TV Series (Jul 2019)
Regarder des séries sur Netflix : l’illusion d’une expérience spectatorielle augmentée
Abstract
Through its video interface and its rate of diffusion, Netflix ensures TV series fans an “instant” experience, addressing the televisual delay that inherently separates one episode from another. Viewers thus become their own “Chief Content Officer”, free to watch series not only whenever they want, but also at their own pace. However, this promise of an expanded seriality mastering comes with several implicit losses that can be developed in three ways: 1) Embracing a full season with no delay between episodes prevents viewers from dreaming TV series together. With each episode immediately at hand, they naturally forsake some of their ability to anticipate and to question the meanings of a long-term narration. 2) Being available immediately and running automatically until the end of the season, the single episode aired in the Netflix way becomes absorbed into a seasonal continuum. As a characteristic example of this statement, The OA (Netflix, 2016-) does not display its first “opening” credits before almost a full hour of what appears to be an unsettling prologue that – as is formally implied – cannot be judged before we have seen the end of the season. 3) After implementing an end credits (and “Previously on”) cutting option in 2013, Netflix now allows viewers to skip each episode’s opening credits so as to retain only its “dynamic” part. Yet, those functionalities obliterate narrative devices that shall be reminded, like inserting a few clues about events to come in the “Previously on” segment, or musically extending an episode’s narrative though the choice of a specific song.
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