The Edinburgh

Companion to
Contemporary
Narrative Theories

Edited by Zara Dinnen and Robyn Warhol

5733_Dinnen & Warhol.indd iii 06/04/18 11:45 AM

 16

Operational Seriality and

the Operation of Seriality
Jason Mittell

T he twenty-first century has seen a notable increase in the prevalence, promi-

nence, and prestige of seriality. The rise of prestigious serial television in the United
States and throughout much of the world has been the major catalyst in seriality’s ascen-
dance, but it has become a prominent element in most contemporary media, including
film franchises, comics, videogames, podcasts, literature, and social media. Alongside
the spread of serial narrative, we have seen a boom in academic studies of seriality in
its various forms, including numerous anthologies, monographs, conferences, and even
a high-profile European research group focused on popular seriality.1 Despite all of this
serial proliferation and attention, seriality itself remains notably under-theorised and
poorly defined. This chapter is an attempt to provide some clarity around the concept
and practices of seriality, while also complicating and expanding our common-sense
notions of serial forms.
For a subfield known for its definitional precision and taxonomic obsessions, nar-
rative theorists have given little attention to defining and debating seriality, suggesting
that it functions more as a ‘know-it-when-we-see-it’ concept. Canonical reference works
such as The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, The Bedford Glossary of Critical
and Literary Terms, Abrams’s A Glossary of Literary Terms, and The Living Handbook
of Narratology all have no entries for serial or seriality at all, while The Dictionary of
Literary Terms gives only four sentences of its 802 pages to the term ‘serial’, far less than
more obscure neighbouring terms such as ‘sestina’ or ‘sevdalinke’ (Cuddon and Habib
2013: 648–9). The recent Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory gives the most
attention to the concept among reference works, with a four-paragraph entry on ‘Serial
Form’, which is still quite brief compared with lengthy entries given to more esoteric
and specialised concepts such as ‘Simple Form’ and ‘Situation Model’. In this entry, Sara
Gwenllian Jones offers a clear definition of seriality:

Serial form refers to the segmentation of a narrative into instalments that are
released sequentially with, usually, a time lapse between the release of one instal-
ment and the next . . . Each instalment of a serial is part of a continuing narrative
that is not concluded until the end of the series. (Jones 2010)

In one of the earliest monographs focused on seriality, Jennifer Hayward is even more
succinct: ‘A serial is, by definition, an ongoing narrative released in successive parts’
(1997: 3). For the purposes of this chapter, we can distil these definitions into two
component parts: continuity with gaps (see also O’Sullivan 2010).

5733_Dinnen & Warhol.indd 227 06/04/18 11:45 AM

 228 jason mittell

We can elaborate each of these two necessary ingredients: continuity suggests long-
form storytelling, repetition and reiteration, consistency and accumulation, historicity
and memory, and potentials for transmedia expansion. Serial continuity connotes size
and scope, suggesting that there is more to any story than can be consumed in a single
sitting, linking to the type of vast narrative explored by Harrigan and Wardrip-Fruin
(2009). However, ‘serial’ is not simply a synonym for vast, as the whole must be seg-
mented into instalments broken up by gaps, leading to temporal ruptures, narrative
anticipation, moments for viewer productivity, opportunities for feedback between
producers and consumers, and a structured system for a shared cultural conversation.
Segmentation of a continuous whole is insufficient to produce seriality – the chapters
in a book are no more a product of seriality than scenes in a film. What makes those
segments serialised is when readers are forced to wait for the release of subsequent
chapters, or when the next scenes of a film are withheld from viewers until a sequel.
Serialised gaps are structured and unavoidable fissures that force readers or viewers to
disengage from the narrative before moving onward.

Mind the Gap: How Seriality Works

Such a definition should not be terribly controversial on its face, but it does raise some
quandaries that might force us to redefine the scope and limits of seriality. First off, the
constitutive importance of gaps highlights how seriality is best considered as a temporal
practice, not a stable formal feature of texts. We can see this distinction in an example
whose nature transforms over time: Dickens’s Great Expectations was released serially
in thirty-five weekly instalments from December 1860 to August 1861. But after its
initial serialised release, the compiled bound volumes cease to function as a serial –
after all, nobody reading Dickens today is forced to wait a week between chapters, as
they determine their own pacing and gaps. Even if readers choose to simulate seriality
and mimic the weekly instalments, as with the online project Reading Like a Victo-
rian, this is an optional recreation of serialised pace: since the gaps are not mandated,
the text is no longer serialised.2 Such a transformation is not limited to the medium
of the novel, as a television series similarly transforms from serialised distribution of
weekly episodes to a bound version of a complete season or series via DVD box sets
or streaming access, shifting from a serialised mode to what I have elsewhere called a
boxed aesthetic (Mittell 2015: 40–1). This is not to say that such works are untouched
by seriality, as their initial serial production and consumption helped define what they
are; however, for the contemporary consumer, that initial life as a serial is not tangible,
making Great Expectations an equivalent reading experience to Silas Marner, George
Eliot’s never-serialised novel published in the same year.
The key point here is that seriality as an aspect of textual engagement changes
over time, even as the works themselves are stable. What once was a serialised gap no
longer is – whether that gap was between chapters of Great Expectations or books
within the ‘Harry Potter’ series, any avid reader can simply plough ahead into the next
chapter or book now that they are all released. And a series that once was serialised
but later appeared complete can be extended onward by creating new gaps. As of this
writing in 2017, the ‘Harry Potter’ series is complete in both literary and cinematic
forms, yet the film prequel Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has created a new
serial gap moving forward in what is reported to be a five-film series, lodged within

