How I Met Your Mother
is a hit TV series that airs on Monday nights on CBS. The show is set as a flashback, as one of the
main characters, Ted Mosby (played by Josh Radnor), sits his children down and
begins to tell them the story of how he met their mother. The show has just currently ended its seventh
season and is gearing up for the new plot twists season eight will hold. Scholar Jonathan Gray writes extensively in chapter
three of his book, Show Sold Separately,
about the hype that paratexts can build or destroy for audience members. Through using the success and popularity of How I Met Your Mother, I will explore
the different ideas behind a few different paratext mediums, and how everyone
from the audience members to the creators and producers of How I Met Your Mother have a way of expressing themselves through different
paratext and how these paratext help build the TV series.
To begin, the show is set as a flashback from 2030 to
present day and follows five friends around New York City as they live out
their 20s and 30s. As the show is being
told as a flashback, the audience is therefore constantly being engaged during
the show, or in media res, to
remember that they are “watching the past”.
There are often times comedic moments where certain details will not be
remembered (such as an episode in which people’s names were not remembered so
they were referred to as “blah blah”) that are added as elements to the show in
order to remind the viewers that a story is being told to them. This narration-type element sets the show up
as if it is just a conversation that wants the audience to constantly be
connecting past episode details with “future” plot lines.
Once the show ends and the viewers decide to surf the
internet out of boredom, they are left with hundreds of different options to
keep furthering their obsessions with the TV program and characters’ lives. One of the most popular sites that I
personally enjoy is a FaceBook fan page called “Your Mother” with the tagline “Home
of the How I Met Your Mother Super
Fan”. This fan page allows the audience
to voice their thoughts and opinions on the show, particular episodes, and to
connect with other fans. What I love
particularly about this fan site is the level of interaction that happens –
memes and wittily captioned still frames are constantly being posted and shared
amongst other fans, creating their own kind of imagined community full or inside
jokes and TV references. Digressing, Gray
discusses that the audience and their interpretations of different paratexts
are key parts in the construction of any text.
He writes about the “ethos of surveillance” and how audiences must somehow
feel a connection to the text (p. 85). Through the use of fan pages, audience members
get to do just that – talk about how they relate to certain characters, or rant
about how they are happy or sad about a certain plot line – as if the
characters are real people that they personally know. Paratexts such as these reel the audience in
through allowing them to express themselves, as well as have an outlet to
constantly be updated and talking about all things surrounding How I Met Your Mother.
Example 1:
 |
| Example: Fans often post creative memes about the show and characters. |
Another interesting point about the perspective of the show
is the spin off paratext in which characters from the show have “live blogs”. For example, one of the writers for How I Met Your Mother, Matt Kuhn, writes
and updates the character Barney Stinson’s “blog”. He writes the blog from the viewpoint of
Barney, which allows Kuhn the creative freedom to add his input and develop the
character as much or little as he wants.
I feel this idea relates to Roland Barthes’ idea of the “death of the
author” (Gray, 108) because it serves as
a way of solidifying that these characters are real people who the audience can
relate to. It helps to over look the
fact that there are people like Matt Kuhn sitting in an office looking for
inspiration for new episode ideas, and at the same time, the blog allows these writers
to gage the feedback for new ideas from the fans who read the blog. This helps to sort out the fans from the
anti-fans by seeing how certain ideas expressed through different paratext will
be received.
Jonathon Gray notes that TV is littered with “on demand”
material that is presented on cable television through Hollywood’s all access
shows like Entertainment Tonight or
late night talk shows (p. 107). These
programs allow audience members to learn about their shows more in depth by
getting to hear what the authors, directors, or producers say about their role
in producing the show. For How I Met Your Mother there are multiple
cast interviews where the cast gets to explore their thoughts about the show
and their characters. One of my favorite
lines comes from an interview in which Josh Radnor (the father telling the
story to his children) in which he notes that one of the most common things for
fans to tell him is how the show is “just like their life”. This is an important concept because the show’s
success is due to the fact that the audience can relate so well to the
characters and their lives. The
interview also establishes that the director is able to fully express her
vision for the show, as well as merge her vision with those of the show
producers and actors. The interview
notes that the actors are never expected to do anything outside of their
comfort zone. I feel that this interview
validates Michael Focault’s “author function” concept (Gray, 109).
Focault describes the author function as someone who can create a “constant
level of value”, “stylistic unity”, and “classifactory”, amongst other
things. There are two creators for How I Met Your Mother and four
producers, two of which are the creators.
In the interview, the creators mention that the show would have never
been successful without the unity and individual creativity of each producer. This shows the multifaceted dimensions of the
TV series are uniquely created through a partnership and function, rather than
death, of the authors.
Example 3:
Example 3:
Moreover, it is important to note that each of these
paratext examples help to finish hyping up the TV series, How I Met Your Mother. Jonathon
Gray explores the idea of paratexts helping to make a text “the real deal” with
audience, cast, and crew members (p. 89).
Each person within the creative process has their own outlet to help
develop the storylines of the show. For
example, audience members get to express their opinions on fan sites where they
can further their own interest and investment in the show and characters by
interacting with other fans. Cast and
crew members get to relate the characters to themselves through either acting
as the character off screen, or making the character have their own flare and
traits. All in all, each of the hundreds
of different paratext waiting online to be engaged with serve as a means to
help spread the popularity and success of How
I Met Your Mother, and other shows and movies.
Disclaimer: I have acted with honesty and integrity in producing this work and am unaware of anyone who has not.
Lizette Villarreal
Lizette Villarreal
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