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Long before Batman, Flash Gordon, or the Lone Ranger were the stars of their own TV shows, they had dedicated audiences watching their adventures each week. The difference was that this action took place on the big screen, in short adventure serials whose exciting cliffhangers compelled the young audience to return to the theater every seven days.Matinee Melodramais the first book about the adventure serial as a distinct artform, one that uniquely encouraged audience participation and imaginative play. Media scholar Scott Higgins proposes that the serial's incoherent plotting and reliance on formula, far from being faults, should be understood as some of its most appealing attributes, helping to spawn an active fan culture. Further, he suggests these serials laid the groundwork not only for modern-day cinematic blockbusters likeStar WarsandRaiders of the Lost Ark, but also for all kinds of interactive media that combine spectacle, storytelling, and play.As it identifies key elements of the serial form-from stock characters to cliffhangers-Matinee Melodramadelves deeply into questions about the nature of suspense, the aesthetics of action, and the potentials of formulaic narrative. Yet it also provides readers with a loving look at everything fromZorro's Fighting LegiontoDaredevils of the Red Circle, conveying exactly why these films continue to thrill and enthrall their fans.

A fictional work contains a cliffhanger if it ends with a central character finding herself in perilous circumstances. The goal of this paper is to establish that authors’ narrative intentions determine what happens next in works that end in cliffhangers when no sequel is produced. To this end, I argue from the fact that a sequel written by the original author would uniquely resolve a fictional work that ends in a cliffhanger to the conclusion that the author’s narrative intentions serve as truth-makers for claims about what happens next in the absence of some such sequel. Une œuvre de fiction contient une mise en suspens (cliffhanger) si elle se termine au moment où un personnage central se retrouve dans des circonstances périlleuses. Le but de cet article est d’établir que les intentions narratives des auteurs déterminent ce qui se passe ensuite dans les œuvres qui se terminent par des mises en suspens et pour lesquelles aucune suite n’est produite. À cette fin, j’argumente à partir de l’idée qu’une suite écrite par l’auteur original résoudrait de façon unique une œuvre de fiction qui aboutit à une mise en suspens; je conclus que les intentions narratives de l’auteur servent de vérifacteur pour des affirmations sur ce qui arrive ensuite en l’absence d’une telle suite.

Despite its ubiquity, the cliffhanger has received little critical attention. This essay takes a closer look at the device, and finds that cliffhangers perform important functions for many narratives. Drawing on the rhetorical theory of narrative, I define the cliffhanger as a unique misalignment of story and discourse, and consider some of the device’s core features. I highlight aspects of the cliffhanger that demonstrate its range of functions: its effects on narrative progression, its role in highlighting continuity and discontinuity in the story, and its capacity to mislead readers in instrumental ways. I argue that we should attend to what cliffhangers have to say about the narratives they interrupt because cliffhangers are elements of authorial design that serve as signals for interpretation. Whether a cliffhanger misleads its reader or not, it makes a claim about the narrative it interrupts. Acknowledging these claims allows us to better understand how narratives maneuver readers to witness a story as it unfolds.

This essay takes up the debate at the beginning of Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), noting that critics have generally treated one figure in this debate—Dick Tinto, the painter who advises our narrator to use less dialogue and more descriptive language—as a strawman. Critics have mostly overlooked the extent to which Tinto articulates the dynamics of “momentaneousness,” an aesthetic principle drawn from Scott’s contemporary, Henry Fuseli. Fuseli defined a momentaneous painting as one that represents a moment with a clear past and future. For Fuseli, paintings ought to select pregnant moments for representation, moments from which whole narrative sequences can be intuited. Implicit in this notion is the belief that some moments are particularly suited to representation because they are qualitatively different from others—more fully narrative, because more indicative of larger processes of change. Turning to Scott’s novel, I show how this assumption features prominently in The Bride of Lammermoor, where it repeatedly produces unforeseen, calamitous consequences. The moment’s disruptive potential culminates in an aptly novelistic take on momentaneousness: the cliffhanger. The cliffhanger draws the act of reading into a circuit of temporal interruption and delay, reproducing the bad timing endemic to the novel’s plot. When read as an instance of momentaneous representation, The Bride’s climactic cliffhanger can be said to incorporate the reader’s own interpretive activity into the bewildering experience of historical time that the novel depicts. This technique, I argue, helps to account for The Bride’s peculiar place in the Waverley canon—its pessimistic historical vision and fatalistic narrative logic.

