Views of the past tv series after 11-S

Abstract

The article tries to evaluate the memory operations in massive narratives such as television series. We will discuss stories that, as The Leftovers (HBO, 2014-2017), work events of great cultural impact as their raw material. In this context, September 11 attacks and the reminiscences of a Culture of Fear emerge through what we define as "views of the past": narrative schemes that, directly or alusively, process the collective and individual experience as their places of enunciation. To account for this, we propose a dialogue between Yuri Lotman's semiotics and reflections on the memory of the essayist Beatriz Sarlo. Both thinkers collaborate in the construction of a relevant framework to understand how art becomes an explanatory principle of tensions, disputes or erasures in the culture.