1st Edition

Cognition, Emotion, and Aesthetics in Contemporary Serial Television

Edited By Ted Nannicelli, Héctor J. Pérez Copyright 2022
332 Pages 26 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

332 Pages 26 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

332 Pages 26 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book posits an interconnection between the ways in which contemporary television serials cue cognitive operations, solicit emotional responses, and elicit aesthetic appreciation. The chapters explore a number of questions including: How do the particularities of form and style in contemporary serial television engage us cognitively, emotionally, and aesthetically? How do they foster... Read more

1. Introduction: Cognition, Emotion, and Aesthetics in Contemporary Serial Television
Ted Nannicelli and Héctor J. Pérez


Part 1. The Nature of Contemporary Televisual Seriality

2. Television’s Temporality: Seriality and Temporal Prolongation
Alberto Nahum García and Ted Nannicelli

3. Multi-plot Structure in Television Serials
Héctor J. Pérez and María Jesús Ortiz

4. “Oh My God, They Didn’t Kill Kenny”: Seriality and Viewer Engagement in Contemporary Animated Television
Oliver Kroener

5. Seriality and Expressiveness in Mad Men
Elliott Logan


Part 2. Audiences

6. From Shots to Storyworlds: The Cognitive Processes Supporting the Comprehension of Serialized Television
Jeffrey E. Saerys-Foy and Joseph Magliano

7. Beliefs, Desires, and Emotions: A Theory of Emotions and Some Implications for the Understanding of Viewer Reactions to TV Serials
Rainer Reisenzein


Part 3. Poetics

8. Reaching through Time: On Seriality, Temporality, and Twofoldness
Murray Smith

9. Five Theses on the Difficulty of Ending Quality TV Series
Margrethe Bruun Vaage

10. Pop Music in Television Serials: Priming, Authorial Commentary, and Musical Memory
Birger Langkjaer

11. Twin Peaks and the Performative Poetics of Complex Television
Aaron Taylor

12. Parallelism and Complex Storytelling in Film and TV
Malcolm Turvey


Part 4. Value: Aesthetic and Beyond

13. Audiovisual Atmospheres, Moods, and Metaphoric Spaces: Aesthetically Rich Spaces in Complex TV Series
Kathrin Fahlenbrach

14. Repetition, Familiarity, and Aesthetic Pleasure: Formulaic Generic Television Series 
Iris Vidmar Jovanovic

15. Ethics and Bad Protagonists in Serial Television Drama
Carl Plantinga

16. A Sense of Moment: Appreciating Television Serials from Aesthetic and Cognitive Perspectives
Sarah Cardwell

Biography

Ted Nannicelli is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at The University of Queensland. He is editor of Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, co-editor of Cognitive Media Theory (2014), and author of Appreciating the Art of Television: A Philosophical Perspective.

Héctor J. Pérez is Associate Professor of Audiovisual Narrative at the Universitat Politècnica de València. He has published widely in scientific journals such as Projections, Culture & Psychology, Aisthesis, and L’Atalante. He is editor of SERIES, International Journal of TV Serial Narratives.