‘I promise I will kill again!’ After a radical change of scenery, Cooper, now considerably older, finds himself again sitting in the room with red curtains in the company of the dancing dwarf (who is referred to as the ‘Man from Another Place’ in the credits) and a doppelganger of Laura Palmer. The Man from Another Place introduces Laura’s doppelganger as his cousin, adding: ‘She’s filled with secrets’. Both of them talk to Cooper in distorted voices – an effect produced by having the actors record the text backwards and then playing this recording back in reverse – offering cryptic hints as to the identity of Laura’s killer. For example, the Man from Another Place tells him: ‘That gum you like is going to come back in style’, a statement that is repeated in episode 16, where it is spoken to Laura’s killer, Leland. In the scene in the Red Room, several of the prominent motifs of Twin Peaks appear. The sudden switch from ‘the real Twin Peaks’ to Cooper’s dream emphasizes the theme of hidden


worlds. Moreover, the Man from Another Place mentions that he and his female companion come from another place where ‘there’s music in the air’. The appearance of the second Laura can be interpreted as an invocation of Laura’s other identity as a prostitute at the club One Eyed Jack’s. Her double is dressed in an evening gown and acts very suggestively towards Cooper’s dream self, bending over him, kissing him and whispering in his ear. In this scene, the mystical element of the show is fully established for the first time. Moreover, this scene can also be interpreted as a flashforward to the final episode, in which Cooper enters the Black Lodge, which looks very similar to the Red Room, and he also meets the dwarf and Laura’s doppelganger here. Cooper also has visions in episode eight after he has been shot. While Cooper is lying on the ground and waiting for help, the room is suddenly lit up by a bright light and a giant appears, who offers Cooper three mystic hints: ‘There is a man in a smiling bag. The owls are not what they seem. Without chemicals, he points’ and promises to return when Cooper has interpreted these hints. All of these remarks in fact have a bearing on the investigation: the ‘smiling bag’ refers to a body bag which is hung up so that the zipper resembles a smiling mouth, and the owls represent the dark woods and the evil spirit of Bob. The last remark refers to Philip Gerard, who is able to give valuable information about Bob via his spirit alter ego Mike, who only appears if Gerard does not get his medication. Since the supernatural clues can thus be given meaning in the fictional world of Twin Peaks, the viewers’ belief in the ‘reality’ of the magical realm is reinforced once more. Later, in episode 14, at the roadhouse, Cooper is watching the band performing on the stage when suddenly the room becomes quiet, the band vanishes, and the black stage curtain turns red. In place of the band, a giant appears and says ‘It’s happening again. It’s happening again’. This comment refers to another killing, this time Leland’s murdering of his niece Madeline. By means of rapid cuts from Cooper’s face to Leland’s attack on Madeline and back, viewers are alerted to the fact that the murder is actually happening at that very moment, thus proving once more that Cooper’s visions are true. Moreover, Cooper is the only one who sees the visions, and he alone can interpret them; Sheriff Truman, who is also present at the roadhouse, does not see the giant. This makes Cooper an initiate and it underlines his outsider status: although he is drawn to the seemingly normal life in Twin Peaks, he remains an unknown quantity with respect to the community. One final example of a supernatural embedded narrative is Laura’s mother Sarah’s experience in the way of visions. She, too, can see Bob,

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which helps to confirm the reality of the demon, since he can be perceived by characters other than Cooper. And right before Madeline is murdered in episode 14, Sarah has a vision of a pale horse standing in the Palmers’ living room, a vision which can be interpreted according to the biblical association of the pale horse with death. This vision also helps create suspense, as the viewers see that something important is about to happen.

Looks, names, behaviour and ethics: forms of character doubling A characteristic feature of postmodern TV crime programmes is the use of mirroring.10 A form of mirroring which is particularly prominent in Twin Peaks is the doubling of characters. Carrión (1993: 241) remarks that ‘Laura and Madeleine, Audrey and Donna, Bobby and James, Shelley and Norma, many of the inhabitants of Twin Peaks look a lot alike’, but this is only one form of character doubling in the show. As will be shown in the following, characters are doubled in looks, names, behaviour, and also as moral opposites: that is, one and the same character can appear in a morally ‘good’ and a morally ‘bad’ variety. An example of character doubling in terms of physical resemblance is the similarity between Laura and her cousin Madeline Ferguson, who – like the character of Laura herself – is played by the actress Sheryl Lee. Maddy can be seen as the representation of Laura’s ‘good’ side. As soon as she hears about Laura’s death, she comes to visit her aunt and uncle in order to stand by them at this difficult time. She is shy and unassuming. She cares very much for her dead cousin and joins Donna and James in trying to track down the murderer. An interesting twist in the conception of Madeline’s character is that in contrast to the blonde Laura, she has dark hair. This feature conflicts with the classic association of the blonde with innocence and dark hair with evil, which often can be found in romances.11 The parallelism between her and Laura is also apparent in their murders: in episode 14, Madeline, like Laura before her, is killed by Leland, who, at the time, is possessed by the evil spirit Bob. With this scene, moreover, a definite connection between Leland and Laura’s killer is established. Another means of character doubling is the use of identical names. The names Bob and Mike, for example, occur twice in the series, and in both cases, the pairs carrying those names are linked. The first Boband-Mike pair is Laura’s official boyfriend Bobby Briggs and his friend Mike Nelson, who are among the first suspects in the murder case, but


who turn out to be innocent. The corresponding pair are the spirits Bob and Mike, who possess humans. In episode two, Cooper has a vision involving the spirit Mike, who explains that he and Bob once ‘lived among the people’, and how he, Mike, cut off his own arm when he ‘saw the face of God’ and turned away from evil. Mike seems to reside permanently in the body of the shoe salesman Philip Gerard and can be summoned up through hypnosis. Bob, however, can appear independently as well as by possessing humans. A person can be seen to be possessed when he looks into a mirror and sees Bob’s reflection. This doubling of names can be seen as a means of creating suspense: after his vision at the end of episode two, Cooper calls Sheriff Truman and tells him ambiguously that Laura was killed by ‘Bob and Mike’. Doubling can also occur in the form of repeated activity. A good example of this involves Cooper’s vision of the Red Room in episode two, where he encounters the dwarf, who performs a strange dance. A very similar dance is then performed by Laura’s father Leland Palmer on several occasions during his initial madness after Laura’s death. By this doubling of behaviour, Leland is connected – at least in the mind of the viewers – to the ‘Man from Another Place’ and therefore to the supernatural powers at work in Twin Peaks. Thus, this form of mirroring offers the viewers a first clue to the solution of the crime, since Leland kills his daughter as a result of being possessed by a supernatural force, Bob. The most complex way of character doubling used in Twin Peaks takes the form of contrastive instantiations of the same character: Laura and Cooper appear both in ‘good’ and ‘evil’ varieties. The variability in Laura’s character is obvious from the beginning. As Plummer (1997: 308) remarks, ‘[a]lthough the narrative works to ferret out Laura Palmer’s killer, it also works to discover Laura Palmer; Lynch collapses her secrets with that of her killer. Laura Palmer must be “detected” in the same manner; she is essentially treated like and revealed to be a criminal as well.’ Laura’s moral ambiguity is thus an essential feature of the conception of this character: she is schoolgirl and prostitute, girlnext-door and cocaine addict. Additionally, there is one further example of a ‘moral doubling’ of Laura’s character which occurs in the final episode: when Cooper enters the Black Lodge, he encounters Laura’s evil doppelganger, who, together with other trapped souls, attacks him. Cooper is portrayed throughout the series as the ultimate good guy. Nevertheless, he is changed by his stay in the Black Lodge. Here, his schizophrenic former partner Windom Earle offers to free Cooper’s lover, Annie Blackburne, whom Earle has kidnapped and taken to the

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Black Lodge after her coronation as Miss Twin Peaks in episode 27. In exchange for Annie’s freedom, however, Cooper has to give up his soul, a trade to which he agrees. After his acceptance, an evil doppelganger of Cooper appears in the Black Lodge. When Cooper returns to Twin Peaks, it is obvious that he is possessed by Bob – when he looks into the mirror, we see Bob’s reflection – but it remains an open question whether what comes back from the Black Lodge is his evil doppelganger, or if evil forces have finally corrupted the ‘good’ Cooper by using his love for Annie as a means of making him give up his soul. This form of character doubling adds to the ambiguity in the series, because moral certainties increasingly disappear. In contrast to the tradition of the detective story, not even the detective, Cooper, is safe from corruption. As a result of their mutual appearance as demons in the Black Lodge, Cooper and Laura are linked, and thus the traditional relationship of detective to victim/suspect is called into question.

Conclusion Among the most obvious features of the series Twin Peaks is its tendency to play postmodern games with viewers’ expectations. Twin Peaks transgresses the generic conventions of the crime series; it makes extensive use of embedded narratives, and employs various forms of character doubling. There are, of course, the secrets associated with the murdered girl Laura (and her doppelganger in the Red Room), but secrets play an important role in the entire fictional world created in the series. And while Twin Peaks constantly leads viewers to believe that the revelations are just around the corner, there are really just more secrets. In Twin Peaks, one can observe a clash between viewers’ expectations about what a TV crime series should be and the actual forms and contents to be found in a work by David Lynch. While many critics have celebrated Twin Peaks for its highly innovative way of telling a story, the resulting estrangement of viewers reflected in the decline in ratings is indicative of the problems involved in violating viewers’ expectations. Notes 1 2

3

For a detailed discussion of the postmodernist features of the series, see also Reeves et al. (1995). See, for example, Helen Deutsch’s (1993: 138) remark that she ‘stopped watching because the story’ for her ‘was over once the identity of Laura Palmer’s murderer had been revealed’. See, for instance, Stevenson (1993) and Hobart and Smith (1993) on psychological aspects of the series; see also Dolan (1995) on the reception.

112 Embedded Narratives and Doubling: Twin Peaks 4 Unlike in many other series in this volume, in Twin Peaks episodes usually are not numbered according to the season/episode model. This chapter takes the first episode to be the pilot and then starts counting with episode one. The first season ends with episode seven. 5 The conventions of the detective series are, of course, influenced by these series’ literary predecessors, including Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and the American hard-boiled tradition. 6 On ‘The Derationalization of Detection in Twin Peaks’, see also Hague (1995). 7 While Cooper’s methods of detection can be explained in terms of the convention of the weird detective as s/he appears in novels of the classical British school (for example Poirot’s solving of a case by interviewing the suspects about bridge in Christie’s Cards on the Table), such extravagant behaviour is not a prominent feature of American detective fiction. Moreover, even the detective characters of the British tradition always rely on rational thought no matter how irrational they appear to the associates and clients, so that this feature does not invalidate my argument. 8 The viewers’ interest in Laura’s secret life was most definitely piqued by this strategy. When Twin Peaks merchandising articles hit the shops, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer quickly made the bestseller list. 9 Helen Deutsch (1993: 143) interprets this scene in much the same way, while Mark J. Charney (1991: 54) in his essay ‘Invitation to Love: The Influence of Soap Opera on David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’ stresses a different aspect of this scene, namely, the arrival of Shelley’s lover Bobby Briggs. Charney argues that ‘Shelley abandons the television romance for one of her own’. To me, however, Deutsch’s interpretation seems more in accord with Shelley’s personal situation; Charney does not even mention her bruised face. 10 For mirroring in postmodern detection, see also Voigts-Virchow (2001: 135), who, building on an argument by Stefano Tani, points out that prominent features of postmodern detective programmes are the use of • ‘the labyrinth (a mysterious, irretrievable past)’, • ‘the mirror (a distorted, changed, removed present version of the past, also deception through the narrative process)’, and • ‘the map (the solution)’. 11 Of course, there are numerous examples of ‘evil blondes’ in TV series, particularly in soap operas. Nevertheless, the classic pattern in Western or Horror movies is that of the chaste blonde heroine and the evil dark seductress.

References Altman, M. (1990) Behind the Scenes: An Unofficial Visitors Guide to Twin Peaks. Las Vegas: Pioneer Books. Carrión, M. M. (1993) ‘Twin Peaks and the Circular Ruins of Fiction: Figuring (out) the Acts of Reading’. Literature/Film Quarterly 21.4. Peaked Out: Special Issue on Twin Peaks (ed. David Lavery), 240–7. Charney, M. J. (1991) ‘Invitation to Love: The Influence of Soap Opera on David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’. Studies in Popular Culture 14.1: 53–60. Deutsch, H. (1993) ‘“Is It Easier to Believe?”: Narrative Innocence from Clarissa to “Twin Peaks”’. Arizona Quarterly 49.2: 137–58.

Janine Matthees 113 Dolan, M. (1995) ‘The Peaks and Valleys of Serial Creativity: What Happened to/ on Twin Peaks’. In D. Lavery, op. cit.: 30–50. Gregory, C. (2000) Star Trek: Parallel Narratives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hague, A. (1995) ‘Infinite Games: The Derationalization of Detection in Twin Peaks’. In D. Lavery, op. cit.: 130–43. Hobart, R. D. and W. Smith (1993) ‘The Knowing Spectator of Twin Peaks: Culture, Feminism, and Family Violence’. Literature/Film Quarterly 21.4. Peaked Out: Special Issue on Twin Peaks (ed. David Lavery), 255–9. Lavery, D. (ed.) (1995) Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Plummer, L. (1997) ‘“I’m not Laura Palmer”: David Lynch’s Fractured Fairy Tale’. Literature/Film Quarterly 25.4: 307–14. Reeves, J. L. et al. (1995) ‘Postmodernism and Television: Speaking of Twin Peaks’. In D. Lavery, op. cit.: 173–95. Stevenson, D. (1993) ‘Family Romance, Family Violence: David Lynch’s Twin Peaks’. Boulevard 8.1: 12–28. Voigts-Virchow, E. (2001) ‘“Goodbye suspense goodbye”? – Postmodern TV Crime in The Singing Detective (1986) and Twin Peaks (1990–91)’. In R. Borgmeier and P. Wenzel (eds), Spannung: Studien zur englischsprachigen Literatur. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 132–48.

6 ‘This is not happening’: The Multi-layered Ontology of The X-Files Klaudia Seibel

The X-Files has been one of the most popular American TV series, ‘a cult programme of the nineties’ (Curti 1998: 79) which also gained international popularity. It ran over nine seasons (from 10 September 1993 to 19 May 2002) and spawned one feature film (so far), a spin-off (The Lone Gunmen), several novelizations, a comic book series, a computer game, and a variety of tie-in merchandise. It focuses on two FBI agents1 and their hunt for ‘The Truth’. It follows in the tradition of the weekly cop series, with each episode representing (more or less) one case file.2 The agents investigating the X-files also try to expose an international conspiracy whose members attempt to hide ‘The Truth’ from the public and to destroy any evidence the investigators might have gathered. This ‘mythology’ forms an overarching storyline originating in the investigation into the abduction of Fox Mulder’s sister Samantha in 1973, 19 years before the beginning of the series’ action in 1992. The ramifications of this ‘mytharc’ not only shape those episodes explicitly dealing with it, but also reach into many stand-alone ‘monster-of-the-week’ episodes, giving The X-Files its ‘elliptical yet serial narrative structure’ (McLean 1998: 6).3 In addition to its high level of estimation among its fans, the ‘X-Philes’, who form a very lively community on the internet, the series also earned some critical acclaim when its popularity reached its peak after season three (Lavery, Hague and Cartwright 1996a). The X-Files ‘experimented – televisually, narratologically, semiotically – with the medium in innovative ways’ (Lavery, Hague and Cartwright 1996b: 3). It imported some of the features typical of the 1990s cinema into a TV series, particularly in the areas of camera work, lighting and the use of a full-length soundtrack, features which are often referred to as ‘expressionist’ (cf. Kellner 1999; McLean 1998: 6). Above all, The X-Files is 114

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considered to be ‘the first truly postmodern television show’ (Reeves, Rodgers and Epstein 1996: 35).4 Nevertheless, it hails its audience week after week with the tagline ‘THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE’, which seems to contradict postmodernism’s scepticism of any grand récit, to say nothing of the postulation of an absolute, tangible truth that can be found somewhere ‘out there’, beyond the subject. But it is precisely the elusiveness of this truth and the way the search for it is presented that illustrates the ontological scepticism in the series and ‘reflects the mindset of its era’ (Lavery, Hague and Cartwright 1996b: 2). To achieve this, The X-Files relies heavily on the structuring forces of detection, but very often the question ‘who done it?’ is eclipsed by ‘what is it?’, which transforms the show into an ‘ontological detective story’, ‘in which the world where the action takes place becomes an object of investigation’ (Gomel 1995: 345). In this chapter I look at how narrative devices are used in The X-Files to present this ontological scepticism within the framework of a TV series. First, I will examine the ‘X-iverse’ (Jones 1996: 80), the world(s) that make(s) up the universe constructed in The X-Files. Using the tenets of possible-worlds theory as a theoretical background in combination with the tools of narratology, I explore how the textual actual world is established. The focus in the second section will be on the changing modal structure of the ‘X-iverse’, that is, on how the ontological status of certain events and existents (characters and setting, cf. Chatman 1978: 19) is rendered ambiguous. The third section will look specifically at one central character, who assumes the role of a latent narrator, very often toppling the ontological status of the X-iverse. The concluding remarks will take into consideration the possible effects the representation of these ontological structures might have on the audience, broadening the scope of this chapter in the direction of a cultural narratology.

The visuality of the ‘X-iverse’ – ‘I know what I saw’5 According to possible-worlds theory, the textual actual world ‘is made up of what exists absolutely in the semantic universe of the text, as opposed to what exists in the minds of characters’ (Ryan 1991: 112). Thus, one may ask: ‘what [narratorial] authority grants it to the reader?’ (ibid.). As stated in the introductory chapter, the camera is the primary narrating agency in televisual narratives.6 But, unlike a narrator in a book, it has to be put somewhere within the story world (cf. Genette 1988 [1972]: 73). It provides a ‘window’ in three-dimensional space

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through which the action is observed by the audience. Above all, in comparison to verbal language, the camera as narrating agency seems to offer viewers a more immediate access to the story world. The images the camera presents, unlike verbal signs, do not need to be ‘translated’ from verbal to visual signs in order to convey a sense of space. The camera presents ‘moving pictures’, which ‘are the most immersive of all media’ (Ryan 2001: 120). It is by visual means that an illusion is created; if it is not otherwise clearly marked, the camera shows ‘what is really there’ in the story world. It provides the centre to which the consciousness of the viewer relocates itself. This act of ‘recentering’ induces the viewer to take the non-actual possible world of the X-iverse as actual if not stated otherwise (cf. ibid.: 103). In The X-Files the camera’s role as recentering narrating agency is supported by the use of captions. This extradiegetic visual verbal code indicates the place where the action is located and, by using proper names, provides ‘a particularly efficient way to create a sense of place without resorting to lengthy descriptions’ (ibid.: 127). Though many of the place names (such as Collum National Forest or Bellefleur, OR7) are fictitious, they nevertheless serve the purpose of activating a cognitive frame (cf. ibid.: 129) that viewers connect with certain regions of the United States. In most episodes the visual track is used to present the mystery to be solved to the audience without commentary. This usually happens in the teaser before the investigation is shown in the episode proper, something granting the audience a discrepant awareness of what actually happened and assigning them the role of eye-witnesses to the crime. In ‘Pilot’ (1.79), the opening sequence shows a woman stumbling through the woods engulfed by a bright light; her dead body is found in the next scene, which raises the question of how the phenomenon depicted before could have caused her death. In ‘Pilot’, as in many other episodes, this audience view is doubled by the agents’ looking at pictures of the crime scene, presented as slides, videotapes or photographs. This parallelism suggests that both the audience and the agents gain their knowledge through media. Thus, the story told visually at the beginning of the episode is further reduced only to be expanded again by means of the agents’ presentation of possible explanations. This forms a coherent plot, that is a sequence of events, out of the given existents. The visual track of ‘Pilot’ then shows Scully as she is assigned to the X-files before following the two agents as they meet for the first time and as they conduct their investigations into the mystery introduced at

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the beginning. In the course of the investigations, all clues are presented visually, following the detective story convention that clues pertaining to the solving of the case must be presented to the recipient. It is usually Mulder who functions as ‘visual guide’ (Wilcox and Williams 1996: 117); either he is the only one present, as in ‘Pilot’, where only Mulder sees Billy Miles carrying the unconscious Teresa Nemman into the bright light, or his perspective is privileged in point-of-view shots framed by gaze shots, as is the case when he keeps looking at the spinning compass needle when the two agents cross the ‘UFO hot spot’. The last scene of ‘Pilot’ once more shows an event in which neither of the agents participates, namely the ominous Cigarette-Smoking Man putting tangible proof of the possible existence of extraterrestrials in the vaults of the Pentagon beyond the reach of the agents. This closure is once again typical of the storytelling pattern in The X-Files, since many episodes close with images that, on the one hand, confirm the agents’ suspicion that something paranormal is going on and, on the other, show the futility of their efforts. Very often, the closing shot of an episode shows that the ‘monster of the week’ is still lurking ‘out there’ despite the agents’ efforts to catch it, for example Flukeman in ‘The Host’ (2.02) or the doll in ‘Chinga’ (5.10). While the presentation of both the mystery and the clues is left to the camera, their interpretation is up to the investigating agents and reflected in their verbal comments. By this division in visual/non-verbal presentation and auditory/verbal interpretation, the two parts of the ‘duality’ (Todorov 1988 [1966]: 159) of detective fiction are attributed to distinct codes. Todorov likens these two structural layers to the formalist difference between fable (story) and subject (plot; ibid. 160), the one being ‘what really happened,’ the other ‘how the reader (or the narrator) has come to know about it’ (ibid.). Thus, while the camera fulfils the obligatory narratorial functions of constituting the spatio-temporal deixis, the investigators provide explanations and evaluations of the phenomena. But while classical detective fiction emphasizes the detective’s ability to find out the true story, the basic character constellation of The X-Files – ‘two FBI agents exploring the paranormal from two different biases: one a skeptic, one a believer’8 – keeps the narrative from ever reaching conclusive truth. ‘Mulder and Scully cannot ever fully resolve the narrative disruption because that would mean explaining the unexplainable thus destroying the basis of the series’ (Lacey 2000: 31). Though some aspects of the relationship between the two agents resemble that between Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, neither of them functions


just as a foil for the other’s brilliant ratiocinative abilities (cf. Wilcox and Williams 1996: 105ff); rather, both agents present fully-fledged and plausible plots for the presented fable, each of them determined by the character’s private domain. The private domain of a character consists of his/her knowledge, obligations, wishes and fantasies concerning the textual actual world; it influences the way the character perceives this world (cf. Ryan 1991: 109ff; Surkamp 2002: 117–21). The two agents’ private domains not only comprise their knowledge, wishes and so on, but also include strong assumptions about the ontology of the textual actual world. These assumptions are not mere prerequisites for, but an integrated part of each agent’s reasoning and determine their investigation and the plots they construct from the clues they find. Since the lines of their investigation are determined by their assumptions and conclusions, the selection of what is presented by the camera depends on these premises as well. Different aspects of the story world, which are presented depending on ‘perceptual sympathy’ (Chatman 1978: 159), together form the multiperspectival narrative of the episode. While Scully, a trained medical doctor whose private domain is determined by ‘the realm of science’ (1.79), gathers physical evidence, Mulder, ‘an Oxford-educated psychologist’ (1.79), asks witnesses about their experience and very often is the only one to experience paranormal phenomena. In ‘Pilot’, for instance, there are two scenes which can be characterized in terms of these different gazes: when the two agents arrive at the site of Peggy O’Dells’s fatal accident, Scully goes straight to the body to inspect it, while Mulder asks the truck driver what he saw. Likewise, when they try to find out whether the vegetative Billy Miles might have committed the crimes, Mulder talks to the nurse while Scully inspects Billy’s hands and feet. In scenes where only one of them is present, Mulder usually experiences the paranormal, while Scully looks at physical evidence, mostly dead bodies (cf. Badley 1996).9 Though the worldviews of the two agents are presented as opposites in ‘Pilot’, they shape ‘Mulder and Scully’s successful dialogism’ (Wildermuth 1999: 154), setting ‘conventional wisdom’ (1.79) against ‘the fantastic as a plausibility’ (ibid.), both standing between rationalism and irrationalism. The interaction of the two agents becomes more and more playful in the course of the series. From the outset of the second season onwards, they both start to take the other’s view into consideration. In ‘Little Green Men’ (2.01), for example, Scully is seen musing while opening a cranium: ‘What this man imagined . . . his dreams, who he loved, saw, heard, remembered . . . what he feared . . . somehow it’s . . . all locked inside this small mass of tissue and fluid’. Because of this remark

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she is called ‘spooky’ by one of her students, who thus unwittingly uses a term that is Mulder’s nickname. In the same episode, Mulder tries to perform a makeshift autopsy, explicitly addressing Scully in his voice-over. In the third season, Scully is revealed as a believer in the traditional sense, that is, a Roman Catholic, when she – unlike Mulder – argues in favour of the irrational in a case of stigmatization in ‘Revelations’ (3.17). The dialogism of the agents’ interaction becomes an integrative part of their relationship, as is made explicit in The X-Files: Fight the Future, where Mulder tells Scully that her ‘strict rationalism and science . . . made [him] a whole person’. This signals a possible coexistence of the two worldviews, which hints at the postmodern plurality of meanings. Their usual wordplay is acted out physically in ‘Milagro’ (6.18), when Mulder forces Scully to swap places with him because she is arguing his ‘usual side’. The complementarity of the agents’ dialogue becomes even more obvious when one of them is absent. While Mulder is ‘left in danger of sinking into a merely personal epistemophilia’ (Kubek 1996: 183) during Scully’s abduction in ‘3’ (2.07), Scully reluctantly tries to integrate his views into her argument during Mulder’s absence: ‘Maybe I’m . . . I’m trying to force [the facts] into shape. Maybe I’m manufacturing a theory . . . Maybe I’m just trying too hard. – DOGGETT: To do what? To be Mulder?’ (‘Patience’ 8.03). The final convergence of Scully’s and Mulder’s views is reached in ‘The Truth’ (9.19/9.20) where Scully states: ‘We believe the same thing.’ This mode of presentation gives The X-Files a visual epistemology. The audience’s perceptual sympathy lies with the gaze of Mulder and Scully, or, more often than not, Mulder’s. There is an internal ranking of the quantity of what is to be seen which privileges the audience: the viewers’ gaze is made ‘omniscient’ since they always get to see more than the agents. Usually, Mulder sees more than Scully, which gives his explanations a higher degree of credibility, and his view is further privileged since it is supported by both the opening and the closing sequences of most episodes, which are both very powerful positions in terms of the reception since, as cognitive narratology argues, the viewers’ construction of meaning is most strongly determined by what is shown at the beginning and at the ending of any given narrative. This hierarchy of showing is counteracted by the hierarchy of telling: in several episodes of the first and second season Mulder’s and Scully’s findings are summed up in Scully’s intradiegetic narratives presented in voice-over narrations. Though Scully’s narrative voice is thus positioned on a higher hierarchical level, this narrative authority is subverted by


the fact that the addressee of Scully’s reports, section chief Blevins, seems to be more interested in debunking Mulder than in exposing the truth. With the changing addressees of her narratives in later seasons, Scully’s voice-overs also change status: in the triple episodes ‘Gethsemane’ (4.24), ‘Redux’ (5.02) and ‘Redux II’ (5.03), for instance, she is addressing a committee with the expressed purpose of ‘mak[ing] them believe the lie’ (4.24); in the double episodes ‘Biogenesis’ (6.22) and ‘The Sixth Extinction’ (7.01) she addresses Mulder in her thoughts and incorporates some of his views into her narration; in ‘Trust No 1’ (9.06) she addresses her son, imagining questions he might ask. Scully’s storytelling foregrounds its own conditions, that is how the ordering of events and their shaping into a plot depends on the general world view of the storyteller and on his/her supposed addressee.

