The TV series "Symphonic Novel" in the Aspect of its Narrative Specificity

Lyu Sin' Lecturer, Department of Mass Communications; Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 9 Ostrovityanova str., Moscow, 117198, Russia dk-liu@hotmail.com Other publications by this author

Introduction to the problemThe relevance of studying a television series as a way of forming a country image does not decrease due to its specific role in the formation of certain ideological attitudes that enhance its socio-cultural significance.

The issue of the narrative of the TV series is also relevant due to its particular popularity among a wide audience.

"A TV series is a phenomenon of mass culture, on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is an instrument of influence on real life. From the point of view of the axiology of culture, the values broadcast in TV series smoothly flow into our everyday life" [Kushnareva: 2013, p.186]. Despite the reduced pathos of mass culture, which traditionally includes television series, the South Korean television series "Symphonic Novel" allows us to rethink the possibilities of telepublicistics in modern public mass media communication. The artistry in it is manifested in the concentration of plot twists and turns, an extensive system of fictional characters who live in the TV series for a fairly long life period. The sequence of independent, but also interconnected individual series is combined into "seasons" or cycles in which "in order to understand what is happening, you need to closely monitor each series"[Akopov: 2011, p.28]. Such a fragmentation of the plot allows the audience to gradually emotionally experience what is happening, receiving information in small portions, similar to how it happens in life, viewing them becomes a tool for acquiring life experience, and resolving issues in the serial world is a model of behavior. Such a dosed and prolonged plot action becomes a framework on which emotional coloring, the effect of presence and an acute sense of involvement in what is happening are layered.

The basis of the South Korean television series "Symphonic Romance" ("Symphony of Romance", "Symphonic Romance") was the Japanese comics (manga) by Tomoko Ninomiya "Nodame Cantabile". These comics were very popular and filmed in Japan as anime and TV series. In South Korea, a TV series was made based on these comics. In 2020, the famous director Liu Chunchie presented a 46-episode television series in China. And in 2021, its Russian–language version was shown in Russia on the TV channel VGTRK "Russia - Culture". The plot is based on the fate and personal relationships of young musicians, students of the conservatory, in the process of their formation and professional growth. There are several storylines in the series that reveal the subject: about the meaning of life, about their attitude to the world around them, the relationship of fathers and children, men and women, teachers and students, etc. A special place in the TV series is given to classical music. Works by Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Chopin, Brahms, Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Bach, Schumann are performed in the format of "live sound".… The TV series tells a lot about great composers and their compositions. However, along with the traditional characteristics of a television work, it should be considered as a sample of a drama.

The South Korean drama is devoted exclusively to stories from Korean life, which caused a particularly bright and deep local flavor, reflecting the specifics of national and cultural identity. South Korean dramas are very popular. They have a large audience not only in the Country of morning freshness, but also beyond its borders. Here are a few reasons why they love dramas shot in South Korea. Actors are distinguished by their attractiveness and emotionality, they are not clamped, they express their feelings perfectly. Their impeccable appearance is perfectly combined with youth and sincerity. Doramas are informative. They contain a lot of information about Korea, its culture, customs, and people's mentality. Thanks to historical dramas, you can learn a lot of interesting things about the country's past.

The genre of drama, like other film genres, has the most common scenes in which viewers read the signs and symbols of national culture, mentality, character, behavior, attitude to values. In the plot, contradictions in the family, temporary health problems, due to which one of the characters ends up in the hospital, the relationship between a guy and a girl, in which a guy often hugs a girl standing behind her, become mandatory components. This is how he shows his tender feelings. And he shows his courage and chivalry by wearing it on his back. Manifestations of love are expressed as follows: they cook and eat various dishes of national cuisine together, give a soft toy as a talisman, jewelry or new shoes.

The features of the drama "Symphonic Novel" allow us to say that it can be considered as a television series, that is, a genre approaching artistic telepublicistics. The TV series "Symphonic Novel" is characterized by socio-cultural phenomenality as a unique, rare phenomenon occurring in society and considered as a unity of culture and sociality, in inseparable connection with the individual, as a carrier of a set of values and norms. The TV series has become a special product that meets all the requirements of the time and has the quality of a cult television program. As a large form of a television series becomes a certain frame framing the picture of the world In times of large flows of information that we get into, day by day, divided into different pieces, we still go to some certain stable frame, which the series creates for us. The TV series "Symphonic Novel" meets the requirement of a combination of constancy and variability. The openness of the television series "Symphonic Novel" is conditioned by its dynamism (like any product of mass culture), as well as by constant information exchange with the environment (as a means of mass communication), giving priority to "direct experience" before rational comprehension, experience before a complete logical scheme. It is important that this TV series, on the one hand, reconstructs the existing socio-cultural order, and on the other hand, programs socio-cultural processes.

