comm1073undiscloseddesire

The L Word Season Final Trailer

Over the past two decades, television culture has changed so much. In contemporary television (in any country, not only America), there are not only traditional domestic sitcom or crime dramas, but television shows are expanded to other genres, such as reality shows and narrative complexity.

To answer the question why narrative complexity becomes so popular and be able to draw the attention to a huge amount of audience, we shall look at the case study of The L word, a very popular television show on American ShowTime channel and make some links to some of the points that Jason Mittell has made in his article Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television.

In the very beginning of the article, Mittell says that narrative complexity is considered to be better quality television shows. Why?

We might consider narrative complexity as “a distinct narrational mode”. Some narrative complexity shows are seen as the imports of art cinema into small screen (such as Twin Peaks and The Singing Detective). Even though cinema certainly influences many aspects of television, including visual style, there are some limitations in cinema. For example, it is impossible to extend character depth, ongoing plotting and episodic variations within a two-hour film. However, within approximately 10 episodes of a narrative complexity show, the audience enjoy watching and looking forward what happened next in the development of story plot, character and whatever they wish to. For example, specially with a series that contains a big group of main cast like The L Word (more than 10 characters), 12 episodes each season offers the audience enough time to gain a very deep insight in each character and the development of the relationship among the characters. To imagine The L Word in 2 hours, I cannot think of any possible way to portray these characters as lively as the series would do.

Even better than reality shows? Realistic characters and scenarios are the main keys lead to the success of reality show. However, it is lacking of fictional elements that a traditional television show should be able to generate. On the one hand, The L Word is appreciated and praised by audience for being able to portray the life of lesbian and sexual women under realistic camera angle. On the other hand, The L Word is criticized to portray all the characters and their lives too fictionally and fancily. For instance, main characters in the series work in a wide range of artistic jobs such as art lecturer, novel writer, game designer, sculpture artist and hair- dresser, and their lives is mainly surrounding a love circle, involved with party, sex, drug, fame. Then, why audience still enjoy it so much? The answer is …we watch narrative complexity shows to hunt the imagination that we normally cannot have in reality.

         Furthermore, The L word is a perfect example for a successful narrative complexity show, as singular episode and season have their own story but still, all of them linked together perfectly to the main plot. Hence, it creates the continued joy in each coming up episode.

        We are living in such a technology-based world, thanks to the development of TV paid channel, network, narrative complexity show is expanded quickly in the way that I don’t think it would be able to in the last 2 decades. Audience nowadays not only watch the show on TV, but they would pay good money for a high quality set of DVDs and spend time on the Internet participating in online discussion. As Mittelll mentions about the rise of amateur television criticism, The L Word is not an exception. Why do we spend time and make effort to participate in online discussion? It is not about watching the show anymore, but living it. There are heaps of online sources that people discuss about the series, fan- fiction based sites are also very popular.

In my opinion, to participate in online discussions, not only satisfy the need of sharing your thought, your imagination and what you look forward to see next in the series but it may lead you to other unexpected opportunity. For example, the founder and editor AfterEllen.com, the leading entertainment site for lesbian and bisexual women actually made its as her full-time permanent job after she launched a small blog sharing her thought about this show. Most importantly, narrative complexity shows offer the audience the chance of being more actively engaged with the show. 

References:

Jason Mittell, Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television