Ontological boundary crossings – ‘Even if I could see them, would they really be there?’10 So far, visual narration by means of the camera and the characters’ auditory interpretation have been treated separately. Though this differentiation holds true for the first season and thus the basic set-up, it is one outstanding feature of The X-Files that in the course of the series, the visual presentation becomes increasingly contaminated by the ontological assumptions of the character who is looking at the scene. Thus, the objectivity of the visual representation shifts to the subjectivity of perception. The turning point is the beginning of the second season, where Mulder starts wondering whether his interpretation of his perceptions is influenced by his beliefs: ‘Even if I could see them [the extraterrestrials], would they really be there? How do I know this isn’t some classified military satellite?’ (‘Little Green Men’ 2.01). Scully even questions the fact that the aliens that Mulder believes to have encountered and that are ‘shown’ on the visual track ever existed outside his head. When Mulder insists ‘They were here’, Scully asks ‘Here? Or here?’ (pointing at his forehead). This passage illustrates that each event narrated by means of the visual track might be the representation of a character’s possible world and not a depiction of ‘real’ events in the textual actual world. This ontological boundary-crossing between textual actual world and a character’s possible world can be described in terms of calling and popping a stack. These metaphors, which are taken from computer language, facilitate a more precise description of the dynamics of ontological boundary-crossing than the static concept of ‘embedded narrative’: they allow one to separate the textual signals for

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the beginning of an embedded narrative (the call of a stack) from those indicating its end (the pop of the stack), and to describe more precisely those narratives where the ontological status of each stack is doubtful (cf. Ryan 1991: 173ff). Though there are many audiovisual conventions for signalling ontological boundary-crossing, The X-Files seldom makes use of them; very often it is only indicated when the stack is popped, but not when it is called. The traditional ways of indicating the calling of a stack in audiovisual narratives are either visual (a dissolving shot or a change of colour filter, conventionally to black-and-white) or auditory, that is introducing a narrator whose voice-over over the visual presentation of his/her story signals that the ensuing visual narrative is embedded and, hence, not on the same ontological level as the framing narrative. Conventionally voice-over is only used to signal the calling of the stack. The following ‘normal’ audiovisual storytelling is then assumed to belong to the embedded narrative as well. Sometimes there is no signal for popping the stack so that the ontological boundary-crossing is not indicated. Since The X-Files’ basic structure is that of a detective story, it naturally contains many embedded micro-narratives, but only a few of these are represented visually. Nevertheless, there are some episodes in which the act of narration and its dependency on the cognitive frames of the teller are the primary foci. The first and most prominent of these episodes, ‘Jose Chung’s From Outer Space’ (3.20), which sets up ‘a convoluted and multi-layered version of the “truth” of aliens’ (Kaye 1996), has had wide critical acclaim.11 The episode deals with the author Jose Chung’s gathering information for his ‘non-fiction science fiction’ novel From Outer Space. For this, he interviews both eye-witnesses and investigators of what is presented in the teaser as a rather weird alien abduction. The episode, which is introduced by Chung questioning Scully about the FBI agents’ investigation, presents a plethora of contradictory visual narratives about ‘what really happened’ there. But even this lowest stack has a doubtful ontological status within the X-iverse, since Scully is presented as a fervent admirer of Chung’s books, which is inconsistent with the series’ portrayal of her character and seems to originate in Chung’s desire to be admired by the ‘brainy beauty’, rendering even the images of their interview subjective.12 In ‘El Mundo Gira’ (4.11), the first scene shows Flakita, a Latin American migrant worker, telling her friends the story of the goat-sucking chupacabra. Her role as an intradiegetic narrator is emphasized by its marked position at the beginning of the teaser, which is normally used to establish the fictional facts in The X-Files. Flakita repeatedly stresses her


status as eye-witness to the audience: ‘I saw it with my own eyes’. This is underlined by a dissolve signalling the call of a second stack which superimposes her face over the opening scene of her story. At the end, three versions of what happened to the brothers Eladio and Soledad Buente are told by three different intradiegetic narrators: Flakita concludes her tale about the chupacabra by indicating that she saw more chupacabras appearing ‘from the sky’, which is represented visually in the typical way the grey aliens are shown in The X-Files, only to dissolve into an FBI hazmat team. Gabrielle, who has not witnessed the final quarrel between the two brothers, nevertheless retells their encounter in a very detailed way; she even quotes their dialogues word for word in a soap opera fashion, thus giving away her interest in Mexican telenovelas, which was indicated before by the TV in her room. The third ending is provided by Mulder’s and Scully’s report to Skinner, ‘which leaves only narrative undecidability’ (Burns 2000: 206). The closing shot of the episode gives a visual representation of the two brothers turned chupacabras while on the auditory track there is Mulder’s final comment: ‘The truth is, nobody cares’. The multiple narratives in ‘El Mundo Gira’ stress once more how much perception depends on cultural frames. The oral tradition of folktales is juxtaposed with the mediated Hispano-American telenovelas, neither of which can be understood by the ‘FBI’s world of ratiocination’ (ibid.).13 In ‘The Unnatural’ (6.20), whenever the visual representation switches backward and forward between present-day storytelling and the 1947 narrative, the ontological boundary-crossing is signalled in some way or other. The story is told by Arthur Dales, allegedly the brother of the Arthur Dales who, according to the X-iverse, ‘discovered the X-Files’ (‘Agua Mala’ 6.14) and who met Mulder in 1990 (‘Travelers’ 5.15). This doubling of names casts doubt on the reliability of the narrator, whose credibility is further undermined by various textual clues. In this episode Arthur Dales tells ‘a story about baseball and aliens and bounty hunters’, thus characterizing his dominant mode of emplotment, which gives preeminence to baseball. While the first call and the last pop of the narrative stack is signalled by a conventional visual fade from the old Dales to the young one and back, the other transitions are marked in more experimental ways, emphasizing not only the dubious reliability of the narrator, but even questioning the ontological validity and stability of the X-iverse as a whole. One character in this episode, ‘Poorboy’, skips from one ontological level to the other and back: after delivering a bottle to Arthur Dales’ present-day apartment, he crosses through frames to 1947 Roswell. In the last scene of the episode, he is

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again part of the present-day narrative and is hired by Mulder to operate a batting machine. There are other instances of making the transition from one ontological level to the other through black-and-white pictures on Dales’s TV, such as when the 1947 team bus of the Roswell Grays baseball team fades to a black-and-white commercial for Gray Bus Lines and when a scene from ‘Colony’ (2.16) is on, showing the first appearance of the Alien Bounty Hunter on The X-Files. By showing an important scene from one of the mytharc episodes as mere TV, the fictionality of the X-iverse as a whole is hinted at, looping back to what it actually is, namely a TV show. Dales, on the one hand, gives a further indication of unreliable narration by asking Mulder to ‘[t]rust the tale . . . not the teller’, while, on the other, he accuses Mulder of ‘just dying to connect the dots’ and thus even more desperately trying to shape a story out of unrelated events. The X-Files, moreover, often makes use of a so-called ‘occulted call’ (cf. Ryan 1991: 187–8), where another ontological level is entered without any textual indication. Only a textual signal at the end of the sequence might indicate that the previous scenes do not represent the textual actual world but a possible world, but since the ontology of the textual actual world is never fully established, the status of such possible worlds remains ambiguous. One remarkable example of this are the images of the abducted Mulder in ‘Within’ (8.01) at the very beginning of the episode. While the position of this scene at the beginning of the teaser corresponds to the convention that the opening sequence of an episode depicts the actual mystery to be solved, a cut to Scully waking up from a nightmare suggests that the images were just part of her dream. The next images of the tortured Mulder are introduced by Scully lying down on his bed, suggesting that she is first thinking and then dreaming of him. In ‘Without’ (8.02) the tortured Mulder is shown again, followed by a cut to someone waking up, this time Gibson Praise, a recurring character who has telepathic powers. Since all of these scenes can be said to have an ambiguous ontological status, it is never really established as a fictional fact what happened to Mulder during his absence. An even more radical example of the use of occulted calls appears in ‘Field Trip’ (6.21), where the popping of a stack is indicated by a repeated dissolving of the characters’ perceptions into green slime. This signal is ambiguous: when it first appears, the audience does not know its significance and probably ascribes the appearance of green slime either to the paranormal or to a hallucination of a character, since one usually assumes that the camera renders a visual representation of the


textual actual world and hence does not question the ontological status of the depicted events. When the image of a sleeping couple fades at the end of the teaser to two embracing skeletons, this would most likely be interpreted as a conventional time-lapse shot, that is, only as a temporal, not an ontological transition. The repetition of occulted calls and signalled pops in the course of the episode makes the audience realize that all images apart from those of the green slime are hallucinations induced by a fungus. But even before the stack is popped with the obvious signal of the dissolving slime, there are indications that the visually presented narratives are focalized by one of the characters because in each separate hallucination all elements of their respective private domains come true. In one of the narratives, Mulder finds a grey alien and thus has visual proof of his belief, whereas in another one, Scully’s fear of losing Mulder is confirmed by scientific evidence. What makes this episode even more ontologically destabilizing is the fact that only the popping of stacks is signalled. The missing pop at the end of the episode does not necessarily mean that the two agents have returned to ‘reality’, which leaves the slight possibility that all ensuing episodes are mere hallucinations of the two agents. Later, in ‘Scary Monsters’ (9.14), however, agent Doggett refers to this case, indicating that its solution is a fact of the X-iverse and hence the stack was popped. Nevertheless, the very last image of The X-Files (‘The Truth’ 9.19/9.20) iconographically mirrors the closing shot of the teaser of ‘Field Trip’, with Scully and Mulder in the position of the sleeping couple, raising once more the possibility that all episodes after this one (6.21) are illusionary.

The power of narratives and the narratives of power: ‘I put this whole thing together. I created Mulder’14 One of the most ambiguous characters in The X-Files is the ominous Cigarette-Smoking Man, who, according to William B. Davis, the actor who plays him, is ‘the hero of the show’.15 With the exception of Scully and Mulder, this sinister character, who appears to be a key figure in the government conspiracy, is the only constant character throughout the series, from the second scene in ‘Pilot’ (1.79) to the last-but-one scene in ‘The Truth’ (9.19/9.20). He moreover assumes a storytelling role in several episodes, toppling the ontological layering of The X-Files by either adding his own versions of ‘the truth’ to it or even insinuating that many of the things Scully and Mulder discover are set up by him. While Scully and Mulder comment on the phenomena they see and shape the events into plausible stories, the Cigarette-Smoking Man

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comments on and directs their stories, partly in order to play down their findings in front of the Consortium of conspirators, partly to add a further layer of meaning for the audience. With his comments, the Cigarette-Smoking Man constantly destabilizes the visual ontology of The X-Files. At first he is depicted as someone who prevents Scully and Mulder’s evidence from ever becoming tangible truth in ‘Pilot’ (1.79), and in many episodes he is the one who hints that Mulder only sees what he wants him to see and thus will never be able to discover the truth without him. In Scheherazade-like fashion he twice stops Mulder from killing him by telling the FBI agent a story (‘One Breath’ 2.08, ‘One Son’ 6.12). Even in the final episode, ‘The Truth’ (9.19/9.20), when he makes a reappearance as a Native American wise man, a ‘Keeper of the Truth’, it becomes clear that it was he who set Mulder on a final errand where he finds out ‘The Truth’, that is, the date of the final alien invasion. At this point, he derives his power only from telling his ‘scary story’ about the end of the world and says to Mulder: ‘Now you can die’ – dismissing him as if he were a character in the story the Cigarette-Smoking Man is concluding. The central role of the Cigarette-Smoking Man as a storyteller is emphasized in the episode ‘Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man’ (4.07). The circular structure and the ambiguity of the storytelling agency make it a pivotal episode within The X-Files’ narrative structure. The episode relies heavily on several framing techniques for producing an embedded narrative. It opens with an epigraph on a black screen: ‘For nothing can seem foul to those that win. / Henry IV, Pt. 1, Act 5, Sc. 1’. The intertextual reference indicates the fictionality of the ensuing episode, which is, like a book, divided into four parts, all introduced by intertitles – a rather unusual device in The X-Files,16 which gives the written word preeminence over the visual/non-verbal code. This preference for the written word over the visual representation runs as a leitmotif through the episode: the Cigarette-Smoking Man prefers ‘the worst novel ever written’ to ‘the best movie ever made’, and his typing is juxtaposed with a speech by Martin Luther King on the auditory track. The second frame is set up by the opening sequence of the teaser where the CigaretteSmoking Man is seen entering an abandoned attic in order to eavesdrop with an electronic listening device on the conversation going on at the paranoid Lone Gunmen’s headquarters. During the entire episode, the present-day visual track shows the Cigarette-Smoking Man while on the auditory track Frohike’s narrative can be heard. The episode proper opens with Frohike’s voice-over in which he tells his version of the Cigarette-Smoking Man’s biography to Mulder and Scully. The ensuing


narrative of the Cigarette-Smoking Man’s past is embedded in a double frame: Frohike’s voice-over on the auditory track and a close-up of the Cigarette-Smoking Man’s face on the visual track. Since these are conventional means of signalling the call of a narrative stack, it remains unclear throughout the episode whether the scenes from the past are the visual representations of Frohike’s story, whether Frohike’s story is just the trigger for the reminiscences of the Cigarette-Smoking Man, or even whether the Cigarette-Smoking Man (as an author) is just imagining Frohike (as a narrator) telling an adventure story about the Cigarette-Smoking Man (as a character).17 Furthermore, it remains uncertain whether the story depicted in the episode represents an actual world (either as truthfully reconstructed by Frohike or as accurately remembered by the Cigarette-Smoking Man) or just a possible world, representing only ‘who he [the Cigarette-Smoking Man] wants to be’ (either as assumed by Frohike or as projected backwards by the Cigarette-Smoking Man). This ambiguity is further underlined by the fact that the way in which several of the events are depicted reflects how they are stored in collective memory: the whole sequence ‘Just down the road aways from Graceland’, which is about the assassination of Martin Luther King, is in black-and-white, using mainly radio footage of Martin Luther King’s speeches as voice-overs and black-and-white newspaper photographs, while the Kennedy assassination is presented in colour TV. The status of the reconstruction of the past is further undermined by the fact that the fictional (?) Cigarette-Smoking Man is writing a novel about a character called Jack Colquitt under the nom de plume ‘Raul Bloodworth’, which seems to outline the story of his life and which is repeatedly refused by publishers on the grounds that it is unbelievable. This opens up the possibility that the whole story of the Cigarette-Smoking Man – including Scully and Mulder – is just fiction; or, less radically, that the story about the Cigarette-Smoking Man’s past is just made up by him, with his inserting himself in Forrest Gump-like fashion into important moments of American history.18 The novel written by the CigaretteSmoking Man is referred to in a multi-layered fashion: he suggests Tom Clancy as a parallel, when he discusses the cover design with a prospective publisher; thus, the novel keeps an ambiguous status, since Clancy writes both factual and fictional books. Though the publisher praises the author’s vivid imagination, the novel is nevertheless published in a magazine called Roman a Clef, which at least raises the expectations that there are certain factual elements in the novel. The episode’s toppled ontological layering comes full circle when Frohike admits that his

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narrative is ‘based only on a story I read in one of my weekly subscriptions’, which makes him a reader of the Cigarette-Smoking Man’s novel and closes the ‘strange loop’ (Ryan 1991: 191). This central ‘biographical’ episode adds more facets to the role of a character who appears as a latent narrator on several occasions throughout the series. Not only does he claim to have ‘created Mulder’ in ‘Redux’ (5.02), he also figures in many key episodes as the one who, according to his own agenda, tells pieces of the whole. He acts as voiceover narrator in ‘Two Fathers’ (6.11), telling about the demise of the ‘perfect conspiracy’. In ‘The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati’ (7.02), he even appears in Mulder’s dreams and offers him the chance to live in a possible world in which his sister is alive and living next to him. At the same time, on the story level, he tells Diana Fowley about what Mulder is dreaming as if he knew it like an omniscient narrator: ‘The dreams all men who are owned by the world have – a simpler life . . . full of small pleasures. Extraordinary men are always most tempted by the most ordinary things. Dreams are all he has now.’ In ‘En Ami’ (7.15), where he entices Scully to help him to get an allegedly alien-created panacea, he muses about the power it holds: ‘To choose who will live and who will die’, which are, in fact, a narrator’s powers. He is antagonistic in his actions, and even more so in the stories he tells, culminating in the story of his life, which makes Scully and Mulder minor characters who might even be mere figments of his imagination.

Is it really not happening? – ‘MULDER: “You think the government did this to you?” – CRUMP: “Hell, yeah. Who else? You see it all the time on the TV”’19 The X-Files ascribes a plurality of meanings to single events through its narrative structure. This not only involves the internal meanings of the X-iverse; by encouraging the application of the meaning-producing processes of the series to real-life events, The X-Files can potentially have an impact on how actual reality is perceived. TV series come into close contact with a recipient’s everyday life. Inevitably at least one week has to elapse between episodes, giving the viewers time to ponder the fictional facts and to compare them to real-life events. Since TV series, unlike movies, run over several years, they can form the thought world of their recipients much more extensively. The X-Files uses several means to induce its viewers to apply the meaning-producing structures found in the X-iverse to their real life. According to its creator, Chris Carter, The X-Files relies on extreme


possibilities and demands not so much a willing suspension of disbelief, as a willingness to believe that it is not impossible that the events shown in the series might actually happen. In order to induce viewers to apply the fictional logic to the real world, The X-Files uses a closely knit network of references to reality. It encourages the viewers to switch reference worlds, that is, to ‘assess [the series’] viability as a document of real-world events’ (Ryan 2001: 105) and thus to view it as nonfiction. Not only is the X-iverse presented as ‘inspired by actually documented accounts’ in an intertitle that precedes the first episode (‘Pilot’ 1.79), but it also has a dense repertoire of real-world references. It features institutions such as the FBI, the US government, or the Army and shapes viewers’ perceptions of these institutions. It also shares the history of the real world, for example the Second World War, the Kennedy assassination, the Watergate affair, or the 1991 Gulf War. In addition, the episodes were originally aired at approximately the date that they are set. Such strategies suggest that The X-Files is making statements about the real world. The structure of The X-Files’ intertextual references furthermore sets up a parallel to the actual world by treating most texts that are fictional in the real world as fictional in the X-iverse. It particularly highlights its own pseudo-‘factuality’ by clearly marking contemporary science fiction as fictional, implicitly contrasting it with the ‘real’ world of The X-Files.20 In contrast to this, the series over and over again emphasizes the ‘truth’ of folktales. By doing this, it equates traditional folktales with urban myths and popular beliefs, very often drawing on tabloids as sources of information. This network of references emphasizes the truth value of oral traditions in contrast to scientific facts. By the ongoing use of captions that indicate when and where the story takes place, the series employs a feature commonly seen in documentaries, which gives it an authentic look, even though an exact date is rarely given. In concordance with the opening tagline, the iconography of The X-Files very often ‘bears a close resemblance to real CNN news footage’ (Burns 2000: 209); it exploits the mediality which marks the contemporary approach to reality, where the boundaries between fictional and ‘reality’ TV have become more and more blurred. In some episodes, The X-Files even uses the typical features of ‘reality TV’. ‘X-Cops’ (7.12), for instance, is made to look like the Fox ‘reality’ show Cops; it even copies the theme song and the fonts of the captions. Mulder and Scully are thus inserted into a framework that is usually taken to be an authentic reproduction of real events. Further examples of this include ‘Drive’ (6.02), which opens with an authentic-looking

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Fox newsflash, and ‘Lord of the Flies’ (9.05), in which the Dumb Ass Show imitates Stupid Behavior Caught on Tape, another Fox programme. The X-Files constantly undermines the assumptions we have about the world we live in. Its narrative structures blur the boundaries between ontological levels. Moreover, it asks repeatedly the epistemological question whether it is possible to know the truth or to even perceive reality at all. It points at the limits of conventional wisdom and at the same time at how any deviation from it holds the danger of becoming a personal epistemophilia that only sees things because their existence is a foregone conclusion. It shows week after week how anything we see might be just produced by our own imagination or caused by conspiratorial forces. The X-Files thus keeps ‘asking us if we are really sure about aliens, monsters, the government, our families and ourselves’ (Bellon 1999: 141), granting epistemic victory to those whose private narrative is the most conclusive. Notes 1

2 3

4 5 6

7

8 9

Though the protagonists change – Dana Scully and Fox Mulder (seasons one to seven), Dana Scully and John Doggett (season eight), John Doggett and Monica Reyes (season nine) – for the purposes of this chapter, Scully and Mulder are taken to be the protagonists. This is reflected in the fact that the official numbering follows the pattern of 1X01, and so on, assigning an X-files case number to each episode. Cf. the introductory chapter and Reeves, Rodgers and Epstein (1996: 33–4), who illustrate on the basis of ‘F. Emasculata’ (2.22) how ‘shifting gears between the serial and the episodic’ (33) might work. Cf. also Kellner (1999) and McLean (1998). Mulder in ‘Fallen Angel’ (1.09). ‘Camera’ is used here only as a shorthand, meaning the visual representation of the moving images on screen, that is a narrating device that uses an optical channel and a non-verbal code. For the purpose of this chapter any sounds on the auditory track which can be classified as ambient sounds will be regarded as ‘camera’ as well, treating this agency as if it had a built-in microphone; moreover, computer-generated special effects will be regarded as if they were part of the recorded images. The examples in this section are taken from ‘Pilot’ (1.79), since it clearly has an expositional function and contains in nuce all narrative devices used to establish (and later subvert) the textual actual world. Episode numbering in this article follows the official The X-Files homepage (www.thex-files.com or www.thexfiles.com, which is no longer online). Chris Carter in ‘Inside The X-Files’, written by Frank Spotnitz and John Shiban, directed by Glen Kasper, ©1997, 1998 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. This ‘division of labour’ becomes most obvious in those episodes in which Scully and Mulder are separated and confer only via phone, with Mulder being out ‘in the field’ while Scully is at Quantico (‘The Host’, ‘Blood’, ‘Sleepless’ [2.02–2.04]).

130 The Multi-layered Ontology of The X-Files 10 Mulder in ‘Little Green Men’ (2.01). 11 Cf. for example Lavery, Hague and Cartwright (1996b), Campbell (2001) and Booker (2002: 144–8). 12 Another clue that the entire episode might have sprung from Chung’s imagination is the fact that in one of the last scenes, Scully is seen sitting in the office, reading From Outer Space. According to the established pattern, this is quite unlikely, since, unlike Mulder, Scully does not spend her life in the office and usually does her reading at home (cf. ‘War of the Coprophages’ 3.12). 13 This is not the only episode where The X-Files presents several explanations for a phenomenon. In ‘Redux II’ (5.03) it is left open whether Scully’s cancer was healed by divine intervention, by the possibly alien microchip, or by the experimental medical treatment. 14 Cigarette-Smoking Man in ‘Redux’ (5.02). 15 William B. Davis in ‘Inside The X-Files’, written by Frank Spotnitz and John Shiban, directed by Glen Kasper, ©1997, 1998 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. 16 Such intertitles are only used two other times: in ‘John Doe’ (9.07), where they replace the conventional captions to count the days, and in ‘Release’ (9.17), where they divide the episode into thematic sections. 17 The first possibility is supported by the official website, which states that ‘Frohike reveals what he suspects to be the chilling, secret past of The CigaretteSmoking Man’ (http://www.thex-files.com/episodes/season4/4x07.html – no longer online), whereas the second is supported by the title and by the fact that many intimate details about the Cigarette-Smoking Man’s past are given; the third one incorporates both. 18 There is an actual reference to Forrest Gump (1994) in this episode when the Cigarette-Smoking Man muses on a bench that ‘Life . . . is like a box of chocolates’. 19 ‘Drive’ (6.02). 20 Such references include Star Trek in ‘Dreamland’ (6.04), ‘Dreamland II’ (6.05), ‘Hollywood A.D.’ (7.18), ‘4-D’ (9.04); Independence Day in Fight the Future; Star Wars in ‘Small Potatoes’ (4.20); Men in Black in ‘The Beginning’ (6.01), ‘Jump the Shark’ (9.15); Lost in Space in ‘Jump the Shark’ (9.15). There is also an oblique reference to Terminator 2 in ‘Salvage’ (8.09), which can be assumed not to exist in the X-iverse because otherwise the fact that the T2 looks like agent Doggett would have to be explained.

References Badley, L. (1996) ‘The Rebirth of the Clinic: The Body as Alien in The X-Files’. In D. Lavery, A. Hague and M. Cartwright (1996a), op. cit.: 148–67. Bellon, J. (1999) ‘The Strange Discourse of The X-Files: What It Is, What It Does, and What Is at Stake’. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 16.2: 136–54. Booker, M. K. (2002) Strange TV: Innovative Television Series from The Twilight Zone to The X-Files. Westport/London: Greenwood Press. Burns, C. L. (2000) ‘Erasure: Alienation, Paranoia, and the Loss of Memory in The X-Files’. Camera Obscura 45 (=15.3): 194–225. Campbell, J. E. (2001) ‘Alien(ating) Ideology and the American Media: Apprehending the Alien Image in Television Through The X-Files’. International Journal of Cultural Studies 4.3: 327–47.

Klaudia Seibel 131 Chatman, S. (1978) Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY/London: Cornell University Press. Curti, L. (1998) Female Stories, Female Bodies: Narrative, Identity and Representation. New York: New York University Press. Genette, G. (1988) [1972] Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Gomel, E. (1995) ‘Mystery, Apocalypse and Utopia: The Case of the Ontological Detective Story’. Science-Fiction Studies 22: 343–56. Jones, L. (1996) ‘“Last Week We Had an Omen”: The Mythological X-Files’. In D. Lavery, A. Hague and M. Cartwright (1996a) op. cit.: 77–98. Kaye, M. (1996) ‘Is the Truth Out There? Boundaries, The X Files and the World Wide Web’. Deep South 2.3. (http://www.otago.ac.nz/DeepSouth/vol2no3/ mirand.html [30 June 2004]). Kellner, D. (1999) ‘The X-Files and the Aesthetics and Politics of Postmodern Pop’. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57.2: 161–76. Kubek, E. (1996) ‘“You only Expose Your Father”: The Imaginary, Voyeurism, and the Symbolic Order in The X-Files’. In D. Lavery, A. Hague and M. Cartwright (1996a), op. cit.: 168–204. Lacey, N. (2000) Narrative and Genre: Key Concepts in Media Studies. Basingstoke/ London: Palgrave Macmillan. Lavery, D., A. Hague and M. Cartwright (eds) (1996a) ‘Deny All Knowledge’: Reading The X-Files: The Television Series. London: Faber & Faber. ——(1996b) ‘Introduction: Generation X – The X-Files and the Cultural Moment’. In D. Lavery, A. Hague and M. Cartwright (1996a), op. cit.: 1–21. McLean, A. L. (1998) ‘Media Effects: Marshall McLuhan, Television Culture, and The X-Files’. Film Quarterly 51.4: 2–11. Reeves, J. L., M. C. Rodgers and M. Epstein (1996) ‘Rewriting Popularity: The Cult Files’. In D. Lavery, A. Hague and M. Cartwright (1996a), op. cit.: 22–35. Ryan, M.-L. (1991) Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ——(2001) Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Surkamp, C. (2002) ‘Narratologie und possible-worlds theory: Narrative Texte als alternative Welten’. In A. Nünning and V. Nünning (eds), Neue Ansätze in der Erzähltheorie. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 153–83. Todorov, T. (1988) [1966] ‘The Typology of Detective Fiction’. In D. Lodge (ed.), Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. London/New York: Longman, 158–65. Wilcox, R. and J. P. Williams (1996) ‘“What Do You Think?” The X-Files, Liminality, and Gender Pleasure’. In D. Lavery, A. Hague and M. Cartwright (1996a), op. cit.: 99–120. Wildermuth, M. (1999) ‘The Edge of Chaos: Structural Conspiracy and Epistemology in The X-Files’. Journal of Popular Film and Television 26.4: 146–57.

7 Life in Doppelgangland: Innovative Character Conception and Alternate Worlds in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel Gaby Allrath

The premises of the two series and the relationship between the original series and the spin-off Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel are among the most innovative TV series in recent years. Focusing on a high-school (later college) student who doubles as vampire slayer – that is mythical fighter against evil1 – Buffy creates a ‘universe’ in which vampires, demons, witches and mythical forces are part of everyday life. Buffy is set in Sunnydale, a fictitious southern Californian small-town situated on the ‘Hellmouth’. This portal between dimensions is a hotspot for demonic activity and thus serves as a means of explaining the ongoing supernatural occurrences in the series. In her fight against evil, Buffy is supported by her friends Willow and Xander as well as by her Watcher Giles, a mentor character who not only trains the slayer in fighting but also continuously provides her with information about supernatural occurrences and possible ways of defeating them. From the fourth season of Buffy onwards, Angel, Buffy’s more than two-hundred-year-old vampire-with-a-soul ex-lover, stars in a series of his own. Though similar to Buffy in its portrayal of an ongoing fight against supernatural evil, the spin-off differs in many important respects from the original series. In contradistinction to Buffy’s small-town setting, for instance, Angel is set in Los Angeles, a city that, as many commentators have remarked, is strongly associated with the 1940s film noir. This association ties in with the fact that Angel becomes a private investigator. Together with his associates Cordelia and Doyle (who is replaced by Wesley halfway through the first season), Angel tries to solve 132

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crimes with supernatural origin. This endeavour is both profession and calling for him, since it allows him to atone for the atrocities he had committed in his ‘unlife’ as a vampire before his soul was restored by gypsies. Although no character in Buffy is ever portrayed as an unequivocal white-hat, the line between good and evil is fairly clearly drawn in this show’s first three seasons. Vampires – with the obvious exception of Angel – are soulless and evil, and the right thing to do is to reduce them to the dust into which they so conveniently evaporate when staked through the heart or beheaded. In later seasons of Buffy and especially in Angel, this line becomes more and more blurred. Thus, in ‘Hero’ (Angel 1.09), Angel protects a group of demon-human hybrids from the Nazi-like ‘Scourge’, and in ‘Judgement’ (Angel 2.01), he accidentally kills a demon who turns out to have been the protector of an innocent woman.2 Moreover, not only do vampire Spike in Buffy (from season four onwards) as well as half-demon Doyle and demon Lorne in Angel join in the fight against evil, but Cordelia, one of the main characters in Buffy and later in Angel, is turned into a half-demon in ‘Birthday’ (Angel 3.11).3 From the onset of Angel, Cordelia and Angel as well as the former Watcher Wesley have left Sunnydale and, hence, the series Buffy for good. Nonetheless, a number of crossovers occur, particularly during the first season of Angel, which coincides with the fourth season of Buffy: not only do Buffy and Angel each appear in two episodes of the other series, but minor characters from Buffy, such as Spike, Oz and Faith, also make appearances in Angel, thus contributing to the impression that both series are set in the same fictional universe. Likewise, in season five of Buffy, crossovers occur, for instance, when Angel appears at least briefly at the funeral of Buffy’s mother in ‘Forever’ (Buffy 5.17), or when Willow turns up at the very end of the second season to tell Angel about Buffy’s death (‘There’s No Place like Plrtz Glrb’, Angel 2.22). Additionally, the recurrent references to the history of the central ‘family’ of vampires (Darla, Angel, Drusilla and Spike) in both series repeatedly lead to the appearance of characters from Buffy in Angel, and vice versa. There is even one instance of a multiperspectival presentation of the same events in the two series: the episodes ‘Fool for Love’ (Buffy 5.07) and ‘Darla’ (Angel 2.07), which were originally aired on 14 November 2000, one immediately after the other on the same network, both deal with the vampires’ shared past. These two episodes occasionally even make use of exactly the same images or show the same events from different camera angles. Because of their choice of main character (‘Fool for Love’ focuses on and is at least partially narrated by Spike, whereas the narrative

134 Life in Doppelgangland: Buffy and Angel

in ‘Darla’ centres on the past of the eponymous character) and the differing amounts of information these two characters have access to, the narratives, however, differ significantly. Spike’s version of the night when Drusilla ‘sired’ him (turned him into a vampire) in the late nineteenth century foregrounds what a profound experience it was for him to become a vampire. In the Angel version of the same night, the events are presented from Darla’s and Angel’s perspectives. Even though neither Darla nor Angel are explicitly marked as focalizers of these memories, the selection and presentation of scenes render it obvious that these characters’ knowledge and their interests determine what is shown. In this version, viewers learn that Drusilla has just decided to create a mate for herself, an endeavour which Darla comments on mockingly by predicting that Drusilla will sire ‘the first drooling idiot’ she meets. The second presentation of the night thus severely undermines Spike’s version. Further events narrated in the two episodes concern one night in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion, when Spike killed the then slayer and when Angel finally separated from Darla and the other members of his ‘family’. Here, again, Darla turns out to be better informed than Spike, who does not know at that point that Angel has regained his soul, so that the second version both adds to and modifies the first. By Buffy’s season six and Angel’s season three, respectively, crossovers between the two series have decreased significantly. The main reason for this is institutional: Buffy switched networks from WB to UPN, whereas Angel remained at WB. While being on different networks normally precludes any kind of crossover, Buffy and Angel, however, are still linked in complex ways. The continuing illusion that the universes of the two series coincide is, for instance, achieved by representing phone calls of which viewers see and hear only one half. A further way of linking the series are the references made in both Buffy (6.03/6.04) and Angel (3.04/3.05) to an encounter between the series’ protagonists, which, however, happens ‘between episodes’ and is not shown on screen. Despite institutional obstacles, the final season of Buffy, which coincides with Angel’s season four, again witnesses various crossovers featuring principal characters. Not only does Faith, the second vampire slayer,4 return to Angel for three episodes (4.13–4.15) before again switching series for the last five episodes of Buffy, but Willow also provides significant magical help to the characters of Angel in ‘Orpheus’ (4.15). Ultimately, Angel himself briefly returns to Sunnydale for the last two episodes of Buffy’s seventh season, thereby linking the two series’ universes once more. In addition to rounding off the series’ finale, which in several ways takes up story arcs and ideas from earlier seasons, this final crossover

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also prepares the ground for the transfer of various characters, including Spike and Harmony, from Buffy to Angel in the latter’s fifth season. The set-up of the two series as fantasy offers a wide variety of narrative possibilities: since any of the premises of the series can be altered by means of witchcraft or demonic influence, no aspect of the fictional world is fixed. This freedom to modify the ‘Buffyverse’ provides the authors of the series with the opportunity to employ highly experimental narrative techniques. Particularly in Buffy, there are a number of outstanding episodes. In ‘Hush’ (Buffy 4.10), for instance, all characters lose their ability to speak for most of the episode, forcing the characters to rely on body language or notes to communicate with each other. An anachronical time structure can be found in ‘Life Serial’ (Buffy 6.05), and in ‘Once More, With Feeling’ (Buffy 6.07), all characters repeatedly burst into song, involuntarily revealing their best-kept secrets in the songs they sing to each other. The use of innovative narrative techniques in Buffy and Angel is not restricted to such highly experimental singular episodes, however; other experimental narrative strategies are used throughout both series. For instance, conventional conceptions of characters as stable entities which, despite all development, remain essentially the same, are regularly undermined in Buffy and, to a lesser extent, in Angel. Both Angel and Buffy moreover tend to construct alternate worlds which in some significant respects operate differently from the regular universe of the two series.