The television series "Symphonic Novel" as a whole demonstrates moral norms and regulates our value preferences. It produces social patterns and norms of behavior. It can be considered as a special simulator that translates the rules of life, cultural attitudes. That is, in other words, it performs a normative function and a function of social control. For several months, this TV series has become the norm of everyday life not only for housewives and pensioners, but also for young people, whose representatives prefer the series as the main way of spending leisure time. In crisis situations, its leisure purpose only increases. The TV series gives them value guidelines. "A common place has become the opinion that the phenomenon that Hegel called the world spirit – apparently, the focus of what is happening in popular culture – is moving from movies to TV series. Series become the focus of all the most important creative processes"  [Zizek: 2013, p.56] .

The translated version of the drama "Symphonic Novel" into Russian lay on favorable ground for the prepared Russian audience, who perceived it as the best example of a television series as a multi-part feature film. His journalism sharpens and hyperbolizes the best features of the drama as a source for comfortable acquaintance and acceptance of South Korean culture and values.

Problem statementIn line with the current trends of narrativization of the modern media space, it is necessary to consider the TV series "Symphonic Novel" as a product of combining artistic discourse and media discourse, which determines the formation of stable qualities of narrative, which has penetrated almost all types of communication today: electronic media, blogging, social networks, etc.

Narration as a type of structuring and transmission of information is one of the most optimal formats for the exchange of knowledge about the world and the actualization of value orientations in the public environment. Storytelling today characterizes not only everyday communication, but also a television product in general and a television series in particular.

Narrative becomes an important distinguishing characteristic of the TV series "Symphonic Novel", which allows it to become a unique and effective tool for influencing foreign (Russian-speaking) audiences in order to form a stable positive perception of South Korean culture and the South Korean state as a whole.

Theoretical and methodological foundationsThe identification of narrativity in the TV series "Symphonic Novel" is based on the theory of narrative by M. M. Bakhtin [Bakhtin, 1986], V. V. Vinogradov [Vinogradov, 1980], G. O. Vinokur [Vinokur, 1990], V. M. Zhirmunsky [Zhirmunsky, 1977], V. Ya. Propp [Propp, 1928], B. V. Tomashevsky [Tomashevsky, 1996], B. M. Eichenbaum [

Eichenbaum, 1969], E. V. Paducheva [Paducheva, 2018], E.A. Popova [Popova, 2002], V. I. Tyupy [Tyupa, 2012], etc. In Western narratology , the works of Zh . Genette [Genette, 1998], A.-J. Greimas [Greimas, 1979], R. Barta [Bart, 1977], U. Eco [Eco, 2018], V. Schmid [Schmid, 2003]. In addition, the works dealing with the problem of studying narrative structures by S. A. Bozrikova [Bozrikova, 2015], E. S. Moskalenko [Moskalenko, 2009], L. V. have become useful. Tataru [Tataru, 2013], V. I. Tyupy [Tyupa 2012], E. Yu. Sokruty [Sokruta, 2018], E. A. Chuvilskoy [Chuvilskaya, 2009].

To identify the key characteristics of the narrative of the series "Symphonic Novel", the methods of traditional description, comparative analysis of genre and thematic features of the work, its functions, methods of complex description, methods of structural and functional analysis, as well as content analysis are used in the work, which allows us to identify the deep prerequisites for the formation of stable narrative characteristics in the work.

Basic researchM. M. Bakhtin's idea that the text can be understood as a "dialogically organized phenomenon of the event of the meeting of the author, reader and hero", as "a significant moment of a single and unique event of being" [Bakhtin, 1986: p. 14] formulates the essence of the dialogical nature of the television series.

Yu. M. Lotman investigated various aspects of narrative eventfulness, the correlation of event and plot, as well as other structural components of the narrative [Lotman, 1970]. The saturation of events and their stringing on the storyline is clearly present in the TV series "Symphonic Novel", where each episode is a mini-plot, the events of which at the same time continue the long storyline of each character.

R. Barth draws attention to the sentence model, which is the prototype of a narrative text: "any story is a big sentence, and a narrative sentence is in a certain sense the outline of a small story" [Barth, 2000].  The TV series "Symphonic Novel" is based on a narrative in which each episode is a series of narrative sentences in audiovisual form.