5733_Dinnen & Warhol.indd 228 06/04/18 11:45 AM

 operational seriality and the operation of seriality 229

the broader franchise brand of ‘J. K. Rowling’s Wizarding World’. At the moment,
this is a serialised gap because, no matter how much we want to, we cannot consume
the currently unnamed next instalment – but if you are reading this chapter after the
scheduled release of that next film in 2018, there is no serialised gap between the two
films. However, there might well be a new gap created as viewers await the next instal-
ment with whatever sense of anticipation and/or dread that the franchise inspires.
Since a serialised gap is rooted in the timeframe of a narrative’s distribution, it is
ephemeral and fluid – what makes something serialised is not its form, but how it is
created, distributed, circulated, and consumed. Thus, seriality is best understood as a
dynamic cultural practice, rather than a stable formal element, and likewise we should
avoid treating texts as ‘serials’ in the stable noun form, preferring more descriptive
and fluid modifiers like ‘serialised’. Since seriality emerges out of the mandated gap
between instalments within a continuous narrative, it is in those moments that seriality
comes to matter in a range of different realms. For television, the production process
responds to feedback from viewing episodes, assessing what is working well or not,
and integrating responses from critics and viewers; all work to shape a series as it
is unfolding. Such gaps between instalments become productive sites of change and
development, as the divide between production and consumption blurs, according to
Frank Kelleter, ‘intertwined in a feedback loop’ (Kelleter 2017: 13). Serial gaps beg to
be filled, and both producers and consumers rush in to create and circulate paratexts
to supplement the viewing experience – from online videos to toys, tie-in games to fan
fiction, seriality extends textual experiences across media as well.
The serialised consumption experience is particularly fruitful, as seriality enables
conversation among consumers. A serialised Game of Thrones viewer can probably
assume that other viewers they encounter are within an episode of their own viewing,
and thus can go onto Twitter during or after an episode to find a broad array of con-
versational partners. But when watching a series that has already been fully released,
it is unlikely that you can find a community of viewers or relevant set of paratexts
poised at the same point in your consumption schedule until you reach the end – if I
have watched only two of the seven seasons of The Shield, it is as unlikely that I would
find viewers at the same spot in the series to engage with, just as it would be hard to
find a community of readers to discuss the first 200 pages of Infinite Jest. Viewers and
readers productively engage with an ongoing series in ways that become constitutive
of seriality itself. As Hayward writes, seriality is

inseparable from the unique reading practices and interpretative tactics developed
by audiences, practices that include collaborative, active reading; interpretation;
prediction; occasional rewriting or creation of new subplots; attempts to influence
textual production; and, increasingly often, a degree of success in those attempts.
(Hayward 1997: 4)

Such participatory practices are dependent on the temporal span and synchronicity of
seriality, using the mandated gaps to forge communities around reception practices.
Some engaged and dedicated viewers approach serial texts via what I have called
‘forensic fandom’ (Mittell 2015). Such fans take narrative enigmas and information
from a series and theorise about their outcomes and meanings, engaging through both
conversations and paratexts. Such reception practices often focus on how stories are

