1. Do you think that the phenomenon of rewatching TV shows demands a special explanation different from the general question of reexperiencing narrative art, i.e. rewatching movies, rereading books, etc? It seems to me a subset of that phenomenon, with all the same flavors (basically the ones you list: nostalgia; inhabiting the world; to recognize subtleties missed on earlier encounters; a changed viewing to changes in you, the viewer, etc). I am not sure why this should be a question separate from those. Am I missing something?
2. Any news about the possibility of an ebook edition of your book?
Re #1: perhaps this is some holdover from the era of syndication (which still kind of exists, in some sense)? As consumers of media we've evolved as platforms have evolved, and yet the massive shaping force of commercial television, over a period of decades, is perhaps still with us. Hence: some shows were delivered to us, and then re-delivered to us, and then re-delivered to us again, and that has got to have some impact on how nostalgia, inhabitation, recognition, etc., operates in our thinking about these properties. And perhaps it has been carried over more contemporary media properties, ones where there was no such re-delivery. Of course you can re-read a book--but that means you have to go to the shelf or the library and choose to get the book. You can re-watch of movie--but that meant you had to go to the library or Blockbuster and choose to check it out, and now it means you have to click on Netflix or Paramount and scroll through and make a choice. Maybe this is getting phenomenological, but I think the above choices really do operate differently that those (you could always change the channel or turn off the TV!) which commercial television delivered to us from the 1960s through the 2000s.
Good point, well taken. I think the phenomenology is warranted. And you're definitely right about the experience of clicking on the TV, seeing that something is on, wait, have I seen this one...
But as an *abstract* question—why would one, in theory, want to rewatch something?—it's different than the actual question of why we *do* rewatch things. And there I think there is going to be a lot of overlap: basically, it is a fact about the aesthetics of narrative that we enjoy going through (some of) them more than once, and that's true however the narrative is delivered.
And I will say that now, for me, the choices are pretty similar! I don't know how widespread this is, but we haven't had any TV that's not on our computers for years, and I read mostly ebooks these days (hence point 2), so for me if I want to rewatch or reread something, it's a matter mostly of pulling it out of the proper electronic drawer. Not saying this is a good thing—I bet it probably isn't (cf https://www.reddit.com/r/lewronggeneration/comments/2wgczm/so_true/, and note it's from 10-15 years ago, so mentally adjust while reading)—but it is, for me and I suspect many people, the current phenomenological fact.
1. I wonder if part of it is the time commitment. Rewatching a whole series can take much longer even than rereading a long novel. I also wonder if the perceived lower quality or greater ephemerality of TV relative to other media is involved in the question.
2. All I know is that the press knows there's a problem and is working on it. I will let you know as soon as it is available -- very sorry for the inconvenience!
1. Also a good point. I don't know how true this is for contemporary series. Judging from audiobooks, books take anywhere from 8 - 16 hours to read for an average length one, which is about like a season of (modern) TV. But TV shows were longer back in the day, and few can really stack up next to Star Trek!
2. Well, I am glad they know there's a problem. I'll look forward to reading it once it's out. Thanks for checking.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I used to be someone who never re-watched anything. But over the years I’ve started re-watching more and more and am wondering what happened to cause the change. Is it just that I’m getting older? Is it the scary state of the world making me crave comfort? I also resonate strongly with your point about workplace utopia. I’ve long suspected that it’s what’s behind my love of Star Trek and my current rewatch show is the West Wing, which falls into a similar category.
I used to be a real stickler for not rewatching- I was gonna die someday and I still hadn't watched Citizen Kane, better hop to it. All of Art was out there waiting and I didn't (and don't) want to be stuck in my parochial, nostalgic corner because all that mattered was the little tickle of familiarity though.
Somewhere in there, though, it occurred to me that anything that was worth my time and energy to appreciate in the first place probably had enough substance to reward further study, and that no one was handing out medals for making the watch list longer. People have been impressed by Citizen Kane for 70 years, and you think you had it figured out because you watched it once?
I think the secret to harmonizing those opposing impulses is to just make a real concerted effort to not watch crap- crap being whatever you didn't actually have a reason to watch besides not wanting to stare into the void. Watch new things according to a structure (a list, a trusted reviewer, a theme), watch old things according to a ritual.