C. Todorov examines the narrative in the interaction of "history — discourse": "At the most general level, a literary work contains two aspects: it is both a history and a discourse. It is history in the sense that it evokes an image of a certain reality..." [Todorov, 1969, p. 126]. It was he who developed and proposed the term "narratology". Indeed, the narrative of the "Symphonic Novel" exists within the image of South Korean reality created by him, thanks to which the effect of presence and penetration into this reality arises, which is extremely important for the television series in terms of its impact on the audience. This individualization, the appropriation of what is happening on the television screen becomes an important characteristic of the TV series "Symphonic Novel", the audience of which sincerely empathizes with the characters and constantly "tries on" what is happening for themselves. It is also important that the images of the TV series are flexible, so that they are "in time" for everyone, but at the same time they have a solid inner core of the "bad / good" criterion. J. Genette puts forward the idea of the temporality of the narrative [Genette: 1998, pp. 340-354], comparing the historical chronology of events and that, in what order they are reflected in the narrative. In the TV series "Symphonic Novel", temporality reflects the natural course of events, bringing fiction closer to reality, creating the illusion of "living together" for the audience. Thus, the TV series clearly shows the communicative nature of the narrative text, the communicative situation that contributes to the development of new narrative forms.

Accepting V. Schmid's concept that eventfulness is a concept of narrativity [Schmid, 2003], we find the following criteria in the TV series "Symphonic Novel": the relevance of changes (non-trivial events) is associated with the desire for entertaining plot, as well as unpredictability, which increases the level of eventfulness, implying to some extent the paradoxicity of what is happening, consequentiality is demonstrated in changing the worldview and life of the characters, irreversibility excludes their return to early points of view, the non-repeatability of changes is associated with the inability to turn back time. All these characteristics stand out in the TV series "Symphonic Novel", which once again confirms the validity of Schmid's conclusion that narrativity is characteristic not only of verbal, but also of other, including audiovisual texts capable of conveying changes in states (ballet, motion picture, painting, etc.) [Schmid, 2003].

In line with theoretical research, the narrative of the "Symphonic Novel" should be considered as a text in which events are represented that do not just follow each other, but have an internal structure, have participants (actors), are able to independently form an event chain, requiring knowledge, life attitudes, extensions from actors. [Syrov, 1999: pp. 20-26]. The modern scientific concept of narrative has expanded far beyond the limits of literary criticism. The concept of narrative in modern communicalogy is no longer limited to verbal storytelling — it is understood much more broadly, which makes it possible to consider a television series as one of the forms of discourse that forms a special "narrative" type of thinking [Barsky, 2009]. In the Symphonic Novel, such a narrative type of thinking is supported not only by the plot-temporal course of development, but also by a constant musical background.

The study of the narratively conditioned structurality of the TV series "Symphonic Novel" touches on its communicative and compositional sides, which allows us to talk about the level of its subject manifestation, and about the narrating discourse or its own story being told.  The basis should be taken V. Propp's research on the Russian fairy tale as the most typical narrative, the compositional structure of which is described on the basis of 1) plots, 2) seven groups of characters (actors) and 3) their functions, as well as 4) auxiliary elements [Propp, 1928].. In V. Propp's view, event narration is the correct alternation of functions — antagonist, giver, helper, desired character, sender, hero, false hero. Functions are types of actions, their invariants, repeated in each fairy—tale text in a specific order. These invariants form the plot of a fairy tale. In total, V. Propp identifies 31 types of actions. This theory is applicable to the TV series "Symphonic Novel", in which various types of characters are also distinguished, each of which performs a specific function. The proximity to the fairy tale genre gives the TV series its unique ability to influence the deep archetypal consciousness of the audience.

A.-J. Greimas identifies a universal formula of narration, a general model that manifests itself in the style of speech of the characters of the television series [Greimas, 2000: p. 158]. In accordance with the internal relationships of the characters within the narrated world, he identifies pairs of actors according to their functions: Subject / Object, Hero / Desired character, Addressee / Addressee, Assistant / Opponent. All these couples are present in the TV series "Symphonic Romance". Their connections are built in the process of implementing their functions in the narrative chronotope, which is based on the development of the plot and plot. The plot becomes a fictional or real story, which is made up of a sequence of events, and the plot is the way the plot is presented in the text. That is, the plot is a story, and the plot is the telling of this story [Zenkin, 2000]. The components of the content structure of a narrative text can also be frames as a potential text or a narrative concentrate [Eco, 2016: p. 53]. T. V. Romanova calls a three-dimensional, multicomponent concept, which is a "package" of information, knowledge about a stereotypical situation, a frame [Romanova, 2008: p. 82]. Such packages are formed in the TV series "Symphonic Novel" about many significant issues solved by the actors and largely depend on the reader's experience in understanding such life situations.

