Travel through Streaming: Reimagining Temporality, Spatiality and Language in Pachinko

The paper is a critical analysis of Apple TV+’s recent drama series Pachinko(2022) to comprehend the cross-historical and cross-regional metanarrative unfolds from the organization of temporality, spatiality and language. Adapted from an epic historical novel, the TV version of Pachinko significantly alters the order of the stories and the non-linearity plays an important role in deconstructing family history and intergenerational trauma. By analyzing the chronology and transition of space in Pachinko, the paper aims to conceptualize the time-and-space experience of watching transnational programs on streaming platforms as the projection of Harvey’s time-space compression theory. It also provides a perspective on identifying the sense of displacement and anxiety that are forged by the increasingly intensified consumption of global cultural products. To further explore this concept, the paper then seeks to broader research questions in complex TV, the time and space of TV, the switch of languages in transnational programs, and at last, the varied representation of immigrant family narratives in the East Asian diaspora.