Alessandro Catania, University of Nottingham

Alessandro Catania is a Doctoral Candidate at the Institute of Film and Television Studies of the University of Nottingham. He studies transnational television flows focusing on how contemporary American television drama is marketed across Europe (UK, Italy, France). Mainly interested in television, media marketing, new media and narrative theory, he holds a Master’s degree in Semiotics and Communication from the University of Bologna and a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature and Philosophy from the University of Paris 7. Recent publications include “Les jeux sont faits! Immersiveness and manageability of game narratives”, in E|C, special issue “Computer Games between Text and Practice”, forthcoming; “Bond. Just Bond. Le narrative (im)popolari di Daniel Craig 007”, in Ol3Media, Dec 2008; “L'interpretazione nel pettegolezzo”, in Ocula. Semiotic Eye on Media, Jan 2008.

“PREVIOUSLY ON…” : The Use of Recaps in Contemporary American TV Series

Despite their diffusion, recaps – short for recapitulation – are largely overlooked by media and television scholars. Far from being simple summaries of the “previous episodes” of a serial product, contemporary recaps are a strategic textual device used to captivate viewers.
Contemporary American TV drama best exemplifies the nature of these textual thresholds. While making the most of the serial nature of the product, recaps simultaneously allow for a relatively autonomous consumption experience. What are then the narrative principles that recaps exploit to lure the spectator into the story world?
By analysing the recaps of Heroes (2006-present) aired on NBC, this paper will investigate how recaps reedit the serial text according to both narrative and promotional imperatives: while they mash-up the series’ contents, emphasising story-lines and cliff-hangers, recaps also anticipate future narrative developments and use narrative arcs to brand the show by borrowing textual strategies from trailers and teasers. Further, the narrative/promotional function of recaps raises significant ideological issues when promotional hype is privileged over narrative accuracy. Do recap trick the spectator by allowing promotional and narrative content to overlap?
Finally, drawing on the study of televisual and filmic thresholds (Genette 1979, 1987; Re 2006; Grainge 2008), I will show how the narratives of contemporary American TV drama cannot be fully understood as a splinter-patterned narrative form anymore: the analysis of recaps uncovers the transformation of the text itself into a network of references, an open source for textual content to be reworked, that dissolves its self-sufficiency and ultimately causes narratives to reflexively fold on themselves.