Steven Shaviro proposed that post-continuity cinema abandons the coherence of time and space in favor of a plethora of tactics and techniques. This indiscriminate mixing itself represents the aesthetics of post-continuity (Shaviro, 2010). In transmedia storytelling, the combination of language and media in an interactive environment challenges traditional narration (SCOLARI, 2009). After all, linear narrative seems to become less important in post-cinema.

Twin Peaks is a television series directed by David Lynch, which includes three seasons of TV series and two movies, the story is about FBI detectives investigating the murder of a student. “The first two seasons of Twin Peaks have been considered as a monumental example of postmodern intertextuality and parody.”, it includes a lot of thrillers, horror, crime, and mysterious phenomena (Sanna, 2019). This mysterious and spooky story has amassed a large audience of fans.

However, in the final season of Twin Peaks： The Return（2017）， David Lynch used massive transmedia movie concepts including recurring red rooms, angel sculptures, masks, sound design, etc. （the same concept also appeared in two movies）combined with disrupted linear narrative structure which confused many viewers. He used a lot of obscure metaphors, and the first few episodes of the series received a lot of criticism for the slow, extremely flat dialogue of the characters, for the amount of downtime and almost static shots, and for the fact that the events filmed were not connected (Sanna, 2019). The director seems to have succeeded in creating his philosophical world, but it doesn’t seem to be open to the majority of the audience, who are cut off and overwhelmed by obscure metaphors and intentions. They can’t empathize or understand the relationships and meanings between the various events of the episode. Ultimately, the series is described as difficult to understand.

(Twin Peaks season 3 trailer (2017) Showtime Limited Series 2017)

Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed across multiple delivery channels to create a unified and coordinated experience. The ideal situation is each medium makes its unique contribution to the unfolding of the story (Henry Jenkins, 2007). In other words, the narrative should not be abandoned in transmedia post- cinema, it is the basic structure-creating device for meaning production (SCOLARI, 2009). As mentioned in week 2, it is important, not just to focus on the ways new modes of composing and connecting moving images but also on the kinds of sensations and experiences they can generate for contemporary audiences.

Reference

Shaviro, S. (2010) Post-cinematic affect. Ropley: Zero. 

SCOLARI, C.A. (2009) Transmedia Storytelling: Implicit Consumers, Narrative Worlds, and Branding in Contemporary Media Production [Preprint]. 

Sanna, A. (2019) Critical essays on twin peaks: The return. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Henry Jenkins (2007) Transmedia storytelling 101 – pop junctions, Henry Jenkins. Available at: http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html (Accessed: 28 October 2023). 

Twin Peaks Series Trailer (2015) YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLnkfajitpQ (Accessed: 28 October 2023). 

Twin Peaks season 3 trailer (2017) Showtime Limited Series (2017) YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEsebrBB6z4 (Accessed: 28 October 2023). 

Written by Siyi Liu