SmArts

October 24-30, 2016

TV for culture

By Molly Rector

Several recent studies have come out extolling the virtues of online video streaming as an alternative to traditional television networks. According to studies out of Scotland and the United States, choosing to stream television can make romantic partners closer by creating a “shared social reality” – another study points out the benefits of streaming in cutting back on children’s commercial advertising exposure. While it’s certainly true that children’s exposure to commercials would be limited if they simply watched less TV, and that couples can find other means of creating shared social realties, it’s also true that in a work culture that can be (frankly) exhausting, sometimes parents and couples simply want to do what’s easy.

I’m interested in this as a (frankly) exhausted person – but also from an arts perspective, because I find that I talk about TV a lot. A lot. I most certainly talk more about TV than I talk about books, despite the fact that I spend the majority of my waking life around other employees or former employees of a major university’s English department. During my time at the Albee barn, the other residents and I ended up talking about TV every single night – so much so that it became an inside joke (another form of bonding). One of the most important functions of culture is creating and adding to a common social vocabulary, and I have the suspicion that television streaming services are fulfilling that function in an unprecedented way.

I think this largely has to do with two things that relate to one another: energy and accessibility. Television is easy to access, and services like Netflix that stream television shows with only a few clicks of a button (and don’t take commercial breaks!) make the television model both easier and less frustrating to use. These shows are available under a single umbrella (no channel-flipping) and also accessible at any time of day, unlike shows on traditional networks. All of this, combined with the relatively inexpensive cost of a streaming service means, I think, that people are more likely to overlap in the media they’ve shared. And there are many wonderfully complex and critically meaningful shows out there that people find it interesting and productive to discuss.

I’d be curious to see what role TV streaming services play in increasing literacy in political and critical theory, and am fascinated to see how they change the conversation about what counts as high culture.

Molly Rector is a staff writer for the Daily Record. Contact her at molly@dailydata.com.