Complexity, Patterns, and Genres Complexity theory adds several other useful concepts to an understanding of

the globalization of genres. Even global patterns seem to be reenacted locally in such a way that control is hard to determine. In specific, implying that foreign forms exert a linear control over local productions may overlook the strength of the local component and the transformation of the genre itself by local adaptation.

The complexity theory notion of self-organization as represented in fractals and replicating patterns fosters understanding of how television gen res help create similar patterns in different cultures. Jorge Gonzalez ( 1 991)

applied this idea to the development of the telenovela genre. Each telenovela is a fractal, a specific enactment of the Latin American telenovela tradition,

which is itself a fractal subset of the larger genre of melodrama.

Various forms of television seem to function as what complexity theory terms attractors: conditions that tend to form the basis of a pattern. Attractors can be stable, holding a system in equilibrium or balance. New

conditions introduced into a system, such as the introduction of a certain form of television, can change that balance, perhaps even to a catastrophic

or system-changing extent. At a systemic level, commercial, advertising supported television seems to function as an attractor across cultural systems, forming recognizable, but not entirely predictable patterns of

Producing National Television, Glocal and Local 141

television production as the forms of commercial television are transplanted and adapted in various cultures. At a more specific level, television genres such as soap opera or music video function as attractors, formulas that may

be used in a number of settings, forming new hybrid patterns within each culture. In both cases, outcomes include elements of both the original pattern and the nonlinear, unpredictable variations.

The genealogies of commercial television soap operas in Brazil and Taiwan, for example, show adaptation of patterns that began in Europe with serial fiction; were shaped further in the United States, Great Britain, and elsewhere with radio and television soap operas; were adapted to Latin America in Cuba and to Asia in China and Hong Kong; and were further

adapted in Brazil and Taiwan. Enduring aspects of the various earlier or pre ceding pattern transformations can be seen in Brazilian and Taiwanese soap

operas, but the final results are still emerging and would not have been pre dictable from earlier variations of the serial pattern, such as the U.S. radio soap opera. The earlier patterns have set some boundaries, such as the need to achieve commercial success with a mass audience, the need to be com patible with commercial advertising messages, and the dramatic and the matic characteristics of the general genre or formula of melodrama, but the

outcomes within these boundaries could not have been linearly predicted. To use a different genre example, action shows often flow from a few producers, but those producers influence each other as the genre evolves as

a global form. U.S. action genres such as westerns, police shows, detective shows, and suspense have influenced productions in the United Kingdom, Japan, and Hong Kong. Cowboy movies influenced samurai movies and

series, and vice versa (Akira Kurosawa borrowed from John Ford, while George Lucas admits to borrowing from Kurosawa). Samurai movies and

series influence kung fu movies and vice versa.

Complexity, Patterns, and Genres Complexity theory adds several other useful concepts to an understanding of