Some theoretical problems emerge when looking for a definition of anthology series in television. For instance, a certain flexibility in processes of expansion and contraction of the nar-ratives contained in the anthology form invites us to rethink the concept of world-building in me-dia storytelling practices (Wolf 2012; Boni 2017), in order to acknowledge an opposite tendency towards “world-narrowing”. I use the term “world-narrowing” to account for cases of “limited world-building” , where the imaginary world is pitched using processes of demarcation and re23 -boot of the story that prevent the potential for further “horizontal” developments of the narrative.
To simplify, drawing upon Marie-Laure Ryan’s definition, I will say that world-building operates on three levels: it “brings a world to mind (setting) and populates it with intelligent agents (char-acters). These agents participate in actions and happenings (events, plot), which cause global changes to the narrative world.” (Ryan 2004: 337) World-narrowing in anthology series is based on a constant radical change of at least two of these three levels.
If the setting and characters change on the same core plot, we will have a different story - as in the case of some police procedurals. Similarly, if the setting and plot change, while still maintaining the same set of characters, we would then have something like Easy (Netflix, 2016- ), an interesting case of anthology series, where few characters return in different situa-tions/settings and interact with different plots. A similar anthological operation is expected with Love Life, which is announced as the first series to stream on WarnerMedia’s streaming platform
“‘Black Mirror’ Continues to Excel at Limited World-Building.” The Economist. Last modified January 3, 2018.
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Retrieved August 20, 2019. https://www.economist.com/prospero/2018/01/03/black-mirror-continues-to-excel-at-limited-world-building.
(set to launch in 2020), hosting the same main character who will deal in each episode with dif-ferent settings and plots. Finally, if plot and characters change by keeping the same setting, we would end up with an anthology like Room 104 (HBO, 2017- ), which readapted the format of the British anthology Room 101 (BBC, 1994-2007), proving a continuity of setting between episodes while favoring a rotation of characters and situations on the background of the same hotel room.
Of course, in more “radical” anthology forms, we could have a change on all three levels: setting, characters and plot are constantly regenerated and the organizing principle is provided by more abstract elements (main theme, tone, genre).
A change in the setting is one of the most evident strategies to mark a variation in the sto-ry, such as the shifts in fictional locations - Louisiana, California and Arkansas - that distinguish different seasons of True Detective, or the multiple settings in American Horror Story - the haunted house, the asylum or the hotel, just to name a few -, with their tendency to set borders to the narrative ecosystem, outside of which the plot tend to be less solid. Even in an anthology like Fargo, where the setting is recurrent, as suggested by the title itself, the configuration of the space varies depending on each season, in an effort to map different geographical and historical realities - namely Duluth 2006 in season one, Fargo, North Dakota, 1979 in season two, St. Cloud 2010 in season three and Kansas City in the 1950s in season four. Narcos (Netflix, 2015- ) is fol-lowing a similar path, as the setting was moved from Colombia to Mexico. Playing with the spa-tial and historical setting as a way to reboot the story is a common feature in contemporary U.S.
television anthologies. However, as I showed, world-narrowing strategies based on the coexis-tence of innovation and repetition (Eco 1985) can also result in a spatial continuity that acts as a
stable background for other variations - e.g. characters, plot -, such as in the case of the already mentioned Room 104.
For instance, rotating characters is an interesting device adopted in horror stories to re-generate the plot over and over again. Horror stories usually provide closure by, quite abruptly, killing a set of characters. Reasoning on the liminal category of closure in narratives is funda-mental to describe an inner, structural property of the stories that constitutes television antholo-gies, which always progress towards an ending. Contrary to what suggested by Mittell’s view on contemporary television series as complex narratives that do not always conclude (Mittell 2015), ending in anthology series still exists and implies a sharp shift in the plot, and not just the “prom-ise of an ending” (Favard 2019, my translation). Stressing on this point, Shannon Wells-Lassagne distinguishes between a soap-opera form of seriality, where the end is constantly postponed, and a short-form seriality built on a foreseeable, pre-planned, pre-determined ending (Wells-Lassagne 2017). In this regard, not only horror, but also crime genres in their more traditional formulas tend to converge towards a conclusion, by fostering at the same time regenerative processes, through the constant return of the serial killer, as in the Scream franchise (1996- ), or in mecha-nisms of repetition inserted in the narrative structure typical of the crime series’ tradition.