Innovative character conceptions: doubling, body switches, shapeshifters In Buffy and Angel, the traditional unity and stability of character is subverted in a number of ways. Various characters in the two series are constructed in a dualistic way to begin with, uniting what appear to be mutually exclusive character traits. The first and most obvious example of an internally divided character is Buffy herself.5 She is ‘just a girl’ (as one vampire says to her in the 100th episode, ‘The Gift’, Buffy 5.22) but also, as Giles puts it in ‘Welcome to the Hellmouth’ (Buffy 1.01), the one person ‘in all the world with the strength and skill to kill the vampires’. Buffy’s attempts to negotiate her seemingly mutually exclusive roles is one of the central themes of the series. Like Buffy, her Watcher Giles is also torn between two contradictory sides of his character. But whereas the duality of Buffy’s role is obvious from the very beginning, Giles’s dualistic nature only gradually


becomes apparent. Throughout Buffy’s first season and the first episodes of the second season, nothing indicates that Giles may not be what he professes to be, namely a highly intelligent, but socially slightly inept middle-aged Englishman who works as a librarian at Sunnydale High School and serves as a guardian of the slayer. However, beginning with a short scene in ‘Halloween’ (Buffy 2.06) in which he beats up the evildoer-of-the-week, another Englishman who, much to the viewer’s surprise, addresses him as ‘Ripper’ and ‘old mate’, Giles’s ‘other side’ emerges. In ‘The Dark Age’ (Buffy 2.08), we finally learn about Giles’s past involvement with black magic, and in ‘Band Candy’ (Buffy 3.06), viewers see Giles magically transformed back into his teenage self. This younger Giles’s behaviour differs significantly from that of the Giles viewers have become accustomed to: there is a change in body language and a predisposition to violence, and Ripper can be differentiated from Giles by means of voice characterization, since Giles speaks standard British English, whereas Ripper reverts to a working-class London accent. Many of the vampires in Buffy and Angel are also portrayed as having dual personalities. The concept of the vampire itself is already dualistic since it unites human and demonic aspects of character, but vampires also often differ significantly from the human beings they were before they were turned. Such differences between the human and the vampire incarnations of the same character are often marked through the use of different names. In flashbacks, the human counterpart of Angel/ Angelus is called Liam, and Spike, whose former name was William, is still occasionally referred to as William by Buffy when she wants to stress that she regards him not as ‘a monster, but . . . as a man’ (Spike’s words in ‘The Gift’, Buffy 5.22). In addition to the vampires, a number of other characters have a similarly dual nature, as is the case with various demons (Anya in Buffy, Doyle in Angel), a werewolf (Oz), and Adam, a human/demon/machine hybrid created by a military research group in Buffy’s season four. Like the vampires, moreover, Anya is referred to by different names in her various incarnations, so that she is Anya, Anyanka and Aud, respectively. The division between Angel’s ‘ensouled’ and soulless selves is likewise marked by the use of the names of Angel and Angelus, respectively.6 The alter egos moreover seem to have different memories. Thus, when Angel gets his soul back at the end of Buffy’s season two (‘Becoming Part 2’, Buffy 2.22), he is slightly disoriented and, at least initially, does not seem to remember his actions as Angelus. In the fourth season of Angel, the split between the two aspects of this character becomes even more complex: whereas Angel has no memory of a previous encounter with

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a specific powerful demon, Angelus still remembers ‘the Beast’, despite the fact that any information about this demon has been magically erased from the earth. The reason given for the fact that the memory of Angelus – unlike that of Angel – has not been purged is that he was not there when the spell was cast (‘Calvary’, Angel 4.12), which suggests that he and Angel are indeed separate characters. Angel and Angelus are once more played off against each other in ‘Orpheus’ (Angel 4.15), in which a magical drug causes Angelus to re-live various incidences of his/ Angel’s life. Throughout the dream sequences of this episode, viewers see Angel and Angelus in the same scenes. But while Angel is acting, Angelus remains an unseen observer who is apparently unable to prevent Angel from doing any of his good deeds. Only in the final showdown does Angel get to fight with his alter ego, and at the same time that Angel wins the fight in the dream world, Willow manages to restore his soul in the ‘real’ world once more. The notion that characters are unique and stable individuals is even more radically subverted in the various episodes of Buffy in which a character is literally doubled.7 The first example of such character doubling can be found in the episode ‘Doppelgangland’ (Buffy 3.16), in which Willow is confronted with her vampire doppelganger, ‘VampWillow’ from the ‘Wishverse’ (the alternate universe created in the episode ‘The Wish’, Buffy 3.09; see below). At first sight, this double, whom she describes as ‘evil’, ‘skanky’ and ‘kinda gay’, seems to be the complete opposite of the shy, reliable and well-behaved Willow. When, later on in the episode, Buffy attempts to reassure Willow that a vampire’s personality has nothing to do with the person it was, however, Angel’s reaction makes it obvious that this is not true. By means of her incarnation as a vampire, then, a very different side of Willow is introduced for the first time. This foreshadows future developments, such as Willow’s coming out as lesbian in season four and her temporary lapse into evil in season six.8 A very different form of character doubling occurs in ‘The Replacement’ (Buffy 5.03), in which Xander is literally split into two halves by a demon’s attack. Both Xanders, each of whom represents different aspects of his character, are convinced that the other one is an impostor trying to ingratiate himself into the slayer’s circle. Only after an almost fatal confrontation between the two do they realize that both are Xander, one representing the more confident and the other the less confident parts of his personality. In addition to providing viewers with the fun of seeing two Xanders as adversaries (which, unlike all other doublings, is not achieved by editing but by means of the fact that actor Nicholas


Brandon has an identical twin), this splitting also serves as a way of portraying the character’s development from high school ‘doofus’ to an adult with a good job and higher self-esteem and the conflicts inherent in this redefinition of his role. Buffy herself becomes subject to a doubling when Spike has a robot built which looks exactly like her (‘Intervention’, Buffy 5.18). The story arc focusing on this so-called ‘Buffybot’ is sustained through a number of episodes up to the beginning of the sixth season while this double’s functions change. Originally conceived of as a sex toy for Spike, the Buffybot is reprogrammed by Willow to become an additional fighter in the showdown against Glory (‘The Gift’, Buffy 5.22). The ‘relationship’ between Spike and the Buffybot moreover foreshadows the actual relationship developing between Spike and Buffy in season six. And finally, the Buffybot’s unnatural cheeriness and its sex-obsession are hilarious to watch. After two episodes which deal with the death of Buffy’s mother and its consequences, Buffy’s robot double and particularly her impersonation of the robot at the end of ‘Intervention’ (quote: ‘Oh Spike, you’re all covered in sexy wounds!’) thus serve as comic relief. The notion of stability of character is further undermined by situating two characters within one body, as is the case with Ben and Glory in the fifth season of Buffy. Glory, a god from a hell-dimension, has been cast out of her home dimension and become entrapped in the body of a newborn boy called Ben in order to take away her power. By the viewers’ first encounter with her, however, Glory has already become strong enough again to temporarily escape from her human prison, now a young medical doctor, and manifest herself physically more and more frequently. Unlike Ben, who is aware of this transformation, Buffy and her friends remain ignorant about the relationship between Glory and Ben up to the third but last episode of the season, not least because anyone who witnesses such a transformation is magically precluded from remembering it. The viewers, conversely, know from the episode ‘Listening to Fear’ (5.09) onwards that Ben is somehow connected to Glory, and in ‘Blood Ties’ (5.13), they learn that Ben and Glory are actually the same person. The viewers’ resulting superior knowledge on the one hand heightens the suspense since they are aware of the dangers involved in Buffy’s attraction to Ben. Glory and Ben’s sharing of the same body even turns out to provide Glory with a means of capturing Dawn (whom Glory needs to return to her own dimension), when Buffy inadvertently asks Ben for help in ‘Spiral’ (5.20) and thus unwittingly invites the very enemy that she and her friends have tried to escape from into their midst. On the other hand, the fact that the almost

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indestructible Glory has a weaker, human side also turns out to be the reason why she can be killed at the end of the season. In addition to various forms of doubling, Buffy also makes use of body switches as an innovative means of character conception. From early on in the first season, regular viewers learn that appearances can be deceiving and that characters may quite literally not be who they seem to be. The first example of this is the episode ‘Witch’ (Buffy 1.03), where the mother of Buffy’s classmate Amy has cast a spell in order to switch bodies with her daughter. Unable to cope with the fact that her husband has left her, Amy’s mother literally takes over her daughter’s life in an attempt to re-live her glory-days as the school’s star cheerleader. In the double episode ‘This Year’s Girl’/‘Who Are You?’ (Buffy 4.15/ 4.16), it is Buffy herself whose body is inhabited by another character, namely Faith, the second slayer. Trying to escape from both the police and the retrieval team sent by the Watcher’s Council, Faith swaps bodies with Buffy, who is then taken into custody. What follows has repeatedly been referred to as some of Buffy’s finest acting: Faith, in Buffy’s body, enjoys her newly gained freedom by wreaking havoc among Buffy’s friends, whereas Buffy, in Faith’s body, is desperate to escape from her guardians, who intend to take her to England to punish her for her – Faith’s – misdemeanour.9 This episode, which plays upon the fact that Buffy and Faith have long been developed as a light and dark pair, both physically and ethically, also marks a significant turning point in the character development of Faith: at the end of ‘Who Are You?’, for the first time since she accidentally killed a man in ‘Bad Girls’ (Buffy 3.14), Faith accepts the responsibility of being a slayer and chooses to rescue a group of humans threatened by vampires, even though this means giving up her sure escape and risking being caught by the real Buffy and her friends. Instances of body switching also occur in Angel, where in the episode ‘Carpe Noctem’ (3.04) Marcus, an old man living a lonely life in a pensioners’ home, magically steals Angel’s body. Angel, now rendered weak and defenceless in Marcus’s body, desperately tries to communicate with his friends, while Marcus takes pleasure in suddenly being not only young and handsome, but also super-strong. Marcus’s initial ignorance of the fact that the body he occupies is that of a vampire and his macho behaviour towards Cordelia, Fred and Lilah, which is at odds with Angel’s normal, quiet demeanour,10 give rise to a number of comical situations. At the same time, the body switch and Angel’s consequent weakness also serve to highlight the importance his team has for the loner Angel.


While viewers usually witness the transformation of one character into another and are aware of the magical means involved, no such explanation is given in ‘The Killer in Me’ (Buffy 7.13). In this episode, Willow, after having kissed Kennedy for the first time, turns into Warren, that is into the guy she killed at the end of season six. Since the episode is filmed by alternating between scenes in which Willow is played by Alyson Hannigan and scenes featuring Adam Busch, the actor who used to play Warren, as ‘Willow’, viewers keep being reminded that they are, in fact, dealing with this very character. In contrast, the other characters obviously see only Warren and hence need to be convinced that the person standing in front of them is who s/he says s/he is. When Willow seeks the help of her former friend Amy to reverse the spell, what she believes to be a mere glamour turns out to be a gradual process of her becoming what she describes as ‘a murderous, misogynist man’. In addition, viewers come to realize that Amy herself, who was jealous of Willow, has put a hex on the other witch which makes her subconscious choose the most appropriate form of punishment. In an almost exact repetition of a scene from ‘Seeing Red’ (Buffy 6.19), Willow/Warren ends up in the garden of the Summers’ house, threatening to resolve the situation by using a gun. But unlike the original scene, which ends with both Buffy and Willow’s girlfriend Tara being shot (fatally in Tara’s case), this time the scene shows Kennedy defusing the situation. She helps Willow recognize that it is her guilt over killing Warren as well as over kissing Kennedy – which Willow perceives as a betrayal of Tara’s memory – that has led to this situation. The body switch in ‘The Killer in Me’ thus highlights Willow’s inner conflicts, and, since it forces her to deal with her problems, it also marks the moment when Willow is finally able to move on from mourning Tara towards a new relationship. The most radical destabilization of the unity of character in Buffy can be found in the final season, whose ‘Big Bad’, the so-called First Evil, can take the shape of any dead person. In the context of the Buffyverse, this includes Buffy herself, who, after all, died twice within the course of the series. As a consequence, viewers frequently cannot be sure if the character they are seeing on screen actually is this very character or just the First Evil’s impersonation of him/her. In addition to appearing in an almost limitless number of different forms, the First is able to become visible to only one character at a time. In those cases in which the First is present, viewers hence occasionally remain uncertain about whether all characters perceive it or whether only one of the characters can see and hear its present incarnation.

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The First Evil is introduced into the Buffyverse already in the third season, where, in the episode ‘Amends’ (Buffy 3.10), it tries to drive Angel to committing suicide by taking on the form of various people he has killed and tortured. After Buffy has saved Angel in this episode, however, the First Evil disappears, to return as a permanent ‘character’ only in season seven. Here, in the last scene of ‘Lessons’ (7.01), a highly unbalanced Spike is addressed by an entity which constantly morphs from one of Buffy’s former major opponents into the next (and, finally, into Buffy herself). Yet, it still takes various episodes before viewers can be sure that Spike is not conjuring up these apparitions in his madness, but that something actually is there. Important hints to this end are given in ‘Same Time, Same Place’ (7.03), where viewers retrospectively come to realize that the apparent meaninglessness of Spike’s babbling is due to the fact that he can see something others cannot see; in ‘Selfless’ (7.05), where viewers observe Spike telling Buffy that he cannot trust what he sees anymore just as Buffy comes in, and in ‘Sleeper’ (7.08), where viewers can first see Buffy encouraging Spike to kill, before she then changes into a second Spike. In ‘Never Leave Me’ (7.09), Buffy finally realizes that the power that is trying to eliminate the entire line of slayers is one she has encountered before, namely the First Evil. Dealing with a ‘character’ that can change its appearance at will nonetheless continues to have unsettling effects. In ‘Showtime’ (7.11), for instance, it is only through finding the days-old corpse of one of the potential slayers that Buffy and her friends realize that the Eve who has been living in their house for several days is, in fact, an incarnation of the First. By such means, the characters – like the viewers – learn to distrust their eyes. Another example of such undermining of the viewers’ trust is the question of Giles’s possible death. Thus, when the group learns that Giles may have been killed weeks ago, they begin to suspect that the Giles who has been living amongst them and who at that point is the only guardian of a rather helpless group of potential slayers may be another impersonation by the First. This assumption can only be disproved by the fact that the First cannot take corporeal form and that it, therefore, cannot be touched. While the suspense leading up to the resolution of the question of Giles’s identity is mounting, the final discovery that Giles is real is overlaid with strong comic elements when Willow and Xander throw themselves at Giles in their relief that he is not dead and that he has not killed all the potential slayers under his guardianship. The use of such comic relief helps downplay the radical ontological uncertainty raised in this episode, even though viewers


remain uneasily aware of the possibility that any character might have died and been replaced by the First at any time. In addition to being able to look and behave like dead friends and family members, the First also knows about the needs and wishes of those it encounters. In this way, it is able to manipulate characters by giving them information and encouraging them to act in certain ways. One example of this is the First’s manoeuvre to raise an ancient and particularly powerful kind of vampire, the Turok-Han: by adopting the form of Andrew’s dead friend Warren and by feeding Andrew stories about the glorious results such a step would have, the First makes him kill Jonathan, his only friend, in such a way that Jonathan’s blood is spilled on a magical seal. But it is not just such gullible characters as Andrew who are recruited by the First. In order to get rid of Spike, who has become one of Buffy’s most powerful allies, the First reveals to Robin Wood, another member of Buffy’s crew, that Spike is the very vampire that killed Robin’s mother. Robin’s emotional response is further heightened by the fact that the First takes on the form of Robin’s dead mother when talking to him. Such incarnations help advance the story arc of the seventh season whilst creating and maintaining a high level of suspense. In the final confrontation between the forces of good and evil in ‘Chosen’ (Buffy 7.22), the final episode of the series, the First chooses to look like Buffy. Hence, what viewers see is a confrontation of Buffy and Buffy, the two identical down to wearing exactly the same clothes and hair style. Through this scene, the end of the series is linked to the beginning, not least by the First repeating the phrase, ‘In every generation, a slayer is born. She alone . . .’, which, in the very first episode of the first season, is spoken by Giles to introduce the concept of ‘the slayer’ to the viewers. But when the First/Buffy mocks the real Buffy lying beaten on the ground, the effect this has on her is far from what the First intended. Instead of marking its triumph over the slayer, Buffy’s confrontation with her own doubts and fears, which are given voice by the First’s mocking, induces the slayer to get up again and continue fighting, thus leading her to her ultimate victory.

Alternate worlds and changing realities Like the characters that populate them, the worlds of Buffy and Angel are not fixed and stable but are subject to significant ontological shifts in various episodes. At times, even the fundamental premises of the two series are called into question. While the majority of these modifications

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are limited to a single episode, some have more lasting effects, and there are even changes that have an impact on all subsequent episodes. The unfamiliar worlds and transformed realities the characters of Buffy and Angel have to cope with include re-writings of the past, the actualization of dreams, fears, or wishes, and the transportation of characters to one of the many parallel dimensions which, according to the mythology of both series, exist alongside the dimension of the Buffyverse viewers are familiar with. Many changes that affect the fictional reality of Buffy and Angel are the result of magical activities. For instance, some episodes of both series deal with the consequences of memory loss due to spells having gone awry (‘Spin the Bottle’, Angel 4.06; ‘Tabula Rasa’, Buffy 6.08) or with the characters being otherwise affected by spells. Thus, in ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’ (Buffy 2.16), virtually every woman in Sunnydale instantly falls in love with Xander; in ‘Something Blue’ (Buffy 4.09), Buffy and vampire Spike decide to get married; and in ‘Him’ (Buffy 7.06), Dawn, Buffy, Willow and Anya all fall in love with the same boy because he is wearing a magic jacket. The characters’ unusual behaviour in those episodes in which the fictional reality is affected by magic frequently has a hilarious effect. Even though the changes in the characters’ behaviour are often far-reaching, however, the fictional world as such ultimately remains more or less intact. In other episodes, the consequences of supernatural occurrences are not limited to altering the characters’ attitudes and behaviour, but reach much further, threatening to destroy the familiar world of the series. In ‘Nightmares’ (Buffy 1.10), for instance, the nightmares of the inhabitants of Sunnydale become real when the fears of a little boy lying in a coma start to affect the very reality around him. Situated at the end of the first season, that is shortly before the series’ first hiatus ever, the main function of this episode is to elaborate on the principal characters’ personalities and to grant viewers an insight into their minds. Thus, viewers learn that Giles is afraid of Buffy’s death and that Buffy herself has nightmares about turning into a vampire. Willow’s shyness as well as Cordelia’s vanity are also once more brought to the viewers’ attention. An further-reaching effect of a magical transformation of reality can be found in ‘Halloween’ (Buffy 2.06), where a number of characters are turned into what their Halloween costumes represent and can no longer remember anything about their ‘normal selves’. Thus, Buffy, who is dressed up as an eighteenth-century lady, ends up being the prototypical damsel-in-distress; Xander is turned into a soldier; and Willow is suddenly able to walk through solid walls after she has become


a ghost for real. Without the protection of the slayer, Sunnydale is exposed to an attack by a group of vampires that can only be averted by breaking the spell. In addition to the comic effects produced in this episode, the magical changes affecting the familiar world of the series also serve to underline important developments in various characters. For instance, the fact that Willow, who started off being shy and insecure, becomes more self-confident in the course of the second season is heralded by her outer appearance in this episode: the sexy outfit she wears underneath the ghost costume is strikingly different from the geeky clothes she normally prefers. Other characters, however, do not achieve what they set out to do. Particularly Buffy, whose choice of costume was inspired by the fact that she wanted to be more feminine because she believed that Angel preferred her that way, ends up a beautiful but helpless victim who is almost killed by a group of vampires. While Buffy’s original status as the slayer is restored at the end of the episode, other transformations have a more lasting effect. For example, Xander’s turning into a soldier in ‘Halloween’ accounts for his lasting familiarity with military routines, something which he keeps on referring to up to the very last season. There are other changes in reality as a result of magic which at times are much further-reaching, but they are also far more short-lived. Their impact on the fictional world of the series tends to be immediately forgotten by everyone who was affected as soon as the normal reality of the Buffyverse has been reestablished. In ‘The Wish’ (Buffy 3.09), for example, Cordelia longs for a world in which Buffy has never come to Sunnydale. By uttering this wish in the presence of vengeance demon Anyanka, who makes wishes come true by means of a magical necklace, Cordelia unintentionally causes the fictional universe to be radically transformed. In the aftermath of this wish, Cordelia finds herself in the so-called ‘Wishverse’, an apocalyptical world in which the ‘Master’, a high-ranking vampire whom Buffy killed at the end of the first season, is holding a reign of terror over Sunnydale. With Cordelia dying about halfway through the episode and with Xander and Willow as vampires from the moment of the viewers’ first glimpse of this alternate reality, the fight against evil seems to be almost lost for good. Even Buffy’s ultimate arrival on the scene turns out to be too late, and viewers have to face the disturbing sight of familiar characters dying in spades shortly before the end of the episode. Giles finally manages to work out what happened and saves the day by destroying the vengeance demon’s necklace, thus allowing the return to the familiar world of the Buffyverse. Even though the later episode ‘Doppelgangland’ (Buffy 3.16) suggests that the

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‘Wishverse’ exists parallel to the Buffyverse and that characters can move from one parallel universe to another by magic, none of the characters except vengeance demon Anyaka can remember anything about this other world. ‘The Wish’ thus highlights the influence Buffy has on the world around her while reaffirming the importance of Buffy’s friends: without them, this episode seems to show the viewers, Buffy would be an entirely different person. Unlike the ‘what if’ story of ‘The Wish’, the episode ‘Superstar’ (Buffy 4.17) does not engage in reflections about what might have been, but reduces to absurdity the idea of the superhero who is able to do everything better than anybody else.11 In this episode, Jonathan, the superstar of the title, has an astonishingly wide variety of abilities. In addition to usurping Buffy’s position as the prime fighter against evil, he is also a famous actor, has trained the American soccer team for the World Championships, and is a successful writer. Since Jonathan is 18 years old at that point, however, a number of contradictions ensue, which only Buffy appears to notice. The idea of a supreme superhero, who – unlike Buffy – does not have any weaknesses, is made even more ridiculous by the fact that viewers have encountered Jonathan before in several episodes where he was a shy and insecure boy ridiculed by others. While the spell that has transformed him allows Jonathan to be the leader of the group, the alternate reality has serious repercussions. At the same time that Jonathan receives his new abilities, a monster is created that brutally murders people in Sunnydale. Since the false reality of ‘Superstar’ is not an accident, but the result of Jonathan’s deliberate attempt to take a shortcut to being popular and successful, he is to blame for the people killed by the monster. Offering comic relief in the aftermath of the emotionally intense episodes focusing on the Faith/Buffy body switch, the magic of ‘Superstar’ is very short-lived. When the magic is finally reverted, viewers thus see all the paraphernalia associated with Jonathan’s overrated status – Jonathan posters have been omnipresent in the entire episode – disappear, and the characters’ memories of Jonathan as superstar already start to blur. The most dramatic change in the fictional reality is the introduction of Buffy’s sister Dawn to the series in season five. This change is never reverted and it has significant consequences for Buffy since it is the ultimate reason for her – second – death at the end of the fifth season. Generally speaking, it is far from unusual for a long-lost sibling or child to be introduced into an ongoing TV series even though s/he has never been mentioned before, but what makes Dawn’s appearance different is that she suddenly is there for the first time in the last scene of


‘Buffy vs. Dracula’ (5.01), without any explanation, and that characters just seem to take her for granted. Viewers are then left wondering for three episodes who this teenage girl actually is and why she is there, until they learn in ‘Shadow’ (5.04) that she was made by a group of monks trying to protect a mythical ‘key’. This key is the one instrument that would enable the season’s villain, Glory, to open up a portal between dimensions, which would result in a destruction of the world. In order to protect the key and to prevent this from happening, the monks have made it human and sent it to Buffy in the form of her sister whilst altering everybody’s memories to make them believe that Dawn has been around for 14 years. In ‘Blood Ties’ (Buffy 5.13), the extensive changes in everybody’s memories are even problematized explicitly when Buffy and her friends, who by that time are aware of the situation, point out they remember things about Dawn which, in fact, did not happen. Even though the storyline focusing on Dawn’s role as ‘the key’ is resolved at the end of season five, Dawn remains a character in all subsequent seasons, thus turning this alternate reality into the actual reality. There are also episodes set in a different reality which, however, leaves the reality of the Buffyverse intact. Thus, the principal characters of Angel are at one point transferred to a different dimension for several episodes (Angel 2.19–2.22). This alternate dimension, Pylea, is the home dimension of Lorne, a green, horned demon who occasionally uses his telepathic powers to help Angel and his team. Lorne, who always was an outsider in his home dimension and who managed to make his escape years before, is considered a traitor there. Although being in Pylea has consequences for each of the characters, it has the most complex effect on Angel. On the one hand, Pylea makes Angel more human: although it has two suns, neither of them is dangerous to vampires, and Angel is also suddenly able to see his own reflection in the mirror again. On the other hand, Angel’s vampire side is also much more prominent in this dimension, so that when he turns into a vampire, he reverts to being an ugly, blood-thirsty monster who even attacks his friends. The Pylea episodes ‘Belonging’, ‘Over the Rainbow’, ‘Through the Looking Glass’ and ‘There’s No Place like Plrtz Glrb’ are fundamental to the development of the central characters. Thus, Angel is once more confronted with the dual nature of his being human and demon at the same time; Wesley successfully leads the attack against the evil regime in Pylea, which adds significantly to his self-esteem and prepares the way for changes his character will undergo in the third season; and Cordelia learns to see behind the beautiful façade of wealth and power. Finally,

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a new character, Fred, is introduced in the Pylea episodes: Fred is a human who was stranded in Pylea and who now returns home with the other characters to become one of the central characters from season three onwards. The most radical destabilization of the fictional reality of the Buffyverse does not, however, occur in the episodes set in a parallel dimension, but in ‘Normal Again’ (Buffy 6.17). At the beginning of this episode, Buffy is attacked by a demon that wounds her with its poisonous sting. The venom causes her to begin to suffer from hallucinations. In the alternate world thus constructed, Buffy is a patient in a mental hospital who is only under the delusion that she is the slayer. The effects this alternate world has on the viewers are likely to change in the course of the episode. At first, viewers will be fairly certain that they know what is real and what is not: having got used to a world in which demons and vampires are everyday phenomena, they will ‘know’ that the reality of the Buffyverse is the ‘real world’ and that the mental hospital sequences are the result of Buffy’s delusions. As the episode proceeds, however, such certainties become more and more questionable. First of all, the world of Buffy’s delusions is the world as the viewers know it beyond the realm of their TV screens. Thus, when the doctors attempt to convince Buffy that, in the ‘real world’, vampires and witches do not exist, this confirms what the viewers know to be true. A second important factor suggesting that the world of the mental hospital is the ‘real world’ is the fact that both Buffy’s parents and her doctors in the mental hospital actually discuss the extent and the limits of the fantasy world of the series. Buffy’s psychologist even refers to central incidents in the Buffyverse such as the sudden introduction of Dawn as a character and the rewriting of history it necessitated, explaining their illogicality as symptom of her mental illness. Even though the storyline suggesting that the entire Buffyverse might be a figment of Buffy’s imagination ends when the episode ends and is hardly ever referred to later on, within the episode, both interpretations – that Buffy is the slayer and has been attacked by a demon and that she is an inmate in a mental institution – remain viable beyond the end of the episode. Moreover, Buffy’s admission that she was in a mental clinic after she first discovered that she is the slayer assigns further credibility to the alternate universe. While Buffy’s conscious choice of the world she wants to live in, that is her privileging of the Buffyverse over her alternate world, allows the series to go on, the resolution provided by this is still undermined when the very last take of ‘Normal Again’ shows Buffy as a mental patient who, after experiencing


some lucid moments, has once more retreated into the world of her delusions.

Conclusion In Buffy and Angel, the idea that the fictional universe of the series and the characters that inhabit it are fixed and finite is constantly undermined. A wide variety of innovative techniques are used to create characters that have doppelgangers, switch bodies with other characters, or can even change their outer appearance at will. The fictional world is also subject to ongoing changes, involving short-lived magical transformations of individual aspects of this world, characters sojourning in different dimensions, and even the creation of far-reaching ontological uncertainty as to the ‘reality’ of the fictional world. While a doubling of characters can also be found in series such as Star Trek or Twin Peaks, and while alternate worlds exist in many fantasy and science-fiction series, the use of these techniques in Buffy and Angel tends to be especially radical. Particularly in the later seasons, viewers are frequently left wondering if the character they see actually is the character they see, and they recurrently encounter a fictional universe which in significant respects differs from the one they have grown used to. This playful use of ontological uncertainty, which can be traced through the two series, can be situated in the context of a postmodern aesthetics. In this sense, then, the ongoing games the narrative of the two series plays with the viewers – just like the highly innovative use of language or the broad range of intertextual references – can be regarded as an expression of a mode of thinking that combines an acute awareness of ‘having been made’ with a disregard for conventional beliefs about the nature of reality. Since Angel, like many TV series discussed in this volume, is still being broadcast at the time of writing, it remains to be seen whether this series will continue to succeed in finding new ways of subverting conventional character conceptions and of creating alternate worlds. Notes 1

2

As a voice-over speaker proclaims in most episodes of the first and many of the second season: ‘In every generation, there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.’ Such a development from a straightforward distinction between good and evil to a more mixed view also becomes obvious in the changing treatment of characters who have been turned into vampires. In the episode ‘The Harvest’

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3

4

5

6

7 8

9 10

11

(Buffy 1.02), Giles warns the group about the vampire their friend Jesse has become: ‘You have to remember that when you see him, you’re not looking at your friend. You’re looking at the thing that killed him’, and Jesse is duly killed in the course of the episode. By contrast, Buffy refrains from killing Willow’s vampire counterpart in ‘Doppelgangland’ (Buffy 3.16). For a more detailed introduction to the main themes and storylines of Buffy and Angel, see Kaveney (2001b) and the ‘Crash Course’ section of the Buffyverse Dialog Database website (http://vrya.net/bdb/). Even though tradition has it that only one vampire slayer exists at a given time, with each slayer being called at her predecessor’s death, there are two slayers in the Buffyverse from the second season onwards. This is the result of Buffy’s death from drowning in ‘Prophecy Girl’ (Buffy 1.12), the first season’s finale, and her subsequent resuscitation by Xander. As several articles have pointed out, the very title of the series, which includes the seemingly oxymoronic parts ‘Buffy’ and ‘Vampire Slayer’, hints at the dual nature of this character; cf., for example, Wilcox and Lavery (2002b: xvii–xviii). Though ‘Angel’ and ‘Angelus’ are used inconsistently throughout the first seasons of Buffy, later seasons, as well as the series Angel, tend to mark the division by this use of names. On the complex relationship between Angel and Angelus, cf. also Abbott (2003). On various kinds of ‘shadow-double relationships’ in Buffy, cf. also Kaveney (2001b). Cf. also Bartlem (2003), who explains the context of VampWillow’s appearance: ‘Interestingly this double appears at a time when Willow is having a dilemma about being perceived as boring, ordinary and a pushover by others.’ As Shuttleworth (2001: 230) points out, both Sarah Michelle Gellar as Faith and Eliza Dushku as Buffy excel at adopting each other’s body language. This is not to say that Angel, who is a dark and brooding loner, is not conceptualized as an extremely (sometimes rather cliché) masculine character. Angel’s stereotypical masculinity is thus contrasted with Spike’s much more ‘hybridized’ gender; cf. Spicer (2003). On the episode ‘Superstar’ and its complex relationship to the fans’ response to Buffy, cf. also Larbalestier (2002).

References Abbott, S. (2003) ‘Walking the Fine Line Between Angel and Angelus’. In Slayage 9 (http://www.slayage.tv/essays/slayage9/abbott.htm [3 September 2002]). Bartlem, E. (2003) ‘Coming Out on a Mouth of Hell’. In Refractory 2 (http://www. refractory.unimelb.edu.au/journalissues/vol2/edwinabartlem.htm [2 July 2003]). Kaveney, R. (ed.) (2001a) Reading the Vampire Slayer: An Unofficial Critical Companion to Buffy and Angel. New York: Tauris Parke. —— (2001b) ‘“She saved the world. A lot.”: An Introduction to the Themes and Structures of Buffy and Angel’. In R. Kaveney (2001a), op. cit.: 1–36. Keller, D. (2002) ‘Spirit Guides and Shadow Selves: From the Dream Life of Buffy (and Faith)’. In R. V. Wilcox and D. Lavery (2002a), op. cit.: 165–77. Larbalestier, J. (2002) ‘Buffy’s Mary Sue Is Jonathan: Buffy Acknowledges the Fans’. In R. V. Wilcox and D. Lavery (2002a), op. cit.: 227–38.

