ABSTRACT
Critical studies have long treated seriality within a specific medium, whether with full-length studies on television seriality for instance, or of Hollywood franchises. Series have also often been observed as pop culture productions in the context of cultural studies “less interested in the seriality of popular forms than in the popularity of serial forms”. Most studies of seriality, Hayward’s included, also stress the capitalistic, economic framework of serial works, bringing forth the connection between serialized cultural products and a market economy that relies on serialized manufacturing processes – a link conceptualized, decades earlier, by Walter Benjamin. The fundamentally commercial nature of seriality shouldn’t, however, be the only point of entry into these works, or suffice to disregard them as exploitative lures for alienated audiences. Studying seriality on the big and small screens allows our authors to fully analyze issues related with medium specificity, and with the evolution of the audiovisual form and industries today.
