Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-13-2023
Keywords
ordinary aesthetics, American TV shows, complexity, simplicity, ordinary, two worlds, Möbius strips, Escher twists, uncanny, Stanley Cavell, Twin Peaks, The Sopranos, Awake, Ozark
Abstract
Contemporary TV shows, characterized by their complex narrative form, are designed to reveal the simple. They enable characters and viewers alike to discover the ordinary by coupling the everyday to an underworld populated by criminals, demons, vampires, and other kinds of “lowlifes.” I will argue here that the structure of the Möbius strip, or Escher twist, draws a particular aesthetic appeal at the intersection of these worlds. I call these twists uncanny in the Cavellian sense that the underworld, looking strangely familiar, has the capacity of making the ordinary look unfamiliar, inherently strange, and unstable. Rather than allowing us to judge the demonic or illegal, they disclose what is normally inaccessible to us precisely because it is so ordinary and simple, so familiar and in plain sight. I will support this idea of Escher-twisting from one world to another by analyzing examples from Twin Peaks (ABC 1990-2, Showtime 2017), The Sopranos (HBO 1999-2007), Awake (NBC 2012), and Ozark (Netflix 2017–2022).
Publisher Attribution
Open Access. © 2023 the author(s), published by De Gruyter in Open Philosophy Volume 6 Issue 1. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Gerrits, Jeroen, "“‘Normal Is What We Make It, Right?’ Ordinary Aesthetics and Uncanny Twists in Contemporary TV Series."" (2023). Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship. 59.
https://orb.binghamton.edu/comparative_literature_fac/59
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Comments
https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2022-0257