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Start Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
In December 2019, the second season of the series You premiered on Netflix as a “Netflix Original,” and in the summer of 2018, the fourth and final season of UnREAL aired on Hulu as a “Hulu Original.” Both of these series, however, originally premiered on the women’s cable network Lifetime, in 2018 and 2015 respectively, and struggled to find an audience, despite critical praise. This paper takes these two series as case studies to consider what the move from cable to streaming, and from demographic to algorithmic marketing, means for the category of women audiences. Through textual and industrial analysis, I argue that the series’ complex narrative address productively sheds light on the ways that streaming platforms imagine and construct their spectators, offering a model of women’s spectatorship for the streaming era.
Both series directly thematize women’s spectatorship, and specifically how media shapes women’s relationship to romance. Women’s television genres have often been theorized to produce a more dispersed subject position than mainstream media aimed at a universalized, masculine spectator. Digital technology proliferates modes of seeing and being seen, further multiplying viewing positions and fostering the practice of shifting constantly between frames of reference. As digital technology is integrated both narratively and aesthetically into the storytelling of women’s genres, those practices rise to the surface, consciously shaping the romance plot and women’s relationship to it. Examining the dynamics of women’s spectatorship through You and UnREAL reveals the complex negotiation between viewers and the subject position constructed by digital media.
Reinventing Romance: Women’s Spectatorship in Transition from Lifetime to Streaming
In December 2019, the second season of the series You premiered on Netflix as a “Netflix Original,” and in the summer of 2018, the fourth and final season of UnREAL aired on Hulu as a “Hulu Original.” Both of these series, however, originally premiered on the women’s cable network Lifetime, in 2018 and 2015 respectively, and struggled to find an audience, despite critical praise. This paper takes these two series as case studies to consider what the move from cable to streaming, and from demographic to algorithmic marketing, means for the category of women audiences. Through textual and industrial analysis, I argue that the series’ complex narrative address productively sheds light on the ways that streaming platforms imagine and construct their spectators, offering a model of women’s spectatorship for the streaming era.
Both series directly thematize women’s spectatorship, and specifically how media shapes women’s relationship to romance. Women’s television genres have often been theorized to produce a more dispersed subject position than mainstream media aimed at a universalized, masculine spectator. Digital technology proliferates modes of seeing and being seen, further multiplying viewing positions and fostering the practice of shifting constantly between frames of reference. As digital technology is integrated both narratively and aesthetically into the storytelling of women’s genres, those practices rise to the surface, consciously shaping the romance plot and women’s relationship to it. Examining the dynamics of women’s spectatorship through You and UnREAL reveals the complex negotiation between viewers and the subject position constructed by digital media.
Bio
Cara Dickason’s research examines the intersection of surveillance and spectatorship in girls’ and women’s media. She is a PhD candidate in Screen Cultures and a Mellon Fellow in Gender and Sexuality Studies at Northwestern University.