The narrative intrigue deeply inherent in the TV series is not limited to the intrigues of the characters within the universe, but rather relates to interaction with the reader through intrigue [Tyupa, 2011]. The intrigue in the TV series as a narrative statement consists in the tension of the event series, which excites certain receptive attitudes and assumes "satisfaction of expectations generated by the dynamism of the work" [Riker, 1998: p. 30]. For a television series, it is extremely important that "in the case of a story, semantic innovation consists in inventing intrigue, which is also the result of synthesis: through intrigue, goals, causes, accidents are interfaced in the temporary unity of a complete, complete action" [Riker, 1998: p. 7]. The intrigue in the TV series becomes a narrative intermediary that connects events and the whole story as a whole, goals, means, unexpected circumstances, and also plays an important role in the formation of a time sequence.

The narrative modality of the TV series "Symphonic Novel" should be considered from the point of view of the communicative status of the narrative. The narrative of a television series is the most familiar format for storing and transmitting knowledge about the world and at the same time a self-evident means of realizing communicative intentions. An alternative narrative way of depicting and relaying to others what is happening to a person is lyrics, a view of the world "from the inside". But in the TV series, these two methods are combined, since it has both the properties of artistry and demonstrates everyday speech interaction. As different forms of interpretation of reality, narrative and lyrics can organically coexist, interact and intertwine within a television series as one fragment of discourse, depending on the author's attitude to the depicted, on the nature of his intentions at one time or another. Also, the manipulative effectiveness of the TV series as a narrative is explained by rhetoric from the position that narrative speech acts are always the strongest and most reliable arguments [Lukanina, 2014].

From the point of view of the communicative status, the narrative modality is considered through the competence of the author (narrator / narrator) and his characters in the aspect of narrative strategies identified by V. I. Tyupa. The TV series "Symphonic Novel" can be considered as a precedent picture of the world in which the modality of knowledge is determined on the basis of mythologized intrigue; as an imperative picture of the world in which the modality of conviction is formed through the intrigue of duty; as an occasional (anecdotal type) picture of the world through the adventurous intrigue of adventure based on the modality of private opinion [Tyupa, 2018: p. 163].

In the television series, a dual structure of the communicative system, characteristic of narrative art, arises, consisting of author's and narrative communications, and narrative communication is included in the author's as an integral part of the depicted world [Schmid, 2003: p. 34]. In addition, V. Schmid introduced the concept of an "abstract author", under which the image of the creator of the text is assumed. According to him, "the statements of the characters and the narrator express personal or narrative content and thereby contribute to the expression of the semantic intent of the abstract author" [ibid.: p. 33].

Narrativity enlivens the content of the TV series, gives it expressiveness, which is important for the communicative intention to influence the audience. Narrativity allows you to emotionally fill the text space of the TV series. With the help of a narrative, a dialogue is built between the author (sender) and the addressee (recipient) as an interactive interpersonal interaction. The perception of the TV series lies in the fact that communicative interaction determines the special significance of the author's image. On the one hand, the viewer reacts independently to the narration in the TV series, and on the other, he counts on a certain model of situations and characters entering into communicative interaction "in a certain aspect, role or function corresponding to the aspect of the speaker" [Arutyunova, 1981: pp. 357-359].

The targeting of the narrative, which can affect the structure of the text [Kozhevnikova, 1994: p. 41], is certainly visible in the television series. In the TV series "Symphonic Novel", an "illusion of communication" is constantly created with the help of implicitly expressed appeals to the viewer, directing the development of thought (questions, appeals create a so-called dialogical frame) and emotional perception. Thus, the author reports a subjective assessment of the event, models reality around the event, reproduced almost always through the prism of the author's personal experience.

In the TV series, the author appears not only as a real person, but also as an aesthetic category. It is known that V. V. Vinogradov noted that the distinction between the author and the narrator is important, but the literary text limits the researcher's ability to talk about the real writer and his personality — it is impossible to identify him in the text of the text, although the image of the author depends on the worldview and aesthetic attitudes of the real writer, as well as, according to L. Ya. Ginzburg [Ginzburg, 1977, 1979], is closely related to the historical and cultural context. All this can be directly attributed to the situation with the comprehension and functioning of the TV series "Symphonic Novel", in which the author through the characters conveys to the audience a lot of different positions, information, opinions and statements.

When implementing the TV series "Symphonic Novel" on the television screen, the recipient of information enters the communication situation in addition to the sender. The addressee is assumed to be the sender, the message was sent to him and he was meant. The recipient is the recipient in fact, which the sender may not be aware of [Schmid, 2003: p. 39]. In such a situation, the TV series functions, on the one hand, focused on a certain audience, but on the other, addressed to the masses.

