Those Deaths That Are Never Forgotten: Return and Survival in Contemporary Television Series
Among the various recurring figures representing death in television series, a particularly troubling one is the one of a dead person refusing to die completely: the revenant. It may be described as the figure of the staging of death on screen, because it shares with the serialised-series form some persistent qualities postponing and denying the end. Banality of the medium and banality of the figure also meet: the revenant is indeed the figure of a “dead person who returns” the most detached from any otherness. It is neither a zombie, nor a spectre, only a dead person refusing to physically disappear, and who looks like a living person. This specific staging of death, in which the revenant is placed, makes it possible for a fictional reunion of the dead and the living, thus probably questioning more accurately, and expressing with all the complexity it requires, our real relationship with the dead.