After a long day of work or an especially busy day, I will come home and turn on one of a few shows. My go-to shows are Parks and Recreation, Gilmore Girls, Brooklyn 99, and Friends. I have watched each one of these shows multiple times, I know the jokes, plot twists, and ending, but I still watch anyway. However, that is the point.
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued that mass culture operates as a culture industry. This means that entertainment is not produced to challenge the way you think or inspire you, but rather to soothe and distract you while maintaining social order. Comfort TV fits this argument perfectly because these shows are standardized, familiar, and emotionally low-risk. The shows do not demand much from us and they do not surprise us in deep ways that actually make us reflect mentally. We are able to switch off our brains without actually getting away from the thing we are switching off from.
What is interesting about this is how comfort TV can mirror the structure of our work. Work is repetitive, always on a routine, and draining to many. Our leisure is becoming the same thing by passively watching the same thing over and over again. The culture industry tries to promise an escape from labor, but it just gives us leisure that prepares us to go right back to work.
Rewatch culture thrives on predictability. I know that Rory chooses Yale over Harvard, I know that Amy and Jake end up together, and I know that Ron and Leslie have a falling out. Adorno says that predictability trains audiences to accept the world as it is. If things always work out on tv, maybe we shouldn't question the things going wrong in our life because won't they work out too? Comfort TV is not "bad" and people are not foolish for rewatching shows. Comfort TV actually reveals a need we have as a society to rest. Are comfort shows comforting because they’re good, or because they’re familiar?
ReplyDeleteI 100% agree with your post! I do think we as a society spend a lot of rest time rewatching shows. I am guilty of this. In fact, I don’t think I’ve watched a new show in probably a year. I was attributing this so some kind of anxiety. I thought that the idea of a new show with new characters and a new ending was just so crazy and I simply could not do it. I also like that I can do other things while my comfort shows are on. I can clean, do homework or fall asleep and I won’t really miss anything because I already know the outcome and how it’s going to end. I personally watch Grace and Frankie as on of my comfort shows and I believe it is one of the best shows created, I recommend it to everyone I can.
Hadli, You and I are sisters of the same heart (You too Isabella!) I love rewatching shows. My comfort shows are: The West Wing, Gilmore Girls, Friends, Ted Lasso and most rom-coms from the 90's. I have enough on my plate as a mom, consultant, community member, student, church volunteer, etc. I don't need or even want new and different ways of engaging my brain. I want predictability. I want the good guy to win at the end. I want to have some aspirational daydreams that it always works out on those hard days of reality when I'm not sure it will. When I rewatch something I am actually "re-listening" because often I have it on in the background and am working, doing housework, returning emails, or even responding to blog posts for a school assignment ;)
ReplyDelete(Thank you yet again, West Wing for being there so I can get things done). Instead of us feeling like this is a guilty pleasure or something "bad" because we aren't engaging our brains as much, maybe we should think of it as self care. It's an anti anxiety escape for a few minutes because we always know the outcome...we've already experienced it. Personally, I'm going to keep right on with my rewatching habits. It's like wrapping up in my favorite old threadbare blanket. Comfortable and Familiar, just how I like it.