Saturday, June 25, 2016

No Mercy on TV – La Nacion (Argentina)

In the quest to retain as fragmentary attention of the viewer, the twists have become an indispensable resource, such as Game of Thrones, which ends today its sixth season

Jon Snow and his unexpected return to life. Photo: HBO

For a long time, YouTube, circulating called reaction video , clips in which no event is recorded but one who experiences it, a manifestation of the obsessive first person of social networks. Among the most popular are the reactions to the end of the episode “The Red Wedding” Game of Thrones (HBO tomorrow concludes its sixth season), in which most of the characters most beloved series are butchered unexpectedly. The reactions of the viewers are suffering more than pleasure: some shout, others cry, many remain silent, stunned. It is clear that the time is captivating, shows that what is so unthinkable that you can not stop looking. For the creators of series, this is the Holy Grail, that to which all aspire: make situations that touch a chord in its viewers, who do you can not talk about anything else. Television recovered a formula to achieve such a thing. Around unforeseen nut, Twist

For much of the public, that shift is the core of the narrative, where the greatest enjoyment is preserved. It is not necessarily rewarding for the ego, as it is an intellectual challenge that we lose: when the Twist works, the author shows outsmart us. But in our culture wear and exhaustion, in that everything was tested, recycled and reused, the appearance of that which we would never have imagined it so satisfying that, like a good magic trick, delights us have been deceived .

From Oedipus Lost , the authors expect that the unexpected turn its magic and keep the captive audience. The novelty introduced by the current narrative inflammation of the series, and the need for the viewer to continue watching for months and even years, is that, unlike what happens in the movies, the theater or the novel, on TV today anything goes: no resource is too old, too free or too misleading to take the nose until the next episode. Revives the dead, the unthinkable kin, the most cruel betrayals, arbitrary changes more luck are no longer part of the fevered world of the soap opera but with varying degrees of sophistication, pervade all television fiction. Although they live on a thin line: the twist is a hook that should tighten the pact between fiction and its audience as much as possible to provide the greatest shock, but without breaking the pact and feel frustrated, cheated or irremediably distanced.

How to deal with all

a disadvantage of serial stories against the shorter is resorting to a greater number of turns of the screw to engage the viewer from one chapter to next and then they must live with them. This was the problem of Lost , who won introduce an unexpected turn almost every episode and, after a couple of seasons, he had to start doing as if many never have happened because it was impossible to deal with everybody. At the same time, this buildup uncontrolled and demented Twists was its novelty and the reason for its success.

Along with Lost , the series more relies on the twists is Game of Thrones . A popular Internet meme says the cycle of suffering of their fans: 1. A is my new favorite character. 2. brutally murdered. 3. Never again will I see this stupid 4. B program is my new favorite character …

The strategy of the series, as learned the hard followers who had not read the novels, is to build laboriously tie a character with viewers then cut abruptly, surprising and, usually, cruelly. At the same time, has the guile to play with the most pessimistic expectations of viewers and misfortunes do not usually occur in the expected time.

One of the twists most talked about recently was the return the death of Jon Snow (Kit Harington), who had been brutally murdered at the end of last season.

Until this season, readers of the books had the advantage (or disadvantage) that already they knew the major plot turns nut. However, this difference equaled this season, as it is the first that is not directly based on the novels. This independence of the base material made turns this year are more unexpected and, for the same reason, it is likely that the season finale will look tonight is the return of more thoughtless nut so far this cycle.

the best (and worst) Twists

Twists transforming operate, whether the conditions of a character or conditions of their world. The most brutal, most worn and most common of each of these groups is that who had died back and what seemed real was illusory.

Of course, these shifts are the very definition of cliché though, for good and evil, the Twists Frequently much are variants of those.

the revelation that the world is not what it seems had its manifestation in some of the arguments more surprising from last decades and in the most embarrassing. In the film Matrix (1999) and The Truman Show (1998) proposed a more or less original way (both films are very indebted to the work of the American novelist Philip K. Dick) a reality that dissolves in the eyes of the protagonist.

on TV, Wayward Pines (2015) combines concepts of both to create a world that, by averaging the series , it reveals manufactured. The reasons are too gimmicky but at least with some conviction manage to justify the proposed mysteries. (The most shameful of this narrative figure appearance was in the soap opera Dallas , when after the fall of the ratings for the death of a character, it was decided to return to life making all season he was dead a dream of the protagonist!)

sometimes, it is not the existence of the world which is illusory, but of a character. In Fight Club (1999), Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) is a figment of the narrator (Edward Norton). On TV, Mr. Robot (2015) took exactly the same idea and near the end of the first season we discovered that one of the protagonists, too, was a fantasy of another.

The trite appeal of false death it did not work in the last season of the Walking Dead (2010), when it seemed that the walkers had devoured Glenn (Steven Yeun) and even saw flying viscera while screaming in pain. However, obsessional series had discovered that it was a sham and quickly distributed the information on the Web. When Glenn returned (it was another body that had fed zombies) and all were waiting

.

The most disappointing of returns of the recent death may have been to Sherlock Holmes, who pretended his suicide during his final duel with his nemesis, professor Moriarty. Unfortunately, the convoluted circumstances that simulate his death were not up to the expectations imposed by the series.

There are countless times when a series reveals the true nature of a character is very different from which presents us. One of the most amazing discoveries of recent times was President bisexuality Underwood (Kevin Spacey) in House of Cards (2013), who earlier had already revealed himself as a femicide. This feature, apparently, was much more tolerable than see him kissing another man.

The proliferation of Twists in the series today contains the seed of its own destruction. We are so exposed to them we run the risk of developing tolerance. In the 60s, programs like The unknown dimension is forced to end each episode with a twist. Although some are extraordinary (in “To Serve Man” at the end it is revealed that the book reads an alien race misunderstanding whose title is the Episode- is not an ethical manifesto but one of recipes), when one the formula used to become predictable.

the best twist is the surprising by the ingenuity of its rotation but also by its very appearance. In this art, Games of Thrones has no rivals

In this note.

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