Tracing the international consumption, distribution, and cultural importance of silent film serials in the 1910s and 1920s, Canjels provides an exciting new understanding of the cultural dimension and the cultural transformation and circulation of media forms. Specifically, he demonstrates that the serial film form goes far beyond the well-known American two-reel serial—the cliffhanger. Throughout the book, Canjels focuses on the biggest producers of serials, America, France, and Germany, while imported serials, such as those in the Netherlands, are also examined. This research offers new views on the serial work of well known directors as D.W. Griffith, Abel Gance, Erich von Stroheim, and Fritz Lang, while foregrounding the importance of lesser known directors such as Louis Feuillade or Joe May. In the early twentieth-century, serial productions were constantly undergoing change and were not merely distributed in their original form upon import. As adjusted serials were present in large quantities or confronted different social spaces, nationalistic feelings and views stimulated by the unrest of World War I and the expanding American film industry could be incorporated and attached to the serial form. Serial productions were not only adaptable to local discourses, they could actively stimulate and interact as well, influencing reception and further film production. By examining the distribution, reception, and cultural contexts of American and European serials in various countries, this cross-cultural research makes both local and global observations. Canjels thus offers a highly relevant case study of transnational, transcultural and transmedia relations. Rudmer Canjels is a film scholar and lecturer interested in silent film, fan culture, transmedia storytelling, and documentary film. He has published on the international distribution and cultural transformations of silent film serials ( Distributing Silent Film Serials , Routledge, 2011) and industry sponsored films ( A History of Royal Dutch Shell and Films that Work ). Currently he is researching the use of industrial film in Nigeria as it became an independent country in 1960. I. Film Seriality and Its Serial Uses: Transition and Beyond 1. Seriality Unbound 2. Monopolizing Episodic Adventuress II. Localizing Serials: Translating Spectacle and Daily Life Beyond 3. American Mysteries in France 4. German Spectacle from Within 5. Adjusting Seriality in the Netherlands III. Confronting Seriality in Europe and America 6. Consuming New World Views: American Serials in Germany 7. Minds that Cannont Condense: European Serials in America 8. Overshooting inAmerica IV. Another Time 9. Adjusting Forms and Diminishing Uses Distributing Silent Film Serials makes a \"substantial contribution to new cinema histories,\" it is filled with \"potent points of comparison between different national traditions,\" giving \"fascinating insights,\" and leading \"to a rethinking of the significance of seriality in the broader context of film history.\"- Joe Kemper, Early Popular Visual Culture \"This book provides new insights ino the serial productions of both well-known [such as Abel Gance, Erich von Stroheim or Fritz Lang] and more obscure directors. […] Distributing Silent Film Serials is supplemented by thorough notes, a well-chosen bibliography, and a useful appendix, listing serial films, chronologically arranged under importing country and by earliest known premier date. The text is complemented by many interesting photographs, posters and advertisements […]. It is packed […] with interesting anecdotes and solid information, and serves as a welcome addition to the burgeoning body of important literature elucidating the history of silent cinema.\"- Jeffrey Mifflin, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television \"Distributing Silent Film Serials is part of the \"important studies of exhibition [that] have recently emerged from what has been called the ‘new cinema history.’ \"- Jessica L. Whitehead, Early Popular Visual Culture

Exceptionally popular during their time, the spectacular American action film serials of the 1910s featured exciting stunts, film tricks, and effects set against the background of modern technology, often starring resourceful female heroines who displayed traditionally male qualities such as endurance, strength, and authority. The most renowned of these serial queens was Pearl White, whose career as the adventurous character Pauline developed during a transitional phase in the medium's evolving production strategies, distribution and advertising patterns, and fan culture. In this volume, an international group of scholars explores how American serials starring Pearl White and other female stars impacted the emerging cinemas in the United States and abroad. Contributors investigate the serial genre and its narrative patterns, marketing, and cultural reception, and historiographic importance, with essays on Pearl White's life on and off the screen as well as the serial queen genre in Western and Eastern Europe, India, and China. Contributors are Weihong Bao, Rudmer Canjels, Marina Dahlquist, Monica Dall'Asta, Kevin B. Johnson, Christina Petersen, and Rosie Thomas.

Publishing alongside the world premiere of Christopher Nolan's third Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises”, Will Brooker's new book explores Batman's twenty-first century incarnations. Brooker's close analysis of “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” offers a rigorous, accessible account of the complex relationship between popular films, audiences, and producers in our age of media convergence. By exploring themes of authorship, adaptation and intertextuality, he addresses a myriad of questions raised by these films: did “Batman Begins” end when “The Dark Knight began? Does its story include the Gotham Knight DVD, or the ‘Why So Serious’ viral marketing campaign? Is it separate from the parallel narratives of the Arkham Asylum videogame, the monthly comic books, the animated series and the graphic novels? Can the brightly campy incarnations of the Batman ever be fully repressed by “The Dark Knight”, or are they an intrinsic part of the character? Do all of these various manifestations feed into a single Batman metanarrative? This will be a vital text for film students and academics, as well as legions of Batman fans.

Gérard Genette’s study of paratext, a primarily synchronic and taxonomic approach, is predicated upon the assumption that there is a neat border between what we can classify as text and the elements we can group together under the heading of paratext. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the relationship between these two elements is more complicated than Genette suggests. Not only is the term paratext itself saddled with a potentially limitless number of elements, but the way that these elements interact with texts cannot be reduced to a uniform border that applies in all cases. Can we continue to talk about paratext once we have acknowledged its potentially limitless proliferation and the fuzzy border it shares with text; and if so, how does this affect the way we talk about text? This paper will suggest that to answer these questions we should refocus the concept of paratext from a synchronic to a diachronic approach. Such an approach, moving away from a pure taxonomy of spatially oriented categories, enables us to examine the way that literary works are represented over time. By focusing on Victorian serialised fiction, a form of the novel preoccupied with the temporal framework of its own production, it is possible to explore the complex relationship between text and paratext. At the same time, by examining this relationship in the context of different ideas of duration, such as the notions of kairos and chronos used by Frank Kermode, this paper will suggest a theoretical framework for relating an understanding of text and paratext to the figure of the author.

Audience members who have seen past Babes with Blades showcases will notice \"Cliffhangers\" has much more dialogue and character development than past productions. The aim is to demonstrate the Babes' range as full performers, [Michele DiMaso] said. \"We are actors who fight, we're not just women who fight.\"