Texture, realism, performance: exploring the intersection of transtexts and the contemporary sitcom

Contemporary US sitcom is at an interesting crossroads: it has received an increasing amount of scholarly attention (e.g. Mills 2009; Butler 2010; Newman and Levine 2012; Vermeulen and Whitfield 2013), which largely understands it as shifting towards the aesthetically and narratively complex. At the same time, in the post-broadcasting era, US networks are particularly struggling for their audience share. With the days of blockbuster successes like Must See TV’s Friends (NBC 1994-2004) a distant dream, recent US sitcoms are instead turning towards smaller, engaged audiences. Here, a cult sensibility of intertextual in-jokes, temporal and narrational experimentation (e.g. flashbacks and alternate realities) and self-reflexive performance styles have marked shows including Community (NBC 2009-2015), How I Met Your Mother (CBS 2005-2014), New Girl (Fox 2011-present) and 30 Rock (NBC 2006-2013). However, not much critical attention has so far been paid to how these developments in textual sensibility in contemporary US sitcom may be influenced by, and influencing, the use of transmedia storytelling practices, an increasingly significant industrial concern and rising scholarly field of enquiry (e.g. Jenkins 2006; Mittell 2015; Richards 2010; Scott 2010; Jenkins, Ford and Green 2013). This chapter investigates this mutual influence between sitcom and transmedia by taking as its case studies two network shows that encourage invested viewership through their use of transtexts, namely How I Met Your Mother (hereafter HIMHM) and New Girl (hereafter NG). As such, it will pay particular attention to the most transtextually visible character/actor from each show: HIMYM’s Barney Stinson, played by Neil Patrick Harris, and NG’s Schmidt, played by Max Greenfield. This chapter argues that these sitcoms do not simply have their particular textual sensibility and also (happen to) engage with transmedia practices, but that the two are mutually informing and defining. This chapter explores the relationships and interplay between sitcom aesthetics, narratives and transmedia storytelling (or industrial transtexts), focusing on the use of multiple delivery channels in order to disperse “integral elements of a fiction��� (Jenkins, 2006 95-6), by official entities such as the broadcasting channels. The chapter pays due attention to the specific production contexts of both shows and how these inform their approaches to transtexts. This chapter’s conceptual framework will be particularly concerned with how issues of texture, the reality envelope and accepted imaginative realism, as well as performance and the actor’s input inform and illuminate contemporary sitcoms and transtexts, and will be the first scholarly research to do so. It will seek out points of connections between two (thus far) separate strands of scholarship and will move discussions on transtexts beyond the usual genre studied (i.e. science-fiction and fantasy), as well as make a contribution to the growing scholarship on contemporary sitcom by approaching it from a new critical angle. On the basis that transmedia scholarship stands to benefit from widening its customary genre choice (i.e. telefantasy) for its case studies and from making more use of in-depth close analysis in its engagement with transtexts, the chapter argues that notions of texture, accepted imaginative realism and the reality envelope, as well as performance and the actor’s input deserve to be paid more attention to within transtext-related scholarship.

Ljudets funktioner i filmen 9 : En audiovisuell analys

I denna uppsats har en audiovisuell analys gjorts på de inledande minuterna till filmen 9 med ett stort fokus på ljudet. Syftet med uppsatsen var att beskriva och skapa en ökad förståelse för ljudets funktioner i filmen samt se på hur ljudet påverkade filmupplevelsen. Förhoppningen med detta var också att bidra till en bättre förståelse av filmljud och ljuddesign i helhet och vad det bidrar till berättarfunktionen i film. I uppsatsen granskades först ljud och bild för sig och slogs sedan ihop till sin helhet och analyserades utifrån en teoribildning av franska författaren Michel Chion.Ljudets viktigaste funktioner i filmen 9 var att ge en trovärdighet och äkthet, att beskriva föremål och speciellt huvudkaraktärens fysiska attribut samt att ge en respons på det som sker i bild. Vidare fyller ljudet funktioner som att beskriva rum och miljö som ger åskådaren en tydlig känsla för omgivningen filmen. Filmljudet hjälper även till att leda åskådarens uppmärksamhet och beskriva föremål eller personers innebörd. Den kanske absolut viktigaste funktion som ljudet har är att ge åskådaren en djupare förståelse för handlingen.

Retórica testimonial entre verosimilitud y ficción en La Vorágine

For the author, the concept of testimonial rhetoric means the discursive strategy with which the narrator attempts to make understood that narration is not a product of fiction, but the product of a social reality which he witnessed and lived. The First World War brought with it an increase in the demand for rubber which entailed an attitude on thepart of the consumer countries as well as of the producers, of silencing and refusing to recognize the infrahuman conditions to which thousands of people who worked on the rubber plantations were submitted. This is the social reality, the context in which José Eustasio Rivera wrote La Vorágine.

Le poète errant à Port-au-Prince : Une lecture de _Parias_ de Magloire Saint-Aude

Cet article offre une analyse de la figure du flâneur dans Parias: documentaire de l’écrivain haïtien Magloire-Saint-Aude (1912-1971). Étudiant la façon dont il se réapproprie de ce trope surréaliste dans un cadre port-au-princien, le but est de montrer que l’auteur essaie de repenser le sujet haïtien. L’article démontre que Magloire-Saint-Aude se sert d’un chronotope urbain double, d’abord les rues pauvres où les personnages déambulent sans but fixe et ensuite les salons bourgeois où naît le désir. Son flâneur haïtien subit un processus complexe de subjectivation qui s’articule dans la tension de ces deux chronotopes urbains. Même si le héros saint-audien essaye de se libérer par le biais de l’amour pour une Française il est à jamais attaché à l’espace exigu de Port-au-Prince. Cela vient rompre avec une tradition d’affirmation héroïque du sujet (masculin) haïtien. ”Exilé de l’intérieur,” Malgoire-Saint-Aude explore un sujet insaisissable qui garde ouverte sa part à l’altérité.