5733_Dinnen & Warhol.indd 229 06/04/18 11:45 AM

 230 jason mittell

told as much as the content of the narratives themselves, or what many have theorised
as the operational aesthetic. This is the double pleasure that serialised television offers
in appreciating both the emotional engagement of a story, and its masterful storytell-
ing mechanics. Examining how a machine works is crucial pleasure, not just enjoying
the machine’s output, suggesting that the pleasure of watching a magic trick is both in
being amazed and in trying to figure out how it was done. Much of serialised televi-
sion demands audiences to be aware of narrative mechanics and invites us to marvel at
the craftsmanship required to build elaborate storytelling machines. Viewers become
amateur narratologists, heightened by our ongoing serial engagement via the man-
dated gaps that viewers can fill through productive consumption and forensic fandom
(Mittell 2006).
It seems clear that such modes of engaged participatory viewing and feedback
between producers and consumers are dependent on the serialised structure of gaps
to synchronise narrative consumption and viewer productivity. And yet, we are seeing
the rise of television distribution and consumption practices that forgo such serialised
gaps – often termed ‘binge viewing’ with a pejorative edge, the practice that I prefer to
more neutrally call ‘compressed viewing’ is when people watch episodes in quick suc-
cession, consuming as many instalments as are available over a short amount of time.
Compressed viewing does not require any particular technology, such as streaming on
Netflix, as one can also watch a compressed series on DVD, via downloaded files, or
even with a backlog of DVR episodes. The important distinction is that viewers are not
following a broadcast schedule, but rather defining their own temporality to consume
an already published set of instalments. Often those instalments have been distributed
all at once, via the ‘full drop’ model popularised by Netflix releasing an entire ‘season’
(or ‘series’ in the British vocabulary) of a programme in a single instant, but it can also
apply to viewers watching an older series that has already been released.
Per my emphasis on seriality’s reliance on structuring gaps, it should seem clear that
compressed viewing is not serialised viewing: if you can marathon through episodes,
there are no mandated gaps. Any gaps between episodes that viewers may take are
optional and not determined by its serialised release. In this way, watching a DVD
set or a streaming full-drop series is more analogous to reading a long novel and the
reader determining their own occasional breaks between chapters. Even though a long
novel could not be reasonably read without gaps and taking breaks, seriality is not just
the presence of gaps in consumption, but requires the mandating and scheduling of
those gaps. As segmentation does not make a story into a serial, it must be delivered
with mandated temporal separation between segments. Thus, if compressed viewing
is not a serialised experience, then its distribution parallel, the full-drop series, is not a
serialised release, lacking the possibilities for feedback and ongoing revision that typify
serial storytelling. And thus series that were released with the full-drop model, such as
Netflix originals House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black, cannot be considered
to be serialised in the same way that conventional television releases are, any more
than a novel released initially in a bound form is not regarded as a serial.3
To be clear, rejecting the serial label for full-drop series or compressed viewing is
not meant to dismiss the vitality or creative possibilities of such forms of distribution
and consumption. Rather, it is a definitional move in the name of precision, highlight-
ing the lack of mandated serialised engagement with such series as they initially were
viewed, skipping straight ahead to the boxed aesthetics of consuming a larger unit in

5733_Dinnen & Warhol.indd 230 06/04/18 11:45 AM

 operational seriality and the operation of seriality 231

self-paced instalments. Understanding such full-drop series as distinct from serialised

programming allows us to better analyse each mode of storytelling and consump-
tion, pointing toward subtle differences in narrative structure and strategies, as well
as variations in cultural practice (Warhol 2014). We could frame this difference as
hierarchically privileging either mode of engagement: compressed viewing can be seen
as individualistic and decontextualised versus the communal, social, and historicised
facets of serial viewing, or we can flip the emphasis to frame compressed viewing as
empowering viewers to take control of media texts, while serialised distribution makes
viewers subject to the whims of industry and advertisers, reducing agency and flexibil-
ity. Both are correct, of course, highlighting how such hierarchies are quite arbitrary.
However, these distinctions matter if we want to understand the varieties of practices
and norms that now proliferate around narrative distribution and consumption.

Operational Seriality: How Seriality Might Work Differently

The previous section made a case for how the temporal gaps that structure serial story-
telling are crucial to understand how seriality works and to differentiate between serial
and non-serial practices. Such gaps have been underexamined by scholars of seriality,
typically because continuity, seriality’s other essential ingredient, has been overem-
phasised. In its creation of long-form, vast, transmedia, expansive, and multifaceted
stories, serial continuity has received the bulk of attention in the burgeoning world of
seriality studies. However, I argue that its attention might be too narrowly focused on
one aspect of continuity, and that we might expand our understanding of the serial
impulse by considering some other facets of continuity.
Typically, serial continuity is based around narrative events: a text is considered
serialised when events accumulate with a degree of consistency. Viewers entering into
a new television series need to be taught how to read narrative events as self-contained
or cumulative, as this is a key distinction people make between episodic and serialised
norms. We gauge our expectations based on how the storyworld and characters deal
with and react to events: do people remember and discuss events from previous epi-
sodes? Are character actions informed and motivated by what they have previously
experienced? Do events have a persistent impact on the storyworld? If the answers
to these questions are ‘yes’, then typically the series is regarded as serialised. Thus,
The Shield is a serialised police drama, as cases endure beyond single episodes and
characters wrestle with events from the past, while the Law & Order franchise is
episodic because each individual case is ‘stand-alone’ without significant impact on
future instalments. Most programmes invite us to either assume serial accumulation of
events, or ignore previous episodes in favour of a present-minded episodic approach.
However, even in highly episodic procedurals, we expect some continuity. The CSI
franchise is defined by its different locations – Las Vegas, New York, and Miami all
are the same cities in each episode of the respective series, and those consistent settings
anchor the programme. In these series, setting and storyworld provide key continuity
rather than narrative events. Likewise, characters persist across episodes: for instance,
Law & Order SVU (Wolf 1999–present) is defined by its consistent characters, espe-
cially Olivia Benson who has appeared in all 400 episodes that have aired as of this
writing. She is that programme’s core anchor of continuity, and certainly forms a key
point of connection for audiences whose memories do extend across episodes. For

