The premiere of the last season for Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011-2019) coincided with the announcements or launches of several new streaming platforms. GoT’s home HBO, Disney, NBCUniversal, and even Apple wanted to cash in on the streaming revolution. As the season 8 premiere drew closer, television critics and ordinary viewers began to express trepidation about the new era of television, which many saw as the end of any form of American monoculture rooted in television (this view, of course, problematically forgets about sports and politics). As Newcomb and Hirsch assert in their formative essay “Television as a Cultural Forum,” TV has been the dominant cultural forum/form in American life since the 1950s (563). While the claim remains true (I think? maybe?), I doubt Newcomb and Hirsch could have predicted the proliferation of television and the changes wrought by the post-network era. Prior to the advent of cable, and decades before DVR and streaming would fundamentally change television consumption, Americans really only had three channels (CBS, NBC, and ABC) to get their television entertainment, meaning that viewers had a common corpus of shows to discuss. When Game of Thrones, a global television blockbuster, ended, what the hell could we all talk about?
Newcomb and Hirsch assert that by rejecting the limiting analytic frames put forth by mass communication theory and aesthetic television criticism, we can get at what makes television a unique medium (561). They assert “almost any version of the television text functions as a forum in which important cultural topics may be considered” (565). For the purposes of this post, I would like to explore whether or not the concept of television as a cultural forum still holds weight in the era of Peak TV. As Heather Hendershot notes in her analysis of Parks and Recreation (NBC, 2009-2015), industrial shifts have changed not only television content, but also what audiences seek out. She argues, “narrowly targeted niche TV thus provides ‘self-confirmation,’ leaving little room for the old cultural forum ideal of ideas in conflict” (206). While I am inclined to agree with Hendershot that industrial shifts, especially narrowcasting, have fundamentally altered television’s presentation of ideas, in re-reading Newcomb and Hirsch I found elements of their argument still applicable. Hendershot uses Parks and Recreation as an illustration of the places that the cultural forum model persists. However, I believe it is important to note that the core of Newcomb and Hirsch’s argument was that “any emphasis on individual episodes, series, or even genres, misses the central point of the forum concept” (566). Rather than look at individual series that perhaps exemplify the discussion of core issues, might we look at a “television strip” and extrapolate the core social concerns of our time? When we look at the American television of the 2010s, what emerges as the dominant social concerns of the time? I’d imagine we would see a variety of programming centrally concerned with questions of economic precarity and social alienation across a range of genres and networks (I’m thinking here of things like Atlanta (FX, 2016-), Insecure (HBO, 2016-), Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008-2013), Superstore (NBC, 2015-), Broad City (Comedy Central, 2014-2019), Fleabag (BBC/Amazon, 2016-2019)). How did the financial crash and the continued deterioration of old-school models of social inclusion make its way on-screen?
I am letting this post get away from me, so I will close with this: I do not have a clear answer as to whether or not television at this current juncture primarily presents the topics for debate or provides audiences with definitive answers (there is too much content, and I wouldn’t know where to start). However, (perhaps paradoxically), I do think that Newcomb and Hirsch are exactly right in arguing that given television’s dominance in American culture, we can determine the most prevalent ideological questions through an analysis of the medium at different points throughout history.
I think you raise a great point Jackie with regards to Hendershot's failure to heed Newcomb and Hirsch's methodological warning against looking at individual episodes/series in lieu of the "television strip" as significant unit of analysis. On the one hand, I am curious how we might formally and experientially reconcile the "strip" with Williams's work on "flow" as a means of identifying core socio-political concerns of the period (a relationship they gesture towards but never unpack). Moreover, I question where and how we might even conceive of the "strip" – or where we can argue it properly resides – in a moment which, as you put it, has become inundated by "too much content" and watching habits that tend towards singular habits of "binging." Might a tracking of Netflix's algorithmic suggestion model provide a basis for this? And what interpenetrations between network and platform-based content might inform our understanding of the strip as a cultural model that has tended towards increasing specialization?
ReplyDeleteIf anyone has thoughts on any of these questions, I would love to hear them.