Television as technology of remembrance: Cultural alchemy in post-apocalyptic seriality

Abstract

This article develops ‘cultural alchemy’ as a media studies framework for understanding how post-apocalyptic television recasts survival as creative cultural practice rather than mere endurance. Focusing on The Walking Dead (AMC, 2010–2022) and Station Eleven (HBO, 2021–2022), it examines how serial storytelling, industrial context, and visual aesthetics model cultural transformation through objects, performance, and chosen kinship. Drawing on television studies (Mittell, 2015), memory theory (Assmann, 2011; Nora, 1989), and material culture scholarship (Hoskins, 1998; Miller, 2010), the article argues that serial form builds ‘memorial density’, enabling both audience meaning-making and corporate narrative control within a technology of remembrance.

Keywords

cultural alchemy seriality cultural memory post-apocalyptic television material culture

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