ABSTRACT
Films and television shows often cue viewers to compare two or more narrative elements by highlighting similarities between them. For example, resemblances between the so-called A, B, and even C plots in TV episodes are one way that televisual storytellers can connect storylines and create unity. This narrational device or principle, which can be called parallelism, hasn’t received much sustained attention from film and TV scholars, and in this chapter, I seek to lay the foundations for further study of this neglected technique by providing a taxonomy of commonly recurring forms of parallelism. Having addressed the difference between parallelism, motifs and metaphors, I identify four kinds of parallelism that occur in both film and television using examples from both: situational, narrative, character, and conceptual. I also show how parallelism can be a source of aesthetic pleasure by fashioning narrative complexity and richness. Finally, I identify a distinctive form of parallelism that, while not unique to television, is made possible by its norm of serial narration. A film typically consists of a single narrative viewed in one sitting lasting between 75 and 180 minutes, and parallels of the sort discussed in this chapter must be established within this temporal limit. By contrast, due to what Ted Nannicelli aptly calls television’s “temporal prolongation,” television shows can return in later episodes to parallels originated in earlier ones, expanding upon, nuancing, and complicating them to the point that they are enriched and even transformed.
