< previous page page_96 next page >

Page 96
Nevertheless, a typology of repetition does not furnish the criteria that can establish differences in aesthetic values. Yet, since the various types of repetition are present in the whole of artistic and literary history, they can be taken into account in order to establish criteria of artistic value. An aesthetics of repetition requires as a premise a semiotics of the textual procedures of repetition.
4. A Radical or "Postmodern" Aesthetic Solution
I realize that all I have said until now still represents an attempt to reconsider the various forms of repetition in the media in terms of the "modern" dialectic between order and innovation. The fact, however, is that when one speaks today of the aesthetics of seriality, one alludes to something more radical, that is, to a notion of aesthetic value that wholly escapes the "modern" idea of art and literature (cf. Costa 1983; Calabrese 1987).
It has been observed that with the phenomenon of television serials we find a new concept of "the infinity of the text"; the text takes on the rhythms of that same dailiness in which it is produced and which it mirrors. The problem is not one of recognizing that the serial text works variations indefinitely on a basic scheme (and in this sense it can be judged from the point of view of the "modern" aesthetics). The real problem is that what is of interest is not so much the single variations as "variability" as a formal principle, the fact that one can make variations to infinity. Variability to infinity has all the characteristics of repetition, and very little of innovation. But it is the "infinity" of the process that gives a new sense to the device of variation. What must be enjoyedsuggests the postmodern aestheticsis the fact that a series of possible variations is potentially infinite. What becomes celebrated here is a sort of victory of life over art, with the paradoxical result that the era of electronics, instead of emphasizing the phenomena of shock, interruption, novelty, and frustration of expectations, would produce a return to the continuum, the Cyclical, the Periodical, the Regular.
Omar Calabrese (1983) has thoroughly looked into this: from the point of view of the "modern" dialectic between repetition and innovation, one can recognize easily how, for example, in the Columbo series, on a basic scheme some of the best names in American cinema have worked variations. Thus it would be difficult to speak, in such a case, of pure repetition: if the scheme of the detection and the psychology of the protagonist actor remains unchanged, the style of the narrative changes each time. This is no small thing, especially from the point of view of

 
< previous page page_96 next page >