Zero-Degree Seriality

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores what it means for contemporary viewers and shows to be “serial” in terms of both ontological reception (the experience of viewing in time) and epistemological intellection (the articulation of viewing in time). It shows that both 24 and Lost construct narrative codes that confront the electronic present while likewise mapping its displacements. By stylistically and structurally foregrounding, or “plotting,” their own contexts—obsessive speed for the former and digressive multiplicity for the latter—these programs are semiotic/experiential modes and electronic “signatures” of our era.