Atraídos pela profundidade: a série The leftovers e o impacto da intermídia na relação entre crítica e leitor

Abstract

When working as a critic, it is believed that relationships with readers are based solely on contesting or affirming values. The interest in understanding and questioning this dynamic came during the episodic coverage of the TV series The Leftovers, when the analysis of criticism pointed to a possibility: that criticism can also lead the reader to a process of understanding and sharing meanings; and not just evaluate the regulations of the narrative structure. This possibility found the scope for this reflection in the intermedia studies of Maria Cristina Ribas (2018); as part of this “new way of working with criticism”, it emerged from the reverberation of interpretations resulting from intermedia processes. Questions were raised along the way as a critic on the biggest websites; and this research resorted to Foucault (1980), in the work “Theatrum Philosoficum”, in which the interpretation of symbols through Nietzsche and his vertical diving method is discussed, which reformulates the process of signification. The space between work and criticism – as this work is interested in – is the terrain where the philosopher and critic is located around what Nietzsche calls “the good excavator of the low depths” (FOUCAULT, 1980, p.12). Two examples – an essay and a short story, with similar themes, but in different ways and contexts – joined the experience of the effects of criticism on the public, giving rise to this dissertation. In 1917, Monteiro Lobato published a review of the work of the artist Anita Malfatti, in the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, entitled “Paranoia ou Mistificação”, which, alleging the imitation of the European model among other stigmas, profoundly affected the artist's work . The imbroglio was a concrete setback, emphasized by the second example: the short story “Attraction by Depth”, by Patrick Suskind (1976), which was connected to Lobato's critique of Malfatti. The story tells of a painterwho hears from a famous critic that her work has “no depth”; placement that plunges her into a self-destructive process. Once this perspective of judgment was established, the proposal was to understand, for the television media, what “depth” means. We used the reflection of researcher Brett Martin (2014) on the behind-the-scenes of the creative process of television series. This process includes a dive into intermedia studies as characteristics of this new television. The work intends to discuss how part of the critical procedures in circulation cross production both at the moment of creation and reception, including artist, critic and viewer/reader.