"Series, for better or worse, have changed our lives," writes critic Pep Prieto in the prologue to Petita gran pantalla, published by Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat. They have become preferred in our leisure time, he affirms, and in a permanent counterpoint to the topics we discuss every day, as he well knows as a regular contributor to programs such as El món a Rac1 by Jordi Basté, Cafè d'idees amb Gemma Nierga or as a columnist for Diari de Girona.
The journalist Francesc-Marc Álvaro, director of the collection, asked him not to write an academic book but to talk about the seriéphile phenomenon from his point of view. This is how his Petita gran pantalla was structured into chapters around friendship, crimes, mourning, religion, politics or racism, mentioning those series that, in his opinion, addressed these issues, contributed to him and allowed him to reflect. , and claiming titles that may have fallen into oblivion such as Carnivale or Braindead.
In the book you describe the series as a full-fledged cultural asset. Isn't it ironic that they have received this consideration now that, like cinema, they seem to be entering a crisis?
They are catharsis typical of excess. The cinema has entered into a crisis when it has entered into looping creative dynamics. We already experienced it in the eighties when cinema imploded because it took on a style of entertainment that became exasperating: one only has to compare iconic films like The Goonies with those of the end of the decade: there was an evident loss of quality and commercial circulation. The industry always makes the mistake of overexploiting its own ideas. This causes overproduction and oversupply, and ends up affecting the creative dynamics. It is the fault of the algorithms and thematic and conceptual currents are created.
Some example?
Does the viewer accept Marvel on television? Well, let's do three series a year. Does the viewer accept a Star Wars series? Well, let's fill in all the gaps in the imaginary. In addition, there is another factor to take into account. Television was an elephant graveyard, the place where the great stars of classic Hollywood went to die. The transition of an actor from television to cinema was very unusual. Now the viewer gives cinema and television an equal status, but we have multiple platforms and we barely enter into debates about their use: we have multiple media phenomena but we don't understand where they come from. We burn stages very quickly.
In the book you point out that “we see very complex narratives in a very short time, making the episodes indistinguishable. It is as if television fiction cut its wings making it impossible to have a long-term journey.
The cinema is having a hard time creating iconic titles but it is an art with more repercussions in the long term. Of series, on the other hand, which ones last? We always quote the same ones. There are professionals like you and me who spend all day claiming certain series that do not have the social or commercial impact that we would like. But we have a problem: we tend to comment on the series for weeks, both professionals and users, and a single episode does not make a series good or bad. It would be like analyzing Star Wars from The Empire Strikes Back, the best, without taking into account that it is part of a whole, and that everything must be able to be analyzed.
Should binge-watching be done to talk about ownership of a series? No, since even each platform has its emission rate. And how can you criticize a series if we haven't seen the entire season and therefore don't know where the narrative arc is headed? The series have problems being a lasting product because the opinion around a series, like it or not, has more to do with its irruption than its transit. The clearest case is that of The Mandalorian: it may have an audience but the debate has disappeared with the third season, except for fan circles. I always wonder, for example, if Lost would have survived the age of Twitter: possibly it would have had additional pressure that would have directed the fate of the series in a different way.
Stranger Things or Game of Thrones are one of the few series whose conversation survives beyond the second or third season...
Look Perry Mason. It is a prestigious series, solid from a dramatic point of view, script, aesthetics, music, photography, at an interpretive level... but it is totally invisible in its second season. I am amazed by the few people who comment on it and it is a series that I am passionate about because, instead of producing a remake for the character, it offered a covert prequel in its first season, making the viewer wonder where the Perry Mason they were they knew. In the second, for the record, he already fully enters the genre to which he belongs: judicial intrigue. And it is that we really like to vindicate the novelty but very little verify the follow-up. It is the result of monitoring on social networks. It is true that critics do their best to highlight series with a good development or a good ending. But there are series that disappear from the collective imagination with a speed that is even disconcerting. I bet that we will not remember 80% of the series in ten years.
Perhaps we should differentiate between television fiction and streaming fiction since the platforms offer shorter series, seasons with fewer episodes, and are often made to be viewed in a weekend. Have the series stopped being a constant like when we had the same characters every week at home?
