Jorge Carrión (Tarragona, 46 years old) advanced in 2011 the global power, almost as powerful as that of classical literature, of the stories created in television series in his essay
Teleshakespeare
(Errata Naturae).
At that time, he was already talking about
Mad Men
, the Fishers from
Six Feet Under
, and the antiheroes from
The Wire
and
The Sopranos
.
11 years have passed in which new classics have emerged, such as
Fleabag and The Leftovers,
and other types of global phenomena, such as
Stranger Things
and
Game of Thrones.
.
They go hand in hand with a mass supply of series that has brought the arrival of countless platforms, some of them fleeting.
To re-evaluate the new television scene and adjust some pending accounts with the original text, Carrión, PhD in Humanities from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, launches a
remastered
edition of his text, edited by Galaxia Gutenberg.
It includes a selection of the articles he has published in
The New York Times
and
The Washington Post
in recent years.
More information
Nine chapters to remember 'The Wire' on its 20th anniversary
For the author of
Teleshakespeare
, the current quality in terms of television series is similar to that of then.
Only our perspective has changed.
“The problem is that before we admired those 10 excellent series that appeared out of 500 and now we find 10 excellent series out of 50,000.
The percentage has changed, but not the amount of good material, ”he defends in mid-October, just before giving a talk with critic Lorenzo Mejino at the CCCB Theater in Barcelona during the Serializados festival.
“
The Wire
didn't win any awards.
It was created with total freedom, without any kind of pressure.
That changes radically starting in 2007, with
Mad Men
and
Breaking Bad
.
Everything is codified, creators face a lot of expectations and it doesn't happen again that a creator has complete freedom”, he explains.
Jorge Carrión, author of the essay.wikimedia commons
But
Teleshakespeare
is not a compilation of masterpieces, rather it tries to represent and analyze an entire industry, comments Carrión.
“It was born out of the idea of Shakespeare as a popular author, not just a classic.
This Is Us
, for example, has moved me, and it appears in the new text, as
V
appeared in its day ”.
The new television reality complicates the creation of a new edition of this essay in the next decade.
“There are fewer and fewer series that you can write a long essay on in a mass medium about phenomena like
Game of Thrones, Black Mirror
and
Euphoria
.
The fragmentation of the audience means that there is not enough public that has seen it.
I would have liked to write about
Separation
(Apple TV+), an extraordinary series, but I thought that my readers were not going to know what it was about”, he laments.
Cover of the second edition of 'Teleshakespeare'. Galaxia Gutenberg Publishing House
A new concept that Carrión analyzes in his
remastered
text is that of self-awareness in the series, which affects their own plots.
He remembers how
Girls
in its last season makes some of her characters shoot a movie about her own story, already told in the series.
That self-awareness even extends to other projects.
With
The Leftovers
, Damon Lindelof sought to correct the bittersweet feeling that he left in many followers of
Lost
, his previous work, taking up and refocusing some of his reflections.
Michael C. Hall probably wouldn't have been Dexter if he hadn't played David in
Six Feet Under
.
And adapting
Homeland
, the creators of
24
went to places that the constricted narrative structure of their previous success did not allow.
“Series are often addicted to their own past.
It is an increasingly complex and infinite phenomenon.
Wonders like
Better Call Saul
have a great lead being born out of a supporting character.
And Diane Lockhart [secondary of
The Good Wife
, protagonist of
The Good Fight
] is something like the memory of 15 years of television”, comments the essayist.
Although the ability of series to generate conversation has diminished, can sound fictions achieve something similar?
“In Spanish,
El gran apagón
and
Guerra 3
begin to attract millions of listeners.
I think the time will come when they will be as talked about as those on television”, warns the Catalan.
In December, he launches a new project with the Podium Podcast, expanding the
Solaris
universe ,
sound essays
.
It is an experimental
podcast
entitled
Ecos
and focused again on technology, science and culture.
You can follow EL PAÍS TELEVISIÓN on
or sign up here to receive
our weekly newsletter
.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I'm already a subscriber