150 Life in Doppelgangland: Buffy and Angel Shuttleworth, I. (2001) ‘“They always mistake me for the character I play!”: Transformation, Identity and Role-playing in the Buffyverse (and a Defense of Fine Acting)’. In R. Kaveney (2001a), op. cit.: 211–36. Spicer, A. (2003) ‘“Love’s Bitch but Man Enough to Admit It” Spike’s Hybridized Gender’. In Slayage 7 (http://www.slayage.tv/essays/slayage7/spicer.htm [8 January 2003]). Wilcox, R. V. and D. Lavery (eds) (2002a) Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ——(2002b) ‘Introduction’. In R. V. Wilcox and D. Lavery (2002a), op. cit.: xvii–xxix.

Part III Narrating Gender/ Gendering Narratives


8 Serial Gossip: Gossip as Theme and Narrative Strategy in Sex and the City Esther Fritsch

In the wake of television series like Friends and Ally McBeal, Darren Star’s Sex and the City (HBO 1998–2004) has carved out a niche for itself among the shows about the trials and tribulations of 30-something American urbanites. With its focus on the private or rather intimate lives of its four female protagonists and their exploration and construction of the rules of dating in Manhattan, the award-winning show is made of the material typically discussed in gossip, the communicative practice that is widely engaged in but is often discounted as idle or immoral. The show deals to a large extent with characteristically gossipy themes involving sex and money, and the protagonist Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) is a gossip columnist, the episodes largely showing the raw material from which she spins her articles for the fictitious New York Star. Moreover, elements and strategies of gossip play a major role in determining how the show is presented. Particularly the way the comedy series uses showing and telling – for example asides and voice-over narration – in presenting its stories is based on principles typical of gossip. Sex and the City can thus be said to be not just based on gossip and to be about gossip, but one can also claim that it functions like gossip in several respects. On the level of story, of narrative mediation and of reception, Sex and the City thus draws on gossip strategies.

Functions of gossip in scholarly analysis Gossip was long deemed unworthy of scholarly attention because it was considered trivial, insubstantial and immoral. Additionally, it has long been associated with women’s speech. Since the 1960s, however, scholars in sociology and anthropology, psychology and literary studies have 153

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begun to take gossip seriously as a communicative phenomenon with important social and psychological functions. Gossip, it turns out, is a complex and multifunctional social practice that uses, distributes, produces and perpetuates social knowledge. It ‘maps the social environment’ (Fine and Rosnow 1978: 162), while it is positioned both at the margin of social discourse and at its centre. Gossip circulates knowledge of uncertain truth status about others and confirms, modifies and revises the images gossip producers and recipients have of themselves and of others. Thus it is a process that assumes a key role in forming and maintaining individual identities and social structures. As a ‘practice of everyday life’, gossip provides an archive of knowledge and thus a ‘repertory of tactics of future use’ (De Certeau 1984: 23). In literature, gossip has been paid attention to as a theme and as a plot device (for example in William Wycherley’s The Country Wife, Edith Wharton’s New York novels, or in Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple novels, where it is used as the detective’s method of investigation). It has been analysed as a means of characterization (for instance in novels by Jane Austen or Emily Brontë), as the narrative device of what one could call gossipy narration, for example in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fiction, Marcel Proust’s Un amour de Swann, or the novels of Toni Morrison, and as an incorporation of oral tradition.1 In narratological terms, gossip is particularly interesting regarding narrative authority and as an alternative epistemology, a way of knowing. The latter aspect of gossip has attracted the particular attention of feminist scholars (Spacks 1985; Brown 1990; Althans 2000). In the context of media studies, the role of gossip in and about soap operas has been analysed by Marie Gillespie (1993), who focuses on the functionalization of gossip in soaps and its impact on the social relations and self-images of viewers in an ethnic West London neighbourhood. Mary Ellen Brown (1990) has analysed the functions of soap opera and (or rather as) gossip in terms of women’s oral culture. In Sex and the City, this chapter will argue, gossip fulfils various functions including that of a repository of urban myths, a source of comparative information, a tool for fashioning the self-image of characters, and a narrative device.

Sex and the City – the series The comedy series Sex and the City was created by Darren Star, who is in particular known for having produced the teenage soap Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990, 1992–95), Melrose Place (1992) and Central Park West

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(1995). It was produced for and ran from 1998 to 2004 on the pay-TV cable channel Home Box Office (HBO). The production for HBO, a cable channel established in 1972 that airs its films and series (both Hollywood productions and original programming) uncut and without commercials, results in fewer restrictions on what language can be used and what themes can be shown, for example involving the use of fourletter words and the explicitness of sexual or violent scenes. The series was aired in 30-minute instalments without commercial breaks, but it used product placement and advertized a lifestyle modelled on Cosmopolitan and its ilk. Since there was no need to integrate mini-cliff-hangers before commercial breaks, the directors had more freedom in plotting the show. The TV series is loosely based on the eponymous book by Candace Bushnell (1997), which is a collection of her actual gossip columns in The New York Observer called ‘Sex and the City’. The show has won several awards, such as a Screen Actors Guild Award (2002), several Golden Globe Awards (2002 and 2003), and Emmy Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series (2001) and actors’ performances (2004).2 As a TV genre it can be classified as both situation comedy and drama. It does not use laughtracks and it has an upbeat jazzy musical score reminiscent of Latin dance music. Unlike in many (more cheaply produced) sitcoms, many scenes in Sex and the City are shot on location, and the setting, Manhattan, is essential to the show, which turns it into a kind of ‘local colour television’ in some respects. The protagonists are four attractive professional women in their thirties who live in New York City, meet regularly, and gossip about men, shopping and sex. The four women represent different types and outlooks on life. Public relations specialist Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) is very blonde, tough, openly hedonistic and uninhibited. Red-haired, smart and sceptical corporate lawyer Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) has a biting wit and is the most restrained of the four. Brunette, wellbred, idealistic Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) is an art dealer and plays the role of the ingénue in several episodes. Restless fashion victim and journalist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) represents a stereotypical neurotic New Yorker. A minor character who at times also joins in as an important conversational partner is Carrie’s balding gay friend Stanford Blatch (Willie Garson), the owner of a talent agency. Not much is known about the characters’ past, their families or how they met, but all four are individualized, coping with complex psychological problems and sometimes acting contrary to the expectations that their type generates. The show focuses on their private lives so that only brief, mostly summarized sequences depicting their professional lives are


shown – unlike shows like Ally McBeal, which devote more attention to that part of their protagonists’ lives. The character constellation in Sex and the City very much shapes the format of the series since the four protagonists supply four plot strands that run parallel and intersect. These plot strands provide variations on a theme, usually obliquely or directly indicated by the title of the episode, in that they sometimes complement each other and sometimes serve as contrasts. Often individual plotlines are designed to provide comic relief, a role that seems to be assigned most frequently to Samantha and Charlotte. This is the case, for instance, in ‘Shortcomings’ (2.15), where Carrie’s enthusiasm about her current lover’s parents is contrasted with Miranda’s dislike of her lover’s overindulged son, while Samantha and Charlotte have a heated argument about Charlotte’s brother Wesley, whom Samantha spent the night with. Carrie generally appears as the hub of the relationships portrayed. Scenes including her often conclude the episodes, which makes her the prima inter pares among the four protagonists on the story level, a position which is reinforced by her role as narrator on the discourse level. The casting of well-known actress Sarah Jessica Parker for this part also stresses her exceptional role. Conflicts among the characters flare up from time to time. In ‘The Power of Female Sex’ (1.05), for instance, Samantha and Miranda get in an argument about whether it is admissible for women to use sex in order to gain power, while in ‘Anchors Away’ (5.01) they are at crosspurposes about the intrusion of Miranda’s baby in their relationship. Different attitudes as to sexual mores lead to a conflict between Samantha and Charlotte in ‘Frenemies’ (3.16), while Samantha and Carrie have a temporary falling out about being ‘judgmental’ concerning Samantha’s sex life in ‘Cover Girl’ (5.04). But these conflicts are generally resolved at the end of an episode. The episodes are structured around the individual plotlines, interspersed with meetings of the friends in various combinations, usually involving Carrie. Some of these meetings are ritualized, in particular the Saturday brunch. Mostly, the characters are doing something else while they are talking, such as eating, shopping or working out.

Gossip, women and work Talk among female friends while doing something else is a typical feature of gossip. This even harks back to the etymology of the term. Gossip is informal, personal talk among people who know each other fairly

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well about people not present. Historically, it initially referred to a godparent (Old English god sib), then to a drinking companion; it later acquired its association with women and their speech. First it referred to women present at a birth, a nexus that is literally enacted in the series when Miranda gives birth to her son and calls her best friend Carrie to her bedside in the last episode of season four (‘I Heart NY’ 4.18). Later, the term denoted women’s talk at such occasions and their conversation accompanying communal (and often monotonous) manual work, such as washing, sewing or quilting, which provided the backdrop for talk (Rysman 1977: 176; Bergmann 1987: 21). The German word for gossip, Klatsch, even alludes to the sound of handling wet laundry (Bergmann 1987: 85) – washerwomen being stereotypically associated with gossip. Birgit Althans (2000) illustrates the connections between women’s talk during work and gossip and traces the historical development of this nexus in great detail. Gossip among men was systematically redefined as work, for example in the development of insurance business and journalism at coffee houses such as Lloyd’s in the early eighteenth century (Althans 2000: 153–4). So gossip and (serious) work seem to be mutually exclusive, since gossip is ‘idle’. Not incidentally, this argument can also be used to discredit women’s work. For Carrie, however, gossip is work – it is the basis for her column. In effect, she publicly reveals gossip knowledge about her friends and herself. It is not only the connection between work and talk, but also between food and talk that is of interest regarding gossip. Althans (2000: 78–9) has shown the relationship of food (and drink) and gossip – as talk that is incorporated and enjoyed – as well as the consistent association of gossip and the female body. The connection between food, the body and talk is strongly established in Sex and the City. Miranda once compares her protracted lack of sex (in ‘The Drought’ 1.11) to starvation. Also, one synonym for engaging in gossip is ‘to dish’, which is based on the food analogy, and ‘The Dish’ was chosen as the title for the on-line newsletter on the HBO web page advertising the show. In the series, food is often the occasion for talk, be it at a restaurant, a Chinese takeout meal at home, or a picnic in a park. Sometimes the impression is created that the talk about sex seems just as enjoyable as the act itself, and characters cannot wait to talk about their experiences. Some events require immediate meetings or at least phone calls. Many conversations between the characters take place on the phone, starting with ‘you won’t believe what I heard/what happened the other night . . .’ (for example in ‘The Turtle and the Hare’ 1.09) – a typical starter of or invitation to gossip which then proceeds with a relation


of events, their evaluation, and making sense of them in a dialogical process. The talk among the friends in Sex and the City deals mostly with men, other women, their relationships, and with dissecting character flaws, especially those of men, for example when Carrie retells the story of how Big and Natasha’s marriage is not working out to her friends at their habitual Saturday brunch (‘Easy Come, Easy Go’ 3.09). At one point, Miranda specifically objects to this kind of gossip about men, which she considers immature and calls ‘seventh grade with bank accounts’ (‘Take me out to the ball game’ 2.01), and unsuccessfully tries to change the topic of conversation to her new palm pilot. Her friends, sitting at a table full of empty plates in a diner, guiltily admit to enjoying this kind of talk and are evidently not prepared to give it up. In this kind of personal talk, individual events are related and then interpreted as typical in some way, representing issues and problems of women or men at the turn of the millennium and creating solidarity and a common frame of reference for the participants. The private is made into an object of public interest and the specific is related to the typical. This kind of generalization is typical of gossip. In this process of translation, an archive of knowledge is tapped into – and this archive is what essentially makes up Carrie’s column. The potential claim that Carrie gossips about her friends in her column needs to be qualified. Gossip (unless undertaken by children) presumes the absence of its target or object. This rule usually also precludes gossip about a person if someone with an intimate connection to the potential gossip object (such as spousal or family relation) is present (Bergmann 1987: 71). The characters’ talk about each other when all are present thus, technically, is not gossip, but personal talk. When Carrie uses this personal talk in her column, however, it becomes a sort of gossip. In some cases, most notably Carrie’s love interest Mr Big (Chris Noth), who is rich, handsome, dressed to the nines, and a bit enigmatic, she uses the generic name to protect the identity of the gossip object.3 This issue is addressed openly when Big asks Carrie at her book-reading whether ‘This Mr Big character – does he have a real name?’ and she answers ‘Yes, but I can’t reveal it. I have to protect his privacy’ (‘The Big Journey’ 5.07). The issue of what is fiction or ‘just writing’ and Mr Big’s claim that ‘some of that stuff really happened’ is brought up later in the episode as well, where Carrie in a defensive move insists on the fictional quality of her writing and thus implicitly discounts its quality as gossip (that is, events ‘that really happened’). Carrie can also keep a secret, as in the case of Charlotte’s problems with marital sexuality, which

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Charlotte confides to Carrie and which Carrie does not mention to her friends (‘Escape from New York’ 3.13), or Samantha’s bad news about her breast cancer, which Carrie does not spread (‘The Ick Factor’ 6.14), showing the discretionary side of gossip as ‘indiscrete discretion’ (Bergmann 1987). Similarly, in ‘Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda’ (4.11) Carrie does not tell her friends about Miranda’s pregnancy, although she feels compelled to gossip about it to her lover Aidan, swearing him to secrecy, an indiscretion which puts him in an untenable position towards his friend Steve, the baby’s father. Also, Carrie is shown to be relying on her friends for material for her column in ‘Unoriginal Sin’ (5.02). She asks her friends to ‘report back’ to her since she finds it hard to write while not being in a relationship herself, worrying about whether ‘not getting laid’ is going to translate into ‘getting laid off’. In so far as Carrie uses gossip knowledge about her friends in her column, they do not really seem to mind as long as she is not ‘judgmental’ – thus taking the evaluative sting out of gossip. Carrie can be said to use the material and the atmosphere, but not the attitude of gossip, emphasizing its pleasurable side and deemphasizing the betrayal of trust it implies. In this use of gossip strategies, Carrie’s column can be seen in a longstanding tradition of journalism. Very early examples of journalism, such as Addison and Steele’s moralist journals Tattler (1709–11) and Spectator (1711–12), simulated coffee-house gossip (using the names of coffee houses for different rubrics) and thus created a fiction of authenticity. Early journalists such as Aphra Behn and Mrs Manley, who were both party hacks, that is writing at the service of political parties and manipulating and trading in reputations, used a gossipy atmosphere as a frame for their writing (Althans 2000: 216). As so-called fallen women they were both the object of gossip and gossip producers. Both were able to make a living from their writing, which was a precedent for women of their time. Seafarers’ gossip at London coffee houses, most notably that of Lloyd’s, was the basis for a budding insurance business (for instance knowledge and speculation about risks, the success of enterprises, routes), which developed as a ‘rationalization of maritime gossip’ and was distilled into a newsletter (Althans 2000: 140). Carrie can even be said to tread in the footsteps of Benjamin Franklin, who, under the pen name Mrs Silence Dogood – the persona of a country parson’s widow prone to gossip – was the originator of gossip columns in the Philadelphia Enquirer.4 Early journalism can thus be said to have used simulations of gossip, presenting its material by using strategies and the reputation of this communicative practice. Carrie Bradshaw,


like Aphra Behn and Mrs Manley, uses the raw material and the strategies of gossip as well as a partly autobiographical approach validating her writing to make a living as a writer.

Gossip and narration This use of gossip strategies is also reflected in Carrie’s role as a narrator, her narrative voice constituting a hallmark feature of Sex and the City. Carrie as a homodiegetic narrator is shown both as experiencing self and as narrating self and, as such, both as an embedded narrator and a frame narrator. Her narrative position is established in several ways. She is shown in front of a night skyline of New York reminiscent of the studio set-up of talk shows like David Letterman’s and introduces the ‘theme’ of the episode by way of various snippets of film, for example about models and ‘modelizers’ (in ‘Models and Mortals’ 1.02). Thus she is established as a frame narrator (or host narrator) who presents material as if in a documentary. This documentary frame is missing in later seasons, however. In the opening credits to the show, the camera, after showing landmarks and scenes of New York City, focuses on Carrie walking down a busy Manhattan street, then zooms in on her face (implying that her viewpoint will be dominant). Fastmoving clouds (shown in fast-forward) are contrasted with a slowmotion sequence of Carrie’s stroll, taking in the city like a late twentieth (or early twenty-first) century flaneur and being rudely shaken out of her reverie by getting splashed by a bus that prominently features on its side an advertisement for her own newspaper column. At this point, the visual track freezes and the episode begins. The trailer thus establishes Carrie as the principal focalizer of the show and introduces her as the author of a gossip column on sex or a ‘sexpert’, as she is later called (‘Take me out to the ball game’ 2.01). Throughout the episodes her position as the principal focalizer is emphasized both in the visual and the musical track. Blurry camera work, for instance, reflects Carrie’s vision when she meets Mr Big again in ‘Take me out to the ballgame’ (2.01), and the hallucinatory, cartoonish fairground tunes that accompany Carrie’s dates with ‘freaks’ in ‘The Freak Show’ (2.03) emphasize Carrie’s paranoia about the presumed oddity of her new boyfriend, the music thus underscoring her perspective. Carrie is not only the principal focalizer of the series, but also its gossipy narrator. Particularly at the beginning or at the close of episodes, Carrie often ‘reads’ from her column as a voice-over narrator. Thus her voice-over narration is anchored to writing, which is a common feature

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in the usage of this form, according to Kozloff (1988: 52). Carrie is not only a frame narrator, though, but also an embedded narrator. Often Carrie is on screen while narrating, addressing the viewer in asides. In these scenes she steps out of her role as experiencing self, as it were, and provides reflections and comments on events while they are happening. This creates a blurring of the temporal levels of experience and narration. In some scenes a split-screen technique is used to visualize the temporal split of experiencing and narrating character, for example in the very first episode when Stanford is introduced and Carrie is shown with him at a party while at the same time giving the audience a short character sketch. But mostly her comments take the form of short asides directly addressing the camera while the action continues and the other characters are oblivious of her double role. Similar to the documentary frame, this overtly documentary narration becomes less frequent in the course of the series. Carrie also makes explicit reference to her act of narration, for example by using the traditional storytelling formula ‘once upon a time’ or variations of it, such as ‘once upon a second time around’. This both emphasizes her role as a storyteller and, in evoking the fairy tale mode, casts doubt on the truth status of what she relates. Since the professed temporal distance (‘once upon a time’) is actually shown to be virtually non-existent, her opener comes across as ironic as well – are these tales and urban myths or are we going to be presented with quasi-documentary material, as the frame of presentation seems to imply? The uncertain reality status of what is shown is reminiscent of the questionable truth status of gossip. Carrie as narrator uses ‘quotes’ from her column to motivate many transitions between temporal levels and between showing and telling as in ‘“He never did call, of course,” she told me one day over coffee’ (‘Sex and the City’ 1.01) followed by a depiction of previous events or, conversely, a summing up after events are shown such as ‘later, this sentence would turn up in one of his plays’ (‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’ 1.12) after Miranda’s short affair with a Catholic playwright ridden with sexual guilt. Similarly, Carrie sums up the episode ‘The Awful Truth’ (2.02) by tying up loose plot threads. In this episode Charlotte has a newly acquired ‘perfect dog’, Henry, a Jack Russell terrier whose antics render her increasingly unhappy and who turns out to be ‘inconsistent, selfish and stubborn, and hopelessly co-dependent’. Henry ends up reconciling Carrie’s friend Susan Sharon and her husband: ‘He [Henry] and Charlotte soon parted ways . . . of course we all know what happened to him – he’d become the glue that put Susan Sharon and her husband back together again.’ Events and Carrie’s reflections on them


are generally shown to be almost simultaneous or temporarily very close, for instance ‘after Miranda left I had a thought . . .’ – showing Carrie working at her computer (‘Bay of Married Pigs’ 1.03). Such shots of Carrie pondering her and her friends’ experiences and entering her thoughts into her computer are hallmark shots of the series. In the first season, they are often followed by a sequence of short interviews with people on the street about the topic of Carrie’s current column, for example about the frequency of sexual activity in ‘The Drought’ (1.11) or about monogamy in ‘The Monogamists’ (1.07). In the very first episode (‘Sex and the City’ 1.01), this format also serves to introduce Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte using captions like ‘Miranda Hobbes, Corporate Lawyer, Unmarried Woman’. The short sequences of interviews that sometimes identify the interviewees by name, age and profession by way of captions represent part of Carrie’s research for her column and emulate a documentary style, but they do not show Carrie as the interviewer. They also provide different viewpoints and examples, and thus they function as embedded narratives. In Sex and the City Carrie is the one who speaks and very often the one who sees and frames and integrates others’ viewpoints into her narration.

Gossip as a way of knowing The episodes show the events that feed Carrie’s writing, her research, including interviews, her observations, thoughts, reflections, summaries, her epiphanies and conclusions, in short the ‘making of’ her column. Or, vice versa, her column is used as a motivation and transition device to tell the various stories. As a self-described ‘sexual anthropologist’ (‘Sex and the City’ 1.01), Carrie treats her friends’ and her own adventures in the Manhattan dating game as case studies; she delivers for example a quasi-ethnological account of men who date models (in ‘Models and Mortals’ 1.02), or of the differences in outlook of people in their twenties and their thirties (for example ‘Valley of the TwentySomething Guys’ 1.04 and ‘Twenty-Something Girls vs Thirty-Something Women’ 2.17). Her writing is based on the anthropological method of participant observation – with an emphasis on participation. She is an anthropologist ‘gone native’ – which is the description of gossip reporters given by Levin and Arluke (1985: 83), who also state that both gossip reporters and anthropologists ‘describe amazing things in the lives of normal people’ (ibid.: 75). In this role she on the one hand relies heavily on gossip for material, and on the other hand what she writes is gossip for her readers. As one character gratefully says to her ‘If it wasn’t for

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you we wouldn’t know half the things we do about other people’s sex lives’ (‘Shortcomings’ 2.15).5 She contributes to the gossip archive of everyday knowledge and draws from it at the same time; gossip is thus not just a way of telling but also a way of knowing. As a journalist and narrator, Carrie speculates on the private motives behind interesting behaviour and actions and (like an ethnologist) tries to link them to broader and more general patterns of behaviour, particularly regarding interpersonal relationships. Carrie’s column fulfils the function of gossip as a source of knowledge that would be hard to obtain otherwise. Like gossip, it is a reconstruction of past events, a process of making sense of the past in terms of the present, thereby translating people and their experiences into tellable stories. In gossip, people talk about others in order to know themselves, negotiating the individual and the typical. Carrie re-tells and ‘shows’ what others tell her, for example Skipper’s exploits and multiple rejections in ‘The Fuck Buddy’ (2.14). She thus gossips to viewers, but as documentary material gossip is ennobled as a sort of scientific enterprise, albeit with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. Thus, the documentary style stresses the authenticity of what is shown on the one hand; on the other hand, the reliance on gossip and the references to fairy tales question its authenticity. As a homodiegetic narrator Carrie is not privileged in terms of time, space or insight into other characters’ minds; yet she talks about a lot of things she cannot have seen, since her narration refers to intimate moments between other people. The question of how she knows about this anyway can be answered plausibly by her reliance on gossip. Gossipy talk about these intimate experiences enables her to relate what goes on ‘meanwhile downtown’ or ‘meanwhile on the other side of town’ – hallmark phrases of her narrative style. Her making Charlotte ‘promise to tell [her] everything’ on the phone in the first episode sets a pattern for this kind of information flow in an informal communication system that revolves around Carrie, who is best friend and confidante to the other women. Carrie’s reliance on gossip as her main research tool and source of information raises the question of her reliability as a narrator, since information filtered through gossip is notoriously unreliable – being speculative and subjective. This is particularly the case because in the course of the series Carrie shows a somewhat paranoid streak in her personality, a tendency to over-interpret what she sees, hears and experiences. Her comment ‘it was true . . .’ in the pilot episode raises the question of her possible self-deception (in considering herself not attracted to an old boyfriend); after all, repeated protestations of the


truth of what is being told often actually signal narrative unreliability. Carrie herself worries about the increasing cynicism colouring her perception and interpretation of events and relationships in ‘Unoriginal Sin’ (5.02) and later in ‘I Love a Charade’ (5.08). In another episode (‘Old Dogs, New Dicks’ 2.09), Carrie’s conclusion about the (in)ability of men to change is not supported by the plotline. This might be simply a sign of inconsistent plotting, but it can also be seen as a subversion of her narrative reliability and thus her authority to draw conclusions from the events depicted. These instances show the possibility of using gossip as an indicator of unreliability, although this strategy is not emphasized or exploited extensively as a narrative device in Sex and the City.

Conclusion Across various narrative levels, Sex in the City is about talk – it presents events, the talk about events, and the talk about the talk in an interplay and partial simultaneity of telling and showing, using the devices of voice-over narration and asides. The voice-over narration evokes a documentary style and thus an impression of authenticity, which is also promoted through the introductory frame narration in season one and the use of authenticating material such as interviews. At the same time, these authenticating strategies are undercut by tongue-in-cheek references to fairy tales and occasional fairy-tale plotting, such as Samantha’s miraculous restoration to the social A-list by a deus-ex-machina Leonardo di Caprio after having been blacklisted for an ill-advised flirt with a high-society spouse (in ‘Four Women and a Funeral’ 2.05). In this episode Samantha, who is usually shown to be immune to criticism of her sexual transgressions, is stung by gossip when she is ostracized from polite society. In ‘The Cold War’ (6.17) Samantha counters insulting gossip about being a ‘fag hag’ by inserting videotaped gossip material of her own into the New York gossip machine, showing her as a true public-relations specialist, who uses gossip as part of her communicative repertoire in shaping and maintaining reputations. Carrie is also afraid of being a target of gossip when the bus advertising her column with her photograph features humiliating graffiti (‘Secret Sex’ 1.06), and she frets about her reputation when she is portrayed as a not-so-fabulous single woman in a magazine when the photo session followed a night of drinking and partying (‘They Shoot Single People, Don’t They?’ 2.04). Carrie and her friends thus are objects of gossip as well as gossip producers and recipients.

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Carrie’s narration, in that it relates the intimate confidences of her friends, has affinities to gossip as well. Gossip is implicitly voyeuristic in that it claims other people’s experiences and turns them into stories (see Spacks 1985: 11). On the one hand, voice-over narration, as Kozloff (1988: 51) points out, has the advantage of excusing the viewers from the potential position of voyeurism. Since they are directly addressed, they are not eavesdropping on gossip. On the other hand, viewers are gossiped to, which simulates an atmosphere of trust and implies a shared system of values. A common system of values favourable to gossip is generally promoted if factors such as age, race and social class are also shared. The social and racial spectrum shown in the series is quite homogenous – mostly white, middle and upper-middle class with the notable exception (as far as race is concerned) of Samantha’s tryst with African American Chivon and her conflict with his sister, a successful restaurant owner, in ‘No ifs, ends or butts’ (3.05), and, in season six, Miranda’s affair with an African American doctor, which serves to highlight the tensions brought about partly by class differences to the father of her baby, Steve Brady. The issue of class and the supposed classlessness of contemporary American society becomes a theme to some extent in the episode ‘Secret Sex’ (1.06), where class is conflated with looks and thus a performance of class. Since minimal social distance is generally a prerequisite of gossip, this homogeneity makes sense in terms of anchoring the series in gossip. Thus in Sex and the City, not just the characters, the topics and the atmosphere are steeped in gossip, but also the communicative situation that is set up between narrator and narratee. In this context, the fact that there is no laughtrack underscores the more intimate positioning of the narratee, who is not constructed as a studio audience. Gossip paradoxically deals with respecting and violating the borders of what is considered public and private, decent and indecent, moral and immoral behaviour at the same time. Sex and the City similarly probes the limits of propriety and of what can be shown on US television screens while respecting them at the same time. Its format frames the events depicted as quotes by the journalist narrator Carrie, implying that what we see might be stylized and exaggerated, but nevertheless is ‘essentially’ true.6 When narrators use or refer to gossip they bring in unexpressed standards and general authority; the direct address to reader or audience has the implication of sharing the value system of the addressee, especially if the atmosphere or thematic concerns of gossip are evoked. Gossip is pleasurable and empowering and at the same time a violation of trust. As has been shown, the series functions like


gossip in several respects, but it is not like gossip in that it aims at not being judgmental, which is achieved partly through Carrie’s pose as an anthropological narrator. The show is in some ways reminiscent of gossip – exaggerated with a ring of truth to it, slightly risqué but in many ways quite conservative, sometimes ironic and at times blending into a fairy tale and urban myth. At the same time, the show is entertaining and pleasurable in a gossipy way, an invitation to the joys of consumption. Notes 1

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Patricia Spacks’ (1985) monograph on gossip in literature provides a wealth of examples. On the complex functions of gossip particularly in the fiction of contemporary ethnic US women writers, such as Louise Erdrich or Toni Morrison, see my Reading Gossip – Funktionen von Klatsch in Romanen ethnischer amerikanischer Autorinnen (2004). The awards are: Screen Actors Guild Award For Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series (2000); Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Series – Musical/Comedy, Best Performance by Sarah Jessica Parker (2002), Best Supporting Actress for Kim Cattrall (2003); Emmy Awards in 2004 for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (Cynthia Nixon). Mr Big – described as the next, more handsome Donald Trump – is a character who would not be out of place in a Mills and Boon romance. He is supposedly modelled on the publisher Ron Galotti, a former boyfriend of the author of Sex and the City, Candace Bushnell (Smith 2002: 14). Carrie’s column also harks back to celebrity gossip columnists such as Hollywood journalist Louella Parsons. See Levin and Arluke (1985) for detailed accounts of gossip columns, especially the example of Parsons. Bergmann (1987: 12) affirms the affinity of anthropology and gossip by quoting Aristotle’s The Nicomachian Ethics, where the ideal person ‘of high mind’ is said to be no ‘anthropologos’; that is, he is not interested in personal talk about others or, to put it more concisely, ‘he is no gossip’. See Bergmann (1987: 152) on the use of quotation in gossip.

References Althans, B. (2000) Der Klatsch, die Frauen und das Sprechen bei der Arbeit. Frankfurt/New York: Campus. Bergmann, J. (1987) Klatsch: Zur Sozialform der diskreten Indiskretion. Berlin: De Gruyter. Brown, M. E. (1990) ‘Motley Moments: Soap Operas, Carnival, Gossip and the Power of the Utterance’. In M. E. Brown (ed.), Television and Women’s Culture. London: Sage, 183–98. Bushnell, C. (1997) Sex and the City. London: Abacus. De Certeau, M. (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. S. Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fine, G. A. and R. L. Rosnow (1978) ‘Gossip, Gossipers, Gossiping’. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 4: 161–8.

Esther Fritsch 167 Fritsch, E. (2004) Reading Gossip – Funktionen von Klatsch in Romanen ethnischer amerikanischer Autorinnen. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Gillespie, M. (1993) ‘Soap Opera, Gossip and Rumour in a Punjabi Town in West London’. In National Identity and Europe: The TV Revolution. London: British Film Institute, 25–43. Kozloff, S. (1988) Invisible Storytellers: Voice-over Narration in American Fiction Film. Berkeley: University of California Press. Levin, J. and A. Arluke (1985) The Inside Scoop. New York, etc.: Plenum Press. Rosnow, R. L. and G. A. Fine (1976) Rumor and Gossip: The Social Psychology of Hearsay. New York: Elsever. Rysman, A. (1977) ‘How the Gossip Became a Woman’. Journal of Communication 27: 176–80. Smith, J. (2002) Manhattan Dating Game: The Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to Sex and the City. London: Virgin. Spacks, P. M. (1985) Gossip. New York: Knopf.

