Mise-en-scène, Embodied Metaphors and Mood in 'Hannibal'

Abstract

Wyatt (1994) defines TV-Series as a "high concept", a recognizable object that has a modular structure that can be parceled and replicated. For Pescatore & Innocenti (2012), TV-Series are no longer textual objects, but the result of a design with a high degree of consistency among its components, similar to an ecosystem. The characteristics of this narrative ecosystem are, among others, that it is made up of open systems inhabited by stories and characters that change in time and space, that have interconnected structures and that tend to maintain the balance of their universe (Pescatore, Innocenti & Brembilla, 2014). In our proposal, an element that maintains the cohesion of a TV series, and that therefore could be one more element of the narrative ecosystem, is the mise-en-scène. This mise-en-scène not only has to do with the visual style but also helps to generate a mood through emotion markers and visual manifestations of metaphors that have a cognitive origin.