I was actually working somewhere that had a mandatory-on TV that I started hijacking to watch morning TNG reruns, and then watching and talking about it online became an intellectual practice when I didn't have many other outlets, and then I watched some DS9, and realized I'd never watched the Animated Series, and hadn't actually finished Enterprise, and was off to the races for a while. I also wasn't interested for a while there because the likes of Battlestar Galactica and Firefly were clearly such an intentional critique of Trek's shortcomings and they were calling to me. But I found my way back, and there was more there than I remembered. My memory is still pretty good, though :-P
This resonated strongly with me. Back in the late 90s due to a very late-90s-Internet accident I ended up published on Wired talking in the positive about how the Net had "corroded my native culture" (I'm from Argentina; at the time I was living in Corrientes, an smallish and relatively poor state on its northeast). Part of my argument was that Star Trek -and by that I meant TNG- showed me a set of values and habits (the workplace utopia) I found better for me than what was available in my local culture.
A lot has changed since then, including probably the precise meaning of "local," but it's still the case that every work environment I'm in, every purposeful organization I'm part of, the yardstick they are evaluated against is probably the Enterprise-D.
> "(Apparently Paramount Plus now has “linear” channels that may duplicate the old ways, though I suspect that, like the Heroes and Icons cable channel, they likely play everything in chronological order rather than skipping around.)"
This is good, actually, because it leads to my favorite thing about cable TV: when they air a show's series finale, and then immediately air the show's pilot! I used to make note of when one of the basic cable channels would do this with "Malcolm in the Middle," because there's something really jolting, immersion-breaking even, about watching the three boys turn unpubescent, and thus being reminded that the thing you're casually half-watching while doing the laundry is in fact a massive structure whose creation was a full-time job for hundreds of people. (This is true of all TV, btw, not just "prestige" fare or "comfort watches." I mean, "Malcolm" is a great show, to be clear, but it doesn't obviously fall into either category.)
Two questions, unrelated to each other:
1. Do you think that the phenomenon of rewatching TV shows demands a special explanation different from the general question of reexperiencing narrative art, i.e. rewatching movies, rereading books, etc? It seems to me a subset of that phenomenon, with all the same flavors (basically the ones you list: nostalgia; inhabiting the world; to recognize subtleties missed on earlier encounters; a changed viewing to changes in you, the viewer, etc). I am not sure why this should be a question separate from those. Am I missing something?
2. Any news about the possibility of an ebook edition of your book?
Stephen,
Re #1: perhaps this is some holdover from the era of syndication (which still kind of exists, in some sense)? As consumers of media we've evolved as platforms have evolved, and yet the massive shaping force of commercial television, over a period of decades, is perhaps still with us. Hence: some shows were delivered to us, and then re-delivered to us, and then re-delivered to us again, and that has got to have some impact on how nostalgia, inhabitation, recognition, etc., operates in our thinking about these properties. And perhaps it has been carried over more contemporary media properties, ones where there was no such re-delivery. Of course you can re-read a book--but that means you have to go to the shelf or the library and choose to get the book. You can re-watch of movie--but that meant you had to go to the library or Blockbuster and choose to check it out, and now it means you have to click on Netflix or Paramount and scroll through and make a choice. Maybe this is getting phenomenological, but I think the above choices really do operate differently that those (you could always change the channel or turn off the TV!) which commercial television delivered to us from the 1960s through the 2000s.
Russell,
Good point, well taken. I think the phenomenology is warranted. And you're definitely right about the experience of clicking on the TV, seeing that something is on, wait, have I seen this one...
But as an *abstract* question—why would one, in theory, want to rewatch something?—it's different than the actual question of why we *do* rewatch things. And there I think there is going to be a lot of overlap: basically, it is a fact about the aesthetics of narrative that we enjoy going through (some of) them more than once, and that's true however the narrative is delivered.
And I will say that now, for me, the choices are pretty similar! I don't know how widespread this is, but we haven't had any TV that's not on our computers for years, and I read mostly ebooks these days (hence point 2), so for me if I want to rewatch or reread something, it's a matter mostly of pulling it out of the proper electronic drawer. Not saying this is a good thing—I bet it probably isn't (cf https://www.reddit.com/r/lewronggeneration/comments/2wgczm/so_true/, and note it's from 10-15 years ago, so mentally adjust while reading)—but it is, for me and I suspect many people, the current phenomenological fact.
