Surviving "Certain Death": Narrational Reliability in American Motion Picture Serial Cliffhangers of the Golden Age

Abstract

abstract: American sound serial chapter endings frequently placed the protagonist(s) in mortal peril before the following week's installment would reveal how they evaded seemingly certain death. Frequently relying on audience memory lapse, these solutions, or "take-outs," did not always play fair. Drawing on a 20 percent sample of golden age serials (1936–1945), I analyze the narrational methods and reliability of cliffhangers and their take-outs. I propose that there are three key strategies, which I term sequential, augmented , and incompatible . I show how these categories move progressively further from the cliffhanger's nineteenth-century literary precedents and from conventions of classical Hollywood narration alike.