Historical science fiction: from television memory to transmedia memory in El Ministerio del Tiempo
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[1] Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Madrid, España
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- Localización: Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, ISSN 1463-6204, ISSN-e 1469-9818, Vol. 17, Nº. 1, 2016, págs. 87-101
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
- Dialnet Métricas: 17 Citas
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Resumen
This article examines the first season of the Spanish television series El Ministerio del Tiempo (The Ministry of Time), broadcast by the public network Televisión Española in the first trimester of 2015. First we consider a number of interpretive problems arising from the representation of history on television. Then, through a qualitative analysis of the series’ content, we review its main narrative features and explore its combination of historical reenactment, science fiction and memory discourse. We end by analyzing the representations of history generated by interpretive or creative communities of followers of the program through linked transmedia practices. We will argue that El Ministerio del Tiempo is a hybrid product that, while novel, also evidences the persistence of certain traditional representational modes. Its innovative and appealing focus is based on genre hybridization and strategies for representing the past that are potentially open to the introduction of uchronias. It has additionally been able to mobilize a significant, active and creative fan community. The series has offered the contemporary Spanish television drama scene a model for renewal; however, its plotlines suggest a simplified, conservative vision of the past, as well as a banal, essentialist view of the nation. The article holds that the transmedia practices generated around El Ministerio del Tiempo have also been influenced by this nationalist framework, and that responses from the fan community have not disputed the hegemonic meanings proposed by the original story.
