Television Series Fans and a Regime of Cultural Values: Located Pleasure and Autonomy of a Contemporary Culture
For ten years, television series, and especially those produced in the US, have become an addictive and passionate cultural object for many people, previously less inclined to watch this television genre, as well as a main program on prime time French television. Watched in a new environment, transformed by DVDs and the Internet, seasonal and stand alone series have renewed the dominant highbrow and ascetic regime and social meanings attached to cultural goods. Based on qualitative interviews with young adults, this article attempts to demonstrate the development of a new cultural practice, articulating a new genre (‘Quality Television’ as identified by American and British scholars), and its internal hierarchy, with a consumption in domestic space. The viewer, who is frequently alone, chooses and organizes his watching time according to a value system and meanings contrasting the manners of consumption of the “cinéphilie” and movie theater goer. We argue that watching series could be interpreted as a specific and new “regime of cultural value” for this audience. This regime of cultural value is no longer ascetic but situated (valorizing pleasure in the here and now), no longer imposed but chosen, no longer shameful but positive. Fan attitudes towards this genre is an excellent gage of the current transformation of media and cultural practices provoked by the digital environment.