Television Title Sequences are Weird

By Matt Hartzler

Every show has one… every week… every season… always. In a medium that has countless different genres and types of shows from The Price is Right to CSI: Miami, their ubiquity is rather odd. To be blunt, television title sequences are just simply… weird.

If a viewer watched the West Wing from its premiere to season finale, they would have seen the same 45-second opening 156 times. 156 times!

We, as viewers, see title sequences of television series over and over and over again. This is what truly separates television from other medium. Film, for example, that has opening credits, but unless you re-watch the movie, in viewing the entire narrative you’ll see the title sequence to Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can only once.

In comparison, each episode of Law and Order requires the viewer to sit through a 1:15 long opening and its legendary theme song. If the viewer watched every single episode over its 20-year span to view the entire narrative, that’s 9.5 hours spent exclusively watching the Law and Order introduction 456 times.

These notions are rather absurd. How could a single narrative force us to watch the same clip hundreds of times? Obviously, the sequences are there to brand the name of the series for first time viewers and let the audience know what it is about to see for the next half- or full-hour of television, but that does not explain all of it. In contemporary television with the TV Guide channel and cable boxes that have the programming schedule available at the push of a button, this argument of letting the viewers know what they are watching is dying out.

Are television opening titles really just waste time for each episode, or do they serve some kind of worthwhile rational purpose? In general, why do these weird titles exist?

Grounding

What is more fascinating about the opening credits is although we have seen them dozens of times in watching our favorite programs, it’s likely that we will watch them each time. There is a sense of being imprisoned by the title sequences with their quick cuts and fancy title graphics. They force and demand viewership. This is sense of controlling power only details the borders of what titles can do.

Branding of the show certainly occurs when the title of the program is shown, but the branding and demarcation of aesthetics and characters of a show is vastly more important. The titles have this ability to ground us, as viewers, in the mood and style of the program. Television as a fluid medium requires this grounding to shift between programs. “What is being offered in not, in older terms, a programme of discrete units with particular insertions, but a planned flow,” writes Williams (p. 91). The titles move this flow along by capturing your attention and changing the mood. Titles serve as a map for you emotions as you watch television, seamlessly moving between pieces. Or, if you have just flipped on the television or are watching online, the titles set the stage for what is to come, and grounds you in the series.

Creating Aesthetics

Community is an NBC comedy series in their jam-packed Thursday night line-up. Its introductory credits help detail this sense of style that becomes grounded.

“Community College is considered an extension of high school in the US, also known as 13^th grade,” notes Erin Sarofsky, the creator of this sequence. When looking for inspiration she brainstormed through what used to be in her locker: “notebooks, trapper keepers, chewed pens, notes passed in class, doodles.” She thought about the building itself “filled with bulletin board, linoleum titles, cafeteria food, bleachers, carved wooden desks.” These things all embody high school and the immature temperament it embodies, “but what really stood out for me were the silly games we used to play... MASH, Dots, Hangman and the Cootie Catcher.” These games and the ‘silliness’ that comes with clearly fit within the completed aesthetic of Community. Like the Cootie Catcher, Community is not a show grounded in realism or a series that takes itself too seriously. Sarofsky acknowledges, “we landed on the Cootie Catcher because it was a great metaphor for the show overall.” The infantile aspects of the show are captured and solidified by the opening.

The pairing of the opening and the aesthetic of the series is shockingly important. A fan of the program that disliked the title sequence attempted to create the more classic ‘montage’ title sequence that is common in programs like Saved by the Bell, The Office, and most importantly – Friends.

The Friends montage just simply does not work with the style of the show. It molds the show into trying to be a ‘live studio audience’ sitcom that is just simply is not. The Cootie Catcher – which was actually drawn out with school-like ballpoint pen – uniquely grounds the program with a demarcated aesthetic that works within the program.

Character Connection

Dexter on Showtime is a crime drama/dark comedy series about a crime scene investigator and blood spatter expert that moonlights as a vigilante serial killer who murders criminals.

It is important to note that Dexter’s style of narrative relies heavily on the titular character, Dexter Morgan, providing voiceover monologues to the audience. This allows us to see inside the head of a murderer and hear his thoughts. Connecting the audience and the character of Dexter is wholly important. Otherwise, the viewer would simply dislike and not understand this generally evil murderer. The introductory titles provide a space for the viewer to connect to Dexter, and that’s precisely what Dexter’s morning routine accomplishes. Linking the audience and the characters foundationally shows the power of titles.

Whether we see the knife cutting the eggs or the forceful stringing of the floss and shoelaces, Dexter’s opening shows us how we can be serial killers every morning. The mopping up of blood after the shaving cut makes us empathize on some level Dexter’s plight when cleaning up his own murders. With the help of the humdrum theme music, taking these ordinary acts that any of us might do in the morning and putting them in Dexter’s world makes us almost complicit in his murders. The creator Eric Anderson describes how part of his inspiration was to contextual mundane things and give “those mundane things overwhelming and sinister importance.” Jeffery Sconce writes, “what television lacks in spectacle and narrative constraints, it makes up for in depth and duration of character relations… and audience investment” (p. 95). Through this opening title sequence, Dexter practically makes us his accomplice in the gruesome killings that unfold throughout the series, effectively connecting the audience and the character in less than two minutes.

Combination

Finally, titles do something even more amazing; they tie the sense of aesthetic grounding and character recognition together flawlessly. Saturday Night Live has been airing for decades, but their current opening bonds the style of program with the an introduction of the characters.

First off, the opening grounds the aesthetic. The time-lapse shots and the random shots of the city help establish the location of the program. The opening’s fun, upbeat attitude pierces through. You know when watching SNL, you’re going to have a good time; about as much enjoyment as you might have drinking sake with Andy Samberg…

…or high-fiving Kenan Thompson on the Brooklyn Bridge. The characters are all shot at night to direct their attention to television’s ‘liveness’. It is set up as if the actors were all just hanging out before they go to the stage, putting them in a similar situation to us, as we are getting ready to experience the show as well. Additionally as an effective introduction to the characters, locations allow us to connect with the SNL actors by simply showing them doing things that we might do like shoot hoops or hang out with friends. In a similar manner as Dexter’s mundane mornings made us understand him better, the cast’s seemingly average nights allow us to identify with them as well.

Conclusion

Like Community places us in an immature post-high school or Dexter makes us feel for a murderer, SNL throws us into New York with its high-octane world of motion and celebrity. Jeffery Sonce’s arguments could be applied where the titles become “a form of ‘world building’ that has allowed us for wholly new modes of narration and that suggests new forms of audience engagement” (p. 95). The combination of aesthetics and rich characters helping to create fictional worlds that are “constructed, marketed, and used by fans not as ‘texts’ to be ‘read’ but as cosmologies to be entered, experienced and imaginatively interacted with,” as Sara Gwenllian Jones explains (p. 84).

This power that the minute-long clips we see constantly in television have is rather appalling. If the central concept of these sequences is to ground us as viewers with the world of aesthetics, characters, or a combination of the two, and we understand how television’s fluidity requires this grounding each time we view, then we almost have to consider the title sequences the most important part of the viewing experience…

…which is pretty weird.