The Expanding Digitized World and an Era Post TV

WandaVision, - Disney+

A somewhat generational shift away from the norm of televised sitcom series previously dominant in the world of television has seen the rise of a new era and a growing array of digital on-demand streaming services. Just as television disrupted the monopoly that cinema originally held upon audiences by the mid 20th century, which had itself along with radio taken over from the music halls as the predominant evening time entertainment form, on demand streaming services have come to challenge our attention of that within the world of television today. Above this effect of development in televised series, streaming services such as Netflix, PrimeVideo, Disney+ , Apple TV et al. have moved toward expansion into the realm of feature length productions, resulting in novel home cinema access which in turn is further re-establishing the parameters in distribution of cinema as we know it. With the advent of the laptop and devices such as tablets in conjunction with online streaming services and other video platforms of the likes of YouTube, TV broadcast as we knew it is no longer at the forefront of home entertainment. A juncture that in reflection of this change could well be recognised as an era of a post TV.

Recently I have been viewing the miniseries WandaVision of the streaming service Disney+. WandaVision is a series of the digital streaming age that presents a reflection of the historicity of television itself and hence self-consciously appoints its place within an era of Post TV. The series moves through different realms of contextual meaning and visual metaphor to encompass an array of known household historical tropes of television of the western world, or more specifically, that representative of American culture. Using the essential features of historical situational comedies or sitcoms as we know them, those which almost unanimously take place within the suburban home setting, the series adopts the familiar mise-en-scène of popular American television series past, episodically re-representing these sequentially, using roughly one for each decade throughout the second half of the 20th century. Correlations can be drawn to series such as I love Lucy, Bewitched, The Brady Bunch, Full House, Malcolm in the Middle, and Friends etc., in conveying this as moving chronological references within the miniseries.

WandaVision continues events within the Marvel Cinematic Universe of which viewers with familiarity of their blockbuster films bring with them to the mini series' viewing experience. Thus, the series presents us with the curiosity of Wanda & Vision paradoxically living an idyllic suburban life customary to that of a sitcom TV set, in this case in the fictive Westview, New Jersey. With this presumed background knowledge of the two characters our entertainment begins with the comic element of them living through these chronologically developing idealised sitcom settings. In the preamble of the series one may find themselves unquestionably enjoying its premise, at ease in its familiar setting aided by the rhythmic and distracting quality of sitcom. Since our protagonists are superheroes, they thus appear to be ‘playing’ husband and wife which allows us to begin to expect (only slightly) an explanation as to why they are confined to the realm of these characters within a sitcom? What we come to learn is that a traumatised Wanda, the Scarlet Witch, has taken over Westview, and constructed a safe environment that she controls or rather reigns over with inhumane mind control of its inhabitants, the form of an unconscious psychological coping mechanism on the part of her powers in response to the loss of Vision and the previous post-mortem dissection of his body for military repurposing.

This use of a series within a series provides the digital era its position within the historicity of television and opens an interesting interplay for the development of its plot. As this controlled familiar world begins to reveal glitches, we become aware that something is wrong within this world and that the characters are in conflict and acting under Wanda's direction inside a series within the series. In the first instance of this Wanda and Vision are having Vision’s boss and his wife over for dinner as a customary practice of good will and gratitude toward his employer in aid of assisting a promotion at work. A classic rehashed scene favourite most befitting the 60’s sitcom bewitched. Following the authority-based expectancy of Vision’s boss at the dinner table to a level of rudeness that shows the acting character's frustration with the situation he stops mid-sentence and curiously begins to choke, upon this the characters are stuck in their acting, in a loop as it were; unable to break character and providing a level of anxiety unusual to the sitcom where death has no usual place especially in such a cold sense. What arises from the scene is our first understanding that Wanda has directorial authority over the other characters and Vision can save his boss from choking only upon her begrudging command. To allow the town to go about existence under this control to provide a world in which to safely house her reincarnated Vision they have become forced labour actors within a series of situational comedy events, and as these glitches begin to occur it becomes apparent to us that they are indeed acting and further not of their own will, they are prisoners of an enclosed safe-world that Wanda’s subconscious has taken captive.