9 Ellen Degenarrated: Breaking the Heteronormative Narrative Contract Dirk Schulz

Come out, shut up ‘You’re about to watch adult content. Discretion is advised.’ This warning, accompanied by an extradiegetic voice-over, preceded several episodes of the final season of Ellen, a sitcom which until that point had been a mainstream international hit. How did one of the most successful American TV series get to the point of needing to overtly ‘warn’ its audience about its content? How did Ellen (DeGeneres) become so degenerated, or rather degenarrated? The recent popularity and growing number of gay and lesbian characters on television has led to the widespread assumption that the love that once dared not speak its name can now finally be narrated and celebrated on screen. However, if one looks at the narrative conventions by which the issue of homosexuality is presented, it becomes evident that this seeming liberation might be only a new strategic disguise for preventing and excluding the subversive potential of gender and sexual confusion, thereby affirming a heteronormative value system. To illustrate this, I will focus on a TV series that was accompanied by an enormous tabloid frenzy and public outcry, first and foremost in its country of origin, the United States. By tracing the history of the sitcom Ellen (1993–98) and highlighting the changes in the narrative strategies in the show’s five-year run, I will argue that an analysis of the series’ narrative frame helps us understand the public controversy the show caused in America, revealing cultural conventions by which the representation of homosexuality may or may not be accepted. Drawing on Jurij Lotman’s influential cultural narrative concepts of ‘semiosphere’, ‘boundary’, ‘frame’, and ‘plot’ as well as on recent approaches by queer theorists such as Judith Butler and Lee Edelmann, the following observations highlight the intertwining 168

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principles of artistic production and public reception – that is ‘the dual nature of an artistic model: while reflecting a separate event, it simultaneously reflects a whole picture of the world; in recounting the tragic fate of a heroine, it speaks of the tragic nature of the world as a whole’ (Lotman 1977: 216). After Ellen had been seen as an amusing, lightweight representative of American society for several years, her twofold coming out was perceived as a transgression of genre conventions, providing a plot which changed and ultimately terminated the series. The public attention and uproar Ellen’s dramatic and public admittance of her sexuality caused, testifies to the way Western culture views and reads homosexuality. In the case of the show it was seen as an overstepping of a semantic border, a decisive change of her character, and as a progressive plot, ‘the shifting of a persona across the borders of a semantic field’ (Lotman 1977: 232), a violation of the circular narrative pattern typical of the sitcom.

Situation comedy: the close(d se)t of the flat In 1993 Ellen made its debut at number three among the highest rating sitcoms in the USA. In the second week it reached number two and throughout remained in the top ten (cf. DeGeneres 1998), thus becoming one of the most successful sitcoms ever. Originally entitled These Friends of Mine, the show focused on the type of disillusionment with the American Dream that had become the standard trope of several successful sitcoms (for example Roseanne, Married . . . with Children). When the series was first conceived in 1993, the idea was to focus on a circle of friends who lack far-reaching ambitions, goals, or dreams, thus embodying the prevailing disillusionment and uncertainty of the ‘Generation X’. Over time, however, it became ever clearer that the show’s popularity lay primarily in Ellen as a character and in the power of Ellen DeGeneres as a comedienne, which led to a change of the show’s title and cast. From its second season onwards, the sitcom was, in the tradition of Roseanne, Cybil, or Grace, called Ellen, thus not only turning Ellen unquestionably into the protagonist, but also creating a link between fiction and reality. This link seemed to secure the programme’s success; later on, however, it ironically became a key factor in the show’s commercial collapse, when Ellen, once regarded as one of America’s funniest actresses, became one of the most controversial television figures of the last decades. Interestingly, the show’s initial narrative design actually points to the way in which this dramatic turn in the popular reception came about.

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In season one, the show, still called These Friends of Mine, was an ensemble piece driven by conversational comedy, comparable to the sitcom Friends. The title suggests at least two interesting interpretations: it might either allude to the point of view of the characters, or it might adopt the perspective of the imagined viewer, thus highlighting the multiple identificatory potential of TV series. The title These Friends of Mine furthermore explicitly addresses the viewer as potential member of the screen assembly and invites identification by stressing the familiarity and sense of belonging which the repeated viewing establishes. As the title These Friends of Mine suggests, the character ensemble and the show’s narratives establish what Lotman refers to as semiotic individuation, creating a clear semantic boundary, an outer limit of a first-person form. This space is ‘ours’, ‘my own’, it is ‘cultured’, ‘safe’, ‘harmoniously organised’, and so on. By contrast their space is ‘other’, ‘hostile’, ‘dangerous’, ‘chaotic’ . . . Every culture begins by dividing the world into ‘its own’ internal space and ‘their’ external space. (Lotman 1990: 131) Following this spatial model of semantic boundaries, the characters of a sitcom and the stories built around them over time turn the viewers into in-siders. As Teresa de Lauretis (1984: 269) states in her feminist study of film narrative, Alice Doesn’t: To identify, in short, is to be actively involved as subject in a process, a series of relations; a process that, it must be stressed, is materially supported by the specific practices – textual, discursive, behavioral – in which each relation is inscribed. Cinematic identification, in particular, is inscribed across the two registers articulated by the system of the look, the narrative and the visual. De Lauretis’ observations also hold true for television series, where the identification and comprehension process is further encouraged by continuity. As viewers, we hence ‘make assumptions, erect expectations and confirm or disconfirm hypotheses [not only on the grounds of] schemata derived from our transactions with the everyday world, with other artworks, and with other films’ (Bordwell 1985: 32–3), or sitcoms for that matter. By confronting us with the same characters and locations each week the shows’ formal designs themselves appear to establish a fixed and reliable fictional world. Narrative repetitiveness, especially in the case of the sitcom, is an important factor in a TV series’

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attractiveness and popularity. It guarantees reliability and works towards the sedimentation of the viewer’s identification with the characters and the story world, whilst also supplying the main source of entertainment, which ‘stems from the anticipation of how the characters will react in a given situation, based on their, and the audience’s, previous experience’ (Walker 2000: 96). In most sitcoms, the living room of the protagonists provides the main setting. ‘If the centre for “normal life” is the flat’ (Lotman 1990: 140), the atmosphere of familiarity, homeliness and intimacy is further strengthened. In These Friends of Mine, the living room of Ellen Morgan (Ellen DeGeneres) and her flatmate Adam Green (Arye Gross) provides the main site for all of the narrative expositions, complications, revelations and solutions, with the sofa, that is a quintessential symbol of private comfort and recreation, being framed as the centre of the camera’s gaze. Another feature typical of the sitcom is its being staged and taped in front of an audience. The audible laughter of the audience may on the one hand highlight the performativity of each scene, pointing to the act of dramatic presentation. On the other hand, the laughter whose source cannot be identified invites engagement in and the feeling of belonging to an even bigger group than the ensemble seen on screen. A contradictory effect of this narrative trademark is that the intimacy with the characters, which is in particular established through the living room as the main location, becomes a public space. The dramatic staging furthermore limits the range of possible locations and also favours narrative closure at the end of each episode. Setting, characterization and plotting are thus subject to conventions. The living room is established as closed space ‘and is endowed with certain features: “kinship,” “warmth,” “security,” and so on. It stands in opposition to open-ended, “outer” space and its features: “strangeness,” “enmity,” “cold”’ (Lotman 1977: 229). In opposition to the estrangement and disillusionment that result from interaction with the outer world, the scenes set in Ellen’s home take the viewer inside her hiding place and provide in-sights into a character feeling safe behind closed doors. These doors separate the core group (friends) from the peripheral (strangers) and the characters’ authentic selves from their performative ones. It is interesting to see that from the start pretension was an essential source of the show’s humour, most often with negative results for the impostor, thereby creating a morale of poetic justice which favours honesty. The recurrence of the characters’ defrauds hinted at their inferiority complexes and their deeply ingrained lack of self-confidence, regarding both their


career ambitions and their love life. In the fourth episode of These Friends Of Mine, ‘The Class Reunion’ (1.04), for example, Adam (an unemployed photographer) and Ellen (then a bookstore assistant) feel intimidated by the confrontation with their old classmates, who all appear to have made a success of their professional and private lives. To engage in the same discourse of economic and reproductive flaunting as their old classmates, the two flatmates pretend to be cardiologists, married to each other, and raising four children. For the protagonists, inventing identities is a prerequisite for entering the realm of social recognition.

Ellen and Adam: love was in the air At first the focus was on Ellen Morgan and Adam Green as individuals, friends, flatmates and potential lovers. The change of the title to Ellen, however, correlated with a change of narrative focus. Although the relationship between Adam and Ellen continued to hinge upon the possibility of them becoming a couple, which was a major source of narrative plotting up to the third season, Ellen became the central character around which the show was orchestrated. As confidante within her circle of friends she was an acute observer. Yet, ironically, it was her character that, in terms of action, remained the most passive one. From the first episodes on, her attempts at dating men were conducted halfheartedly. Every minor obstacle seemed a remarkably welcome excuse to cancel the whole affair. Even if this cyclical plot structure adheres to genre conventions, in this particular sitcom the strategy of romantic prevention in retrospect allows an ironic interpretative twist. Ellen’s professional ambitions also appeared vague. Thus Adam, Audrey, Paige, Spence and Joe, that is the peer cast, at least occasionally had affairs and career opportunities, while Ellen was increasingly portrayed as not meeting the expectations of American society. Her ability to be funny despite the fact that her life was apparently lacking such values as determination, social mobility and romance might be a major factor responsible for the show’s success. Compared to the rest of the cast, Ellen from the beginning was pictured as the most complex and ambiguous character: on the one hand, Ellen was depicted as being highly principled, self-determined and clever; on the other hand, her constant wish to be liked became more and more apparent, revealing her fundamental insecurity. Part of the popularity of the show could be linked to the complexity of the protagonist’s personality, allowing many conceivable readings. Ellen’s

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complexity defies unequivocal readings of her identity and contrasts with the portrayal of the other characters who, more or less, can be viewed as representing stereotypes, albeit with a twist. Paige (Joely Fisher), for example, Ellen’s best friend from season two onwards, is portrayed as a dazzling Hollywood nymphet, materialistic and without discernible scruples or high morals – a satirical comment on women’s role in the film industry, in which they must always appear eager to please and climb the social ladder by embodying the image men desire to see. Paige plays by the rules of Hollywood. Her looks and her lack of socio-political or artistic concerns enable her to succeed in her plan of becoming a scriptwriter with her own office and a (male) receptionist. While personal values remain the decisive factors for Ellen’s choices, Paige’s capitalist and consumerist attitude conforms to a very different notion of femininity. Paige’s radiant femininity and sexuality contrast with and thus highlight Ellen’s conspicuous lack of exhaustive gender and sexual inscriptions. Ellen’s long-term friendship with Adam provides a different touchstone for her characterization and a seedbed for subsequent interpretations. Their close relationship raised suspicions about the possibility of them becoming lovers, especially since a number of episodes implicitly linked the failure of their half-hearted attempts at dating others to the closeness of their friendship. In ‘The Sleep Clinic’ (2.18), Ellen has recurring erotic dreams about Adam, which lead her to thoroughly reconsider their attachment. However, the power balance between these two characters subverted traditional male/female gender binarisms and rather ‘point[ed] out that feminine and masculine economies are never fully separable; as a result, it seems, relations of contiguity subsist[ed] between those two economies’ (Butler 1993: 47). The juxtaposition of Ellen, the main caretaker, breadwinner, Adam’s advisor and protector, and Adam, who was easily intimidated, passive and longing for comfort, exemplified a ‘relational point of view suggesting that what the person is, and, indeed, what gender is, is always relative to the constructed relations in which it is determined’ (Butler 1990: 10). A major source of humour in the show was its turning upside down of traditional gender assumptions. This was predominantly staged by the unlikely couple – the tomboy Ellen and the ‘chicken’ Adam. When Ellen, for example, due to her lack of composure, grace and elegance fails to become a ballet dancer (‘Ballet Class’ 2.16), Adam, due to his expertise in classical ballet, becomes her teacher, exposing the ‘feminine’ qualities she apparently lacks. In turn, when Ellen wins the American Gladiator contest (‘Gladiators’ 2.19), while Adam does not even make it


into the first round, their gender ambiguity guarantees hilarious scenes which both highlight and undermine gender dichotomies, offering multiple identification positionings for viewers, even if one believes ‘that spectators naturally identify with one or the other group of textimages, one or the other textual zone, female or male, according to their gender’ (de Lauretis 1984: 141). Adam’s and Ellen’s close relationship, moreover, appeared to be based on their complementary idiosyncrasies and their differences. Still, it clearly was not their sexual difference that drew them together, but being different with regards to the expectations that follow ‘[t]he presumption of a binary gender system [which] implicitly retains the belief in a mimetic relation of gender to sex whereby gender mirrors sex or is otherwise restricted by it’ (Butler 1990: 6). In season two, Ellen’s and Adam’s solid or, rather, static relationship begins to be questioned, first by Paige and Audrey and later by Adam himself, who moves out of the flat because he thinks that Ellen limits his possibilities, both professionally and romantically. In the end, though, they have to admit that they need each other’s company; so Adam moves just across the hall. Nevertheless, his moving out can be seen as the first major break up of Ellen’s narrative pattern. Before, the living room was the place they shared, now it is Ellen’s alone. The show’s focus consequently shifts from the twosome to Ellen. In ‘Hello, I Must Be Going’ (3.40), Adam leaves for London, where he has been offered a job. This episode finally puts an end to the viewer’s speculation on the possibility of Ellen and Adam becoming lovers. Ironically, though, Adam, feeling safe because he is about to leave, declares his romantic feelings for Ellen, proving the viewers’ suspicion of the erotic undercurrents of their relationship to be true, at least on his side. Ellen, unable to deal with this unbalanced situation and feeling safe because Adam is on the verge of leaving, claims to share his feelings. Yet, since his flight is postponed, she subsequently has to reveal this as untrue. This episode highlights both her desire for harmony and an everincreasing lack of romantic commitment. After this dramatic end of the show’s previous narrative pattern, which erases the possibility of a romance between Ellen and Adam, the storylines of the following 35 episodes do not feature any love interests for the protagonist. Although in the first two seasons Ellen’s dates perpetually turn out to be failures, they provide a central topos for humorous situations since the dates usually do not work out for ridiculous reasons. In most cases, her dates are terminated due to misunderstandings, misinterpretations and mis-recognitions. Although this

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narrative pattern adheres to the genre’s usual repetitive and circular narrative formula, where ‘the character network . . . is a kind of solar system with the characters like planets in specific and unchanging orbits’ (Walker 2000: 96), in the case of Ellen they gained specific meaning. Their repetitive occurrence on the one hand prevented dramatic changes that a serious romantic relationship would have implied. On the other hand, ‘as a process of materialization that stabilizes over time to produce the effect of boundary, fixity and surface’ (Butler 1993: 9), the missing romantic attachment left little room for suspicions concerning Ellen’s sexuality. She might have appeared to be a tomboy, a ‘butch’, non-‘femme’, but her sexuality became fixed as heterosexual. She became identifiable as straight and thus adhered to ‘the structuralist law that divides and bounds the sexes by virtue of their dyadic differentiation within the heterosexual matrix’ (ibid.: 11).

Separating Ellen from Ellen Instead of presenting narratives concerning Ellen’s dating problems, subsequent episodes even more began to jar with characteristics of plots as ‘a concerted plan for the accomplishment of some purpose . . . the realization of a blocked and resisted desire [and plots as] intentional structures, goal oriented and forward-moving’ (Brooks 1984: 12). Although, as mentioned before, it is characteristic of sitcoms to present circular rather than forward-moving narratives, Ellen’s role as protagonist continued to rest on her being an observer and a confidante, but ultimately an outsider in her peer group. The main storylines thus challenged narrative assumptions that ‘not only is a question . . . always a question of desire; a story too is always a question of desire’ (de Lauretis 1984: 263). At least in the case of Ms Morgan, it was the deficiency of her desires and goals which became increasingly prominent. Hence, on the diegetic level of the show, Ellen’s agency and force became problematic; her ‘competence [meaning] the determination or will . . . to proceed to action, the power or possibility, and the knowledge or skill necessary to execute the aim’ (Bal 1985: 33) were questioned. In the show’s opening sequence, where Ellen and Ellen seemed to merge, however, Ellen’s authority was continuously highlighted, and the link and the tension between the fictional and the real world were further emphasized. In the fourth season, for example, Ellen’s search for a new title song and introductory clip for ‘her show’ as she put it became a running joke. Hence, for the viewer, the question concerning the commanding voice of the sitcom apparently became visible. Ellen was not


only the protagonist, but also in charge of other aspects of the show, her show. While the series’ stories presented the character of Ellen as insecure, inoffensive and ineffective, the sitcom’s teasers pointed to the power and celebrity status achieved by the actress. Instead of an extradiegetic theme song,1 guest stars, accompanied by Ellen and sometimes by other members of the cast doing physical comedy, performed their version of the song in front of the camera or simply introduced the show in their own manner. The playfulness with regard to the fragmented border of fiction and reality was further strengthened by numerous guest appearances of celebrities, such as Carrie Fisher, Neil Young, Mary Tyler Moore, Sheryl Crow, Anne Rice, as themselves. The growing number of extra gimmicks spicing up the show also resulted from the limited storylines, however, which Ellen’s suspicious withdrawal from any romantic involvement had brought about. It looked as if the stories possible in the show had come to a halt, and the red herrings and diversions were simply trying to cover up this scantiness. The documentary The Real Ellen Story (1998) confirms that Ellen’s coming-out episode had already been planned at that stage, but because of Disney’s and ABC’s commercial concerns, it kept being postponed. As Ellen DeGeneres explained in an interview with Larry King: Every year we went back we were still looking for what the show was. Nobody could figure out what it was. We didn’t have a point of view. It was focusing more and more on me. We changed cast members and it was always focused on my character Ellen Morgan. But Ellen Morgan didn’t date . . . There were a few dating shows. And they wanted me to date more. And the . . . I didn’t want to date and it’s funny because this year I wanted to date, they said why do you have to date. (DeGeneres 1998) Nevertheless, the fourth season was also replete with hints at Ellen’s change of sexual orientation. In the first scene of the season’s first episode ‘Give Me Equity or Give Me Death’ (4.01) she sings the famous West Side Story song ‘I Feel Pretty’ in the bathroom. With greasy, spiky hair and toothpaste all over her face she passionately chants: ‘I feel pretty and witty and . . .’ just when the word ‘gay’ is about to be uttered, the water stops running and she says ‘hey’ instead, thereby ironically stressing the missing word and its implications. In the same episode, in which Ellen is looking for a new home, an event which in itself indicates a change of direction for the protagonist’s life, the estate agent showing her around is suddenly unable to locate her. Ellen steps out of

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a closet door with the words: ‘I was in the closet’, this slang term, suggesting the concealment of a gay identity, being unambiguously expressed in the past tense. In ‘Splitsville, Man’ (4.03), her parents tell her about their decision to get divorced. Unable to cope with this situation she flees to her favourite refuge, the O in the Hollywood sign overlooking L.A. It is striking that, of all places, this well-known emblem of the world’s dream factory is presented as the place where she can contemplate her life. In contrast to her flat, which before was established as the location of introspection and the search for the truth, this site, with its associations of a theatrical performance of identities, clearly hints at an opening up of the spatially and semantically closed narrative space. When her parents find her, she tells them: ‘What if it turned out that my whole life had been built on a lie and, say, I’d been lllle..fthanded.’ As the actress Ellen DeGeneres clarifies, it was not the writers’ original intention to have these teasers running for the whole season: The teasing was supposed to be just a few episodes and then I thought the coming out episode was bound to air maybe episode 10, something like that. It just – we never got the OK. It just kept getting pushed back and back, and the story leaked out way in advance before anybody – we didn’t want to leak – we wanted the teases to make the audience look every week and wonder if we were going in the direction it seemed it was going. So the teasing and the jokes got kind of monotonous because it was: we know what she’s doing. (DeGeneres 1998) At the time when those episodes were aired, actress Ellen DeGeneres embarked on a promotion tour for her new CD. As she explained, rumours that her character was coming out as gay had already been spread in Hollywood. Instead of answering or confirming these speculations, she was joking around, in accordance with her character in the show. Appearing on Conan O’Brien’s, Jay Leno’s and Larry Sander’s late night shows, her comments ranged from saying there was a new character called Les Bian in the show to joking about discovering that she was Lebanese or making ambiguous remarks concerning the gender of Ellen Morgan’s next love interest. The tabloid coverage was immense and the mingling of fiction and reality, character and actress complete. The fervour and apparent uneasiness with which the media speculated on Ellen Morgan’s and Ellen DeGeneres’s sexuality and insisted on knowing ‘the truth’ can be linked to the threatening insight that homosexuality


might otherwise go unnoticed or, in the case of the protagonist, that it might have gone unnoticed. Thus, Ellen’s ‘confession’ was demanded because ‘while the cultural enterprise of reading homosexuality must affirm that the homosexual is distinctly and legibly marked, it must also recognize that those markings have been, can be, or can pass as, unremarked and unremarkable’ (Edelmann 1993: 7). Finding out the ‘hidden truth’ of Ellen’s sexuality was thus in accordance with society’s desire ‘to differentiate categorically between heteroand homo-sexualities, [which serves] the dominant heterosexual principle of an essential (and oppositional) identity while homosexuality would introduce difference or heterogeneity into what passes for the same’ (ibid.: 14). Once the questions concerning Ellen’s sexuality had been raised, the issue of lesbianism, historically rather silenced than acknowledged, was brought into public discourse. The uncertainty resulting from Ellen’s refusal to comment directly on the speculations became unbearable and reverberated in the continuous public request for clarification: ‘It is one thing to be erased from discourse, and yet another to be present within discourse as an abiding falsehood. Hence, there is a political imperative to render lesbianism visible, but how is that to be done outside or through existing regulatory regimes’ (Butler 1991: 20). In a heteronormative discourse, the growing awareness of the subversive potential of homosexuality as a universal option needs to be answered with a representation and articulation of homosexuality as being explicitly different from the heteronormative order. It is no coincidence that the word ‘out’ in the terms ‘coming out’ or ‘outing’ highlights the demand for visibility, for unveiling a supposedly hidden fact, for a verbalization of the truth: ‘When Lacan recalls the passion for unveiling which has one object: the truth . . . it is always in order to link the truth to the power of speech. And to the power of communication as a contract (sworn faith)’ (Derrida 1988: 197). With Ellen’s reluctance to give in to the pressure of ‘speaking the truth’, of adhering to the contract of communication, and the media coverage and hype, the anticipation of the character’s coming out in the show increased. The code named ‘Puppy Episode’ finally was scheduled, and ABC and Disney Productions admitted its subject matter to be Ellen’s disclosure of her homosexuality. Vance DeGeneres, Ellen’s brother and producer of the show, explains the strange title: ‘Somebody suggested that maybe Ellen should get a puppy . . . People like puppies, so maybe they will warm up to the whole lesbian thing more, if they know Ellen has a puppy’ (Bailey and Barbato 1998). However, with all this leaking of information long before the episode was aired, there was

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a public outcry the likes of which American television had never seen before. While GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) asked supporters of Ellen’s coming out to send waffle mixes to Disney to stop them from waffling about and urge them to air the episode, hundreds of Disney products were sent back to the company with letters claiming the cuddly toys to be the work of the devil (ibid). Waiting for the executives’ okay for the coming-out episode, the people responsible for the sitcom narratives turned the focus away from Ellen Morgan’s sexual inclinations in the fourth season. However, Ellen DeGeneres’ real-life romance with actress Anne Heche, perceived as one of the most promising Hollywood beauties at that time, increasingly came into the public spotlight and guaranteed the viewers’ continuous attention to developments in the show’s approach to the subject matter of lesbianism and its threatening implications for the heteronormative order. Public demonstrations and summons to boycott not only the show, but ABC, Disney Productions and its products turned the sitcom into a massively controversial socio-political phenomenon. Before the ‘Puppy Episode’ was aired, Ellen even had made it onto the cover of Time Magazine, with the headline: ‘Yep. I’m gay.’ Ellen and Anne Heche made headlines in the tabloid press by publically appearing as a couple, attending the White House Correspondants’ Dinner, and also being guests on the Oprah Winfrey talk show.

Ellen and Susan: love is on the air With all the media frenzy surrounding Ellen, a recordbreaking number of 42 million viewers tuned in to see the ‘Puppy Episode’, despite the fact that some regional ABC companies, for example in Alabama, gave in to the conservative public morals and did not air the episode. Unlike the show’s usual 25-minute episodes, this episode is 50 minutes long. Moreover, contrary to all other episodes, the ‘Puppy Episode’ does not feature any teaser or opening song. Thus, the narrative design clearly differs from that of other episodes, which points to its significance. In the first scene, Ellen’s friends are waiting for her while she is getting ready for a date with an old (male) friend of hers, and urge her to hurry up: PAIGE: Ellen, are you coming out, or what? JOE: Yeah, quit jerking us around and come out already! ELLEN: What’s the big deal, I’ve got a whole hour.


This temporal and rhetorical blending of fiction and reality, of narrated and narrating time addresses the viewer’s knowledge, which goes beyond the narrated world of the sitcom and further postpones the revelation which everyone expects to see. When Ellen meets Richard (Steven Eckholdt), his boss Susan, played by actress Laura Dern, intrudes upon their amicable conversation. Right from the start it is evident that the two women have the same sense of humour, a fact which soon leads to the exclusion of Ellen’s original date from their conversation. After having said goodbye to Susan, Ellen agrees to follow Richard into his hotel room, where he tries to make a pass at her. Distressed by this overstepping of their friendship’s boundary, she leaves. At this point she bumps into Susan, who invites her into her room. After some misunderstandings concerning the reasons why neither of the women feels attracted to Richard, Susan declares that she is gay, adding that she is sure that Ellen is gay too. Jumping up from the sofa on which the two of them are sitting and exhibiting tense body language that dramatizes her sense of discomfort, Ellen tries to distance herself from the woman whom she before referred to as her mirror image. Ellen’s shock is further underlined by the fact that she absurdly keeps putting ice cubes into an empty cup while accusing Susan: SUSAN: Ellen, ehm, the ice . . . ELLEN: Ice. Yes. I know. Heterosexuals like ice. ... ELLEN: You know it’s funny, because I think I know what’s going on, it’s not enough for you to be gay, you gotta recruit others, you know. SUSAN: Yeah, I’ll call national headquarters and tell them I lost you. Damn, just one more and I would have gotten that toaster oven. ELLEN: What is that? Gay humour? ‘Cause I don’t get it. That’s how un-gay I am. Ellen is looking for difference; her internalized homophobia demands a separation from character signs which could be read as homosexual. Nevertheless, Ellen’s commotion and damaged sense of self becomes evident when she leaves Susan, going instantly to Richard. ELLEN: I’ll show you who’s gay. [Knocks on Richard’s door] RICHARD [opens the door, surprised]: Ellen! [Ellen grabs him and kisses him passionately] I thought you didn’t want to rush into things?

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ELLEN: That’s why I left for a minute. [She pushes him into the room, still embracing him, and closes the door with her foot] COMMERCIAL BREAK At this point the audience is confused. Was not this episode supposedly about Ellen’s coming out as gay? This confusion is picked up after the commercial break, when Ellen gives two different accounts of what happened during that night. First, she tells her friends that she was ‘so turned on from him being a man and [her] not being one’ (4.22), an account that is narrated with a camera editing that jumps between showing scenes from the previous night at Richard’s hotel room and the bookstore where her friends listen to her story. With a voice-over by Ellen, the scenes set in the hotel room depict a passionate sexual encounter between her and Richard, with Ellen as the active partner, which ends in a stereotypical manner with the two of them smoking. When Audrey’s voice-over reminds her (and the viewer) that she does not smoke, Richard and Ellen flip away the cigarettes and put a chewing gum into their mouths instead, which suggests that what was shown before was an unreliable account. Indeed, since most viewers are familiar with Ellen’s character traits, her first account of the story must appear very unlikely even without her lie about smoking. Ellen’s second account of the events is narrated in a similar style (cutting in this case between the hotel room and her therapist’s consulting room), but this time Ellen tells her therapist what really happened: THERAPIST: And obviously you didn’t click with Richard? [Ellen shakes her head] Has there been anyone you felt you clicked with? [Ellen looks up] And what’s his name? ELLEN: Susan. Taking Ellen’s heterosexuality for granted the therapist voices what the viewers, at least without the previous media hype, would also presuppose. The question with its masculine reference thus points to the fact that one actually needs to reveal one’s homosexual inclinations. The protagonist’s first admittance of her romantic feelings for a woman is accompanied by the audible roaring applause of the audience in front of which this episode was taped and a smile on the face of the therapist, played by Oprah Winfrey, according to Time Magazine one of the 25 most influential people in the United States and host of a very popular talk show. Again, fiction and reality are difficult to separate, due to the


immense tabloid coverage building up to this declaration. Apart from Oprah Winfrey, other guest stars, among them Demi Moore, K. D. Lang, Billy Bob Thornton and Gina Gershon, testify to the significance of this episode, not only for the sitcom’s story world, but also for the cultural climate in America. The second scene of this episode, which can be considered the real coming out, takes place at the airport, from where Ellen thinks Susan is leaving. The location gains special significance since it is a place of departure and arrival, of transition: Ellen leaves the confines of her home and becomes a ‘mobile person . . . who has the right to cross the border’ (Lotman 1977: 238). After telling Susan that she ‘did get the joke about the toaster oven’ she finds it very difficult to say the words that the audience has long expected: This is so hard. But I think I’ve realized that I am . . . I can’t even say the word. Why can’t I say the word, I mean why can’t I just say . . . I mean what is wrong, why do I have to be so ashamed, why can’t I just see the truth, I mean, be who I am, I’m thirty-five years old . . . I’m so afraid to tell people. I mean, I’m just . . . Susan . . . [Ellen turns back towards Susan, putting one hand on the counter thereby accidentally on the switch for the public address system, broadcasting the words to everyone at the gate to hear] I’m gay. Again, while Susan embraces her, cheering and applause erupt from the studio audience, this time even louder and more prolonged. Furthermore, the fact that these words are uttered through the airport’s public address system humorously underlines the poignancy of this moment. The long ‘hidden truth’ of Ellen is out in public, creating ‘a major night in television history . . . Maybe in the history of culture’ (DeGeneres 1998).

Come out, don’t come back After telling her friends and her parents in the next two episodes, the fourth season of Ellen ends. It is interesting to see though that apparently for most of the audience the scene at the airport was the last before the sitcom’s collapse, as the actress Ellen observes: ‘Everyone thinks that was our final episode. We had two more shows after that I really liked a lot, which is telling my parents’ (DeGeneres 1998). The reason for this loss of interest can be linked to the termination of the ongoing speculation which had for many viewers become the major point of interest.

