SAME but DIFFERENT: Chaos and TV Drama Narratives
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SAME BUT DIFFERENT: Chaos and TV Drama Narratives BY ALISON MCLACHLAN A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Victoria University of Wellington (2019) ABSTRACT Complexity is a term that is now commonly used when discussing TV serial dramas and the way that, in recent years, creators and producers of this narrative form have embraced innovative and challenging strategies to tell their stories. As a result, it is also often argued that all TV serial dramas are strikingly different from one another; one of the few things that contemporary TV serial dramas have in common is their employment of complex narrative strategies. However, in this thesis, I argue that—while serial dramas are different from one another in many ways—they are also all the same at a fundamental level. In order to examine the fundamental narrative components that all serial dramas employ, I use chaos as a framework. Chaos is a branch of mathematics and science which examines systems that display unpredictable behaviour that is actually determined by deep structures of order and stability. At its most basic level, chaos corresponds with the way in which serial dramas are both complex and simple at the same time; beneath the complexity of serial dramas are fundamental building blocks that are used to generate innovative, challenging and unpredictable narratives. I apply the findings from my critical examination of chaos and TV drama narratives to the creation of my own TV projects, which employ the inherent structures and patterns of TV drama narratives in a way that produces innovative and complex stories. In doing so, I intend to highlight the potential of serial dramas to be endlessly creative yet consistently the same. 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank everyone at the IIML—especially Damien Wilkins, Katie Hardwick- Smith, and Clare Moleta—for providing the time, space and support that made this project possible. Many thanks also go to my fellow PhD creative writing cohort for their feedback and support: Angela Andrews, Valerie Arvidson, Airini Beautrais, Peter Cox, Amy Leigh Wicks, Allan Drew, Kate Duignan, Gigi Fenster, Helen Heath, Therese Lloyd, Monica Macanstantos, Sue Orr, Anna Sanderson, Claire Baylis, Nikki-Lee Birdsey, Ben Egerton, Miles Fuller, Helen Innes, Justine Jungersen-Smith, Mikaela Nyman, and Lena Tichy. I would also like to thank my mum, my dad, Dougal McLachlan, Hamish McLachlan, GARAR, and Gavin McGibbon for shaping me and helping, in various capacities, to get me to where I am. My immense gratitude also goes to Megan Le Bas, Kim Le Bas, Florence Le Bas, Lois Le Bas, Diane Owen, Doug Owen, and Kirsty Owen, for welcoming me into your family and providing encouragement, support and countless getaways. Special thanks go to: Fiona McLachlan for being an amazing sister and role model. Fiona Druitt for sharing your knowledge of chaos, and providing such generous and in-depth feedback. Cameron McLachlan for your rigorous proof-reading and endless support. My secondary supervisor, Joost de Bruin, for your valuable feedback and calming reassurance. My primary supervisor, Ken Duncum, for your insights, gentle encouragement, and general wizardry. My deepest gratitude is for René Le Bas. This thesis wouldn’t exist without your love, encouragement, patience, tolerance, and humour. I’m very lucky to have you. 2 CONTENTS ABSTRACT 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2 PART ONE: CRITICAL COMPONENT INTRODUCTION 6 Complexity in TV Drama Narratives 7 Introduction to Chaos 12 Methodology and Thesis Outline 16 CHAPTER ONE: “Universality” and the Narrative Structures of TV Dramas 23 Introduction 23 “Universality” 24 “Universality” and the Narrative Structures of TV Dramas 29 “Universality” and The Wire 41 Conclusion 52 CHAPTER TWO: Strange Attractors and Unpredictability in TV Drama Narratives 54 Introduction 54 Strange Attractors 55 Strange Attractors and Unpredictability in TV Drama Narratives 61 Strange Attractors and The Leftovers 70 Conclusion 78 PART TWO: CREATIVE COMPONENT INTRODUCTION 81 PROJECT ONE: UNTOLD 83 Untold: Series Bible 84 Untold: Episode Synopses 89 Untold: Episode One script 97 Untold: Episode Two script 150 Untold and Chaos 203 3 PROJECT TWO: BAD NEWS 207 Bad News: Series Bible 208 Bad News: Episode synopses 213 Bad News Scripts: Episode One script 221 Bad News: Episode Two script 267 Bad News and Chaos 311 PROJECT THREE: THE CHANCES 314 The Chances: Series Bible 315 The Chances: Episode Synopses 321 The Chances Scripts: Episode One script 330 The Chances: Episode Two script 376 The Chances and Chaos 425 CONCLUSION 429 BIBLIOGRAPHY 433 4 PART ONE: CRITICAL COMPONENT 5 INTRODUCTION When water is poured into a waterwheel that has holes at the bottom of each of its buckets, the behaviour of the wheel will be unpredictable. This is because the weight of each bucket