...and having the now-familiar-but-always-weird experience of coming to a popular culture product after it has been consumed, digested and regurgitated by the whole world as memes and gifs and coffee mugs that say DUNDER MIFFLIN. CO.
I feel like I'm always waiting for the next joke or scene I recognize, and while I really like the show I think I put off watching it for so long because I resented coming to it long after it's fertile ground had already been picked clean. I can't form a new opinion of the show, and I like it because it comes from the same team of producers and writers whose work I tend to like in general. Would I like it if I'd just stumbled upon it, not yet acclimated to the textual device of *looks into the camera like I'm in the Office*? Has my humour been formed by the sediment The Office has left behind, so that it is generating its own audience in me before I even watch a single episode for myself? I am beset by such existential questions, etc.
Novelty in form and narrative in TV is a very very important part of the entire televisual experience. The digital catalogue's perverse abundance is disturbing, but so is the persistence of cultural memory in the form of cult shows you just didn't watch when they were running. I'm bingeing it, of course, but would past-me have liked it, for real-for real? Probably, but I'll never have the sense that I'm making my own taste in TV.
I feel like I'm always waiting for the next joke or scene I recognize, and while I really like the show I think I put off watching it for so long because I resented coming to it long after it's fertile ground had already been picked clean. I can't form a new opinion of the show, and I like it because it comes from the same team of producers and writers whose work I tend to like in general. Would I like it if I'd just stumbled upon it, not yet acclimated to the textual device of *looks into the camera like I'm in the Office*? Has my humour been formed by the sediment The Office has left behind, so that it is generating its own audience in me before I even watch a single episode for myself? I am beset by such existential questions, etc.
Novelty in form and narrative in TV is a very very important part of the entire televisual experience. The digital catalogue's perverse abundance is disturbing, but so is the persistence of cultural memory in the form of cult shows you just didn't watch when they were running. I'm bingeing it, of course, but would past-me have liked it, for real-for real? Probably, but I'll never have the sense that I'm making my own taste in TV.
It's interesting to me that you say "the digital catalogue's perverse abundance is disturbing." The sheer abundance of content on digital platforms is astounding, but so little of it is ever seen. Youtube uploads thousands of hours of content per day; barely any of that may actually be consumed, let alone become popular.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to me because despite the "perverse abundance," you came to the Office, a show you had already settled on not wathcing. There are a few of these shows that stand out to me: The Office, FRIENDS, Parks and Rec. These shows have maintained their value and popularity since their final airings, and audiences watch and rewatch them.
I'm doing the same kind of catch-up viewing with RuPaul's Drag Race right now, and its weird becoming aware of the source of many of my favorite queer memes.
In many of the long and idle summer vacations in my long and idle student life, I found myself binging some very cheap yet very popular Hong Kong martial arts television from the 1980s–90s. That is, before I was born. The stories, adapted from popular Kongfu novels, are familiar to most Chinese people. Up to now, there are already many versions of those same stories—often, a new tv adaptation after every 5-10 years. With time, those big-budget productions in the rapidly growing television industry in mainland China replaced the old HK ones on the television screen.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, people, especially people with memories of the HK shows when they first came out, still talk about them and express their nostalgia for that time or their detest for the cutesy new shows. Looking at those words, I feel like I am born to be less “tasteful” as the shows many redeem as classic are simply not the product of my era. On the other hand, it also makes me think how I am accessing many television shows “after” their running time. I am, to a large extent, desynchronised with what’s on the television screen—in China, in the United States—and I guess this is not a rare case. The public memory of certain television shows exist not only during their running time, but also after they already became a memory. The afterlives, however, are subordinate to but not necessarily submerged by the lives during its time.
Laboni -- I wanted to follow up on this! Assuming you've kept up with your viewing of the show, are you finding your response changing as you grow ever more familiar with the show and its world? I'm wondering if one's own familiarity and emotional connection with TV could outweigh the weight of cultural baggage, whether the 'authenticity' you speak of might be possible even now...? (Tania)
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