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This chapter explores the expansion of Internet access in Brazil since 2011 and analyzes three critically acclaimed web series: Septo (Septum, YouTube), Marcos: Uma websérie quase original (Marcos: An Almost Original Web series, Instagram and YouTube), and 3% (YouTube and Netflix). The former two were made exclusively for Internet distribution and are the products of recently formed production companies in cities far from the Rio–São Paulo axis of production: Natal and Caxias do Sul. While they differ in genre, tone, length, and themes, both Septo and Marcos stand out for representing regions of Brazil not often portrayed on the small screen during the period leading up to 2011. For its part, 3% eschews regional and national differences, focusing instead on a post-apocalyptic world. Unlike Septo and Marcos, both of which emerged within the context of the new Brazilian mediascape, the production of 3% spans the pre- and post-2011 mediascapes.

This chapter explores an explosion of serialized vampires after television’s deregulation. Like newspapers and newscasts, serialized television can produce national audiences around topical issues about citizenship and difference. What cinema often excludes due to the financial risk, television can include by offshoring production and narrowcasting transmission. Although Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003) ushered in “girl power” and a place for same-sex relationships, it was criticized for its racial insensitivity. With greater racial/ethnic diversity, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, and The Originals explore legacies of racial oppression. Transnational Hollywood largely masks locations, prioritizing economic over cultural consideration. Some series are produced in southern California, others elsewhere—Gabriel, amor inmortal (2008) in Florida, The Vampire Diaries and The Originals in Georgia, True Blood in Louisiana, From Dusk till Dawn: The Series (2014–present) in Texas, The Strain (2014–present) in Ontario, and Penny Dreadful (2014–2016) in Ireland. Web series emerge as a means of narrative and economic experimentation, ranging from UGC in The Hunted (2001–present) to cross-platform marketing and narrative experiments of Valemont (2009) and Carmilla (2014–present) to videogames.

With the switch to streaming video, a whole host or royalty, content, and distribution issues need to be addressed. In addition, there is a plethora of programming designed specifically for the web. Some come and go like mayflies, and die a quick death; others build up a long-term audience, and keep coming back year after year to a cadre of loyal viewers. Web Therapy, for example, has now amassed 46 episodes, with Meryl Streep featured as a recent guest star in a three-episode story arc. Syfy Television (formerly Sci-fi, until the need to copyright the channel’s name forced the somewhat awkward switch to Syfy) has been churning out 10 minute segments of a web serial entitled Riese, with an eye to combining the sections into a two hour TV pilot for the network; and Showtime has oddly created an animated web companion for its hit live action serial killer television show Dexter, entitled Dark Echo, which offers brief (3 to 6 minute) of additional back-story on the series for its numerous devotees.

The ongoing interest in Jane Eyre and its various adaptations, appropriations, mash-ups and sequels are indicative of the fact that the story and the main character have loosened themselves from literary forms and have become transmedia phenomena. Taking into consideration the independent web series The Autobiography of Jane Eyre, and the media discussion it generated among online communities, this chapter argues that in contrast to popular screen adaptations of the novel, the web series disentangles the heroine from the romantic plot and re-positions her within a network of relationships that encourage her growth. In this way, the series bypasses gender critiques levelled at Charlotte Brontë’s text and the majority of its mainstream adaptations. The web series’ media format and exploration of authorship enables its viewers to treat it both as an adaptation and a fictional vlog, highlighting the complex ways in which this classic of Victorian literature continues to matter today.

This chapter focuses on the international circulation of the newer forms of African American television, particularly, how different network organizations and audience configurations create opportunities for new kinds of African American television flows. The priorities of premium cable channels, general entertainment broadcasters, and comedy channels abroad, combined with industry lore about “edgy” and “quality” programming, lead to a heavy reliance on black masculinity, heteronormativity, crime, violence, and frequent use of the word “nigger” in contemporary series. These similar aesthetic choices tend to dominate web-based television series as well, largely because online producers often strive to have their programs noticed by more traditional television outlets. The chapter looks at how series creators navigate these institutional expectations of what African American television should include in order to get their shows on air.

The book concludes with a discussion on the making of an Internet legend, Slender Man, as a step further in embedding everyday life with supernatural entities. Originated in a contest proposed by the Something Awful website, which made a call for users to post images of phenomena that could pass for paranormal, this figure, which appears in the background of photographs showing children and teenagers, generated a series of horror stories (in the form of creepypasta), web series (Marble Hornets and totheark), horror films, and games. Slender Man has also been pointed to as the motive behind real acts of self-harm and stabbings. The multiple recycling of this monster (which some believe to be real) across a variety of media invites questions about the strange mix of unquestioning belief and exaggerated skepticism that characterizes our approach to information circulated on the Internet and in social media.

Although more changes will certainly arise as the transformations to the Brazilian mediascape continue to take hold, it is clear that the confluence of legislative, technological, economic, and creative factors during the post-2011 context have given way to the most competitive mediascape in the history of Brazil. This particular moment represents a snapshot of Brazil, where the increasingly diverse field of television and Internet fiction is altering the relationships between distributor and producer and producer and viewer, and where a hegemonic force like Globo struggles to maintain and reproduce its audiences in the face of a number of subnational, transnational, and global movements, organizations, and technologies. In short, in the new Brazilian mediascape, while Globo competes with national and international pay-television channels, YouTube, and Netflix and while telenovelas compete with series, both local and foreign, more Brazilians in more parts of Brazil are faced with more symbolic portrayals of the nation than ever before. The result is a Brazil reframed by the small screens.