Abstract

CORCUFF, Philippe. “Language games” of the black genre: fiction, film and television series. Cultura representaciones soc [online]. 2016, vol.11, n.21, pp.9-28. ISSN 2007-8110.

Current black TV series can be included in a more global configuration by bearing in mind their relationships with the literary genre of black novel and black cinema. A methodology of “language games”, borrowed from the second Wittgenstein, is used to carry out translations between the “language game” of the novel, the fiction film and the TV series, in a dialogue with the category of “knowledge games” coming from philosophy and sociology. A radical social criticism in connection to an existential and a moral cross-examination is carried out in every “language game” through analogies, but bearing in mind their specificities. Having examined successively a novel (Gone, Baby Gone, Dennis Lehane), a film (In the Valley of Elah, Paul Haggis) and a series (The Killing, American version, Veena Sud), certain displacements produced in these translations were detected. A critique of the conspiracy narrative plot and of the displacements of a perfectionist ethics arises from the analysis of these three works. The researches carried out have an exploratory and programmatic nature.

Keywords : “games of language”; black genre; cinema; TV series; borderline dialogues.