I think it’s interesting to look at our televisual consciousness, and how in context we expand and extract different parts of texts to suit our own needs. As our own machininc subjectivity is constantly changing, our consciousness and interpretations are also flux. Key components such as age, mood, and any other factors in your life play a part in what you see in a televisual text and how you engage in it.
I give the example of Dawson’s creek. Last Christmas, I was shopping with my friend when we found the Dawson’s Creek box set. It was $199, so we decided to split the cost and make it our Christmas present to each other. The night we snuggled on the couch, and stoped making Katie Holmes impressions (“Daaaawson” with that asymmetric smirk). We got half way through the first season and had to turn it off. It wasn’t terrible, just a bit boring. Had it changed? Pacey wasn’t cute, we cringed at their conversations about sex, and I still couldn’t understand the dialogue. It occurred to me then that my previous adoration for this show was simply clouded by my eight year old naivety. I had previously loved it and would wait all week for the next episode simply because I was engaged in this romantic depiction of American teenagers; a world I longed to grow up and live in myself. Having experienced teenagehood now, that admiration for the characters and their lives has subsequently subsided, and hence my engagement and interpretation with the text was completely different.
Context, apart from allowing different understandings, made room for this “daggy” element of the text. Dawson’s looked overly stylised with nineties fashion, and outdated technology (such as Dawson’s massive video camera, and video cassettes). So even though in its time, the mis-en-scene looked perfectly normal, depicting the world as we were living in it, viewing it now it seems ridiculous, triggering memories of past fashions and so on. Now, the show is a statement not only of that time, but gives reference to our previous subjectivity.
Some texts can also act as watermarks in our lives, triggering memories and occasions. Remembering old movies and TV shows reminds us of who we were at the time, and what we were doing. Movies you saw on dates will forever be tainted with happy (or sad, or awkward) memories, despite the film’s quality. Even TV shows that were always playing in the background of your grandmas home will prompt nostalgia, warm kitchen smells and ruddy cheeks.
So, retro dvd series can be argued to tap into this nostalgic element when marketed to us. Essentially, nostalgia is another commodity, bundled up with the box set and the bonus t-shirt. Unfortunately, we mask our love for these TV shows and movies with hope of our happy past (selective based of course) to come streaming back, and enrich our lives as it did back then. It’s not until we review these texts that we understand their presence now has a completely different impact.
