Soon after the title sequence cuts in and A. leaves for the bathroom, having not so much as excused himself like O. who, with his phone held over the ear and his mouth running steps out of the living room, it becomes quite clear to me that this sudden turn of events onscreen is something about which we have different perspectives. While for them it seems like a wall of sorts, one that in order to get past and go back to the story needn’t be gotten through but instead around or over it, for me and in actuality this is a window right through this very wall which, unbeknownst to them, has been up the entire time, only that now, having called to itself some attention, they are under the illusion that it is rising.

Of this indifferent reaction of theirs, of course without ignoring its validity given the probable necessity of the rather untimely calls of duty that set it off, one could argue that having been thrust into this cinematic universe straight out of the physical world my friends must be struggling to settle in. Should this be the case, then it boggles my mind that they, in what has certainly made even more true C. S. Lewis’ words about Man’s ironic tendency to “remove the organ and demand the function,” have purged themselves of this time and from this space, because besides being the main components of this, or any universe for that matter, this space lends the events within the stretch of this time a sensibility from which some meaning, the fount of a noetic ability responsible for an easier viewing experience, can then be drawn.

With an empty room or one whose occupants have turned a deaf ear and a blind eye for an audience, an artistic voice, pretty much like its natural equivalent, is certain to water itself down into a mere echo. In the case of the designer, fortunately, this echo gets to be picked up just in time before being blown away into oblivion, thanks to the existence and continued establishment of on-the-art-of-title-sequence publications, awards, conferences and festivals, platforms lacking in the distinctive quality of a target audience but boasting and bringing to bear their singular power of positive publicity responsible for presenting to deserving viewers an eclectic array of title sequences for many films and TV shows, one of which is Netflix’s Marvel’s Daredevil, whose own title sequence, as it happens, I’ve been left to.

Over a beautifully soulful and wistful soundtrack first dollies out the blindfolded face of a protagonist met earlier courtesy of the cold open. Slowly, as though by the stroke of an invisible painter’s brush, his face extends backwards into a bench wig, and, through a cut so sharp it is a sleight of hand, obscurely downwards into a torso of a female whose right hand, severed from above and below the elbow, is holding a sword, and the left a set of scales in suspension. Presented at this point is the portrait of Lady Justice, an allegorical personification of the moral force in some of the world’s judicial systems. Subsequent cuts display further images: that of a water tower, the Brooklyn Bridge, skyscrapers, a church, an angel, the Devil, and the title card; all of which are strategically positioned within a city that is continuously being reformed through blood.

Without any prior knowledge of the abovementioned elements therefore, neither can A. and O. at this point in time possibly realize that within those sixty seconds, a three-season, thirty-nine-episode show is stripped down to everything that is needed to know in part what it really is all about, and that from these essentials it can be discovered that besides obviously being a superhero show, Marvel’s Daredevil has the hallmarks of a thriller and a legal and crime drama; that it is set in New York City; that its protagonist is battling a conflict of interest; and that it deals with identity crisis, passion in all its shades, religion, justice, vigilance and violence: a discovery that when extrapolated, lends one the particularly important supplemental knowledge of this show’s scopic possibilities.

As it can now be figured out comprehensively, a title sequence is a conceptual collation of images with sound appearing either at the beginning or a few minutes into a film or an episode of a TV show to introduce its title and to open a small window into its world, those who created and run this world, and those that this same world harbours and what it seems they are up to. Or so would a standard definition read. Personally, I believe that so long as it is done well, as well as Marvel’s Daredevil’s, a title sequence can transcend the basicity of its raison d’être, gaining while in this new state of being the ability to both be pregustating and critical of that work of art it is embedded in, in a way that is even more intimate since the viewer will be in total control of all its elements, some of which can be choices so appropriate in the making up of a (p)review. For this in particular, besides knowing through experience how onerous creating good art can get and how fortunate it is to have for this art an audience that is liberal with its time, whenever a title sequence comes up, regardless of the frequency should it be a long-running TV show’s, I sit back up, knowing all too well that I am in for a visual and sonic spectacle, throughout which then, careful not to be none the wiser in the end, I try to make sense of it all, keeping in mind that like a rebus, a good title sequence is best solved through multiple viewings, each an opportunity to appreciate more that which is already in the know, or better yet, to discover an overlooked piece and some information about it.