Contemporary TV shows, characterized by their complex narrative form, are designed to reveal the simple. They enable characters and viewers alike to discover the ordinary by coupling the everyday to an underworld populated by criminals, demons, vampires, and other kinds of “lowlifes.” I will argue here that the structure of the Möbius strip, or Escher twist, draws a particular aesthetic appeal at the intersection of these worlds. I call these twists uncanny in the Cavellian sense that the underworld, looking strangely familiar, has the capacity of making the ordinary look unfamiliar, inherently strange, and unstable. Rather than allowing us to judge the demonic or illegal, they disclose what is normally inaccessible to us precisely because it is so ordinary and simple, so familiar and in plain sight. I will support this idea of Escher-twisting from one world to another by analyzing examples from Twin Peaks (ABC 1990-2, Showtime 2017), The Sopranos (HBO 1999-2007), Awake (NBC 2012), and Ozark (Netflix 2017–2022).

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“我们所做的就是正常的，对吗？” 当代电视剧中的平凡美学与离奇转折

当代电视节目以复杂的叙事形式为特点，旨在揭示简单的内容。它们使角色和观众能够通过将日常生活与充满犯罪分子、恶魔、吸血鬼和其他“下等人”的地下世界联系起来来发现平凡。我将在这里论证莫比乌斯带或埃舍尔扭曲的结构在这些世界的交汇处吸引了一种特殊的审美吸引力。我称这些曲折为卡维利式意义上的不可思议，即地下世界看起来异常熟悉，却有能力让普通人看起来陌生、本质上陌生且不稳定。它们并没有让我们去评判邪恶或非法，而是揭示了我们通常无法接触到的东西，因为它是如此普通和简单，如此熟悉和显而易见。双峰（ABC 1990-2，Showtime 2017），黑道家族（HBO 1999-2007），苏醒（NBC 2012），以及奥扎克（Netflix 2017-2022）。