5733_Dinnen & Warhol.indd 231 06/04/18 11:45 AM

 232 jason mittell

viewers of such episodic procedurals, such continuities of setting and character are
vital, even if not manifested in the typical mode of cumulative events found in most
serialised programming – many of the gap-filling viewing practices discussed above
are commonplace for fans of such procedural programmes, creating serialised engage-
ments even without typical modes of narrative accumulation. The importance of char-
acter and setting continuity highlights how the serialised/episodic divide is more of a
fluid spectrum than binary categorisation, suggesting that modes of narrative continu-
ity are more variable than we typically assume.
But what if we stop conceiving of serial continuity as solely a narrative component?
Can we see the productive power of seriality in texts that we would probably not con-
sider ‘serials’? What might serial continuity look like outside the realm of ‘narrative’?
To explore this notion of non-narrative continuity, we can return to the operational
aesthetic, the pleasures of how a story gets told that I argue is essential for various
forms of contemporary serial storytelling. Such a consideration suggests the concept
of operational continuity, where ‘how media are made and circulated’ becomes the site
of seriality. Within this realm of operational seriality, the crucial continuous thread
concerns how stories are told rather than the stories themselves. Making such a shift
requires us to look at texts that we would normally be reluctant to term ‘serialised’
based on their narratives, but might be understood as embedded within cultural prac-
tices of seriality outside the narrative realm.
To exemplify the idea of operational seriality, let us consider how it might work
within the mostly non-serialised medium of film, but not in the typical cases of seri-
alised franchises like Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Instead, looking at
operational serial practices within so-called stand-alone films can highlight how serial-
ity might work outside the narrative dimension. First, a caveat: these brief examples
work more as thought experiments than conclusive arguments. They encourage us to
think about serial practices as facets that transcend storytelling, and thus they might
seem odd or inappropriate in terms of their application of narrative theory to such
practices. However, these examples can hopefully expand our understanding of serial-
ity as a widespread facet of culture, breaking down its narrower definition as solely an
aspect of narrative form and encouraging deeper analysis.
One way we might see operational seriality at work is as a facet of film production.
Typically films follow a linear model, where a screenplay goes into production to be
shot, and then edited and mixed in post-production before being released, allowing for
little of the feedback from viewers or potential for ongoing revisions that typifies seri-
alised storytelling. Yet there are some examples where films become shaped by seriality
in interesting and instructive ways. One exceptional case is Mulholland Drive (Lynch
2001), which I have written about elsewhere as being ‘haunted by seriality’ through
its cross-medium transformation (Mittell 2013): the film started as a television pilot
produced in 1998, but when ABC declined to pick it up in 1999, it sat dormant for
eighteen months until it was optioned into a film by Studio Canal Plus. Writer/director
David Lynch revisited the pilot with a significant gap in time, and then transformed
the film in unlikely directions. While viewers do not experience Mulholland Drive as a
serialised text, Lynch did – and he reaped the benefits of that productive gap to create
what many consider his finest work.
This unintended but productive serialised gap in the film’s production led to much of
its power. Typically in serial production, creators benefit from (or at least are influenced

