Intersezioni di immaginari in un iper-immaginario postmoderno e postmediale: il caso della serie Once Upon a Time = Intersections of imaginaries in a postmodern and postmedial hyper-imaginary: the case of the series Once Upon a Time

Abstract

Within the contemporary mediascape, Once Upon a Time (ABC, seven seasons, 2011-2018) represents a rather original serial experiment: starting from the shared westerly (and not only) fairy-tale imagery, fueled and sometimes created by Disney, the series, thanks to its ecosystem structure, is configured in its essence by intersections with other imaginaries. The result is the creation of a contaminated hyper-imaginary novel that rethinks, re-semantizes and reformulates characters and stories already imprinted in the collective imaginary. The architecture of the series resorts to the starting imaginaries as architraves and foundations; the semantic construction, instead, weaves a constant dialogue with the spectators, questioning stories, characters, musical moments, costumes, iconographies, even entire sequences of other films - all materials well impressed in the collective imaginaries of viewers, whose memory is solicited. It is only thanks to the links generated in the audiovisual memory of the spectators – in turn, well evoked by the narrative and metanarrative strategies applied by the authors – it the series manages to carve out its own originality. Therefore, the series under discussion creates, from scratch, a reflective imaginary of imaginaries in a constant evolution. So, the traditional fairy-tale imagery is not forgotten, but reshaped and re-semantized in favor of the new perspectives that dominate in the contemporary mediascape (gender perspectives, villains back history, transmedia storytelling, replicability), combined with an original metanarrative: therefore Once Upon a Time, referring to the paradigm of complexity, proposes itself as a new point of reference that can be useful on several levels, and could be seen as a new postmodern and postmedial myth valid from childhood to adulthood.