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TV Finales and the Meaning of Endings Casey J. Mccormick

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TV Finales and the Meaning of Endings Casey J. Mccormick TV Finales and the Meaning of Endings Casey J. McCormick Department of English McGill University, Montréal A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy © Casey J. McCormick Table of Contents Abstract ………………………………………………………………………….…………. iii Résumé …………………………………………………………………..………..………… v Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………….……...…. vii Chapter One: Introducing Finales ………………………………………….……... 1 Chapter Two: Anticipating Closure in the Planned Finale ……….……… 36 Chapter Three: Binge-Viewing and Netflix Poetics …………………….….. 72 Chapter Four: Resisting Finality through Active Fandom ……………... 116 Chapter Five: Many Worlds, Many Endings ……………………….………… 152 Epilogue: The Dying Leader and the Harbinger of Death ……...………. 195 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………... 199 Primary Media Sources ………………………………………………………………. 211 iii Abstract What do we want to feel when we reach the end of a television series? Whether we spend years of our lives tuning in every week, or a few days bingeing through a storyworld, TV finales act as sites of negotiation between the forces of media production and consumption. By tracing a history of finales from the first Golden Age of American television to our contemporary era of complex TV, my project provides the first book- length study of TV finales as a distinct category of narrative media. This dissertation uses finales to understand how tensions between the emotional and economic imperatives of participatory culture complicate our experiences of television. The opening chapter contextualizes TV finales in relation to existing ideas about narrative closure, examines historically significant finales, and describes the ways that TV endings create meaning in popular culture. Chapter two looks at how narrative anticipation motivates audiences to engage communally in paratextual spaces and share processes of closure. Chapter three takes up binge-viewing and the idea of “Netflix Poetics” in order to investigate how on-demand technologies change our experience of TV endings. Chapter four examines the ways that affective energies circulate intertextually within and across fan communities, reshaping our sense of finality. The final chapter explores the concept of “cofactuality” to account for the ways that viewers manage narrative loss by thinking through, and sharing, multiple versions of imagined endings. This dissertation combines core ideas from Media and Cultural Studies, Narrative Theory, and Fan and Audience Studies to make substantial cross-disciplinary contributions to the study of television and digital culture. I integrate links to images, iv video, news articles, and social media posts in order to convey the multimedia textures of TV viewership. By using a series of case studies to rethink the key terms of televisual storytelling and viewer engagement, “TV Finales and the Meaning of Endings” examines how TV endings can help us negotiate loss and come to terms with finality. v Résumé Que voulons nous sentir lorsque nous arriverons à la fin d’une série télévisée? Que nous consacrons des ans aux programmes hebdomadaires, ou nous passons quelques jours en visionnage rafale, les finals des séries télévisées sont les sites de négociation entre les forces de la production et la consommation des médias. En traçant une histoire des finals, du premier âge d’or de la télévision américaine à notre ère de la télévision complexe, mon projet offrit la première étude en profondeur qui définit les finals des séries comme une catégorie distincte des médias narratives. Cette thèse examine des finals pour comprendre comment les tensions entre les impératifs émotionnels et économiques de la culture participative compliquaient nos expériences de télévision. Le premier chapitre met des finals des séries dans le contexte des idées existantes sur la résolution narrative. Il examine les finals d’importance historique et décrit la façon dont les fins des séries télévisées créent un sens dans la culture populaire. Le chapitre deux considère comment l’anticipation narrative motive les audiences d’engager collectivement dans les espaces paratextuels et de partager les processus de résolution. Le chapitre trois revient sur la visionnage rafale et l’idée de la “Poétique de Netflix” pour découvrir comment les technologies sur demand change notre expériences des finals. Le chapitre quatre examine comment les énergies affectives circulent intertextuellement dans et à travers les communautés de fans et redéfinissent notre sens de finalité. Le dernier chapitre explore le concept de “cofactuality” pour expliquer les façons par lesquelles les spectateurs gèrent la perte narrative en construisant et en vi partageant des versions multiples des fins imaginées. Cette thèse combine des idées centrales d’Études Culturelles, Théorie Narrative, et Études des Fans et Audiences pour apporter des contributions interdisciplinaires aux études de la télévision et la culture numérique. J’intègre des hyperliens aux