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Once the truth about Ellen had been unveiled in the ‘Puppy Episode’, the appeal of the show suffered and when the show returned for its fifth season, only 12 million people tuned in. The decreasing interest could thus be ascribed to Ellen’s coming out, which through its seeming border crossing allegedly brought the whole narrative to a halt: Once the agent has crossed a border, [s]he enters into a semantic field, an ‘anti-field’ vis-a-vis the initial one. If movement is to cease, [s]he has to merge with the field, to be transformed from a mobile into an immobile persona . . . [S]he crosses the border separating ‘this world’ from ‘that world’. It is the border itself that is associated with the greatest dangers . . . For this very reason as soon as a man in love gets married, as soon as insurrectionists are victorious or mortals die [or homosexuals come out], the movement of the plot comes to a halt. (Lotman 1977: 241) Replacing the endlessly circular story patterns typical of the genre, the protagonist’s discovery of her homosexuality now appeared to have been the show’s whole narrative accomplishment. Once the dichotomy of heterosexuality and homosexuality could be erected again, evidently clarified by the protagonist beginning to date a woman, the show, in the public opinion, became ‘too gay’, too politicized and issue-oriented and thus less funny, allegedly excluding many ‘heterosexual’ viewers: ‘Robert Iger, the president of ABC . . . said, the sitcom played poorly with mainstream audiences because it explored the homosexuality of the lead character every week’ (DeGeneres 1998). So, were the reasons for the fifth season’s unpopularity to be found in its alleged violation of the genre’s narrative conventions? Ellen’s coming out apparently was seen as the decisive ‘movement of the plot, the event, the crossing of that forbidden border which the plotless structure [of sitcoms] establishes . . . the revolutionary element in relation to the world picture’ (Lotman 1977: 238). The world picture revealed by this reception clearly demonstrates the fear homosexuality causes due to its potential to penetrate the borders of various semantic fields, thus countering the world mapping by which every given person, just as he or she was necessarily assignable to a male or female gender, was now considered necessarily assignable as well to a homo- or hetero-sexuality, a binarized identity that was full of implications, however confusing, for even the ostensibly least sexual aspects of personal existence. (Sedgwick 1990: 2)


After Ellen’s coming out, the category of homosexuality became the primary prism through which the show was perceived. Ellen Morgan’s ‘outness’ marked even those aspects of the show that did not touch upon the subject matter. The sudden controversy over Ellen, culminating in the parental advisory warning before several episodes in the fifth season, does not find an adequate explanation in its ‘dealing with holding hands or having a five-second kiss’ (DeGeneres 1998), but rather in the growing difficulty to separate the story world of Ellen from the public persona of Ellen DeGeneres and in viewing homosexuality as an identity determining every single action. Although the stories of the fifth season still involved plots concerning the other, straight characters of the ensemble, and although the character of Ellen Morgan did not change in any other significant respect, the depiction of her homosexuality changed the reception dramatically. Before, her gender ambiguity and increasing lack of romantic/sexual inclinations left endless identification positionings open; her altered sexual preference seemed to demand a thorough reconsideration. Before the controversial episode was aired, US Vice President Al Gore had predicted ‘that people will see that Ellen the perceived heterosexual was not at all that different from Ellen the announced homosexual . . . For once you realize that the object of your loathing is pretty much like you, hate becomes difficult’ (Gore 1997). This prognosis was proven wrong. Rather, the confrontation with Ellen’s sameness, despite her purported difference, obviously was too much to take and its threatening potential for subverting binary notions of heterosexual and homosexual characteristics had to be countered by putting a warning sign on this show. This strategy exhibits the cultural imperative to produce, for purposes of ideological regulation, a putative difference [which would] otherwise count as the same if sexual identity were not now interpreted as an essence installed in the unstable space between sex and the newly articulated category of sexuality or sexual orientation. (Edelmann 1993: 10) Within the sitcom’s diegesis, Ellen the perceived heterosexual was not all that different from the announced homosexual, because ‘homosexual’ narratives are not all that different from heterosexual ones. Therefore, the difference needed to be visualized in another way. Unlike in the sitcom Will and Grace, where the gay characters have been marked as such right from the start, thus communicating the difference which allows heterosexual viewers to watch as voyeurs from a supposedly

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clear-cut distance,2 Ellen’s character, by coming out as gay after the sitcom’s narratives initially established her as heterosexual, did not remain in her specific orbit. Her mobility transgressed Western culture’s semantic borders and turned traditional notions of what is normal and what is marginal upside down. Consequently, her declaration of being a lesbian was seen as a betrayal of a narrative contract, undermining dichotomies of either/or, inside/outside, fiction/truth, hidden/revealed, difference/sameness. Hence, the narrative progression of Ellen in its fifth season demanded a willingness to accept the fluidity and instability of any identity and to rethink preconceived notions of sexual identities, but ‘when the difference is [culturally viewed as] absolute and mutually exclusive dialogue becomes impossible’ (Lotman 1990: 143). The actress’s and character’s attempt at liberation was countered by ‘the need to construe such an emblem of homosexual difference that will securely situate that difference within the register of visibility’ (Edelmann 1993: 11) by way of the warning sign along with the voice-over of heteronormative authority. The opening scene of ‘The Fix Up’ (2.06), long before the coming-out episode was conceived, retrospectively appears to have been prophetic in its dramatization of a liberatory moment that is countered by the patriarchal voice of authority: The establishing shot shows the opening door of an elevator. Ellen, shorthaired, wearing a vest, sneakers and a pair of jeans, stands in the elevator next to a businesswoman wearing a miniskirt and a pearl necklace. The song Respect, sung by Aretha Franklin, is apparently transmitted through the loudspeakers of the lift. Ellen is moving her head in time with the music. As soon as the other woman gets off, Ellen starts dancing, becoming less and less inhibited whilst also miming the significant lyrics of the song: R-E-S-P-E-C-T Find out what it means to me R-E-S-P-E-C-T Take care, TCB Oh (sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me) A little respect (sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me) Whoa, babe (just a little bit) A little respect (just a little bit). When her dancing becomes wilder and she starts jumping around, all of a sudden a new gaze is introduced: the perspective of the surveillance camera placed in the upper-right corner of the elevator. The change of point of view is emphasized by a new picture quality, that is a change to black-and-white and to a grainy video aesthetic. Then we hear a filtered male voice from the off: ‘Excuse me, Ma’am. This is the security service. Please refrain from jumping in the elevator.’ Startled by the


voice, Ellen looks up into the camera, only now discovering it, then turns away from its relentless gaze, additionally shielding her face with her left hand. The contrast between Ellen’s boyish clothes and the conformist feminine style of the other woman, her increasingly passionate impersonation of the song with its self-confident demand for respect, and the ultimate denial of this demand by the surveilling patriarchal gaze and the authorative voice could hardly anticipate more clearly what happened to the sitcom in its fifth season. What follows from all this is that homosexuality can be narrated today, but it needs to be clearly established and visualized as such. It must be presented and narrated as different from heterosexuality right from the start in order to remain distinguishable and controllable in the conventions that the heteronormative order prescribes and licenses. Notes 1 2

Cf. ‘You know I’m close, I’ll always keep my promises. I’ll always listen when you talk to me, and I’ll always hear you.’ Possible reasons for the success of Will and Grace ‘despite’ its focus on gay characters, including its conventional camp humour and the fact that its stereotypical depiction of male homosexuality fits better into the capitalist, consumer-oriented targeting of TV shows, would need to be explored further.

References Bailey, F. and R. Barbato (1998) The Real Ellen Story. Bravo Television Network. Bal, M. (1985) Narratology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bordwell, D. (1985) Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Brooks, P. (1984) Reading for the Plot. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge. ——(1991) ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination’. In D. Fuss (ed.), inside/out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories. New York: Routledge, 13–32. ——(1993) Bodies That Matter. New York: Routledge. DeGeneres, E. (1998) Interview with Larry King. Larry King Live. CNN, 12 May 1998. De Lauretis, T. (1984) Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Derrida, J. (1988) ‘The Purveyor of Truth’. In J. P. Muller and W. J. Richardson (eds), The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading. Baltimore/ London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 173–213. Edelmann, L. (1993) Homographesis: Essays in Gay Literature and Cultural Theory. New York: Routledge. Gore, A. (1997) ‘Interview with The Hollywood Radio and Television Society’. 16 October 1997. Lotman, J. (1977) The Structure of the Artistic Text. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Dirk Schulz 187 ——(1990) Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Sedgwick, E. K. (1990) Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press. Walker, C. (2000) ‘A Funny Business: Producing Situation Comedy’. In E. VoigtsVirchow (ed.), Mediated Drama, Dramatized Media. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 95–100.


Part IV (Re)Narrating History


10 History and Biography in Die zweite Heimat: Narrative Strategies to Represent the Past Sandra Heinen and Stefan Deines*

Introduction In many ways the TV series Die zweite Heimat (1993)1 does not correspond to the typical TV series as outlined in the introductory chapter of this volume. The main differences involve the narrative structure of the series and the circumstances of its production. 1 Narrative Structure. Die zweite Heimat is not potentially endless. The number of episodes is limited to 13 from the start by the series’ subtitle Chronik einer Jugend in 13 Filmen [‘Chronicle of Youth (= a Generation) in 13 Films’]. Furthermore the evolution of events over the course of the series is much more important than the outcome of individual episodes, and it is impossible to speak of formulaic or repetitive plot patterns. Thus, it can be looked at as a mini-series. Another difference between Die zweite Heimat and other series discussed in this volume is this series’ refusal to submit to classic programming slots: each episode is longer than an average feature film, and the individual episodes also have different running times of between 100 and 131 minutes. Additionally, since Die zweite Heimat is a European coproduction made for public broadcasting channels, its narrative structure does not integrate breaks for commercials. 2 Production procedures. Die zweite Heimat also differs from other TV series in its mode of production. Much more than most other series,

* We would like to thank Marc Colavincenzo for his invaluable help with this chapter. 191

192 History and Biography in Die zweite Heimat

it is the result of the ideas and efforts of one man: Edgar Reitz not only wrote the script, but also directed and produced the series. This accumulation of executive power cannot be neglected since it has influenced the form of the series and has also had a strong impact on its reception. Through his films and as one of the signers of the Oberhausen Manifesto,2 Reitz has influenced the development of German postwar cinema and the ‘New German Film’ of the 1960s. It is characteristic of the ‘New German Film’ that the author has enhanced control over the filming. One person is responsible for different aspects of such an ‘Autorenfilm’ (auteur film): usually the director is also the scriptwriter, and he additionally takes over the financing in order to guarantee his artistic independence. By analogy, Die zweite Heimat can be seen as an ‘auteur series’, which shows a relative freedom from the usual restrictions on TV formats. These points are of course interdependent: Reitz presumably only got the chance to undertake such a project because he was already a wellknown director; and only under such generous conditions would he have agreed to work for television at all. To fully understand the emergence of the specific format of Die zweite Heimat one has to look at the time when its predecessor Heimat (1984) was filmed. In the 1980s the German public television channels felt a growing pressure from the increasing number of competing commercial channels and the widespread use of VCRs, where an abundance of American feature films was readily available. The German public broadcasting networks ARD and ZDF tried to stay in competition by offering large-scale productions of a high aesthetic standard. Series episodes of feature-film length allowed for the presentation of complex stories within a broad narrative framework liberated from cinematic limits on discourse time. Edgar Reitz’s mini-series Heimat could show the development of a whole village over a time span of 63 years in 11 episodes because it had a total running time of 15 hours and 24 minutes. Thematically Heimat might be thought of as the German response to the American dramatization of the Third Reich in the very successful TV mini-series Holocaust (1978).3 In fact Reitz criticized Holocaust for its oversimplification of complex historical events and for its overt and stereotypical emotional appeal. Holocaust focuses on the victims of the Third Reich and the persecution of the Jews, depicting the experiences of the fictitious Weiss family. Heimat, by contrast, tries to reconstruct the perspective of the German rural population on the events of the times: it tells the story of the inhabitants of the fictitious village

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Schabbach. Heimat experiments with the possibilities of telling history ‘from below’ by concentrating on the villagers’ unspectacular everyday life. In contrast to Holocaust, Heimat prevents easy identification with the characters by showing polydimensional individuals instead of types. This sort of complex historical reconstruction enables viewers to compare the events depicted with their own experiences, and so the actual reconstruction of the past takes place in the process of the viewers’ reception of the series.4 Whereas Heimat is concerned with those people who remain firmly integrated in the network of a traditional community, Die zweite Heimat tells the story of a group of people who try to rid themselves of the influences of their social background by creating a ‘Heimat’ of their own choice. The linking figure between the two series is Hermann Simon, the son of Heimat’s main protagonist Maria Simon, who leaves Schabbach in order to study in Munich. While Hermann is of minor importance for Heimat, he becomes the main protagonist of Die zweite Heimat. Although Die zweite Heimat picks up on some events from Heimat, it cannot be called a sequel but rather appears to be an insert, with the story time of Heimat ranging from 1919 to 1982 and the story time of Die zweite Heimat starting in 1960 and ending in 1970.5 This of course underlines the fact that the two series complement one another. Die zweite Heimat shows a change of perspective, which is most prominently marked by the shift from country to city and by the replacement of protagonists who experienced the Second World War by their children, who belong to the so-called postwar generation. Although it is not the focus of this article, it is important to keep in mind that the intertextual and complementary relationship with Heimat is an important factor in the narrative strategy of reconstructing the past in Die zweite Heimat and that neither series ever claims to tell the only (hi)story possible.

Die zweite Heimat as a representation of the past A central concern of Die zweite Heimat is a representation of the past different from those forms of historiography which look at objective facts and important political events. In Die zweite Heimat this is replaced by a more private and comprehensible presentation of historical events in an attempt to make the audience relive the past. Most of the structural and narrative features of the series serve this new form of historical representation. Not only in the selection of events narrated and in the angle from which they are told does Die zweite Heimat differ radically


from other methods of depicting history, but also in the way it relates fact to fiction. These narrative strategies shape a certain view of history and offer new possibilities for its (re)construction.

‘Chronik einer Jugend’ – a portrait of student life in the 1960s The era dealt with in the 13 episodes is the 1960s. The setting is Western Germany, for the most part Munich. Die zweite Heimat offers a regional and temporally limited view of history, presented from the viewpoint of a specific generation, already indicated by the series’ subtitle – ‘chronicle of Youth (= a Generation)’. Unlike Heimat, which showed Maria Simon’s whole life, the narrative of Die zweite Heimat focuses on a particular phase of life. The protagonists are about 20 years old at the beginning of the narrative; they are all in the Munich art scene and form a circle of friends that includes students of music, young filmmakers and budding writers. These are the social surroundings Hermann finds himself in after having left his home village Schabbach to study music. For the protagonists, just as for the Federal Republic of Germany, the 1960s was an important time during which the course was set in many ways: the postwar generation was attempting to emancipate itself from the generation of the fathers and from tradition in order to shape an identity and future of its own (cf. Reitz 1993b: 156). The history of the FRG is mediated in Die zweite Heimat through a variety of separate (hi)stories: there is the story of a circle of friends and therefore a particular generation and social milieu, the story of the development of avant-garde music and of the Young German Film, and the stories and biographies of the individual protagonists. This framework offers a complex interplay between individual histories and collective history. Die zweite Heimat paints a portrait of the FRG in the 1960s which lays claim to authenticity in a special way. Authenticity is not created by strictly adhering to historical source material, but rather through staging fictional biographies which exemplify the way people lived, felt and worked in the 1960s. It is not the facts and dates, but a specific space of experience that is shown, which contains possible personal experiences and memories of that decade.6 The fictional biographies are staged in a highly realistic setting. The décor, costumes and props represent the chosen social group in detail. The car models, the music, and even the underwear worn by the actors: everything is ‘real’. In addition, the use of historical documentation enhances the impression of authenticity. Through television, radio and


newspaper the news of the important social and political events of the times such as the building of the Berlin Wall or of the first lunar landing are brought in. The ‘great history’ is mirrored in the private sphere – but without dominating it or exerting a direct influence on the protagonists’ lives. Nevertheless the historical frame is more than just a backdrop for the private lives. The individuals’ lives are heavily influenced by the themes and problems of the time, such as the student movement or the contraceptive pill. The realist décor, the use of authentic historical documentation, and the subjects discussed by the students illustrate the historical changes of the 1960s. The rising hemlines of skirts, the substitution of the more familiar Du for the formal term of address Sie, the disappearance of men’s ties, the increasing presence of drugs, and the prominence of Marxist theory – all of these do not simply inform us about arbitrary changes in contemporary fashion, but are a sign of more fundamental changes in the intellectual climate. Even the details of language and clothing reflect the revolutionary Zeitgeist and the search for emancipation, which ultimately lead to the early RAF-terrorism occurring in the last episode of Die zweite Heimat. Historical changes crisscross with the protagonists’ personal developments in Die zweite Heimat, and the characters do not experience historical changes objectively but from the subjective position of their lives and age. During the first half of the series historical changes and biographical developments reflect one another. The young students who have just come to live in the city of Munich take up the movement of renewal enthusiastically and participate in it actively. They strive to be avantgarde – both in their art and in their lives. From the midpoint of Die zweite Heimat, however, historical and biographical developments diverge increasingly. While the student movement’s fight for an open society goes on, the circle of friends disintegrates and the protagonists return to a more conventional approach to life. The otherwise quite open-minded Hermann, now a husband and father, is by 1968 simply too old for the group sex and drug experiments which he witnesses while visiting the notorious Kommune I in Berlin.

Narrative strategies to represent history (I): subjectivity The events recounted in Die zweite Heimat are not simply presented by an unobtrusive, implicit narrative agency, but are at times clearly mediated by a narrator. This is most obvious when at central moments of the narrative a voice-over narrator becomes audible. It is always a character


from the story who doubles as narrator, and at the beginning of almost every episode the pictures and diegetic sound are accompanied by such a narratorial voice presenting a subjective perspective on the events depicted. The pictures themselves are usually not marked as being subjective, but are filmed from varying perspectives, suggesting a neutral narrative agency. It is only through the voice-over commentary that they seem like subjective impressions. The voice-over narrators talk in the past tense about what is shown on the visual track, indicating a time gap between the events related and the act of narration so that the events on the story level appear to be remembered rather than experienced. A good example of the expositional marking of the events as memories is the third episode (‘Jealousy and Pride’/‘Eifersucht und Stolz’, 301): we see a group of people leaving a cemetery after a burial. A young woman, Evelyne, stays behind in order to go back to the grave, which is just being covered by two cemetery workers. While we see her hurrying to the grave, a voice-over spoken by a woman starts: In July 1961 my father died. He was only 42 years old. In the night before his funeral my life changed completely. I had loved my father very much. I had always been his confidante, even as a little girl. But despite this he had never told me that I wasn’t the child of the woman I had always thought of as my mother. At the beginning of the third sentence the visual track shows a close-up of Evelyne’s serious face. Because of thematic correlation (death and cemetery) and the synchrony between the visual presentation of Evelyne and the sound of the unknown female voice, the voice is identified as Evelyne’s. Her dating the events serves not so much for temporal placement as to underline the temporal gap between the moment of action and that of narration. The fact that Evelyne only mentions the month and the year but not the exact date suggests a time gap of several years. Thus, one of the main functions of the voice-over is to stress that the presentation of the past in Die zweite Heimat is based on subjective memory. This is also indicated by the overall time structure of the narrative. In the 13 episodes, 10 years of historical time are covered. Each episode should therefore deal with about nine months. The narrative speed with which events are told varies greatly, however. Episode six (‘Kennedy’s Children’/‘Kennedys Kinder’) shows only the events of a single day – 23 November 19637 – whereas episode 11 (‘Time of Silence’/‘Zeit des Schweigens’) covers a whole year from winter 1967/1968 to November


1968. The attention given to different events depends on the importance attached to them by the narrator. Additionally, more important events are not only told in greater detail, but are also dated more specifically either by voice-over commentary or by subtitles. In episode six the date of the events is mentioned five times in voice-over commentary (in scenes 602, 606, 611, 625 and 627), which indicates the significance of this date for the group of people remembering their past. In episode 11, which is initially dated with the subtitle ‘1967/1968’, the exact date for one day – although not given – can be inferred. All other events happen at unspecified moments in that year, only placed in time through their chronology. Looking at the sequence of episodes, one can observe that the earlier episodes tend to show events in more detail and refer to specific dates, whereas the later episodes are narrated faster, mostly looking at longer periods of time. The impression is that the earlier episodes depict key moments in the young students’ lives, while the later ones try to grasp the more general atmosphere of a certain span of time. This appears to reflect the interpretative effort of a remembering and narrating agency and can be related to the events being told: the first years in Munich are a time of revelation, exciting novelty and revolution for the students. Having left their home towns behind, they avidly take in everything related to their new life and are full of hope and enthusiasm. They are willing to make history. In the course of the events, however, nearly all of them choose at least temporarily a settled private life with family. Earlier high hopes are replaced by daily struggles for money and disillusionment in relationships. Things still change, but more slowly than they did before, and can therefore be compressed. The change in narrative speed and specificity in Die zweite Heimat can thus be viewed as mirroring the protagonists’ own perception of time. The fact that subjective memories play an important role in the presentation of the past in Die zweite Heimat is further highlighted by the stress placed on emotions, visions and dreams. Very often it is not facts that dominate memory but emotions, colours, melodies or other sensual perceptions. For instance, Clarissa remembers the day she had an illegal abortion mostly through smells, as she recounts in a voice-over commentary: I remember many smells of that day. The doctor in Rosenheim lived close to a pine forest. In the foggy air there was a smell of petrol and resin and rotting leaves. Four boys tried to push-start a vehicle. The exhaust fumes mixed with the smell of the dripping wet cobblestones


in front of the doctor’s house. At the garden gate there was a lamp smelling of charred electric wires, and a garbage bin stood there, whose fermented contents emanated sourish air. I passed the doctor’s garage: the smell of waste oil mixed with that of ivy and that of the withered roses by the house’s wall. Even the iron grille effused a smell. It smelled of rust and dampness. (‘Kennedy’s Children’, 631) Internal focalization is marked by voice-over commentary and camera perspective. A large number of point-of-view shots represent Clarissa’s visual perception. When her voice-over mentions the smell of the wet paving stones they are seen from a perspective that can only be attributed to Clarissa; while she talks of the garage the camera passes over a garage and moves towards an iron gate. The most striking use of the subjective camera, however, is in the abortion scene itself: images reproducing Clarissa’s viewpoint – showing her bare thighs and her hands dug into her jumper – alternate with close-ups of her contorted face. Both kinds of images try to represent Clarissa’s perspective, but whereas the point-of-view shots virtually reproduce her visual perception, the images of her face work as indices of the physical agony she is enduring. Occasionally even imaginary perceptions are represented visually in Die zweite Heimat, showing the character’s emotions or desires. On his first evening in Munich, Hermann’s enthusiasm is expressed visually. While he remarks in a voice-over commentary ‘I felt that I had set out on a long journey. I was freezing. But the sky above Munich was full of violins’, suddenly there are violins in the sky, illustrating the literal expression of his feelings (‘The Time of the First Songs’/‘Die Zeit der ersten Lieder’, 117). In episode six (‘Kennedy’s Children’) we see a point-of-view shot representing what is seen by the hungry Alex: in the centre of a black-and-white shot of a shop window coloured sausages call for attention. Represented dreams can also reveal psychological conditions as in ‘The Wedding’ (’Die Hochzeit’), which includes a long sequence (817–21) depicting the dreams of Hermann and Clarissa, whose mutual love will not be fulfilled since Hermann is about to marry another woman, Schnüßchen. In Die zweite Heimat psychological phenomena are as much part of the past as objective occurrences are; emotions turn into facts which are often more important than real events. The line between objective facts and subjective perceptions even becomes blurred occasionally. Especially in the last episode there is a variety of unrealistic occurrences which cannot always be identified as either reality or fantasy.8 Episode 13, which is tellingly named ‘Art or Life’ (‘Kunst oder Leben’), begins


with a scene from the Oktoberfest in Munich which is depicted in a distorted, unrealistic way: in the outside scenes the constantly moving camera focuses on the flashing lights of the fair and the soundtrack offers a cacophony of sounds. As Hermann enters a festival tent brimming with people, strange camera angles, mostly from below, blurred voices and fog give the impression that he is out of tune with reality. Hermann is no longer sure what is real and what is a dream. He utters his doubts in a voice-over in a scene just after he has been offered money for a sound studio of his own by a man called Zielke: ‘Herr Zielke seemed to be dreaming. Maybe the money of which he spoke was also only imaginary . . . Or it was the other way round, and the money was real but therefore I didn’t exist. I was a dream. My dream? Zielke’s dream?’ (1305, quoted from the film). Such an in-between state also occurs when Hermann is sitting opposite his younger self in a train, when his former friend Renate enters his train compartment dressed up as the embodiment of male sexual fantasies, or when he bumps into nearly every other character of the series in the time span of about seven days of the narrated time. He seems to be haunted by his past and its inhabitants to a degree that his former friends and acquaintances turn up wherever he goes: for instance, Hermann runs into his former lover Erika at the Oktoberfest; during his train journey, he shares a compartment with Frau Kruse, Renate and Elisabeth; Hermann enters a toilet on the train, which is occupied by the grandmother of another former lover; and looking out of the window of the train, he sees his ex-wife Schnüßchen and their daughter Lulu in a car. None of these encounters is impossible, but their accumulation gives them a touch of the unreal. It is therefore not always quite clear whether the scenes are to be read as an illustration of Hermann’s desires or simply as an unrealistic turn of the narrative. But not only do such (day)dreams occur; dreams of different people sometimes even mingle. A dream sequence in episode eight (‘The Wedding’) is introduced as Clarissa’s dream by a shot of her fast asleep in a train (816) before cutting to the actual dream (817). The contents of the dream, however, undermine the idea that it might be her dream, since it concerns a situation beyond her knowledge, something that Hermann, not Clarissa, has just experienced. The ensuing scenes show two dreams that cannot definitely be attributed to either Hermann or Clarissa (818, 819) and a dream which can only be Clarissa’s (821). With regard to the dreams of scenes 818 and 819 it is only the syntactic construction that suggests that they are Hermann’s dreams (scene 817 ends with a shot of him asleep) – something the viewers have just been


taught not to rely upon. The uncertain status of those two dreams is further enhanced by the fact that in both dreams Hermann and Clarissa meet in a realistic context and recount that they have dreamt of each other. At first sight one might accept the realistic frame and interpret the scenes as having really happened; this reading is, however, eventually undermined by renewed shots of both protagonists still fast asleep (820). All these examples illustrate that in Die zweite Heimat the experience, memory and telling of historical events are determined by a subjective point of view. As a consequence emotional states and desires are as much part of the story of the past as so-called facts. Die zweite Heimat does not attempt to give explanations or to show interrelations and coherence beyond the characters’ consciousness. Political events are only relevant for the presentation of the past if they are somehow directly connected to the private lives of the protagonists, which is plainly expressed by Hermann in episode 4 (‘Ansgar’s Death’/‘Ansgars Tod’, 402): We hardly took any notice of the world we lived in: the Russian Gargarin flew into space as the first human being ever; the Americans made fools of themselves in the Cuban Bay of Pigs . . . in Berlin they had built the wall; events of 1961. It was autumn. We friends in Munich felt above all the autumn melancholy.9

Narrative strategies to represent history (II): multiperspectivity Although Hermann is the narrator most frequently mediating the events, there are other narrators as well. Die zweite Heimat makes each of the friends in turn the centre of an episode: ‘The years in Munich are organized according to the friends [Hermann] meets there. Each of these characters is at the centre of one episode and the last, thirteenth episode is a kind of epilogue’ (Reitz 1993b: 157).10 The person at the centre of an episode is in most cases its narrator, with Hermann intervening occasionally in other characters’ episodes. Through this structuring a form of multiperspectivity is created which allows different versions of the past. Although the episodes never overlap temporally and therefore no real synchrony of perspectives is ever achieved, a similar effect is often created: at the end of episode seven (‘Christmas Wolves’/ ‘Weihnachtswölfe’) Clarissa has just left hospital after the illegal abortion which nearly killed her. She hides from her only relative, her mother, who is full of reproach because of the abortion, and spends Christmas Eve in Hermann’s cold, cheerless room. In stark contrast to Clarissa’s and Hermann’s attitude to Christmas, Schnüßchen starts


her voice-over commentary in episode eight by underlining her close relationship with her family and the importance of Christmas for her: ‘I couldn’t have imagined spending Christmas and New Year’s Day anywhere else than at home’ (802). Since Hermann and Schnüßchen are about to get married, the contrast between these two, on the one hand, and the similarity between Hermann and Clarissa, on the other, provide an obvious comment on the projected marriage. Although the principle of giving one person’s story per episode is not followed strictly, the general impression is one of changing perspectives. Such changes are first indicated by the titles: in the opening credits the series’ title (Die zweite Heimat) is not only followed by the individual episode’s title (for example ‘Two Strange Eyes’/‘Zwei fremde Augen’ in episode two) but also by a specification of perspective and date (Juan, 1960/61). In most cases the voice-over spoken by the focused character starts shortly after this subtitle. Sometimes a change in perspective is further indicated by a musical leitmotif. When the pianist Hermann’s point of view is shown, piano music dominates the soundtrack even when he is not playing on screen; similarly Clarissa’s perspective is frequently supported by cello music. This musical identification is a particularly useful tool for indicating a change in perspective within an episode. Even if perspectives do not overlap from one episode to another, they can do so within one episode. Simultaneity of different perceptions of one event is suggested above all in episodes five (‘The Game with Freedom’/‘Das Spiel mit der Freiheit’) and six (‘Kennedy’s Children’). Episode five depicts the beginning of the Munich riots in the summer of 1963. It is Helga’s episode, and consequently she starts commenting on the opening pictures from off-screen (501). But already the second scene shows Hermann, and his voice continues the retrospective comments (502). In the following scenes a dialogue develops between the off-screen commentators long before they eventually meet on screen. There is an impression of two people sitting together trying to reconstruct the first day of the riots while the things they remember are shown in alternation. Even though Helga and Hermann share the experience of intending no harm but ending up being attacked by the police, their reactions to injustice are contrasted: whereas Helga goes into hysterics and wants to change something, Hermann seeks refuge in the pose of the emotive artist. These differing reactions foreshadow their respective futures: Helga becomes a terrorist opposing the state’s despotic rule with all her might; Hermann, by contrast, turns away from the world’s problems to concentrate on his art.


The contrast in perspectives is even more apparent in episode six. The whole of this episode shows the events of a single day, the day of Kennedy’s assassination: Alex, Hermann, Schnüßchen and Clarissa take turns telling what they remember of that day. It soon becomes clear that although the day is remembered as the day of Kennedy’s death, it is not the assassination that is central for the characters; 23 November 1963 happens to be the day on which Alex finds 100 marks, Clarissa has her abortion, and Helga attempts suicide. Nonetheless, the assassination is intertwined with what happens to them on that day. For instance, Helga is rescued from death by Hermann and Stefan, who find her already unconscious when they go to tell her about the assassination. Alex summarizes this strange interrelation in his final commentary: ‘Kennedy’s death had three effects on us: we found Helga in time to save her from suicide. I had money in my pocket again. And the friends came together again after more than a year, like they did before’ (650).11 In episode six, the various perspectives show different attitudes towards the same event as well as how everyone is mainly preoccupied with his/her private affairs. Although the students are all shocked when they hear about the assassination, the political is always eclipsed by the private. Multiperspectivity is deliberately used at a point where the circle of friends is falling apart: no longer can one of them speak for the others. The splitting-up of the storyline into several individualized memories can also be interpreted as a general statement on the representation of the past. Episode six refuses to give one story or one interpretation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Instead, it shows a plurality of highly individualized stories trying to reconstruct the day within the tension between the private and the public.

Narrative strategies to represent history (III): anti-illusionism One of the most striking narrative features of Die zweite Heimat is the frequent alternation between scenes filmed in black-and-white and scenes filmed in colour. This alternation is probably due to technical considerations: since black-and-white film needs stark contrasts, whereas colour film is more suitable for low-light nuances, most night and indoor scenes are filmed in colour, most daytime outdoor scenes in black-and-white.12 But whatever the technical reasons, the alternation has a definite effect on viewers: it disturbs their illusion and prevents one from becoming immersed totally in the world of Die zweite Heimat by giving prominence to the materiality of the film. Every time there is


a change in colour one’s eyes have to readjust to the new situation and one is made aware of the fact that the film is an artefact rather than reality.13 A similar form of anti-illusionism is created by those unrealistic shots which illustrate the character’s emotions and desires, such as the violins in the Munich night sky (117) or when the photograph of Alex’s father suddenly starts to move and talk (602). By such means Die zweite Heimat combines an extremely detailed and realistic reconstruction of the past with a disruption of this realism caused by the emphasis on subjective experience and on the series’ constructedness.