The main characteristics of the narrative of a television series as a media communication product include the following:

1) Publicity is a reference point for a large audience capable of perceiving and interpreting content. Such TV series as "Symphonic Novel" have a large number of people as addressees and may be aimed at influencing society or part of it. The demonstration of a television series presupposes its comprehension by the speaker — to a greater or lesser extent.

2) Polycode — combining various types of connections of various components (text, visual, audio and video components). Verbal and audiovisual means of information transmission form a polycode (creolized) text in their entirety. These means, interacting, ensure the integrity and coherence of the work, its communicative effect [Valgina, 2003: p. 127]. The same applies to the text of the TV series "Symphonic Novel", taking into account the understanding of the text in this whole set of polycode formats. R. O. Jacobson wrote that when studying communication, extra-verbal means (creolizing elements) should be analyzed in terms of their structure and functions [Jacobson, 1985: pp. 319-321]. Polycode elements for the text of the TV series "Symphonic Novel" are sometimes the main means for updating the necessary values. Thus, when verbal and nonverbal components are combined, a creolized text is formed, as a result of which the integrity and coherence of the work, its purpose and linguistic and pragmatic characteristics are ensured.

Great cohesion, the merging of components is found in texts with complete creolization, in which synsemantic relations are established between the verbal and visual components: the verbal text completely depends on the pictorial series, and the image itself acts as an obligatory (mandatory) element of the text. It is this dependence that is observed in the TV series.

3) intertextuality is the result of interaction in the process of implementing feedback from the audience and the creators of the TV series. Intertextuality is understood as "a textual category reflecting the correlation of one text with others, the dialogic interaction of texts in the process of their functioning, ensuring the increment of the meaning of the work" [Bazhenova, 2003: p. 104]. Intertextual interaction is implemented on three levels: 1) at the level of imitation of "someone else's" text, 2) accurate reproduction of "someone else's text" and 3) references to "someone else's text" [Kanashina, 2019: p. 136].

Initially, the category of intertextuality was considered as strictly related to artistic discourse, but now it is relevant in relation to the texts of the TV series "Symphonic Novel", in which intertextual connections manifest themselves in a special way, primarily at the level of musical and verbal languages. The reference to the precedent text implies that intertextuality is realized in the form of a hint (implicitly) or a reference (explicitly) [Kanashina, 2019: p. 136].

4) Mediation — communication is broken in time and space. Mediation is understood from the point of view of the mandatory availability of technical means and for the generation of a television series as a narrative.

5) Dialogicity. Any information in the modern media space is capable of evoking responses, including dialogic reactions of users [Kolokoltseva, 2013: p. 62]. Dialogically oriented are not only forums and chats for discussing TV series that are dialogical in nature, but also the content of the TV series itself. The technical possibility of dialogization of the text is determined by various extensions — comments, "I like" marks, commented reposts.

6) Eventfulness — one or more events are represented in the text. Narrative-a television series is based on an event or sequence of events that broadcast a change in states, relationships, phenomena with reference to the chronotope determined by the plot.

7) Narrative modality. Narration is always a simulation of events, thanks to which the audience is included in the sustainable practice of reproducing behavioral attitudes.

ConclusionsSo, in the interaction of the audience with the content of the TV series "Symphonic Novel", media communication, due to its features — publicity and mediation — receives specific parameters for the image of the author.

Narrative discourse, complicated by the narrative instance, begins to obey the laws of the media text, the classical concepts of "plot", "plot", "image of the author", etc. they can be interpreted differently — through a communicative model. The narrative in the media space is determined by the psychological and social characteristics of the addressee — interests and needs, social status, emotional state (now) and personal qualities (always). The final product is also influenced by his ideas about the communicative situation, about himself as a subject of speech, about the direct recipient and random participants of communication, expectations of a perlocative effect (although the latter often lies outside the linguistic reality).

Narrative-knowledge actualizes the precedent of the worldview, highlighting its most universal sides. In the TV series, this is information about life in South Korea. The narrative modality of persuasion presupposes the intention and communicative strategy of persuading the audience to evaluate certain events. Narrative opinion promotes a personalized position that allows the audience to engage in a joint discussion of the events taking place in the TV series. Finally, the modality of understanding (comprehension, insight) determines the dialogization of the discourse of the TV series "Symphonic Novel". Thus, in the TV series, narrative modality is formed in conjunction with lyricism as a system of principles and views that are displayed in the plot.