García-Martínez, A.N. (Alberto Nahum)
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- A Storytelling Machine: The Complexity and Revolution of Narrative Television(Between (Italian Association for the Theory and Comparative History of Literature), 2016-05) García-Martínez, A.N. (Alberto Nahum)This article analyses how TV fiction, in the last fifteen years, has become one of the most stimulating and successful vehicles to narrate complex and daring stories. The article is divided into two parts. In the first, armed with narratological and poetic elements, we will define the serial story, stripping away the husk of its principal forms and explain why it is now the best media for telling lengthy stories. In the second part we will pause to examine specifically variations on the traditional story: alternate universes, time jumps, coincidence between diegetic time in the story and real time and other mechanisms that have made television fiction the most daring way for telling stories.
- Prozac para zombies. La sentimentalización contemporánea del muerto viviente en la televisión(2016-01-22) García-Martínez, A.N. (Alberto Nahum)This article analyses one of the most notorious TV trend in the last years –the zombie–, and how its evolution is related to the usual dynamics that features every artistic genre, but also to the “affective turn” that contemporary society is experiencing. In order to analyse this cultural phenomena, firstly we will explore the metaphorical condition that traditionally has been associated with zombie narratives since George A. Romero reinvention. Next, we will study –by taking a close look to some examples– the causes for the ongoing humanization the living dead have gone through both in cinema and television. Lastly, we will scrutinize three recent TV Shows dealing with the zombie myth from stylistic, thematic and ideological innovative perspectives: In the Flesh (BBC, 2013-14), Les Revenants (Canal Plus Francia, 2012-15) and iZombie (CW, 2015-).
- El espejo roto: la metaficción en las series anglosajonas(Universidad de La Laguna, 2009) García-Martínez, A.N. (Alberto Nahum)This article examines how, coming from different aesthetic and generic directions, a representative portion of Anglosaxon television series build up their stories by means of breaking –at different levels– the illusionist mirror that characterizes traditional fiction. In this way, they are –implicitly or explicitly– reflecting on the conventions of Realism. The article begins by exposing some theoretical issues about the concept of metafiction. Featuring examples collected since 2001, there follows cartographic research into all the possibilities that metafictional tv-series can harbor: a manipulative narrator, the juxtaposition of diegetical worlds, television as thematic seed for innovative stories, the hybrid game of self-consciousness and, lastly, the direct appeal to the audience’s attention as the major reflective device used by contemporary anglosaxon television series up to now.
- En las fronteras de la no-ficción. El falso documental (definición y mecanismos)(2004) García-Martínez, A.N. (Alberto Nahum)A la posmodernidad le gusta jugar con los límites. La difusa frontera entre la realidad y la ficción constituye un terreno fértil para sembrar imágenes sospechosas. Por eso, a la posmodernidad audiovisual le gusta la falsificación, que se alimenta del estilo, la credibilidad y las estrategias retóricas del documental y los informativos televisivos (supuestamente, los que registran la realidad) para manipular al espectador y obligarle a que se cuestione: ¿verdad o mentira? Los falsos documentales pueden tener diversos tipos y estilos, casi tantos como clases de documentales existen. En cualquiera de estas simulaciones se imita la gramática del género, se falsifica el interés del asunto, se copia la supuesta espontaneidad de los protagonistas y situaciones o se fingen los lugares comunes (grabaciones de archivo, voz en off, cámara al hombro, declaraciones de especialistas en la materia ante la cámara...). La pretensión de la mayoría, además de un indudable sentido lúdico, es desmitificar la veracidad y credibilidad de la que goza el género. Demostrar que hasta el más fiel cinema-verité no es más que un mundo posible; la imagen nunca sustituirá a la realidad, como mucho conseguirá ser un reflejo.
- The Rise of 'Bright Noir'. Redemption and Moral Optimism in American Contemporary TV Noir(Palgrave, 2018) García-Martínez, A.N. (Alberto Nahum)This article explores how some recent American TV crime dramas that can be specifically labelled as noir address the issue of hope and redemption by undermining one of the main thematic and ideological features that both spectators and critics tend to assign to noir narratives: the logic of hopelessness, of no way out. In what I have coined as “bright noir”, several recent, influential and popular TV noir series (such as 'Justified' or 'Fargo') offer stories in which brave protagonists achieve a positive outcome and defeat evil while fulfilling a higher purpose or attaining an honorable end.