The need for histories: self-reflexiveness in Die zweite Heimat As the preceding analysis has shown, Die zweite Heimat is an attempt to represent history in the format of a TV series. But Die zweite Heimat does not just stage history, it also has it as its central theme. Many of the protagonists take a critical look at the significance of their own history for their identities, at possible ways of representing history in different media, or at the changeability of historical conditions. This thematic focus will now be examined under the rubrics ‘history and identity’ and ‘representability and mediality’ in order to discuss Die zweite Heimat’s self-reflexiveness.

History and identity The series’ title ‘Die zweite Heimat’ already points implicitly to the fundamental conflict between social background and potential, between history and identity, which is central for many of the protagonists. ‘The second home’ functions as an idealized counterconcept to the first home one is born into. The second home stands for the possibility of a future beyond the arbitrary conditions of social background, family or village tradition. Identity is no longer set out by the past but can be chosen and changed freely and actively. As Hermann remarks programmatically during his ‘flight’ from his home village at the beginning of Die zweite Heimat: ‘I was given birth for the second time, this time not by my mother but by my own mind. I set out to look for “my second home”’ (‘The Time of the First Songs’, 107). The series is populated with characters trying to leave their past behind; they all want to get rid of the burden of their origin and to reinvent themselves. Alex, the philosopher, stresses repeatedly that things like social background or family ties are of minor importance for his generation.


This conflict between self-invention and the past is exemplified in the way Hermann deals with his dialect. The Hunsrück dialect he speaks is not socially acceptable in the Munich art scene, and in order to fit the image he is creating for himself he tries to learn standard German through arduous language lessons. He wants to rid himself of his rural dialect in order to cast off all traces of his origin. Standard German, the ‘language of writers and thinkers’, however, is so artificial to Hermann that he has to try really hard and endure great suffering in order to learn it – and when he eventually succeeds, it seems to him that he is living a lie. Against his will the dialect stays part of his identity even years later. In situations of great emotion or when he remembers his childhood, he automatically falls back into dialect.14 The characters running away from their past in order to create a new identity are juxtaposed against others looking for their roots in order to secure their identity through the reconstruction and appropriation of their history. The different attitudes towards the past are mainly illustrated by the characters’ relationships to their parents. The protagonists fall into two groups: those fleeing their parents (mainly Hermann, Ansgar, Clarissa) and those in search of their parents (mainly Evelyne, Esther and Fräulein Cerphal). It is quite striking that the first attitude is primarily that of men, the second exclusively one of women. Episode three (‘Jealousy and Pride’) juxtaposes the two extreme positions by depicting the contrasting lovers Ansgar and Evelyne. Evelyne, who has just lost her father and has learned that the woman who brought her up is not her real mother, comes to Munich to trace her natural mother, who is said to have been killed during a bomb raid in 1944. She offsets the loss of identity and home caused by the loss of her (putative) parents by seeking her origins. The more she can reconstruct her mother’s history through listening to Frau Ries, ‘the memory of the Cerphal household’, by meeting her aunt, and by rummaging through old photo albums, the more she can stabilize her identity: ‘The more I looked for my mother, the more I found myself’ (364). The search for her own identity culminates in a visit to the place where she was conceived, the place where she was ‘made’: ‘Here it must have happened, you couldn’t get any closer to your roots.’ (ibid.). At this place a dispute with Ansgar arises, who insists he was not ‘made’ but only is – ‘without reason and without a past’ (ibid.). Unlike Evelyne, who cherishes every photograph of and every story about her mother as documentation of her own existence, Ansgar has burned everything reminding him of his parents. His aversion to his parents is coupled with a mistrust of their entire generation, whom he generally suspects of fascism and


Nazi-collaboration. Ansgar’s main endeavour is to free himself of his past and of his parents’ expectations, which stick to him ‘like slime’ (‘Ansgar’s Death’, 437). His liberation attempts, however, do not lead into an individually shaped present or future. Ansgar, the ‘homeless human being’ (436), cannot find his second home but stays caught up in a destructive fatalism, which leads almost necessarily to his early death. The characters’ different attitudes towards their pasts are not explicitly judged by the homodiegetic narrators. Nevertheless an implicit statement is made through characterization, plot, and the endings of some episodes. The only productive attitude seems to be a consciousness of the past which does not lead to conservative standstill. Neither Ansgar, nor Hermann, who has been constantly on the run since his ‘flight’ from home, nor Fräulein Cerphal, who seems to inhabit her childhood memories, has found the ‘right’ relationship to the pasts. It therefore does not come as a surprise that at the end of Die zweite Heimat, Hermann, after a decade of aimless search and experiment, becomes homesick and returns to Schabbach to confront his past. A stable identity and the ability to shape the future are shown to be dependent on a reconsideration of the past.

Representability and mediality The questions of the nature and representability of history and of the conditions for an authentic rendition of historical events are not only raised by the narrative strategies of Die zweite Heimat but are also explicitly dealt with on the story level and constitute an essential feature of the plot. One reason for this is the depicted era itself, which had a particular historical awareness. More than any other decade in the history of the FRG, the 1960s were characterized by historical thinking, as becomes manifest in the reappraisal of the recent past, utopian thinking, and the broad acceptance of left-wing ideas. Moreover, the explicit discussion of the course of history and of the means and media of representing historical subjects are prominent in Die zweite Heimat because the protagonists are mostly members of an intellectual, artistically creative milieu who adopt the roles of authors or directors. The photographer Esther and the film crew are prominent examples, and the avant-garde musicians also talk frequently about their place in art history, striving for the destruction of tradition and for their own immortality. Particularly in episodes 10–12, which are narrated by the members of the film crew, much attention is given to debating different media,


their functions, and their potential for representing history. The central questions here concern the advantages of photography and film imagery over verbally narrated stories and the possibilities of historical objectivity as opposed to imagination and fictionality. Several times throughout the series, the objectivity of photographic images is cast into doubt through showing that pictures do not necessarily present the truth. Images as historical documents are not capable of being true or false in and of themselves, but only in connection with the narrative structure of a story. This becomes obvious with regard to a story Alex tells while looking at a picture of Kennedy right after he was shot: ‘Strange, such a picture conceals more than it shows. In reality Kennedy is suffering right here from an acute pain attack caused by his slipped disc. He smiles against the awful pain’ (‘Kennedy’s Children’, 648). This alternative interpretation of historical events can obviously neither be verified nor falsified by a photograph alone. The narrative rather changes the picture’s supposed objectivity, since everyone now sees the picture in a different light. For this reason the scriptwriter Reinhard chooses the medium of verbal narrative. According to him ‘everything essential in life is invisible and hides from the camera’s sight: love, what people think and feel, death’ (‘Time of Silence’, 1103). This observation is illustrated by a scene where Rob and Reinhard examine some of their film documents for editing (‘The End of the Future’/‘Das Ende der Zukunft’, 1014). They vie with each other in telling ‘do-you-remember?’ stories until they are interrupted by the cutter’s remark that none of their thoughts and feelings can actually be seen in the material. The images only work in connection with memories, which may be ‘burned into the memory’ (1014) but are not captured on celluloid. The camera, ‘the damned glass eye’ which ‘can only gawp! Without hope and without sympathy’ (1007), cannot record the relevant things: the complex mixture of moods, events, thoughts and motivations. It only provides traces of a past world but cannot evoke it.15 These limitations of photography are also underlined when the protagonists look at old photographs, which is a frequently employed motif in Die zweite Heimat. The photographs always function as initiators of storytelling; they are an aid to memory, but never a medium representing history by itself. In the final episode, ‘Art or Life’, which in many respects sums up the entire series, this mechanism is even triggered in the viewers. When Hermann is looking at photographs showing earlier scenes of the series, viewers are reminded of the things they experienced together with the protagonists.


Cameraman Rob is concerned with the question of how to produce pictures that not only document history but also enable others who have not experienced it to relive it. For him, ‘[w]atching is more intense than thinking. Watching for me means “perceiving”. I take in truth when I watch’ (‘Time of Silence’, 1130).16 He is nevertheless conscious of the fact that images can also lie and mediate ‘false truths’. This becomes clear during a conversation with Herr Zielke, a former propaganda film maker in the Third Reich: he always showed the German troops moving from left to right so that they were – according to the prevalent iconography – constantly on the advance, even if they were in reality retreating (ibid.). In his own theory of film, Rob differentiates between reality and truth: The things our eyes see will only become true if we feel them before we film them. What I mean is this: the camera is a machine not capable of any sentiment. Therefore it makes no sense whatsoever to simply point the camera at something . . . To approach truth the cameraman has to depict his emotions. Reality is not true. (1262) It is therefore the representation of feeling and not the simple reproduction of the visible world which gives authenticity to images. In order to produce such images, however, a great amount of artistic construction and invention is required. The true pictures representing history are those imbued with subjectivity and fictionality.

Conclusion Rob’s theory of images, which relies on experience and feeling, and the combination of fact and fiction is shared by the author of the series, Edgar Reitz.17 Both Heimat and Die zweite Heimat can be considered as an attempt to represent history which includes feelings and subjectivity so as to enable the audience to experience history rather than only see it. This kind of history is not situated on a level of objective abstraction, but moves through the private sphere of individuals. The Heimat films attempt to offer a ‘worm’s-eye view of world history’:18 ‘In our films we defend people against systems, histories against history, the bent against the straight, the “unimportant” against the “important”’.19 This form of historiography, in contrast to that of history books, is decentralized and subjective. It is mirrored in the multiperspectival and subjective narrative strategies of Die zweite Heimat. Representing events from the biased points of view of changing individuals highlights that


it is not the History but one possible history among others which is being told. The anti-illusionist elements of Die zweite Heimat also serve the purpose of making the audience conscious of the series’ artificiality by making obvious that it is not an objective reproduction of past events, but a construct. Reitz’s dislike of illusionist tendencies in objective historiography is connected with his theory of memory: The way in which we connect [experiences] while we are remembering is dependent on the situation and our purposes . . . From [remembered pictures] we create a new picture not giving the facts, but a mirror image of the present on the basis of memory fragments. Remembering works like that; it is a creative process. Nobody can produce objective memories.20 The structure of Die zweite Heimat imitates the mechanisms of remembering as described by Reitz. Even if it dispenses with objectivity, it does not, however, dispense with truth. On the contrary: it is exactly the subjectivity and experientiality of the narrated history that enables the viewers to activate their own memories and thus participate in the (hi)story. The more that abstract generality moves into the background, the more the story loses its documentary qualities, the ‘truer’ it becomes for the recipient: ‘Die zweite Heimat’ cannot serve as a document for a history of the 60s since things experienced and things made up are indistinguishable. But the viewer mobilizes his own life or his own memories, and in this way the film approaches a subjective truth. There are as many truths in the film as the viewer finds.21 Notes 1

2 3 4

Die zweite Heimat literally means ‘the second home’, but the word Heimat usually has more patriotic connotations than the word ‘home’. Also, Heimat normally refers to the place (town, region, country) where someone was born – which means that people can only have one Heimat. The title toys with these implications by postulating a second Heimat. Quotes from the series give the scene numbers in the published script (Reitz 1993a) and have been translated by us into English. Where the script differs from the actual film, this is indicated. In 1962, 26 young film-makers announced the ‘Oberhausen Manifesto’, which marked the beginning of the Young (later, New) German Cinema. The series was first broadcast in Germany in January 1979. For Reitz’s critique of Holocaust, cf. Rauh (1993: 182–3), who quotes Reitz’s diary. The idea that the audience should participate in the reconstruction of the past and therefore in the construction of the meaning of films is an important


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aspect of Reitz’s film theory (cf. Scholz 1996: 94). A side-effect of the decision to record people’s everyday lives in Heimat is that politically important historical issues and events occur only as distorted mirror-images of minor importance – a fact which led to Reitz’s being accused of playing down the horrors of the Third Reich. This question is extensively discussed in Palfreyman (2000). Reitz has just completed Heimat 3, a series of six films covering the time span between 1989 and 2000. According to Palfreyman (2000: 194), ‘Die zweite Heimat is a “Zeitfilm” exploring history, historiography and identity in Germany’. The film gives 23 November as the day of Kennedy’s assassination, although he actually died on 22 November. This might either be a mistake or an indication of the unreliability of historical reconstruction. Cf. Reitz (1993b: 209): ‘Im letzten Teil ist nie ganz eindeutig, ob eine Szene Hermanns Ängste und Wünsche, seine Erinnerungen oder eine reale Geschichte beschreibt’ (‘In the last episode it is never unambiguous whether a scene describes Hermann’s fears and hopes, his memories, or a real story’). This is not to say that Die zweite Heimat does not depict historical change. On the contrary it is obsessed with the recreation of the Zeitgeist of the day and its changes through the 1960s. ‘Die Jahre in München gliedern sich auf nach den Freunden, die [Hermann] hier begegnen. Jede dieser Figuren steht im Mittelpunkt eines Teils und der letzte, 13. Teil, stellt eine Art Epilog dar.’ Compare also Alex’s voice-over commentaries at the beginning of episode 6: ‘It was the day John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas. The event, which only happened in the evening, prolonged the short-term memory of this day and extended it to historical dimensions’ (602); and ‘All I did that day, was linked to the president’s assassination, which hadn’t even happened yet’ (ibid.). Exceptions are those pictures showing an object of desire in colourful contrast to its black-and-white surrounding. Cf. Sobhani (1997: 205), who considers the alternation between blackand-white and colour film to be ‘disrupting image harmony’. Dialect therefore has a symbolic meaning in Die zweite Heimat. Cf. Meinhof (1995: 264): ‘Wie die Personen sprechen, wie sie ihr Sprachverhalten ändern, ablehnen oder beibehalten, ist eine der bedeutendsten Metaphern in beiden Filmen, mit der die Ideen und Gefühle der verschiedenen Figuren über ihre Umgebung, ihre Herkunft, ihre Zukunftspläne subtil und zwiespältig Ausdruck finden’ (‘How the characters talk, how they change their language, reject it, or keep it is one of the most important metaphors of the two films by which the different characters’ ideas and feelings about their surrounding, their past, and their plans for the future are expressed in a subtle and ambiguous way’). Cf. Scholz (1996: 91): ‘The problem with photography is that it is only a trace of existence which has to be filled by imagination’ (‘Das Problem der Photographie ist, daß sie nur eine Spur der Existenz ist, die imaginativ gefüllt werden muß’). ‘Sehen ist intensiver als Denken. Sehen heißt für mich “Wahrnehmen”. Ich nehme Wahrheit in mich auf, wenn ich sehe’ (‘Zeit des Schweigens’). There


17

18 19

20

21

is a pun here which cannot be translated: the German word for perceiving literally means ‘to take truth’. Cf. Edgar Reitz’s (1995: 197) criticism of the conception of the camera as ‘Wahrnehmungsorgan’ (‘sensory organ’) or ‘Instrument der Wahrheitsfindung’ (‘tool of truth-detection’). ‘Weltgeschichte aus der Froschperspektive’ (Reitz 1993b: 9). ‘Wir verteidigen in unserem Film Menschen gegen Systeme, Geschichten gegen Geschichte, das Schräge gegen das Gerade, das “Unwichtige” gegen das “Wichtige”’ (Reitz, quoted from Rauh 1993: 185). ‘Die Art und Weise, in der wir [Erfahrungen] beim Erinnern verknüpfen, ist vom Augenblick abhängig und auch davon, zu welchem Zweck es geschieht . . . Wir schaffen uns [aus Erinnerungsbildern] ein neues Bild, das überhaupt nicht die Tatsachen wiedergibt, sondern ein Spiegelbild der Gegenwart anhand der Gedächtnisbruchstücke. So funktioniert das Erinnern, es ist ein schöpferischer Prozeß. Niemand ist in der Lage, objektive Erinnerungen hervorzubringen’ (Reitz, quoted from Rauh 1993: 11). ‘Die zweite Heimat kann nicht als zeitgeschichtliche Quelle über die 60er Jahre dienen, denn Erlebtes und Erfundenes vermischen sich ununterscheidbar. Aber der Zuschauer mobilisiert sein eigenes Leben oder seine eigenen Erinnerungen, und so nähert sich der Film wieder einer subjektiven Wahrheit. Im Film stecken so viele Wahrheiten, wie er Zuschauer findet’ (Reitz 1993b: 262).

References Meinhof, U. H. (1995) ‘Dialekt als Metapher: Ein Vergleich der beiden “Heimat”Filme von Edgar Reitz’. In B. Spiller (ed.), Sprache: Verstehen und Verständlichkeit. Frankfurt: Lang, 264. Palfreyman, R. (2000) Edgar Reitz’s Heimat: Histories, Traditions, Fictions. Oxford: Lang. Rauh, R. (1993) Edgar Reitz: Film als Heimat. Munich: Heyne. Reitz, E. (1993a) Die zweite Heimat: Chronik einer Jugend in 13 Büchern. Munich: Goldmann. ——(1993b) Drehort Heimat: Arbeitsnotizen und Zukunftsentwürfe. Frankfurt: Verlag der Autoren. ——(1995) Bilder in Bewegung: Essays. Gespräche zum Kino. Reinbek: Rowohlt. Scholz, L. (1996) Die Konstruktion von Geschichte in Edgar Reitz’ Zweiter Heimat. Siegen: Gesamthochschule Siegen. Sobhani, M. (1997) ‘Avant-Garde Music and the Aesthetics of Film: On Edgar Reitz’s Die zweite Heimat’. In P. Goetsch and D. Scheunemann (eds), Text und Ton im Film. Tübingen: Narr, 199–208.

11 History: The Sitcom, England: The Theme Park – Blackadder’s Retrovisions as Historiographic Meta-TV Eckart Voigts-Virchow*

For every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably . . . To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. (Walter Benjamin, ‘On the Concept of History’)

History returns as farce In 2000, a survey conducted by military history publishers, Osprey, suggested that the 1980s television sitcom Blackadder has entered the collective memory of British schoolchildren to a great extent: many of them thought that the title character of the series was a historical person.1 This arch-misunderstanding of historiographical re-imagining speaks both for the cultural power of the TV sitcom and for the peculiar conditions under which the metahistorical series Blackadder operated in 1980s Britain. What a shock it must have been for historians to realize that the next generation’s historical knowledge is to some extent being shaped by a television sitcom, which has been largely neglected in

* I would like to thank Gaby Allrath, Katherine Williams, Alexander van de Bergh and Meike Röhl for additional ‘input’ after their reading of earlier versions of this chapter. 211

212 Blackadder as Historiographic Meta-TV

accounts of how national history has been conceived of in audiovisual media. In this chapter, I shall outline how the serial narrative of the television sitcom has contributed to a postmodernist, metahistoric social construction of history. The 1980s were the heyday of the heritage debate, fuelled by resurgent Thatcherist nationalism. From the initial joke in their ‘Blackadder Chronicles’, added to the publication of the series script, it is evident that the writers of Blackadder are very much aware of this context: ‘The history of these sceptred isles earlier than about 1800 BC is lost in the mists of time. What we do know is that, from earliest times, though Britain was relatively new, it was called “Ancient”, probably in an effort to encourage tourism’ (xi).2 The context of the Blackadder parodies is the same one which Julian Barnes attacked in England, England (1998) – both the ‘chants of history’ (‘1512 (clap clap) Henry the Eighth (clap clap) / Defender of Faith (clap clap)’) learnt by heart in Miss Mason’s history classes, and English history as a theme park as in the words of a PR consultant: You – we – England – my client – is are – a nation of great age, great history, great accumulated wisdom. Social and cultural history – stacks of it, reams of it – eminently marketable, never more so than in the current climate. Shakespeare, Queen Victoria, Industrial Revolution, gardening, that sort of thing . . . We must sell our past to other nations as their future! (Barnes 1998: 11, 39–40) Taking Karl Marx’s aphorism to task, Blackadder re-appropriated the tragedy of nationalist appropriations of history for a second reading – and history returns as farce indeed. One should, however, be aware of the limitations of this parody on ‘England: The Theme Park’. At the Gala for the 50th birthday of HRH Prince Charles in November 1998, the Blackadder team performed with ironical unease a sketch in which Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) writes a speech for a royal namesake, Charles II: I would rather go to Cornwall, marry a pig, have 13 children by her and see them all become members of Parliament. I would rather hack off my big toe, slice it, mix it with beetroot and serve it to the poor folk of Clapham as a light summer salad. Ask me if you wish, to bury my face between the buttocks of a flatulent baboon, but never under any circumstances ask me to involve myself in a Royal Gala performance.3 This chapter is therefore preceded by a warning against overestimating the subversive potential of even the parody of the Biedermeier version of

Eckart Voigts-Virchow 213

‘Deep England’ on which, amongst others, Patrick Wright’s On Living in an Old Country (1985) pinned its attack. Even the most anachronistically self-reflexive parody of a royal celebration corroborates the celebration of royalty to such an extent that Prince Charles only needs a little sense of humour to have some light entertainment himself on the occasion of his 50th birthday. Elsewhere (Voigts-Virchow 1998) I have supported recent studies which emphasize the role of discursive negotiation in comedy, the fact that funniness is hopelessly dependent on context, not content. Thus, if even Prince Charles is amused by Blackadder, this is only one indication that in the 1980s and 1990s, at the same time in which a return to seeing history as national heritage was being promoted, the cultural climate for parodying British history was beneficial. As Palmer (1987: 140), amongst others, has argued, comedy needs to be perceived as a little, but not too shocking in order to work. In the case of parody, Hutcheon (1985: 6) has pointed out that it always imitates a text, but it does not necessarily have to sing a ‘counter-song’, its ‘ironic inversions’ need not function ‘at the expense of the parodied text’. In Irony’s Edge, Hutcheon correctly identifies irony as a ‘risky business’. Her chart on the functions of irony (1995: 47) illustrates that the ironical view of history in Blackadder can be viewed as oppositional, demystifying, corrective and satirical, but at the same time as subsidiary, misleading and trivializing. Blackadder has to address history as cliché because any mass-mediated product needs to be inclusionary. It strives to create an audience which would be capable of realizing the historical ironies through at least a historical and literary surface knowledge and interest, but which, at the same time, would also be willing to be shocked a little, sacrificing reservations against the parodic attitude towards British history.

Blackadder as British sitcom In Britain, the Family Affairs-sitcom has been one of the programming staples since it began in 1949 with the quintessentially titled half-hour programme of that name, which was transferred from its original radio format to TV. To this day, most sitcoms preserve the relative stasis in location and the overarching importance of dialogue. In 1998, for instance, 16 new sitcoms appeared on the British screen, and programmes such as Men Behaving Badly (1991–98), Birds of a Feather (1989–98) or The Vicar of Dibley (written by Richard Curtis, 1994–2000) provided top-ten rated episodes and BAFTA winners (Higham 2000: 106–7).


In terms of its audiovisual narrative, Blackadder is quite conventional. The most remarkable aspect of the series is its thematic crossover to British heritage culture. I shall argue that, to some extent, Blackadder moves beyond the simple ‘problem/solution formulae’ of the sitcom, which critics such as Grote (1983) or Newcomb (1974) have criticized. Whereas Seiter (1987: 38) argues of the traditional family sitcom that it represents an utopian view of the family as it should be, Blackadder revisions British history as it never was, but always will be, as it should never have been, and as it should never have been construed – all at the same time. Sitcom is the archetypical TV narrative and it is regularly named as the most prominent instance of a TV-specific genre development. The 24 regular Blackadder episodes and occasional specials share the timeworn structural and narrative hallmarks of the genre: the half-hour duration, the predominantly verbal humour, the episode-specific predicament, the stereotyped characterization, the perennially static and circular plot constellations, the importance of the series context (for example for running gags such as Baldrick’s ‘cunning plan’ and recipes), the consistent scheduling, and the season division which cuts across the boundaries of series and serial, moving towards new generic hybridity (see Figure 11.1). Blackadder is also typical of most successful sitcoms in that it has been seen as achieving cult status by embodying the cultural situation of a nation. It has a dedicated following of aficionados who monitor re-runs and exchange expert knowledge in internet forums and specially designed homepages. No less typical is the transfer to other media and the occasional return in spin-off formats after its demise. These include VHS and DVD packages, trailers and commercials, one-off ‘specials’ such as the 40-minute parody of Dickens, Blackadder’s Christmas Carol (1988), the time-travelling Blackadder Goes Back and Forth (2000), and the published scripts. This last product hints at the particular quality and appeal of the scripts by the experienced TV and film writers Ben Elton and Richard Curtis. These TV authors contribute ‘authority’ to an otherwise schematic and conventional format, and it is interesting to briefly look at their biographies in order to locate the cultural environment from which Blackadder springs. The Blackadder view of history does indeed conform to the simplistic formula of the sitcom (see Figure 11.1), but, at the same time, it is far from reassuring. Just as the Pythons, the influential earlier generation of comedians, Elton, Curtis and Atkinson have an academic background. Curtis, a New Zealander, went to Harrow and met Atkinson at Oxford, while


Recurrent themes

Equilibrium – Disequilibrium – Resolution A ‘classical’ narrative structure for each episode – which involves the disruption of a stable situation (within the parameters of that sitcom’s ‘normal’ stable state) and its resolution within the episode – a return to the same equilibrium

Family, Work, Home and Authority

Three acts A very clear three-act structure – a beginning, middle, and an end

I Don’t Belieeeeve It! Synchronizing motifs of clothes, actions and catchphrases

Characters

Processes of construction These involve: • Writer – dialogue and action • Commissioner/Producer • Broadcaster • Advertizing • Actors (casting, performance, appearance, previous roles) • Director • Production design, including props, setting, clothes, etc. • Audience – values and beliefs

The principal fundamental situation of the situation comedy is that…

…Things do not change (Grote, quoted in Neale and Krutnik 1990)

Simplistic and reassuring The situation is usually based on a problem, the complication of this problem and its resolution – usually this is a simple and reassuring problem/ solution formula for the audience – furthest from the reality of daily problems which are not so easily resolved. However, more recent sitcoms reject narrative neatness for the messiness of real life.

Figure 11.1

With clearly defined characteristics and behaviour – usually based on stereotypes, who are confined by their situations, so that their actions and reactions can be easily predicted to create familiarity, recognition, and the reassurance of shared laughter

Comic modes Comic traditions Gag structure, visual and verbal humour, slapstick, dramatic irony

Circularity and modification A recurring process of destabilization and restabilization in each episode – narrative transformation relies on narrative circularity, with some modification of the basic situation if no real change

Key narrative ingredients Conflict and friction; collision of values, identities and lifestyles, including social class, gender, sexuality and race; transgression

Narrative structure of TV sitcom

Sources: Adapted from McQueen (1998) and Clark (2002).

Elton studied theatre at Manchester University (with Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson). All of them had been involved in the TV branch of the 1980s wave of alternative comedy based at the club The Comic Strip in Soho – Atkinson and Curtis in Not the Nine O’Clock News (1979–82) and Elton in the ‘filthy farce’ (Paul Morley) of The Young Ones (1982, 1984). The deliberately low, juvenile, aggressive and self-conscious, but less reactionarily racist and sexist humour of The Young Ones, mixed with zany illogical plots and media parodies of, among other things, the TV sitcom, is a particularly obvious ancestor to Blackadder.


It is quite clear that Blackadder’s roots in 1980s ‘alternative’ British comedy contribute to a view of history which is completely at odds with the patriotic audiovisual heritage culture. This ‘Laura-Ashley-historicity’ has been seen as a hallmark of film culture in the Thatcher years (cf. Craig 1991 and Higson 1995, 2003). It is also clear that Blackadder is typical of the 1980s and early 1990s, because the foregrounded artificiality and conventionality of the sitcom series explicitly rejects the dominant empiricist, mimetic, realist and naturalist paradigms of 1960s and 1970s television drama as outlined by Tulloch (1990) or Nelson (1997). The BBC-produced Blackadder was transmitted in four series from 1983 to 1989, and single-handedly redefined the sitcom formula of the 1980s as it was both commercially successful and critically acclaimed, winning two BAFTA awards (Blackadder the Third 1988; Blackadder Goes Forth 1990). The series originated from Atkinson’s and Curtis’s desire to go beyond the meta-TV topicality of the successful Not the Nine O’Clock News. Their initial idea, a modern setting focusing on bicycle thieves in Camden Town, would have invited comparison with the most successful and critically acclaimed TV programme of all time in Britain, the sitcom Fawlty Towers (1975–79). Instead, the historical setting was inspired by Errol Flynn’s 1938 Robin Hood film, but it may also be contextualized with a penchant of British comedy for historical environments. This holds true for the historically variegated low comedy of the Carry On . . . films and their TV offspring Up Pompeii! (1969–70, 1975, 1991), as well as for the large number of historical settings in the 1960s and 1970s sketches of the Monty Pythons or Dave Allen. In 1995, comedienne Jo Brand published a Blackadder-inspired anthology of biographical portraits of men in history under the title A Load of Old Balls. Especially the acclaimed fourth series of Blackadder, set in the French trenches of the First World War, can be related to successful British world war and army comedies such as The Army Game (1957–61), Dad’s Army (1968–77) or ‘Allo ‘Allo (1984–92). In addition, historical TV comedies have a metatelevisional aspect in that they draw on successful British historical TV series of the 1970s such as I Claudius (1976), Upstairs Downstairs (1971–75) or Secret Army (1977–79). The enormous and still proliferating amount of predominantly historicist classic TV serials since Andrew Davies’ Middlemarch (1994) and the burgeoning ‘History TV’, such as Simon Schama’s recent 15-part A History of Britain (BBC 2002), continues to invite this contextualization. In contrast to some of the expensive American series dealt with in this volume, Blackadder’s audiovisual form adheres to the old-fashioned studio set-up. This may reflect a cultural difference between Britain and


the US, the latter favouring the glossy and expensive-looking high ‘production values’, whereas in British sitcom the tradition of writerly predominance seems to linger at least residually. Blackadder also exhibits the classic British variations on the American sitcom formula. McQueen (1998) argued that there is a British sitcom tradition focusing on a central character of bleak and cynical disposition which differs from the American sitcom roots of the family-driven ‘Hi Honey, I’m Home!’show. It is obvious that this tradition of cynicism contributes to the ‘alternative’ approach to genre and history which is the salient feature of Blackadder.