5733_Dinnen & Warhol.indd 232 06/04/18 11:45 AM

 operational seriality and the operation of seriality 233

by) the feedback they get from viewers, critics, and collaborators as they create future
episodes of an ongoing series – even when creators isolate themselves from such feed-
back, television producers often talk about how seeing the final cut of one episode will
reshape their plans for future episodes. For Mulholland Drive, the feedback that Lynch
got was mostly within the industry, as rejected by ABC and encouraged by Canal Plus.
But the chief feedback he received was from himself, as Lynch describes his return to the
film after this unintentional serialised gap as hugely productive, allowing ‘everything
to be seen from a different angle’ and acknowledging that the film would not be what
it was without this gap (qtd in Mittell 2013: 31). Not only did this gap forge the film’s
spectacular shift into its final act, but traces of its original seriality also endure in the
film’s repurposed television pilot, with dangling loose ends that were designed to launch
ongoing stories now serving as uncanny surrealist non sequiturs. Lynch admits that he
could not have created Mulholland Drive without this atypical production history, sug-
gesting that seriality can endure even when forced into a stand-alone text.
Another unique example of serialised film production is Boyhood (Linklater 2014),
shot in regular instalments between 2002 and 2013. Richard Linklater designed his film
to pass through twelve years of production time (and thus story time) in under three
hours of screen time, requiring lengthy gaps in the production process while maintain-
ing clear continuity in the story. While the plot was roughly mapped out in advance, the
gaps and passage of time were hugely productive, both in refining storylines and allow-
ing the young characters to literally develop. Linklater and the cast suggest how fluid the
production process was, where the actors’ ageing and life experiences became integral to
both the story’s development and the film’s approach to storytelling. Through this atypi-
cal approach to serialised production, one of the film’s truly remarkable effects is how
it simultaneously represents the long gaps in production on-screen through the ageing
actors, and elides those gaps in a seamless flow of time moving forward. Boyhood as a
finished film is a fluid work of narrative continuity, but it emerges out of vital temporal
gaps in its production that serially constitute the final product.
Boyhood and Mulholland Drive are exceptional films, both in their unique and
highly acclaimed final forms, and in their unconventional production practices that
were essential to achieve their storytelling innovations.4 But more modest gaps within
a film’s production are much more commonplace, leading to interesting moments of
reconsideration and revision within a wide range of films. Sometimes these gaps are
intended from the outset – Ida’s writer/director Paweł Pawlikowski recounts how he
wanted to halt filming for a few weeks to edit footage and ‘rewrite the film that’s emerg-
ing’ before returning to production, but his financiers refused; it was only because of
a historic snowstorm shutting down production that Pawilkowski was able to get his
intended gap and reimagine the film in process (Pawlikowski 2014). Most produc-
tion gaps are more unintended and acrimonious, as with Superman II (Lester and
Donner 1980): most of the footage was shot simultaneously with Superman in 1977
by director Richard Donner, with the intent of releasing the two films back-to-back.
However, shooting stopped on the sequel to focus on editing the first film for release
in 1978, and Donner was fired from Superman II, with Richard Lester taking over to
reshoot much of the final film. The result is somewhat haphazard and disjointed, and
quite different in tone than Donner’s original plan, but the film is well regarded by
most critics and viewers. In both instances, the gaps within the filming process allowed
the filmmakers to reconceive the film they were making – or in the case of Superman

5733_Dinnen & Warhol.indd 233 06/04/18 11:45 AM

 234 jason mittell

II, who was making it – and allow the feedback within the creative team to reshape
the final films.
The most common type of productive gap in the filmmaking process is the reshot
ending in reaction to test screenings or studio interference; typically this leads to trans-
forming a downbeat conclusion into a happier ending, as in Suspicion, Little Shop
of Horrors, Fatal Attraction, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, among many others.
Whether these reshoots and revisions are regarded as productive improvements for the
final film, or commercially-driven watering down of creative intentions, it is clear that
this feedback process during a gap in the filmmaking process is a vital facet of many
stand-alone films. And in some cases, such reshot revisions are essential to creating a
cinematic classic: Woody Allen’s landmark 1977 film Annie Hall was originally written,
shot, and edited as a 140-minute stream-of-consciousness surrealist midlife crisis, with
a core murder mystery plot, called Anhedonia. Allen, his co-writer Marshall Brickman,
and editor Ralph Rosenblum watched that unwieldy rough cut and reimagined the story
as a romantic comedy focused on the relationship between protagonist Alvy Singer and
Annie Hall, who was a secondary character in the original version. Allen reflects on the
film’s transformation as they re-edited and reshot footage:

The whole concept of the picture changed as we were cutting it. It was originally
a picture about me, exclusively, not about a relationship. It was about me, my life,
my thoughts, my ideas, my background, and the relationship was one major part
of it. But sometimes it’s hard to foresee at the outset what’s going to be the most
interesting drift. The guesses we started out with, many of them were wrong. But
we wound up with the right guesses. (Qtd in Rosenblum and Karen 1986: 283)

