long-form narrative

So the broad consensus is that television has finally reached its golden age. Somehow, magically, it doesn’t necessarily suck anymore. People have figured out how to use the medium to do something substantial and engaging, and while not every show follows through on this potential, or does it well, the artistry is loose — and some damned excellent things have been coming of it: The Sopranos, Lost, Battlestar Galactica. Most people seem to trace this evolution down to the mid-’90s, in particular to The X-Files. A few nerds throw around Babylon 5. I recently saw a proposition that it was a three-step process begun with Twin Peaks (showing that something substantial could be done with the medium), developed in The X-Files (showing that an involving long-form narrative was possible), and refined in Buffy (moving that narrative focus from plot to character development).

What strikes me as just as important, though, is the development of DVD. Again we can thank The X-Files for establishing precedent of DVD compilations; now with shows like Lost, and shows developed straight for pay channels like The Sopranos, that otherwise have no direct commercial value, television is produced with the end user — and an end product — in mind. Whereas the ’90s shows demonstrated the artistry, DVD provides a framework; a structure. Shows are designed to be cohesive, coherent long-form narrative units that people can pull off their shelves and watch, enjoy, as a single work, with the actual broadcast little more than a taster for the eventual consumer product. I’ve even heard cases of networks developing and showing series at a loss or near the break even point (though I’m scraping my mind to remember which ones, and where I read this), with the long-term expectation of DVD revenue, once the ratings and word of mouth have made their rounds, to make up the balance. As a result, TV shows are more and more made as a long-form work, that can be watched over and over, rather than for serialization.

I’ve said before that television is, in theory, the novel to film’s short story or novella. Whereas films are self-encapsulated, short narratives with a single premise, meant to be taken in at a sitting, both novels and television are serial formats. Many novels even start off as a series of short stories (Catch-22), or as newspaper or magazine serials (Musashi, anything Dickens). It’s only when they’re compiled into a single, tangible volume that they are assessed and evaluated as complete, legitimate works. And though there is a certain elegance to the short story or novella, revolving as they do around a single conceit, there is a reason why the novel is considered the true test of literary skill: as a serial, it has the scope and structure to explore plot, character, and theme with a nuance impossible in the shorter works. Of course, most novels still suck; that’s what happens, though.

What DVD has done is allow television that objective, tangible distance. Long-form works now can be compiled and assessed as a whole, in the same sense that they provide a target structure for the narrative. It’s just a strange coincidence that it happens to have come around immediately after the artistry. I think it’s the final critical step for the medium, in that previously that objective distance was impossible to attain. Even with the occasionsal VHS release, television was transitory. There’s a reason why the BBC archives (among others) were systematically wiped; just as life doesn’t become a story until it has an ending, a serial doesn’t become a novel until it’s bound. You have to be reminded to value the fleeting because it is fleeting, rather than ignore it because you can’t grab hold of it and place it on an altar.

Film, it got its act together years ago. Decades ago. Before sound, even — though it wasn’t until the New Wave that it got all self-aware and critical. Reason? It’s already self-encapsulated. You don’t need it bound; you don’t need it on your shelf; you don’t need to have it compiled for you, because it’s brief and simple enough to be instantly comprehensible, and easily exploited. (Relatively speaking, that is.) I think there’s a reason why in film the main artistic force is perceived as the director (Charlie Kaufman aside), whereas with television it tends to be the writer. Each dictates the essental narrative structure of the work. Since film is comparably simple and short, each shot, each visual juxtaposition is of greater narrative importance. Since television sprawls, the basic narrative block becomes the chapter rather than the scene — meaning an increased reliance on script as a source of content and momentum, rather than rote imagery.

Funny thing is, soap opera was way ahead of its time. All it really lacks is sophistication and an end structure — neither of which were even developed until a few years ago.