1. I wonder if part of it is the time commitment. Rewatching a whole series can take much longer even than rereading a long novel. I also wonder if the perceived lower quality or greater ephemerality of TV relative to other media is involved in the question.
2. All I know is that the press knows there's a problem and is working on it. I will let you know as soon as it is available -- very sorry for the inconvenience!
1. Also a good point. I don't know how true this is for contemporary series. Judging from audiobooks, books take anywhere from 8 - 16 hours to read for an average length one, which is about like a season of (modern) TV. But TV shows were longer back in the day, and few can really stack up next to Star Trek!
2. Well, I am glad they know there's a problem. I'll look forward to reading it once it's out. Thanks for checking.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I used to be someone who never re-watched anything. But over the years I’ve started re-watching more and more and am wondering what happened to cause the change. Is it just that I’m getting older? Is it the scary state of the world making me crave comfort? I also resonate strongly with your point about workplace utopia. I’ve long suspected that it’s what’s behind my love of Star Trek and my current rewatch show is the West Wing, which falls into a similar category.
I used to be a real stickler for not rewatching- I was gonna die someday and I still hadn't watched Citizen Kane, better hop to it. All of Art was out there waiting and I didn't (and don't) want to be stuck in my parochial, nostalgic corner because all that mattered was the little tickle of familiarity though.
Somewhere in there, though, it occurred to me that anything that was worth my time and energy to appreciate in the first place probably had enough substance to reward further study, and that no one was handing out medals for making the watch list longer. People have been impressed by Citizen Kane for 70 years, and you think you had it figured out because you watched it once?
I think the secret to harmonizing those opposing impulses is to just make a real concerted effort to not watch crap- crap being whatever you didn't actually have a reason to watch besides not wanting to stare into the void. Watch new things according to a structure (a list, a trusted reviewer, a theme), watch old things according to a ritual.
How long ago was this rewatch prohibition? Based on your Daystrom writing, I'd assume you were either regularly rewatching or have eidetic memory.
I was actually working somewhere that had a mandatory-on TV that I started hijacking to watch morning TNG reruns, and then watching and talking about it online became an intellectual practice when I didn't have many other outlets, and then I watched some DS9, and realized I'd never watched the Animated Series, and hadn't actually finished Enterprise, and was off to the races for a while. I also wasn't interested for a while there because the likes of Battlestar Galactica and Firefly were clearly such an intentional critique of Trek's shortcomings and they were calling to me. But I found my way back, and there was more there than I remembered. My memory is still pretty good, though :-P
<i>Star Trek is a space where...</i>
This resonated strongly with me. Back in the late 90s due to a very late-90s-Internet accident I ended up published on Wired talking in the positive about how the Net had "corroded my native culture" (I'm from Argentina; at the time I was living in Corrientes, an smallish and relatively poor state on its northeast). Part of my argument was that Star Trek -and by that I meant TNG- showed me a set of values and habits (the workplace utopia) I found better for me than what was available in my local culture.
A lot has changed since then, including probably the precise meaning of "local," but it's still the case that every work environment I'm in, every purposeful organization I'm part of, the yardstick they are evaluated against is probably the Enterprise-D.
> "(Apparently Paramount Plus now has “linear” channels that may duplicate the old ways, though I suspect that, like the Heroes and Icons cable channel, they likely play everything in chronological order rather than skipping around.)"
This is good, actually, because it leads to my favorite thing about cable TV: when they air a show's series finale, and then immediately air the show's pilot! I used to make note of when one of the basic cable channels would do this with "Malcolm in the Middle," because there's something really jolting, immersion-breaking even, about watching the three boys turn unpubescent, and thus being reminded that the thing you're casually half-watching while doing the laundry is in fact a massive structure whose creation was a full-time job for hundreds of people. (This is true of all TV, btw, not just "prestige" fare or "comfort watches." I mean, "Malcolm" is a great show, to be clear, but it doesn't obviously fall into either category.)