depends on how much water it contains, as well as how much water it lets out. But the amount of water that a bucket leaks out also depends on how much water it initially contains. This interlinked relationship between how much water is going in and out of each bucket at one time means that, if the flow of water from the top is fast enough, the wheel will display both regular and irregular behaviour. An observer can never predict when the wheel will perform regular or irregular behaviour because of the infinitesimally tight intertwining of stability and instability in the system. This particular waterwheel is known as the Lorenz Waterwheel, named after Edward Lorenz, an applied mathematician and meteorologist who is often considered the father of chaos*—an area of mathematics that examines instability in nonlinear dynamical systems (Gleick 29). Chaos is commonly associated, by non-mathematicians, with “the butterfly effect”; a term coined after an image that Lorenz came up with to describe chaos, also known as sensitive dependence on initial conditions. That is, the flap of a butterfly’s wings can cause a tornado on the other side of the world. This image captures the essence of chaos—that minor perturbations in a chaotic system, like the weather, can have catastrophic and unpredictable consequences in the future due to the infinitesimally tight intertwining of stability and instability. In other words, the weather and the Lorenz Waterwheel are both systems that perform chaos because their behaviour is unpredictable yet deterministic (a system’s current state determines the next state). For instance, the speed at which the water flows into the Lorenz Waterwheel initially determines the rate at which the first bucket will fill and leak, which will in turn determine the speed at which the wheel rotates, which in turn determines the rate at which each subsequent bucket will fill and leak, and so on. In this sense, its current state determines its future state but, if the flow of water * The study of nonlinear dynamical systems is popularly known as “chaos theory” in the humanities, but within the field itself is more commonly referred to as “chaos”—I will use the term “chaos” throughout this thesis. 6 reaches a certain speed, it is not possible to predict what these future states will be—it is impossible to know what the wheel will do next at any given point. Thus, a chaotic system displays behaviour that is determined by particular conditions and states yet is unpredictable (Gleick 27). In this thesis I argue that the narratives in critically successful TV serial dramas* resemble the behaviour of a chaotic system, like that of the Lorenz Waterwheel. I will also argue that the creators of successful TV serial dramas are attempting, albeit inadvertently, to produce storylines that resemble the chaotic behaviour of these systems. I see this resemblance as apparent in the way that all successful serial dramas are underpinned by the same basic narrative structures, or building blocks, that are utilised in ways that produce unique and engaging stories. In other words, for a serial drama to be successful it must continually strike the difficult balance of being rigidly structured yet endlessly creative; familiar and expected yet surprising and unpredictable; the same but different. Before I examine serial drama narratives through this lens of chaos in more depth, I will provide a general overview of how scholars and critics have perceived complexity in relation to TV drama. I will then provide a brief introduction to chaos, followed by an examination of how chaos has been successfully and not-so-successfully adopted by those in the field of humanities. From there I will outline my own method of comparing TV serial narratives to chaos and how this will form chapters one and two of this thesis. I will then go on to introduce the three TV projects that I have written as part of my creative component, which have simultaneously informed and been informed by the critical component of this thesis. Complexity in TV Drama Narratives The past two decades have seen a distinct increase in the production of compelling, challenging and risk-taking serial TV dramas, which has in turn given rise to the term “complex TV” in the academic field of television studies. Two major scholars who have investigated “complex TV” in depth – Trisha Dunleavy and Jason Mittell – argue that * While I am aware there are different types of “success” in serial dramas (such as commercial success), I will use “critically successful” serial dramas as the focus of this thesis. 7 complexity in TV emerged in the early 2000s and has since continued to develop and evolve as technology and viewing platforms have changed (Mittell 1). Dunleavy’s book, Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television, examines the authorship processes, narrative characteristics, industrial practices and stylistic tendencies of American ‘complex serial’ drama.