Chapter 18 Bingeing Narratives: Conclusion

chapter 18 Bingeing Narratives: Conclusion Lynn Kozak and Martin Zeller-Jacques, Tom Hemingway, Orcun Can, Júlia Havas and Tanya Horeck T he emergence of binge-watching as one of the defining logics of the SVOD era of television presents a challenge to the scholar of television narrative. As a practice of television audiences, binge-watching seems resistant to textual analysis. However, as television producers and distributors attempt to distinguish their programming in the crowded SVOD marketplace, they have begun to claim that they are producing their shows in ways which facilitate or encourage bingeing. The chapters in this part of the collection interrogate those claims by examining the narrative structures of ‘made-for-bingeing’ television programmes on Netflix. Collectively, we explore both the continuities and the developments of television form which characterise bingeable television in the SVOD era. The centre of our approach is the investigation of a claim often made in trade discourse, publicity and journalism around streaming television: that television made in the season-dropped, bingeable format offers a qualitatively different form of television storytelling than conventional scheduled television. As the title of a 2015 New York Times article by TV critic James Poniewozik puts it: ‘Streaming TV Isn’t Just a New Way to Watch: It’s a New Genre’. According to Poniewozik, the practice of full-drop release has generated ‘new conventions and aesthetics’ that ‘we’re just starting to figure out’ (2015). Indeed, Poniewozik goes so far as to suggest that: ‘More so than any recent innovation in TV, streaming has the potential, even the likelihood, to create an entirely new genre of narrative . . .’ (2015). This part on Netflix and narrative evaluates such claims and explores the narrative mechanics of TV series designed for user-directed, bingeable viewing. While CEO Reed Hastings might claim that Netflix’s full-drop release strategy has ‘improved’ television (cited in b i n g e i n g n a r r at i v e s : c o n c l u s i o n 275 Sharf 2018), to what extent are the narrative dynamics of bingeable TV any different from those of linear television? The ‘quality’ turn which crystallised around HBO in the 2000s occasioned similar claims that new scheduling and commissioning practices were leading to different forms of television storytelling (McCabe and Akass 2007; Nelson 2007). While such claims had some basis in fact, they were also part of the strategies of legitimation (Newman and Levine 2012) undertaken by the new players driving changes in the television industry. This makes it doubly important for scholars to regard claims of narrative distinction with a critical eye, lest we allow press releases and popular journalism to set the terms of the discussion around television narrative. In the introductory essay to this part, Lynn Kozak’s and Martin ZellerJacques’s exploration of ‘The Bingeable Narrative’ examines the Netflix original Stranger Things (Netflix 2016– ). Responding to critical claims about textual ‘purity’ (Jacobs 2011) as a defining feature of bingeable television, the first half of the chapter explores the narrative impact occasioned by the violation of that purity in the form of the stand-alone episode, ‘The Lost Sister’ (2:8). The second half of the chapter interrogates claims about the supposed lack of narrative redundancy in made-for-bingeing television, and demonstrates that various forms of redundancy are essential to the storytelling in the Stranger Things. Tom Hemingway’s chapter compares two texts available for streaming on Netflix, Arrested Development’s (Fox 2003–6; Netflix 2013– ) fourth season and Love (Netflix 2016–18). These case studies offer ways of approaching narratives which break from the previously established norms of broadcast television comedy. Both shows demonstrate different ways in which the comedy genre has been able to adapt its narrative structure to suit the binge-watching practices encouraged by streaming services. The chapter’s engagement with bingeability is on a strictly textual level, building on Jenner’s previous work (2016) regarding Arrested Development’s complex narrative structure. It then moves on to explore Love’s irregular use of temporality. The chapter points toward future areas of research in the audience response to these texts and by noting that there are, in fact, a small number of comedy programmes on Netflix which adhere to the traditional style associated with innumerable broadcast sitcoms. It would be interesting to examine how these programmes, The Ranch (Netflix 2016– ) and Alexa & Katie (Netflix 2018– ), fit alongside other Netflix original comedies in an expanded version of this study. Orcun Can introduces a new analytical model to examine so-called bingeable narratives. Breaking down consecutive episodes to their formal structural elements, the Serialised Televisual Narrative Analysis (STNA) Model presents overarching narratives in multiple episodes as a single, linear dataset. His chapter offers a comparative analysis of the broadcast TV show Gilmore Girls 276 k o z a k , z e l l e r - ja c q u e s , h e m i n g way , c a n , h ava s (The CW 2000–7) and the Netflix Original Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (Netflix 2016) using the STNA Model. By exploring narrative possibilities afforded in an SVOD environment and investigating how televisual afterlives take shape on Netflix, Can argues that the omission of commercial breaks enables a variety of changes in the narrative form of televisual serials in Netflix. In ‘Netflix Feminism: Binge-Watching Rape Culture in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix 2015–19) and Unbelievable (Netflix 2019)’, Júlia Havas and Tanya Horeck examine the political potential of Netflix’s bingeable programming strategy for narrating rape. Focusing on two Netflix series that attempt to find new ways of televisually representing rape and post-traumatic recovery from rape – Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Unbelievable – Havas and Horeck reflect on how these series represent what the authors refer to as ‘Netflix feminism’. While Kimmy is a comedy and Unbelievable a crime drama, both series mine the affordances of Netflix’s much-touted binge-watching formula and its use of serialised narrative structures to explore and criticise both rape culture and the established tropes of narrativising rape culture. Havas and Horeck commend the feminist innovation of these two series, but they also point to the need to think critically about how Netflix deploys an idea of itself as a feminist company in relation to its self-branding strategies as a pioneer of what has been referred to as ‘woke’ media culture. While there is not one set formula or template that Netflix uses for its bingeable narratives, these chapters demonstrate that its business model of full-drop release has led to certain significant shifts and trends in narrative form, storytelling and temporality. At the same time, this work across genres also emphasises where streaming TV has merely innovated on or adopted historical television forms. Textual analysis gives all these chapters the critical leverage to push back against commercial claims of the ‘new’. references Jacobs, J. (2011). ‘Television, Interrupted: Pollution or Aesthetic’. In J. Bennett and N. Strange (eds), Television as Digital Media. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 255–80. Jenner, M. (2016). ‘Is This TVIV? On Netflix, TVIII and Binge-Watching’. New Media & Society 18(2): 257–73. Jenner, M. (2018). Netflix and the Reinvention of Television. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. McCabe, J. and K. Akass (eds). (2007). Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. Nelson, R. (2007). State of Play: Contemporary ‘High-End’ TV Drama. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Newman, M. and E. Levine (2012). Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status. London and New York: Routledge. Poniewozik, J. (2015). ‘Streaming TV Isn’t Just a New Way to Watch: It’s a New Genre’. 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