The series are a constant because they have become a routine. Before, the series were a refuge based on a weekly appointment of general broadcast that, if you did not see, you would miss it. It was a very daily weekly appointment. When television was promoted in the United States, the promotional image was essentially a family in front of the television. Streaming has a different consumption: I have no doubt that there are entire families that sit together in front of the television, but the proliferation of devices has created new observation centers. And they are a constant because we have made them part of our habits and routines. There are many people who watch what is released that week on the platforms every Friday, replacing that tradition of watching the movie billboard. Television in the streaming era works by this engulfing system of the weekend premiere. This harms the installation in the imagination of exceptional series like Mindhunter. Another one that, on the other hand, I do think will be considered one of the greats in twenty years is Succession.
The future claim of Succession I must admit that bothers me a bit. Critics tend to claim series with very masculine views as 'the best': The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men or Breaking Bad. And, those that are led by women, have problems to last in the imaginary of good television. Look at Big little lies or The good wife, splendid.
What irritates me about this debate is that, despite having advanced and having installed series like Big Little Lies in the collective debate beyond its a priori female audience, over the years we run the risk of them being seen as sectorially for women if we do not claim them in an orbit of equality with the protomasculine series. And they are not sectorial series for women. The same thing happens with I may destroy you: if it ends up becoming a niche series, it will be an injustice because it challenges all of us equally, and we all have a role in contemplating and analyzing the series. The sad thing is that we succumb to old analysis mechanisms.
I can't help but remember Desperate Housewives, whose cultural, social and television impact in the United States was immense but died crushed by two opposing currents: the macho critic who looked down on her and a sector of feminism who despised the series for representing women. upper-middle class home.
I agree with you, and I would add the case of Ally McBeal, before Desperate Housewives. In addition to being by David E. Kelley, it was a series that revolutionized many molds long before the molds wanted to revolutionize themselves. It is a series ahead of its time and it does not have the iconographic role it deserves. Sex in New York, which has a much more expensive point in some respects, even considering its subversive capacity, has a greater role in modernity than Ally McBeal. It is a danger that we run and that I hope will be corrected with the new generations that will know how to put this type of fiction that is transversal and should not be interpreted as niche.
Excuse me for asking you a quick question that crossed my mind while reading Petita gran pantalla. What emotional shelters do you have at the serial level?
Fringe is one of the most severe cases of empathy I have had with the characters of a series, possibly because it appeals to one of the themes that I like the most as an author when I write: the relationship between parents and children. You can talk about parallel dimensions but I entered the character dynamics as I have rarely entered life.
When talking about friendship on the screen, you mention the virtues of Friends and also contextualize the series. Do we tend to over-justify why we like Friends?
In general, we go too far with the lack of context that we put to things. Friends is the daughter of an era where things sadly worked differently: but just because it was sad and different doesn't mean we can't enjoy the series. We can keep the critical spirit watching Friends and at the same time have fun with its mistakes and successes.
Do we attribute too much social responsibility to the series?
It is a phenomenon that comes from afar: it has always been applied to literature, then to cinema and now to series. The cultural tools that we have at our disposal help us to reflect on our lives and the social debates that we have around us. Another thing is that sometimes we overestimate the cultural product because of what it says and not because of how it says it. If a series opens a debate that interests us, we attribute a quality category: in reality sometimes, despite dealing with an interesting topic, a series is simply mediocre. It happened to me with Unorthodox. This is why I am interested in series that deal with topics that are practically taboo. For example, The leftovers is a series about mourning: there is no subject more unsympathetic. And I value more the series that make the implicit message without being so obvious. Mike Flanagan's Midnight Mass is still a vampire story and uses apparently very traditional narrative resources, but implicitly has a whole discourse on religion and religious repression that is exciting.
I appreciate the book, by the way, that it shows that you are the one writing it, especially when you criticize the veneration of the traditional family on television from before or the need to find a partner to be happy.
Family is a topic that challenges me a lot. In the eighties, being the child of separated parents was very different, so television families have always obsessed me: the way they sold that happiness was having a stable family. Yes, it is true that there may be times in life when you can feel alone, but it is also true that you become a very competent person. I wanted to explain in the book that we have been victims of a television model that tried to sell us a certain model of happiness. Luckily, in the age of streaming, we have very different families.