I use the term closure in a rather pragmatic way: closure is where the narrative strands converge into a resolution and stop. Instead of discussing a “phenomenological feeling of finali-ty” (Carroll 2007: 1) found on a reception level in the audience, here I refer to practices of clo-sure embedded in the narrative itself, as logical mechanisms of answering “all of the presiding
macro-questions and all the micro-questions that are relevant to settling the macro-questions.” 24 (ivi: 6) In certain genres, this quest of the narrative plot for a conclusion is more evident. At the beginning of a horror or crime series, the audience is presented with a problem (i.e. a presiding macro-question), which is then usually solved in the end, with different possible outcomes. The eschatological structure typical of such genres appears to be functional to the anthology form, resulting in many occurrences of horror or crime anthologies in the history of U.S. television. I will observe this predilection of the anthology form for certain genres when looking at the evolu-tion of anthology series in television in chapter 4.
For now, I am more interested in showing that the process of narrowing, as opposed to expanding, other than being a formal and structural feature of serialized narratives, has effective outcomes on production. First, creating narrow worlds requires a lower commitment from the ac-tors, which are not asked to sign a five-year contract or longer to return to the same series. Simi-larly, if narrowing happens in the setting, the financial investment on the location is likely to be lower. Finally, narrowing the plot allows for safer business models: since the initial financial risks of a straight-to-series commitment can be relatively high, as I previously outlined in the para-graph on miniseries and other short narratives, opting for an anthological reboot can be a valid alternative to long narratives that end up being not appealing for the public, or that simply incur in contextual impediments (actors leaving the production or lack of budget). In a platform econ-omy, where there is an urge for always new content to feed the library, anthologies create quanti-ty, in a moment when quality is not so clear of a term anymore, and perhaps even not that
Noel Carroll differentiates between ‘presiding macro questions’, ‘macro questions’, and ‘micro questions’ contai
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-ned in narrative plots. As Carroll explains, “[s]ome questions orchestrate our attention to the emerging story from one end to the other […]. Questions that structure an entire text or, at least most of it, we can call ‘presiding macro questions’.” More over, micro-questions are those “whose answers are required cognitively to render the answers to the macro-questions intelligible.” (Carroll 2007: 10)
vant. A massive audience’s feedback, as seen in linear television via Nielsen-like rating systems, doesn’t really affect the actual success of a television series on streaming platforms.
On the contrary, a long-tail economy (Anderson 2004; 2008) pushes internet-distributed television to invest on long-term success and niche audiences as much as - and sometimes even more than - on immediate sell-outs and mass audiences. Long-tail economy is a term commonly associated with digital platforms and it was first introduced in 2004 by Chris Anderson, who used this term in an article on WIRED magazine to describe Amazon’s business model . The article 25 states that in a traditional economy, with high marginal costs, mass markets are sustained by a logic that privileges blockbusters, a phenomenon that David Hesmondhalgh defined as “the blockbuster syndrome” (Hesmondhalgh 2012: 234). Referencing the Pareto principle, Anderson argues that in mass media only 20% of total content production is responsible for 80% of the rev-enues, meaning that the traditional television market, as well as other media and creative indus-tries, were essentially based on mega-hit shows (ibidem). Internet aggregators like Amazon changed this logic by introducing a new model and significantly dropping marginal costs. In the context of online, what matters are not blockbusters that generate peaks in consumption, but niche products able to remain on the market in the long term, thus guaranteeing what Anderson calls a long tail effect in terms of revenues (Anderson 2008). With the arrival of online platforms, television underwent a similar transformation, by favoring entertainment practices mainly based on the production of a diversified plethora of niche content. A fundamental strategy in the long tail economy is therefore the expansion of the catalog and the overall offer, through the inclusion of niche products that used to be off-market due to distribution issues.
Anderson, Chris. “The Long Tail.” Wired. Last modified October 1, 2004. Retrieved August 20, 2019. https://
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www.wired.com/2004/10/tail.
While I do not advocate that television anthologies are the perfect fit in internet-dis-tributed television, they do suggest an impressive resilience on both a formal and production level (they can be cancelled anytime, while preserving the possibility of a long-term benefit), which make them a good bet in a moment of uncertainty and reassessment in television industries and media economy, seemingly oriented towards the creation of niche markets. The anthology form, as a way to collect narrow narratives containing a sense of closure, or else, more pragmatically, an ending, seems to grant the modularity and openness needed in this phase of technological tran-sition and fast-paced media mutations. Predictions on effectiveness of this anthological model in internet-distributed television can not be assessed clearly as of now; however, we can advance some hypothesis on its future evolution and evaluate the current state based on previous trans-formations. For instance, the possibility of reinventing the story, while still offering a familiar narrative, allows screenwriter(s) to gain a higher control on the creative process, which is in fact more fluid. Television content creators can opt for the anthological form anytime: they can create a one-season long narrative with closure and decide to revive the story for a second season, then again they can close the plot once and for all and restart with a completely different story. In oth-er words, television anthologies today are both narrow and open, meaning they are dynamic in the way they can create infinite repetition and yet still guarantee variation where needed, by scal-ing narratives up and down base on an episodic, seasonal or multi-seasonal rhythm.