This revision process, enabled by the gap in production and feedback among the team
and some test audiences, was to essential to create a film that turned out to be one of
the most acclaimed and admired comedies in cinematic history.
Many films are shaped by such production gaps, where time to reflect, retool, and
reimagine – for better or for worse – are enabled by an embedded seriality that will even-
tually be invisible to viewers, but was hugely important to creating the film that we see.
Are such films ‘serials’? Not really, but they are forged by seriality, where operational
continuity in the production process is punctured by gaps that enable feedback and new
creative practices. To grapple with the full importance of seriality as a cultural practice, it
is crucial to explore how such embedded operational seriality matters in such cases, and
how gaps in production can become productive – our understanding of a large number
of films can be deepened by recognising the way that such a pseudo-seriality informs the
processes of their production.
Another serialised practice that has become central to many media is the prolifera-
tion of paratexts, as both the industry and consumers fill the gaps with extra material
to extend narrative engagement across media. For films, such paratextual sprawl is
often used to extend a narrative series, as in Star Wars, James Bond, Lord of the Rings,
or any other franchise layered with toys, games, novelisations, and tie-in properties.
But paratexts can become serialised for an otherwise self-contained film as well. Take
Blade Runner (Scott 1982): given its infamous history of competing edits between
the film studio and director Ridley Scott, seven different ‘official’ versions of the film
have been released in some format, along with numerous other official and unofficial

5733_Dinnen & Warhol.indd 234 06/04/18 11:45 AM

 operational seriality and the operation of seriality 235

paratexts exploring the film and its volatile versioning (Bukatman 2012). Although the
last edit was called ‘The Final Cut’, finality is still being fought over among producers,
who often seek to further monetise a ‘completed’ film through new versioning, as well
as fans, who stake a claim in such debates via paratextual fan edits that offer their own
takes on the film’s storytelling. Such cascading paratexts suggest a serialised feedback
loop of production and consumption, turning a seemingly finished film into an ongo-
ing conversation. Thus, Blade Runner functions as a film that is no longer being made,
but is still being serially produced through paratexts.
Conceiving of such versioning as seriality pushes against the centrality of narrative
continuity in our dominant notion of serial storytelling, as clearly the various iterations
of Blade Runner are notable for their discontinuities and differences – it would be hard
to imagine watching multiple versions of the film as instalments in the continuing story
of Rick Deckard. Instead, the continuity is in the operational realm, as we trace the
ongoing story of the film’s making and remaking. This operational approach expands
the scope of seriality to include remakes and adaptations that aim to tell the same story
again and again, as productively explored in case studies on The Wizard of Oz, Inva-
sion of the Body Snatchers, and ‘Sherlock Holmes’ (Loock and Verevis 2012). Likewise,
paratexts that seem primarily non-narrative can be regarded as a key dimension in the
operational continuity of a film series – the proliferation of Star Wars toys both shaped
the franchise’s narrative, by making Boba Fett into a popular character, and became
part of the behind-the-scenes story debated by fans, as with the gendered marginalisa-
tion of Rey toys for the release of The Force Awakens (Gray 2010). Considering such
operational continuities helps frame seriality ‘as an evolutionary process rather than a
narrative device’, in the words of Frank Kelleter (2012: 37), allowing us to regard a
variety of paratextual elements, multiple versions, and remakes all as instalments of the
ongoing serial life of a text.
Serialised tendencies frequently emerge in reception contexts, even for non-serialised
films. For instance, critics, fans, and viewers frequently return to finished older films to
recontextualise and reframe them, serially reiterating their interpretations and evalua-
tions. One trend that has escalated in the traffic-driven world of Web journalism is the
retrospective think piece on a film’s anniversary – for instance, the thirtieth anniversary
of The Breakfast Club in 2015 prompted dozens of critical reflections and reconsidera-
tions of the film, aiming to revisit the text in the light of this thirty-year gap. Such ret-
rospection is a mode of operational serial engagement, where the text is a stable object,
but the gap in reception changes our understanding and interpretation of it via reiterated
critical reflections – and the film itself becomes a way to understand that temporal gap.
Even more playfully in terms of temporality, 2015 also marked the thirtieth anniversary
of Back to the Future, which prompted both retrospection on the original film and com-
parative examination of Back to the Future II’s vision of 2015 via its time-travel plot.
While none of these films were remade or rebooted in 2015, the commentary among
fans and critics served as a paratextual re-envisioning process where the original films
were retrospectively versioned as part of a broader serial impulse.
Another way that viewer and critic conversations mimic rhythmic serialised prac-
tices concerns the formation and iterative reformation of authorial canons. Critics
and viewers treat the output of any given filmmaker as the terrain for ranking and
debating, turning a set of individual films into a series. Such assessments get revisited
and revised whenever a new entry is released, making the conversation feel like an

