David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Kristin Thompson, Storytelling in Film and Television (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2003)

Kristin Thompson spends most of the four essays (collected from a speaking series given about a year earlier) here arguing for the value of looking at individual episodes, seasons, or series as objects of analysis. Opposing Williams’ idea of flow where viewers are basically unable to distinguish between what is the programming and what is the interruption (in terms of ads or even changes of show or channel), Thompson suggests (rightly) that viewers are not only able to make such distinctions, but that the storytelling, which aligns with her conception of the classical Hollywood storytelling structure, helps viewers make this distinction and forms the fundamental argument for her desire to focus on shows in every scale as the objects of study for television scholars. While this argument may seem somewhat unnecessary, I’d wager it only really seems that way now, in 2020, almost 2 decades after Thompson first made this argument. Her mode has become the standard, but TV scholarship is still relatively new, and it is very possible that the time between her argument and now has been shaped by that very argument.

To focus more on how that storytelling works, she notes that film is reliant upon redundant storytelling that uses dangling hooks and multiple narrative threads, and that TV weaponizes those concepts to ensure that viewers understand what is happening in an episode, season, and series. It’s a compelling argument.

She also, in the third essay, argues that the prevalence of TV has changed the way that we tell stories overall. She claims that the concept of seriality has become so embedded in the public consciousness that it has influenced film and literature, leading to a resurgence of sequels, prequels, and saga style storytelling. I find this claim to be very credible, but I think it both needs some more bolstering and some further thought given the developments of the past 20 years. But I guess that’s what I’m here for.

In her fourth essay, she argues that there can be such thing as Art Television the way there is Art Film, following Bordwell’s famous essay outlining the six features of art cinema. She shows that there are pretty tight homologies between the two media in how they handle the same ideas, using David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet as her primary examples.

Context: Who is this author debating with and why? What is the context of the text’s production and distribution? What historical, cultural, etc. factors affect the way it makes meaning? Does the author seem to be in conversation with other scholars and/or paradigms? Where is this piece of writing centered in the field? What is their intervention in the literature/field? What text is this text in conversation with?

As I said above, she only really argues with (or even references outright) Raymond Williams’ concept of flow. Otherwise, she’s obviously positioning herself as an argument for what might be seen as a standard film theory angle on TV theory. I think it’s important to notice what is similar between the two media, as well as what is different. Though I wouldn’t go as far as McLuhan does on the concept of medium specificity, there are definite differences that make for real, meaningful variances in how the two media handle similar ideas/stories/techniques. Thompson provides a good first step here by noting that there is a tendency towards a unified act structure in different types of TV in a way that is similar to the classical Hollywood style, but there’s so much more to explore (and that was already explored after Thompson’s publication).

Methodology: What is the methodological framework of this text? What methodological moves or questions does the author engage? What is their object of analysis?

Textual analysis of several different kinds of TV shows, including some extended dialogue scenes that are presented in script form.

Rhetorical Moves: What are the major rhetorical moves of the author’s arguments?

By trying to port film theory ideas to TV theory, she both argues for their fundamental similarity and notes the obvious differences.

Engagement & Application: How do I engage this text? How does this apply to my work? Does it support or provide a counterargument or model for strong intro or lit review? In other words, why is this piece of writing useful to me and/or how is it limited (bad writing style, problematic, didn’t consider x, y, and z)? Does it intersect with other items on the list?

Her argument is pretty foundational for TV studies as far as I can tell, as her focus on aesthetics and poetics is a core from which other kinds of analysis can be built. I’ll definitely be going back to her ideas on serialization, even if I don’t think they’re as fully developed as they need to be.

Key Terms: What terms are key to the author’s argument, and are they operationalized explicitly or implicitly?

film, television, poetics, serialization, serials, sequel, redundant narration, dangling hooks, art film, art television, flow

Significant Quotations: What key quotations from this work would I want to have quick access to?

In Storytelling in the New Hollywood, I argued further that the norms and widespread use in recent decades are essentially still those of the “Golden Age” of studio filmmaking in the decades before 1960. This is not to say that all films draw on all aspects of that model, and certainly there are some films that stretch the conventions. I mean rather that the norms are still there to be drawn on, and most films do. Here I would like to take one further step and suggest that many of these norms have been adopted or adapted by television precisely because they have been so suited to telling straightforward, entertaining stories. (19)

Thus it would appear that in some cases even half-hour programs that are not interrupted by commercials tend to include major turning points that divide them into large-scale parts, or acts – though obviously here the authors were not required to time these moments as precisely as they did. With the increasing number of original series produced by premium channels like HBO in the U.S., one might wonder whether these commercial free programs also fall into evenly timed acts. A look at one half-hour sitcom, Sex and the City, and one roughly hour-long drama, The Sopranos, suggests that act structure is somewhat more flexible in such programs, but that it is not abandoned or radically altered. (51)

Such divisions of programs into acts, whether rigidly or flexibly proportioned, are not simply arbitrary. They give an episode a sense of structure, much as the balanced movements of a classical concerto do. They provide the spectator with a sense of progress and guarantee the introduction of dramatic new premises or obstacles at intervals. They allow for the rising and falling action that many writers refer to as crucial to good plots. Regular turning points also give variety to a story, ensuring that the action does not simply involve a character striving toward a goal and meeting a series of similar obstacles. Thus there are reasons why even television episodes that are broadcast without breaks would draw on an act structure. (54-5)

Currently all the familiar studios of Hollywood’s golden age are subsidiaries of large multinational corporations. In many cases, adaptations are attractive because such companies already own the rights to various narratives that have already been produced in one medium but which are available to be recycled in another. Moreover, these huge companies have been able to market their products, including movies, in part by using synergy. That is, a company’s TV stations will promote its movies, while its record division puts out the soundtrack, and so on. Such marketing now has also come to mean selling the same narrative over and over in different media. (81-2)

What, then, of serial narratives? It is possible that the vogue for sequels, series, and serials in film reflects an influence from television. […] These films [in the Lethal Weapon series] also, however, incorporate the mild seriality of much serious television, with the characters and their situations gradually changing. (103)

It is apparent, then, that the tendencies toward adaptations of stories among media, toward sequels, and toward seriality are all part of a general stretching and redefinition of narrative itself. In particular, the notion of firm and permanent closure to any given narrative has loosened across media. Series television, with its broad possibilities for spinning out narratives indefinitely, has been a major impetus in these tendencies. They, along with the innovations and interwoven multiple plot lines discussed in the last chapter, seem to me some of the most intriguing areas where an analyst might explore the aesthetic specificity of series television. (105)