Non-Core 10

In reading Feuer's article "Melodrama, Serial Form and Television Today," I was struck by the fact that critics across the board seem to agree that "daytime and prime-time serials share a narrative form consisting of multiple plot lines and a continuing narrative (no closure)" (4). Indeed, Feuer seems to suggest that the multiple plot structure is perhaps a shared quality of all American television (5). This observation made me wonder about "debates" around "television vs. film"—which is better, which is of a higher quality, which is more ideologically engaged (or engaged with ideology), which is an art, etc.

I started to think about when and where "multiple plot structure" is seen as an asset, and what is has been seen as faulty. I had read a pretty un-compelling article by Andrew deWaard called "The Global Social Problem Film" that considered the multilinear, web-of-life (what deWaard will eventually call a Deleuzian/rhizomatic) plot line as a particularly privileged form to think across a planetary scale, to think the unusual intimacies and connections brought about by globalization, and is a form to think self-reflexively. The films deWaard cites are Syriana, Babel, Crash, Fast Food Nation, and Traffic—films I would characterize as high school-stoner-philosophy-bro fetishes (I'm tbh shocked that Requiem for a Dream isn't shoehorned in that article!). Are television shows ever given this benefit of the doubt? What makes certain multiple plot lines exciting and novel (Sense8 smdh) and others a sign of weakness, distraction, or "doing too much"?

deWaard, Andrew. "The Global Social Problem Film." Cinephile 3, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2007): 12-18.