Blackadder as constructivist retrovision Blackadder has never been given due credit as one of the most important posthistoricist retrovisions of the 1980s. The term ‘retrovisions’ was suggested by Cartmell and Hunter (2001: 2) for ‘countermyths’ which ‘demythologise the past, gazing back sometimes with horror at its violence and oppression . . . and sometimes with nostalgia for lost innocence and style’, for texts which ‘self-consciously reinterpret history through the meshes of genre and fictional precedent’, and which are ‘both postmodern as academics understand the term – allusive, ironic, knowingly intertextual – and firmly in line with popular culture’s playful and opportunistic treatment of history’. In fact, Altman (1999: 195) has argued that genres regulate meaning discursively for constellated (rather than merely imagined) communities, providing only ‘a momentary equilibrium of countervening concerns’, and that this equals the (historical, one might emphasize) construction of national communities. In this sense, Blackadder contributes to the regeneration and regenrification of a historical English identity. The indisputably constructed nature of our representations of the past has been highlighted in the constructivist paradigm of metahistorical thinking, the linguistic turn of historical research in the vein of R.G. Collingwood, whose The Idea of History (1946) draws structural parallels between the narrative coherence of novels and history, or Hayden White (1973) and his trenchant critique of the ‘verbal fictions’ of historical writings. This posthistorical mentality, in turn, provided the foundations for the literary genres variously called historiographic metafiction (Hutcheon) or postmodernist revisionist historical novel (McHale). These genres, which should not be conflated with the conventions of historiography, operate within the literary-fictional framework, and therefore with different textual conventions (that is without historical


source referencing, bibliographies) and audience expectations. A variety of fictional markers and the relative freedom of selection, character constellation and perspective in the novel further dissociate the fictional text from the preceding event (Geschehen). Beyond the category of fictionality, however, historians such as Roger Chartier (1994: 86) have maintained that historical writing aspires to an Aristotelian narrative in the sense that it orders events into a coherent sequence of actions. It is precisely in this field that the character-driven and plot-indifferent sitcom narrative offers a different perspective.4 The situation of history after the linguistic turn is further complicated by the pictorial turn – the fact that these days, historical knowledge is circulated audiovisually to a large extent. Drawing on the work of Maurice Halbwachs, Aleida and Jan Assmann have highlighted the functional, social and medial dimensions of memory culture. As Jan and Aleida Assmann (1994: 138) point out, audiovisuality creates a new environment of historical ‘processing’, marked by ‘Flüchtigkeit und Flüssigkeit’ (volatility and fluidity). In contrast to this, the audiovisual codes of film and TV, the inevitable spatial specificity of sound and vision, may lead to the flawed conclusion that historical TV or films are inevitably more closely and more mimetically connected to the events of the past.5 In view of the misconceptions of British schoolchildren it is in fact one of the most important tasks of TV analysis to deconstruct the popularly held belief that historical TV or film mimetically represent past actions. Blackadder mediates historical narratives through the TV apparatus, depending no less on the textual conventions of the TV sitcom than on the liberties of selecting and reconfiguring the past. It is a text of posthistoricist popular postmodernism because its sitcom formula has the side-effect of debunking residual ideologies of unmediated truthfulness and fidelity in conventional audiovisual representations of the past. Beyond language as the prime medium of verbal representations of the past, the sitcom narrative of Blackadder re-imagines history as a foregrounded collection of stereotypes and clichés. In one of the few readings of the series, Neale and Krutnik (1990: 246) succinctly argue this case: [T]he situational context is a grossly distorted representation of a period of English history which comprises the ‘characters’ and stereotypes which populate ‘commonsense’ notions of the past. The show precisely pinpoints the banality of popular conceptions of English history, making the point through the frequent use of anachronism and cliché.


I would go further, however, arguing that in view of the inevitable distortion of re-imagined narratives of the past, it is precisely the foregrounded simplistic grossness of this distortion that distinguishes Blackadder from other instances of historical TV.

‘Bottoms up’: the structure and codes of Blackadder In the remaining part of this chapter I shall focus on the central components of this metahistorical construction: • • • • • •

the series structure; the variation on the static sitcom narrative; the character concept and constellation; the intertextuality and stylistics of the verbal jokes; the thematic focus on cynical, sexual and scatological humour; and the audiovisual codes of sitcom.

Blackadder consists of four ‘series’, Blackadder (1983), Blackadder II (1986), Blackadder the Third (1987) and Blackadder Goes Forth (1989), two specials, as well as further miscellaneous resurrections, mostly for charity events, such as the 15-minute sketch entitled ‘The Cavalier Years’ for the first Comic Relief event or the ‘Shakespeare sketch’ for the Aids gala Hysteria 2.6 The series tell the alternative history of the Blackadder dynasty, a family configuration which, though present through the entire course of British history, has been miraculously erased from standard historical knowledge. Each of the six-episode series is set in a particularly cliché-ridden and over-written period of British history, introductory mock-chronicles providing further materials in the published text, from the Battle of Bosworth Fields and early Tudor times, via the Elizabethan Blackadder II, the Regency Blackadder the Third to the final season set in the First World War. The fact that the series bear separate titles indicates that there are marked breaks between them. This accounts for the relative flexibility of the format. Within these series, the ‘outside/inside’ scenario as described by Eaton (1981) remains intact: an outside disruption temporarily threatens the character balance and the plot reestablishes stability, confirmed in the narrative closure. As Neale and Krutnik (1990) argued, however, the historically diverse series settings constitute a hybrid seriality, which allows for a disruption of the status quo in each of the season endings. In the first series, King Richard IV (Brian Blessed) and his two sons, Prince Harry and the bastard Edmund Blackadder, are


killed by drinking from an accidentally poisoned vat of wine. The second series whimsically explains how the Germans ascended the British throne, when Prince Ludwig (Hugh Laurie) assumes the disguise of giggly Queen Elizabeth (Miranda Richardson). The Regency series saves both Blackadder and Baldrick, Blackadder’s ‘general dogsbody’ sidekick, whose subordinate position, working-class sociolect and menial household tasks comprise traditional gender and class stereotypes. The episode ends as Prince George (Hugh Laurie) is shot by Wellington because he fails to bring the life-saving cigarillo box. Finally, in Blackadder Goes Forth, the closing episode is aptly titled ‘Goodbyeee’, as the Ersatz-family of the quasi-historical buddies joins in a doomed charge out of their trenches and into machine-gun fire. The final joke by Blackadder, who determines that it is too late for the last of Baldrick’s cunning plans (‘As cunning as a fox who’s just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University’), accounts for a very poignant pacifist ending, which stretches the conventional limits of the sitcom in a radicalized version of the M*A*S*H7 perspective on war insanity: ‘Whatever it was, I’m sure it was better than my plan to get out of this by pretending to be mad. I mean, who would have noticed another madman round here?’ (452). The fateful monochromatic charge on the First World War battlefield is eventually transformed into a field of glowing red poppies and singing birds: the Blackadder ‘family’ is released from cruel and mad history into the pastoral realm of nature. The series pattern of repetition with a difference is also evident in the paratextual framing, from the instrumentally and lyrically adapted (and anachronistic) theme songs and caption character fonts to the titles which not only number the series, but also pun on the numbering of monarchical names or iconic historical phrases, such as ‘Blackadder the Third’ or ‘Blackadder Goes Forth/Fourth’. In this sense, the serial structure with its recurrent stabilities and violent endings works effectively against teleological historical models. Just as the sitcom is marked by cycles, repetition, recurrence and stasis, so is history according to Blackadder: the repetitiveness of TV makes a pertinent point about history. Both sitcom and history are devoid of dynamism. The bi-directional suspense along a linear axis of narrative segments does not focus on finding out what has happened or will happen next, but on how Blackadder mixes character comedy, historical cliché and anachronism. The series takes the pleasurable stability of the sitcom to illustrate the futility of overcoming the ossified stratification of historical hierarchies: even a dead Blackadder is guaranteed to return, reappearing in a different historical period. Whatever historical situation he will have to master, he will be


once more pitted against a mad ruler and a stupid household. This recurring scenario is distinctly post-historic. Blackadder is, of course, not a traditional family sitcom. Eaton’s (1981) typology of sitcom distinguishes between family (for example The Royle Family 1998–2000), workplace (for example The Office 2000–01), and hybrid locations. Blackadder is not untypical of the 1980s and 1990s in offering at best a hybrid scenario, where a redefined family and a historically adapted workplace intersect. In a further instance of comic hybridity, the focal character, the self-centred, anti-social and increasingly cynical Blackadder, is based on the clown persona of the Rowan Atkinson stage shows. Typically, the sitcom is a character comedy: whereas the Blackadder plots are forgettable, the schoolchildren’s memory testifies to the power of the historical character fakes Blackadder and Baldrick. The very fact that the character groupings and casts reappear in various historic set-ups testifies to the circular and static view of history as sitcom. The sitcom recreates history not as past action, but as memorable physiognomies, precious invectives, and running gags about food, faeces and stupidity. In keeping with typical sitcom character concepts, Blackadder is surrounded by gender, age and class types, and all of the characters are predominantly vehicles for one-liners and stylistically hypertrophied similes reminiscent of Raymond Chandler. It seems important to note, however, that a lot of the character types in Blackadder belong to the dominant social kernel of British history. The historical stereotyping in Blackadder, therefore, works to some extent against dominant historical forces (see Figure 11.2). It is furthermore true that stereotyping or social categorizing may be seen as an essential cognitive process in the social construction of reality. In view of the writers’ roots in alternative comedy, it does not come as a surprise that most of the humour is directed against the ruling madness. This is best embodied in the fourth series’ General Sir Anthony Hogmanay Melchett (Stephen Fry). When he sends his troops out of the dug-out to certain death, sipping Château Lafite, he is punished by Blackadder, who replaces his custard with cat vomit supplied by Baldrick (365); Lieutenant George’s (Hugh Laurie) jingoistic ‘Hun bashing’ is tempered by frequent recourse to British imperialism; the appeal to British manliness and the ethos of fairplay by expositions of the Universitytrained gay decadence of the British officers; and the homophobic streaks tempered by the fact that actor Stephen Fry is an eminent, card-carrying homosexual. When Blackadder is described as the war hero of Mboto Gorge (‘Was that the Mboto Gorge when we massacred


Dominant/subordinate

STEREOTYPES Laughing with or at them? These are character and narrative shortcuts and simplifications of members of social groups, which can cause offence and reinforce existing prejudices

Male White Middle-class Middle-aged Heterosexual Able-bodied

Female Other ethnic groups Working-class The young, the old Homosexual, bisexual Disabled

Masculinity/femininity Stereotypical associations Professional Strong Rational Competitive Independent Aggressive Ruthless Ambitious

Figure 11.2

Domesticated Weak Emotional Cooperative Communal Passive Sensitive Supportive

TV sitcom stereotypes

Sources: Adapted from McQueen (1998) and Clark (2002).

the peace-loving pygmies of the Upper Volta and stole all their fruit?’, 443), he remembers: Yes, that was a nasty one. Ten thousand Watutsi warriors armed to the teeth with kiwi fruit and guava halves. After the battle, instead of taking prisoners, we simply made a fruit salad .. .Fifteen years of military experience perfecting the art of ordering pink gin and saying ‘do you do it doggy doggy?’ in Swahili. (446) In terms of character constellation, Blackadder is at the centre of a social hierarchy, pitched between the permanent subaltern Baldrick, and the varying household/work partners Percy (Tim McInnerny), Lieutenant George (Hugh Laurie), or social superiors Queenie (Miranda Richardson), Prince Regent (Hugh Laurie) and Melchett (Stephen Fry). This hierarchical group is a dysfunctional, male-dominated ‘workplace/ family’, and in that it may be contextualized with a variety of redefined, hybrid families in recent sitcoms. These range from the flat-sharing students of the two seasons of The Young Ones, the 1970s patchwork femininity of Absolutely Fabulous (1992–96, 2001), the dwellers of the decrepit slum Slummington in the clay-animated Crapston Villas, SE


69 (1998), the three priests and housekeeper in Father Ted (1995–98), the junk-ship astronauts in the hybrid sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf (1988–99) to the instable couples of the laddist Men Behaving Badly (1991–98), or, most recently, the out-of-work gay actor Tom sharing a flat with the overweight, sex-crazed Linda in Gimme Gimme Gimme (1999–2001). Blackadder is at the mercy of wilful, childish and mad rulers in various historically adapted guises, and the series delights in cutting the cultural heroes of Britain down to size. Queen Elizabeth, the quasi-religiously adored virgin Queen Bess, described as learned, intellectual and moderate in official publications, comes across as an immature, raving girlie, who likes to chop off Catholics’ heads, goes soft on adventurers, writes silly poems, summons her subjects to play practical jokes on them, plays frisbee and uses outdated youth slang words such as ‘super’ (184). In the third series, Elton and Curtis orchestrate a hilarious meeting between the pompous and literate Dr Johnson, who is fond of hard words, and a Prince Regent whose lewd dumbness exceeds the historical cliché of reckless extravagance by far: JOHNSON: I simply observed, sir, that I am felicitous, since during the course of the penultimate solar sojourn, I terminated my uninterrupted categorization of the vocabulary of our post-Norman tongue. PRINCE GEORGE: Don’t know what you’re talking about but it sounds damn saucy, you lucky thing! I know some fairly liberal-minded girls but I’ve never penultimated them in the solar sojourn or, for that matter, been given any Norman tongue. (256) The emphasis on ingestion and digestion, on sexual and scatological humour constitutes, one is tempted to say literally, a bottom-up approach to history. The tasteless corporeality of historical icons is clearly designed to subvert and transgress the heritage approach to history, even if the series studiously avoids direct attacks on historical personages of the First World War and tends to opt for easy targets such as the Prince Regent. In Blackadder, therefore, metahistory is not necessarily at odds with a clear moral stance. Blackadder views history from the perspective of those affected by a range of irresponsible to lunatic decision-makers, down to the quintessential victim of historical hierarchies, the brutalized and merely humanoid dung-gatherer Baldrick. At the same time, Blackadder’s self-centred personality and his casual cruelties against his dependent dogsbody Baldrick mix both the victim and the victimizer of history. The anti-social cynicism of Blackadder is offered as the most suitable


perspective on historical processes. Blackadder, the quintessential cynic, attempts to save himself from history by commenting destructively on the teleologies of ratio, progress or power. Although he is inevitably implicated in history, the four series pretend to recreate a household whose stories have been erased from the history books. This recurrence and perennial presence of populist and cynical comment in history turns Blackadder into a popular culture’s version of Angelus Novus, Walter Benjamin’s/Paul Klee’s impotent angel of history, who is hurled by the storm of progress into an unknowable future and keeps looking back at the catastrophic rubble left by history. Just as Benjamin’s ‘Theses’, popular culture Blackadder-style accentuates the barbarism in the cultural treasures. The artificiality of the scenario is highlighted by the foregrounded Chandleresque metaphoric stylization. The published script even appends an ‘Index of Blackadder’s Finest Insults’, including the following ones: Your brain’s so minute, Baldrick, that if a hungry cannibal cracked your head open, there wouldn’t be enough to cover a small water biscuit. (349) [To Percy] Your brain would make a grain of sand look large and ungainly and the part of you that can’t be mentioned I am reliably informed by women around the court wouldn’t be worth mentioning even if it could be. (95) [On the theatre] A load of stupid actors, strutting around shouting, with their chests thrust out so far you’d think their nipples were attached to a pair of charging elephants. (292) In these examples of hyperbolic simile, it is quite clear that the typical ‘vehicle-construction’ of the metaphorical process is free-floating and creates startling, marked and unconventional images. Blackadder’s cynical and hyperbolic invectives do not seek to blend source and target domains, but are merely vehicles for sheer metafictional stylistic inventiveness. History is thus redefined as an artistic realm and turns into a vehicle for a sequence of grotesque aphorisms. Blackadder also voluntarily blurs the demarcations of fictional and non-fictional discourses. A lot of the episodes in the first season, for instance, are deviations from Shakespeare histories. Here, elements of Richard III and Henry V are synthesized in a single episode, metafictional characters such as Goneril and Regan are introduced, and some more


readily accessible Shakespeare quotes are corrupted and re-distributed for comic effects in lines such as: RICHARD III: Now is the summer of our sweet content made overcast winter by these Tudor clouds . . . Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. Consign their parts most private to a Rutland tree . . . [1–3, a corruption of the initial speech of Richard III and the Harfleur speech by King Harry in Henry V, III,i] RICHARD, DUKE OF YORK: Let blood, blood, blood be your motto. Slit their gizzards! [3, a corruption of the notorious ‘Couple gorge!’ in the Quarto of Henry V, Shakespeare’s version of the battle of Agincourt; mixed with Othello’s ‘blood, blood, blood’] RICHARD III: And gentlemen in London now abed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here. [sic!] And hold their manhoods cheap while others speak. Who fought with us ‘pon Ralph the Liar’s day! [3, a corruption of the St Crispin’s day-speech by Henry V at Agincourt, Henry V, IV,iii] As private parts to the gods are we, they play with us for their sport. [215, a corruption of Gloucester’s speech from King Lear, IV,i] This deliberate conflation of history and fiction makes quite clear that Blackadder draws on history as an already constructed source text. The episode titles of the third series famously parody the titles of Austen novels (‘Sense and Senility’, ‘Ink and Incapability’, ‘Nob and Nobility’). The Regency butler Blackadder teases the actors Keanrick and Mossop with ‘the Scottish play’, and Dr Johnson with common words missing from his dictionary such as ‘contrafibularatories’ and ‘periconbobulations’ (256), while Coleridge, Shelley and Byron posing as Romantic poets provoke his spite in lines such as ‘there’s nothing intellectual about wandering round Italy in a big shirt trying to get laid’ (262). The audiovisual narration of Blackadder further contributes to the dissolution of TV pretence to represent history in the conventions of sitcom. As McKechnie (2002: 222) has argued, historical film-making has veered from the norms of historical accuracy to a pictorial mimesis, ‘a trend for spectacle . . . in tune with the needs of a culture with a preference for the image over the written word’. There is, in fact, a telling shift in the aesthetic concept of Blackadder from the only modestly popular first to the increasingly cultish following series. The first series sought to parody the audiovisual codes of heritage TV. It required


elaborate set designs and a film stock/video mix. It was shot to a large extent on location at Alnwick castle and involved a relatively large amount of extras, real horses and money – so much so that the BBC was unwilling to continue the series. Even if the obvious shortcomings of the comparatively inexpensive and half-hearted recreation of the high production values of a classic TV serial achieved a welcome alienation effect from the routine surface ‘pastness’ of this genre, it impeded to some extent the focus on verbal and farcical interaction on which the TV sitcom is based. Prompted by economic necessity, therefore, the producers decided to opt for a more conventional sitcom audiovisuality, and from the second series onwards, Blackadder was shot entirely on video in a studio and in front of a live audience. It is marked by the unobtrusively static camera of the live studio and the obvious gap between the ‘cheap’ studio sets and ‘soapy’ video images on the one hand, and the conventional expensive glossiness of filming history on TV on the other. Thus, Blackadder can be interpreted as a popcultural version of Alan Parker’s polemicism against the ‘Laura Ashley school of filmmaking’ with its relatively mature, feminine middle-class audience, the appeal to traditional ‘quality’, the implicit values of a literary canon, authorship and acting, the showcasing of landscapes and costume props and formulaic stylistic means. The gap between the studio interiority and TV domesticity on the one hand, and the grand audiovisual narratives of history on the other, is particularly marked in the studio trenches of the fourth series which eschew the conventionally employed visual codes of documenting the war. The four exceptional TV series devoted to the Blackadder chronicles use the sitcom genre to present history cynically and parodically as a repetitive pattern of lunacy, reinforcing but also debunking the cultural heritage of a country which has both more history and more comedians than others. Notes 1 2 3 4

See the BBC News report ‘Pupils’ appalling history knowledge’ (18 January 2001) (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education1123738.stm [13 January 2003]). Further unmarked page numbers refer to the published Blackadder scripts (Curtis et al. 1998). ‘The King’s Birthday’ (http://www.blackadderhall.com/specials/kings_birthday. shtml [12 November 2004]). For this point see the account of the sitcom producer Christopher Walker (2000: 96): ‘In the classic shows it is the characters that we remember with fondness not the plots.’

Eckart Voigts-Virchow 227 5

6

7

I refer to McFarlane’s (1996: 26–30) outline of cinematic signification: wholly verbal vs visual, aural and verbal signifiers, verbal codes vs cinematic plus non-cinematic (linguistic, visual, sound, cultural) codes, linearity vs spatiality (or physicality), tense vs no tense (for representing past actions), telling vs representing (mise en scène replacing narrational voice). I owe this information to the excellent Blackadder website, which also offers various scripts and related material on Blackadder: (http://www.blackadderhall.co.uk/ [19 February 2003]). See also the comedy database at http:// www.phill.co.uk/comedy/. The American movie derivative M*A*S*H (CBS, 1972–83) is, of course, the most prominent example of a war TV sitcom (in this case the Korean war).

References Altman, R. (1999) Film/Genre. London: British Film Institute. Assmann, A. and J. Assmann (1994) ‘Das Gestern im Heute: Medien und soziales Gedächtnis’. In K. Merten, S. J. Schmidt and S. Weischenberg (eds), Die Wirklichkeit der Medien. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 114–40. Barnes, J. (1998) England, England. London: Jonathan Cape. Benjamin, W. (1940) ‘On The Concept of History’. Trans. L. Spencer. (http://www.tasc.ac.uk/depart/media/staff/ls/WBenjamin/CONCEPT2.html [12 November 2004]). Brand, J. (1995) A Load of Old Balls: Men in History. London: Simon & Schuster/ Pocket Books. Cartmell, D. and I. Q. Hunter (2001) ‘Introduction: Retrovisions: Historical Makeovers in Film and Literature’. In D. Cartmell, I. Q. Hunter and I. Whelehan (eds), Retrovisions: Reinventing the Past in Film and Fiction. London: Pluto Press, 1–7. Chartier, R. (1994) [1993] ‘Le temps des doutes [Zeit der Zweifel. Zum Verständnis gegenwärtiger Geschichtsschreibung]’. In C. Conrad and M. Kessel (eds), Geschichte schreiben in der Postmoderne: Beiträge zur aktuellen Diskussion. Stuttgart: Reclam, 83–97. Clark, V. (2002) ‘It’s O.K. to Laugh: Gender and Television Sitcom’. Workshop BFI A-Level conference 2–4 July 2002. OCR Virtual Media Studies Community Support Site (http://ital-dev.ucles-red.cam.ac.uk/listsupport/ocr-mediastudies-a/ docs_html [11 February 2003]). Collingwood, R. G. (1994) [1946] The Idea of History. Ed. J. Van der Dussen. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Craig, C. (1991) ‘Rooms Without a View’. Sight and Sound NS 1.2, June: 10–13. Curtis, R., B. Elton, R. Atkinson and J. Lloyd (1998) Blackadder: The Whole Damn Dynasty 1485–1917. London: Michael Joseph/Penguin. Eaton, M. (1981) ‘Television Situation Comedy’. In T. Bennett et al. (eds), Popular Television and Film. London: British Film Institute, 26–52. Grote, D. G. (1983) The End of Comedy: The Sit-Com and the Comedic Tradition. Hamden, CT: Archon. Higham, G. (2000) ‘Quantity at the Expense of Quality? British TV Fiction in 1998’. In M. Buonanno (ed.), Continuity and Change: Television Fiction in Europe. Luton: University of Luton Press, 99–112. Higson, A. (1995) Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

228 Blackadder as Historiographic Meta-TV ——(2003) English Heritage, English Cinema. Costume Drama Since 1980. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hutcheon, L. (1985) A Theory of Parody. New York/London: Methuen. ——(1995) Irony’s Edge. The Theory and Politics of Irony. London/New York: Routledge. McFarlane, B. (1996) Novel into Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. McKechnie, K. (2002) ‘Taking Liberties with the Monarch: The Royal Bio-Pic in the 1990s’. In C. Monk and A. Sargeant (eds), British Historical Cinema: The History, Heritage and Costume Film. London/New York: Routledge, 217–36. McQueen, D. (1998) Television: A Media Student’s Guide. London: Arnold. Neale, S. and F. Krutnik (1990) Popular Film and Television Comedy. London: Routledge. Nelson, R. (1997) TV Drama in Transition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Newcomb, H. (1974) TV: The Most Popular Art. Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday. Palmer, J. (1987) The Logic of the Absurd: On Film and Television Comedy. London: British Film Institute. ——(1994) Taking Humour Seriously. London: Routledge. Seiter, E. (1987) ‘Semiotics and Television’. In R. C. Allen (ed.), Channels of Discourse: Television and Contemporary Criticism. London/New York: Routledge, 17–41. Tulloch, J. (1990) Television Drama. London: Routledge. Voigts-Virchow, E. (1998) ‘Anglian Antics – British Film Comedies of the Eighties and Nineties’. In Journal for the Study of British Cultures 5.2: 129–42. Walker, C. (2000) ‘A Funny Business: Producing Situation Comedy’. In E. VoigtsVirchow (ed.), Mediated Drama – Dramatized Media. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 95–100. White, H. (1973) Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wright, P. (1985) On Living in an Old Country: The National Past in Contemporary Britain. London: Verso.

Index

Absolutely Fabulous 222 addressee see narratee Agency, The 61 Alias 61 All My Children 26 ‘Allo, ‘Allo 216 Ally McBeal 4, 5, 6, 20, 22, 24, 28, 31, 32, 34, 37, 80, 92, 153, 156 Angel 7, 22, 26, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 132–50 Army Game, The 216 author 6–7, 8, 12, 127, 135, 192, 205, 207, 214, 226 Avengers, The 23 Babylon Five 36 Berlin, Berlin 20, 21, 35, 39, 80–95 Beverly Hills, 90210 7, 154 Birds of a Feather 213 Blackadder 31, 35, 40, 211–28 Buffy the Vampire Slayer 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 15, 17, 19, 20, 23, 26–7, 28, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 78, 132–50 captions, inserted 12, 16, 32, 34, 50, 54, 116, 128, 130, 162, 220 Central Park West 154 character-doubling 31, 99, 100, 103, 107–8, 109–11, 135–8, 139, 148, 149 character-focalization 19–22, 32, 33, 55, 63, 69, 71, 80, 82, 85, 88, 92, 198 character-narrator see intradiegetic narration Charlie’s Angels 23 Charmed 7, 13, 22, 31, 33, 34, 35 chronology 32–4, 51, 52, 54, 124, 197 class 31, 136, 165, 220, 222, 226 cliff-hanger 3, 23, 28, 48, 52, 53, 155 closing credits 27, 101 closure 3, 5, 22–4, 28, 48, 57, 99, 100, 117, 171, 191, 205, 219 commercial break 10, 11–12, 50–1, 52, 155, 181, 191

consciousness, presentation of see dreams, presentation of; emotions, presentation of; hallucinations, presentation of; memories, presentation of; perceptions, presentation of; thoughts, presentation of; visions, presentation of continuity 5, 6, 10, 17, 24, 28, 29, 62, 170 Coronation Street 31 Cosby Show, The 19, 34 Crapston Villas, SE 69 222–3 creator see author crossover 36–7, 63, 133–5 Crusade 36 Cybil 169 Dad’s Army 216 Dark Angel 21 doppelganger see character-doubling dreams, presentation of 25, 73, 74, 77, 80, 85–8, 92–3, 105, 107–9, 127, 143, 195–200 Dynasty 7 Eastenders 31 Ellen 19, 30, 39, 168–87 embedded narrative 17, 18, 19, 99, 100, 105–9, 111, 120–1, 125–6, 160, 161, 162 emotions, presentation of 19–22, 70, 72, 82–5, 88, 90–3, 195–200 ER 24 ethnicity 3, 30, 59, 76, 166, 222 exposition 3, 10, 12, 24, 55, 64, 129, 196 external focalization 40 extradiegetic narration 18, 54, 116, 168 F(antasy)-universe 22, 25, 27, 39, 74, 75, 76, 77–8, 86–7 Father Ted 223 Fawlty Towers 216 flashback 19, 32–3, 38, 50, 51, 66, 87, 136 229

230 Index flashforward 32–3, 108 flow see schedule focalization 19–22, 40, 41, 55, 56, 57, 59, 69, 82, 94, 124, 134, 160 frame narrative 18, 55, 121, 125–6, 160, 161, 164, 168 Friends 17, 19, 20, 24, 26, 28, 30, 33, 34, 37, 38, 62, 153, 170 Fugitive, The 23 gender 3, 7, 14–15, 29, 39, 41, 59, 62, 65–6, 68, 78, 137, 139, 140, 143–4, 153–67, 168–87, 215, 220, 221–2 Gimme, Gimme, Gimme 223 Grace 169 Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten 94 hallucinations, presentation of 22, 27, 39, 63, 72–7, 123–4, 147 Heimat 192–3, 194, 207, 209 Hercules 23, 37 heterodiegetic narration 14, 15, 54, 67 Hill Street Blues 24 Holocaust 192–3, 208 homodiegetic narration 14, 15, 56, 63, 67, 90, 160, 163, 205 host-narrator 15, 16, 28, 55, 160 I Claudius 216 intermediality 4, 35, 36, 52, 93–4, 125, 128, 130, 148, 217 internal focalization see character-focalization intertextuality see intermediality; intramediality intertitles 16, 32, 125, 128, 130 intradiegetic narration 18, 19, 119, 121–2 intramediality 4, 35, 36, 52, 93–4, 128, 130, 148, 193, 217 Lone Gunmen, The L-Word, The 30

36, 114

M*A*S*H 220, 227 Mad About You 27, 37 Married … with Children 17, 31, 34, 169 Melrose Place 154 memories, presentation of 19–22, 25, 72–7, 85–8, 134, 136–7, 197, 203–4 Men Behaving Badly 213, 223 metafictionality 4, 35–8, 41, 52, 179–80, 216, 224

Middlemarch 216 Millennium 7, 37 multiperspectivity 4, 18, 27, 54, 118, 122, 133, 200–2, 207 Murder She Wrote 5, 6, 102 narratee 18–19, 105, 120, 165, 171 narrating agency 13–18, 40, 47, 54–7, 115, 116, 125, 129, 195–6 narrator 2, 13, 14, 16, 18, 41, 52, 54, 63–8, 115, 117, 121, 122, 127, 133, 156, 160, 161, 163, 165, 166, 195–6, 197, 200 Northern Exposure 35 Not the Nine O’Clock News 215, 216 Office, The 221 on-screen narrator 13, 15 opening credits 10, 12–13, 32, 34, 49–50, 81, 90, 101, 107, 160, 175, 201, 215 perceptions, presentation of 19–22, 63, 68–72, 82–5, 90, 93, 195–200 plot 10, 15, 22, 23–5, 28, 29, 36, 39, 49, 52, 53, 55, 57–8, 59, 60, 63, 86, 87, 100, 103, 105, 107, 116, 117, 118, 120, 154, 155, 156, 161, 164, 168–9, 171, 172, 175, 183, 184, 191, 205, 214, 215, 218, 219, 221, 226 possible world 25, 26, 27, 28, 86, 87, 92–3, 116, 120, 123, 126, 127 possible-worlds theory 22, 25–8, 74, 78, 84, 94, 115, 120, 123, 126 Practice, The 37 Psi Factor 16, 28 Queer as Folk

30, 36

race 30, 59, 62, 68, 77, 78, 165 Red Dwarf 223 Roseanne 31, 169 Royle Family, The 221 Sabrina, the Teenage Witch 38 schedule 3, 10–1, 32, 50 Scrubs 27 Secret Army 216 Sex and the City 15, 19, 33, 34, 39, 153–67 Simpsons, The 6, 16, 22, 35, 36, 40 Six Feet Under 22, 30 South Park 94 spin-off 36–7, 114, 132, 214

Index 231 Star Trek (The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise) 7, 10, 13, 24, 27, 28, 29, 31, 33, 34–5, 37, 38, 39, 62–79, 92, 130, 148 Stargate 23 Street of San Francisco, The 102 teaser 10, 12, 26, 32–3, 64–5, 116, 121, 123, 124, 125, 179 textual actual world 25, 26, 27, 74–6, 84, 85, 86, 88, 92, 94, 118, 120, 123–4, 126, 129 theme song 12, 17, 50, 81, 128, 175, 176, 179, 220 thoughts, presentation of 19–22, 72, 82–5, 88, 90–3, 195–200 time structure 32–4, 47, 49–52, 53, 54, 57, 58, 124, 135, 196–7 24 18, 39, 47–61 Twin Peaks 18, 22, 36, 39, 99–113, 148 unreliable narration 4, 17, 41, 89, 122, 123, 163–4, 181 Up Pompeii! 216 Upstairs, Downstairs 216

Vicar of Dibley, The 213 visions, presentation of 20, 22, 33, 63, 72–7, 85–8, 92–3, 107–9, 197 voice-over 4, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 25, 32, 33, 34, 41, 49, 54, 55, 63–8, 69, 78, 85, 88–90, 91, 92, 106, 107, 119, 120, 121, 125–6, 127, 148, 153, 160–1, 164, 165, 168, 181, 185, 195–6, 197, 198, 199, 200–1, 209 West Wing, The 15, 16, 24, 28 Will and Grace 184, 186 Wonder Years 15 Xena: Warrior Princess 29, 30, 34, 36, 37, 38 X-Files, The 5, 6, 7, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 23, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35–6, 37, 38, 39, 62, 78, 92, 114–31 Young Ones, The

215, 222

Zweite Heimat, Die

11, 40, 191–210

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