Beschreibung
US prime time television drama of the earlier broadcast era
featured self-contained storylines and (mostly) amnesiac
protagonists. This changed with the arrival of what television
scholar Horace Newcomb termed cumulative narrative: Prime-time
series of a new era adopted narrative features more typical for
daytime soap opera, and leading characters began to remember
where they came from. This study explores the organisational
patterns and generic implications leading to the rise of
cumulative storytelling. It also points to further venues of
analysis for backstory narratives and diegetic memory in general.
Ursula Ganz-Blättler is a Swiss film and television
scholar and a senior lecturer at the School of Humanities and Social
Sciences SHSS in St. Gallen. Her research interests lie with popular
culture, time economy, and the role of communication in the building
and maintenance of collective memory.