5733_Dinnen & Warhol.indd 235 06/04/18 11:45 AM

 236 jason mittell

ongoing serialised process. Thus, the release of a new film by established filmmakers
such as Wes Anderson or the Coen Brothers prompts a spate of articles aiming to rank
their films and situate the newest entry into their fluid canon. Likewise, new entries
in a director’s filmography will trigger similar practices of repetition and revision in
criticism as practised by both journalists and academics, serially remaking auteur-
ist arguments in light of new instalments. The serialised element here is charting the
operational continuity across many films – not by positing narrative unity, but rather
connecting the threads across films where each new film by a director implies a contri-
bution to a larger whole of their oeuvre.
Of course, some viewers do posit narrative continuities as a key serialised aspect
of a given filmmaker’s work. This follows practices of forensic fandom, where view-
ers strive to create theories and investigate connections that may be less than appar-
ent in the text itself. Such theorisation works well in serialised television, where each
week’s new instalment adds clues and information to piece together into theories
and analyses during the gaps between episodes. Similar forensic practices fill the
gaps between instalments of a serialised film franchise like Star Wars or the Marvel
Cinematic Universe, where narrative continuity reigns, but some fans extend such
practices to examples without such clear narrative continuity. The so-called Pixar
Theory is one prominent case – fans have developed an analysis of every Pixar film,
claiming that they all take place in the same consistent storyworld, with events and
characters in one film carrying over into others.5 Similar ‘shared universe theories’
have been developed to posit narrative continuity among the works of directors
and producers including Tim Burton, Joss Whedon, J. J. Abrams, Disney animation,
Quentin Tarantino – the latter of which has been confirmed as intentional by Taran-
tino. Forensic fans extend such quests for narrative continuity across franchises and
directors as well, for instance making claims of a shared narrative universe between
Star Wars, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, and the ‘Indiana Jones’ films, or arguing that
Sean Connery’s character in The Rock is actually James Bond who has been impris-
oned for espionage – and perhaps the most ludicrous but fascinating example, the
theory that the child-friendly Home Alone movies are actually the origin story for
the serial killer Jigsaw in the Saw horror franchise (Concepcion 2014).
Judging the coherence of such ‘shared universe’ theories is beside the point; it is
more important to consider their implications for understanding seriality. The popu-
larity of such theorisation highlights how important continuity can be for viewers,
sufficient to inspire tremendous efforts to document and argue for such continuous
frameworks where they might at first seem absent. Seriality taps into something that
seems highly compelling to many viewers: a sense of continuity (whether narrative or
operational), punctuated by gaps to be filled by participation, conversation, analysis,
and paratextual production and consumption. Viewers striving for such continuities
are inspired to create their own links and connections, partaking in the serial impulse
whether encouraged by the text or not. Thus, we should view seriality as a practice and
an impulse that transcends narrative design and even storytelling itself, emerging as a
significant factor in many unlikely instances across media.
To conclude, I contend we need to refocus our understanding of seriality to be both
more attuned to the importance of gaps, and more open to various forms of continuity
beyond the accumulation of narrative events. An obvious pushback against this shifting
definition is that it might expand the boundaries of the serial to the point of absurdity,

5733_Dinnen & Warhol.indd 236 06/04/18 11:45 AM

 operational seriality and the operation of seriality 237

encompassing anything that might be consumed multiple times, prompt cultural con-
versations, or become fodder for fan theories and remixes. In short, does my approach
ultimately suggest that everything is a serial? Let me offer two brief responses.
First, I believe that nothing is a serial per se. In fact, I argue we should avoid the use
of serial as a noun altogether – since many instances of texts that we typically think of
as serials get finished, bound, and stabilised in ways that are distinctly non-serialised,
the noun form is inadequate to capture these fluid dimensions of shifting textuality. As
mentioned earlier, The Shield might have been serialised once, but like Great Expecta-
tions and ‘Harry Potter’, such texts no longer function as serials. However, they are all
worth considering as products of seriality, a crucial difference that is hopefully clear via
this approach. So calling something ‘a serial’ is a temporary and shifting designation that
I would rather avoid.
Second, and more importantly, I do believe that seriality is a dominant mode of cul-
tural practice that has been inadequately studied and theorised. Thus, I encourage us
to consider seriality writ large beyond what we more narrowly look for with serialised
narrative, highlighting multiple forms of continuities and various structures of gaps. So
while not everything is a serial, I do believe that everything might well be serialised, if
we examine its cultural production, reception, and circulation. I hope that by adopting
this broader notion of operational seriality, we can draw productive connections across
forms, media, contexts, and disciplines, and prompt an ongoing conversation.