- La imagen que piensa. Hacia una definición del ensayo audiovisual(Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, 2006) García-Martínez, A.N. (Alberto Nahum)El presente artículo pretende analizar las claves esenciales –históricas, retóricas y de género– que caracterizan a un tipo de texto audiovisual que cuenta con una escasa tradición cinematográfica. El ensayo fílmico propone un discurso personal y asistemático que –a través de elementos como un estilo marcado, un montaje visible que privilegia la palabra o la inserción fílmica del autor– va construyendo su reflexión en las imágenes, representando así el camino del pensamiento trazado.
- 'This America, man!' El realismo como crítica ideológica en The Wire(2011-11-04T17:34:54Z) García-Martínez, A.N. (Alberto Nahum)Análisis de los recursos textuales y contextuales que emplean los creadores de la serie televisiva "The Wire" para activar, mediante el realismo, una crítica política e ideológica de la sociedad contemporánea.
- Una revisión fílmica de la Guerra Civil: contrapropaganda y memoria en 'Caudillo'(2007) García-Martínez, A.N. (Alberto Nahum)La película Caudillo (B. M. Patino, 1974) construye, a partir de una constante colisión retórica entre los dos bandos, un anti-retrato de Franco y una crónica de los aspectos ideológicos y bélicos de la Guerra Civil. El director deconstruye el icono creado a lo largo de cuarenta años por medio de imágenes oficiales, símbolos políticos e históricos, ritos sociales y cierta manipulación informativa e ideológica. Caudillo reutiliza material de archivo, tanto nacional como republicano, para ofrecer una relectura histórica, alejada de la diseminada por las imágenes y los medios oficiales del Franquismo.
- The Inner Journey: Essayist McElwee(Ediciones Internacionales Universitarias, 2007) García-Martínez, A.N. (Alberto Nahum)Ross McElwee’s innovative work negotiates its genre identity from a marginal land. Straddled between filmic diaries, performative documentary and home movies, his work falls into a genre that is difficult to place. Just as with the other analyses of this book, we are banking on film essay as the most appropriate label for describing the work of this landscape artist of the self hailing from the American south. It is not Monet’s pictorial impressionism. The intellectual mirror of McElwee could be a Michel de Montaigne essay transformed into images.
- Moral emotions, antiheroes and the limits of allegiance (2016)(Palgrave Macmillan, 2016-03) García-Martínez, A.N. (Alberto Nahum)According to its creator, Vince Gilligan, Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008–13) describes the moral corruption of a normal man, the conversion of Mr. Chips to Scarface. In ‘Full Measures’ (3.13), the moral and emotional complexity of the story is encapsulated in a seemingly incidental scene. We see Walter White in his living room, giving little Holly a bottle of milk. A close- up shows how the baby grabs at his glasses, and in this moment of paternal tenderness, the writers cunningly re-humanize a character who just executed two thugs and minutes later ordered the death of his lab partner, as if to remind us that, at heart, ‘he’s really just a family man’ forced by circumstances to take matters into his own hands. This important step in the metamorphosis of Walter is again mitigated by several factors: children, the family and everyday domestic life. Self-defence is, of course, the justification for these deaths, but the devotion of a father towards his little baby also enter into the moral and emotional equation that characterises Breaking Bad. This article will be structured according to four sections: first, we will examine the rise of antiheroes over the past decade, exploring the ideological, industrial and narrative reasons that explain their success. Secondly, we will address how spectators engage morally and emotionally with the moving image, paying special attention to the specific nature of TV narrative. Thirdly, we will analyse the four main dramatic strategies that strengthen our identification with these morally conflicted characters: moral comparatism , the soothing power of family, acts of contrition and victimization. Lastly, we will propose a discussion over the ‘levels of engagement’ described by Smith and expanded by Vaage for television, in order to explore what the limits of sympathetic allegiance are, and how both the spectator and the narrative need to recover it cyclically.