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"to say something or do something the second time or again and again; iteration of the same word, act or idea." Series means "a continued succession of similar things." It is a matter of establishing what it means to say "again" or "the same or similar things". |
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To serialize means, in some way, to repeat. Therefore, we shall have to define a first meaning of to repeat by which the term means to make a replica of the same abstract type. Two sheets of typing paper are both replicas of the same commercial type. In this sense one thing is the same as another when the former exhibits the same properties as the latter, at least under a certain description: two sheets of typing paper are the same from the point of view of our functional needs, even though they are not the same for a physicist interested in the molecular structure of the objects. From the point of view of industrial mass production, two tokens can be considered replicas of the same type when for a normal person with normal requirements, in the absence of evident imperfection, it is irrelevant whether one chooses one instead of the other. Two copies of a film or of a book are replicas of the same type (see below, ch. 12, "Fakes and Forgeries"). The repetitiveness and the seriality that interest us here look instead at something that at first glance does not appear as the same (equal) to something else. |
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Let us now consider the universe of mass media and see the case in which (i) something is offered as original and different (according to the requirements of modern aesthetics), (ii) we are aware that this something is repeating something else that we already know, and (iii) notwithstanding thisbetter, just because of itwe like it (and we buy it). |
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The first type of repetition is the retake. In this case one recycles the characters of a previous successful story in order to exploit them, by telling what happened to them after the end of their first adventure. The most famous example of retake is Dumas's Twenty Years Later; the most recent ones are the "to be continued" versions of Star Wars or Superman. The retake depends on a commercial decision. |
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The remake consists in telling again a previous successful story. See the innumerable editions of Dr. Jekyll or of Mutiny on the Bounty. |
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The series works upon a fixed situation and a restricted number of fixed pivotal characters, around whom the secondary and changing ones turn. The secondary characters must give the impression that the |
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