images, vidéos, articles, et postes sur les médias sociaux pour montrer les textures multimédias de téléspectateurisme. En utilisant une série de études de cas pour repenser les termes essentielles de la narration et engagement télévisuelle, “TV Finales and the Meaning of Endings” examine comment les fins des séries télévisées peuvent nous aider de négocier la perte et d’accepter la finalité. vii Acknowledgements The best part of writing a dissertation about television finales means that everyone around you has interesting ideas, anecdotes, and perspectives to share. I am thankful to all of the folks who chatted with me about TV over the past several years, offered a thoughtful response to a question I posted on Facebook, or suggested something new to watch. This dissertation is the product of those conversations and wouldn’t be the same without the insights of my friends, family, and sometimes even strangers. Thank you to my husband, Eric, for being a constant support, sounding board, editor, and bingeing partner. I would never have gotten through this process without you, and I am grateful every day to share my life with you. A thousand thank-yous to my mom for her encouragement and stellar editing work (often under tight deadlines) throughout the many years of my graduate education; and to my brother, for his unconditional support and love, always. And also to my dad, who I’m sure would have gotten a kick out of me getting a PhD for watching a bunch of television. Thank you to Derek Nystrom for teaching me how to teach and always lending an ear when I thought I couldn’t make it through this degree. And to all of the other mentors and friends who have taken the time to offer me advice and guidance along the way: Alisa Perren, Paul Booth, Suzanne Scott, Ian Whittington, Justin Pfefferle, Ariel Buckley, and Paula Derdiger, among many others in my SCMS, WSA, and Flow families. To all of the EGSA folks, especially the ladies of my cohort, Sunita Nigam and Mary Towers—you are both exceptional human beings. To my great friend and translation viii master, Sarah Vresk. And to Josie Torres Barth, an awesome friend and an inspiring scholar and teacher. I am also grateful for the publishing opportunities that helped shape the ideas of this dissertation. Elements of chapter three can be found in my essay “‘Forward is the Battle Cry’: Binge-Viewing Netflix’s House of Cards” in the edited collection The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century (Bloomsbury Academic 2016). Parts of chapter four overlap with my essay “Active Fandom: Labor and Love in the Whedonverse,” which will appear in the forthcoming Wiley Companion to Fandom and Fan Studies (2018). And an earlier version of chapter five was published in Participations: International Journal of Audience Research (13.1 2016). My three-part contribution to Flow Journal (2016-17) was also an important forum for streamlining the core themes of this dissertation. Thank you to all of the editors on these projects: Daniel Smith-Rowsey, Kevin MacDonald, Paul Booth, Billy Proctor, Richard McCulloch, and Toni Stickler. Most importantly, thank you to my brilliant supervisor, Ned Schantz. This journey that we went on together over the past six years has not always been easy, but your unique way of thinking inspired me to push this project in directions that I would never have considered. I am so grateful for the hours upon hours that we’ve spent talking about ideas—these have been the most stimulating conversations of my life, and I think this dissertation has captured a lot of our collaborative thinking. You are an incredible supervisor and friend, and this document would not exist without you. Finally, thank you, Buster, for being the coolest cat. 1 Chapter One: Introducing Finales "All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers' plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children's games. We edge nearer to death every time we plot. It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as those who are the targets of the plot." -Don DeLillo, W hite Noise (1985) I. Introduction: Mixed Feelings Endings matter. When we listen to, read, or watch a story, we participate in a drive towards closure that defines our experience of that story. “All plots tend to move deathward,” writes DeLillo, and this narrative death drive reflects our real-life anxieties about death and finality. Things end, people die, and we don’t always know how to feel about it. On January 10, 2017, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered his Farewell Address. The contents of the speech, while poignant, were fairly unremarkable. But what struck me about this televised address was the number of social media posts comparing the event to watching the finale of a fictional TV series. While some of these comments are clearly sarcastic, in many cases, comparisons between this political address and fictional finales express a deep emotional experience—one of loss, heartbreak, and grief. Similarly, this comic strip uses a familiar TV finale trope (turning out the lights on an 2 empty sitcom set1 ) to convey the existential darkness of a Trump America.
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