Serialità distopiche normalizzanti. Il futuro in “un mondo quotidiano” nella serialità televisiva [Normalizing Dystopian Serialities. The Future in “an Everyday World” in Television Seriality]

The essay deals with the function of fictional storytelling in TV series in possible premonitions about the future. My aim is to discuss futures that are often difficult to represent because of their dynamics beyond the scale of common viewers’ perception and comprehension; that is to say, hyper-objects as Timothy Morton (2013) says. This is evident in TV series dealing with climate change, as well as other macro phenomena connected to the Anthropocene. The central issue is how to build up effective narratives that can trigger a cultural bargaining or negotiation on these themes. The idea is to be able to create narrative forms that enable the incorporation of the extraordinary into the ordinary existence, rather than placing the extraordinary within an already “extraordinary”form, like apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic narrative forms. My case studies will be Years and Years (2019) and Extrapolations (2023).