Notes
1. For examples of anthologies, see Harrigan and Wardrip-Fruin (2009); Allen and van den
Berg (2014); Kelleter (2017); for monographs, see Kelleter (2014); Mittell (2015); Higgins
(2016). Among the many prominent conferences focused on seriality over the past decade
are the Serial Forms Conference (University of Zurich, 2009), Thinking Serially (CUNY,
2015), Popular Seriality International Conference (University of Göttingen, 2013), and
Seriality, Seriality, Seriality (Freie Universität, Berlin, 2016), with the latter two sponsored
by the six-year Germany-based international Popular Seriality Research Unit, which the
author was affiliated with.
2. See <http://victorianserialnovels.org/> (last accessed 1 November 2017).
3. Like novels in a longer series such as ‘Harry Potter’, the gaps between seasons of a full-drop
series constitute the seriality of programmes such as House of Cards; these long gaps between
full-dropped seasons are quite distinct from the rhythms and experiences of weekly serialised
programmes.
4. In a 2016 BBC critics’ poll of the best films of the twenty-first century, Mulholland Drive
was ranked no. 1, and Boyhood was ranked no. 5. See <http://www.bbc.com/culture/
story/20160819-the-21st-centurys-100-greatest-films> (last accessed 2 November 2017).
5. See <http://www.pixartheory.com/> (last accessed 2 November 2017).

Works Cited
Allen, Rob and Thijs van den Berg (eds) (2014), Serialization in Popular Culture, New York:
Routledge.
Annie Hall, film, directed by Woody Allen. USA: MGM, 1977.
Blade Runner, film, directed by Ridley Scott. USA: Warner Bros., 1982.
Boyhood, film, directed by Richard Linklater. USA: IFC Films, 2014.

5733_Dinnen & Warhol.indd 237 06/04/18 11:45 AM

 238 jason mittell

Bukatman, Scott (2012), Blade Runner, 2nd edn, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Concepcion, Jason (2014), ‘Did Kevin from ‘Home Alone’ grow up to be Jigsaw? A deadly
serious investigation’, Grantland, 4 December, <http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospec-
tus/did-kevin-from-home-alone-grow-up-to-be-jigsaw-a-deadly-serious-investigation/> (last
accessed 1 November 2017).
Cuddon, J. A. and M. A. R. Habib (eds) (2013), Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary
Theory, 5th edn, Malden, MA: Wiley.
Gray, Jonathan (2010), Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts,
New York: New York University Press.
Harrigan, Pat and Noah Wardrip-Fruin (eds) (2009), Third Person: Authoring and Exploring
Vast Narratives, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hayward, Jennifer (1997), Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Serial Fictions from
Dickens to Soap Opera, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
Higgins, Scott (2016), Matinee Melodrama: Playing with Formula in the Sound Serial, New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Ida, film, directed by Paweł Pawlikowski. Poland: Music Box Films, 2013.
Jones, Sara Gwenllian (2010), ‘Serial form’, in David Herman, Manfred Jahn, and Marie-Laure
Ryan (eds), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, London: Routledge, p. 527.
Kelleter, Frank (2012), ‘“Toto, I think we’re in Oz again” (and again and again): Remakes and
popular seriality’, in Kathleen Loock and Constantine Verevis (eds), Film Remakes, Adapta-
tions and Fan Productions: Remake/Remodel, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 19–44.
— (2014), Serial Agencies: The Wire and Its Readers, Winchester: Zero Books.
— (ed.) (2017), Media of Serial Narrative, Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Law & Order SVU, TV series, created by Dick Wolf. USA: NBC, 1999–present.
Loock, Kathleen and Constantine Verevis (eds) (2012), Film Remakes, Adaptations and Fan
Productions: Remake/Remodel, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mittell, Jason (2006), ‘Narrative complexity in contemporary American television’, The Velvet
Light Trap, 58, 29–40.
— (2013), ‘Haunted by seriality: The formal uncanny of Mulholland Drive’, Cinephile, 9: 1,
27–32.
— (2015), Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling, New York: New York
University Press.
Mulholland Drive, film, directed by David Lynch. France and USA: Canal +, 2001.
O’Sullivan, Sean (2010), ‘Broken on purpose: Poetry, serial television, and the season’, StoryWorlds,
2, 59–77.
Pawlikowski, Paweł (2014), ‘How we made Ida: Paweł Pawlikowski on the journey from script
to film’, The Guardian, 21 November, <https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/21/
pawel-pawlikowski-making-of-ida-polish-film> (last accessed 1 November 2017).
Rosenblum, Ralph and Robert Karen (1986), When the Shooting Stops . . . The Cutting Begins:
A Film Editor’s Story, New York: Da Capo Press.
Superman II, film, directed by Richard Lester [and Richard Donner]. UK: Warner Bros., 1980.
Warhol, Robyn (2014), ‘Binge watching: How Netflix original programs are changing serial
form’, Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 47, 145–58.

5733_Dinnen & Warhol.indd 238 06/04/18 11:45 AM