

Storytelling in Film and Television
Harvard University Press books are not shipped directly to India due to regional distribution arrangements. Buy from your local bookstore, Amazon.co.in, or Flipkart.com.
This book is not shipped directly to country due to regional distribution arrangements.
Pre-order for this book isn't available yet on our website.
This book is currently out of stock.
Dropdown items
ISBN 9780674010871
Publication date: 06/30/2003
Derided as simple, dismissed as inferior to film, famously characterized as a vast wasteland, television nonetheless exerts an undeniable, apparently inescapable power in our culture. The secret of television's success may well lie in the remarkable narrative complexities underlying its seeming simplicity, complexities Kristin Thompson unmasks in this engaging analysis of the narrative workings of television and film.
After first looking at the narrative techniques the two media share, Thompson focuses on the specific challenges that series television presents and the tactics writers have devised to meet them--tactics that sustain interest and maintain sense across multiple plots and subplots and in spite of frequent interruptions as well as weeklong and seasonal breaks. Beyond adapting the techniques of film, Thompson argues, television has wrought its own changes in traditional narrative form. Drawing on classics of film and television, as well as recent and current series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, and The Simpsons, she shows how adaptations, sequels, series, and sagas have altered long-standing notions of closure and single authorship. And in a comparison of David Lynch's Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, she asks whether there can be an "art television" comparable to the more familiar "art cinema."
Praise
-
Remarkably little work (scholarly or otherwise) has been done on television. These four essays provide what may be the most cogent and systematic study of the subject currently available. Thompson is an extremely solid writer with a keen intellect and exceptional analytical skills, and all of these qualities are in evidence here. Simply stated, there is at present no book quite like this one, despite the pressing need for such a book.
-
I quite enjoyed reading this book. What I like most about it is its interdisciplinary approach. It shows the insights that an intellectually mature media scholar can have when she crosses disciplinary boundaries--applying analytical principles of one medium to another. I feel strongly that this sort of work should be encouraged.
Author
- Kristin Thompson is an honorary fellow in the Communication Arts Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Book Details
- 192 pages
- 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches
- Harvard University Press
From this author
Recommendations
-
Babel and Babylon
Miriam Hansen -
Cahiers du Cinéma, 1: The 1960s (1960–1968)
Jim Hillier -
From Hitler to Heimat
Anton Kaes -
Moving Pictures
Anne Hollander -
Cahiers du Cinéma, 1: The 1950s
Jim Hillier