TV is always changing. As new technologies are being innovated and affecting the audiences experience of television, the spread of ways to watch your favourite TV shows are increasing. Cable TV, while still used, is not as popular as audiences are choosing to either consume TV through Foxtel, Tablets or Streaming platforms. So, in the coming years, will the new generation even remember such thing as ‘cable television’? Probably not.
Today, the platform in which I consume my TV from is either from Foxtel or Netflix. My only use for Foxtel is the Sport and Music Channels. Sport channels allow for live viewing of sports I like, such as Cricket, Football and NRL, as well as past broadcasts I may have missed. They also provide the innovative feature which allows for a consumer to record their shows to watch at a later date, something that needed a large and ‘complex’ recording machine back in the day.
The latest series I watched on Netflix was Stranger Things. A short science fiction TV series. It follows a group of kids who in the end have to fight monsters all to save a small town in America called ‘Hawkins’. An older and mature audience will resonate with this type of show as it creates a sense of nostalgia resembling their own childhoods. I think it really resonates with me as I’ve always wanted to know what it really was like to live in the same kind of era or generation. The clothes, the soundtrack and the small-town family vibe you receive is enough to make an individual envy the fictional characters.
Characters explore a true coming of age story as the children in the show learn a lot about themselves. They face both the physical challenges such as the aliens throughout season one and the mental challenges of being a child in the 1980’s. Yet the togetherness of the children empowers the small town of Hawkins to defeat any challenge which came in their way.
The TV series uses political undertones mixing with a storyline that is reminiscent of classical horror/thriller films. The monster in season one, which seems to overwhelm the small town, conveys themes similarly from other classical films such as ‘Alien’ and ‘E.T.’. The vibe which the children create throughout the movie captures a nostalgic take on the domestic era in the 1980’s, similar to Steven Spielberg’s ‘The Goonies’. These classic films all resonate with a standard film audience as they were and are popular on a global scale.
In regards to the global scale of the TV series, the first episode was watched by 40.7 million households. This enormous number shows the popularity of the TV series and how well the themes and genres resonate with the viewers on a global scale. The era in which the series is set in explores an era which many countries did have to endure. An era which encountered the start of technology and therefore television.
Stranger Things truely displays the lost and forgotten era of early technology. Such technologies such as cassettes, cable television and radios have become lost in the new era of global innovative technologies.
James Muggeridge
https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2019/07/09/netflixs-stranger-things-3-breaks-records/
https://au.ign.com/articles/2016/07/08/stranger-things-season-1-review
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Television_Studies_Reader.html?id=pf5QEQkbePsC
James Muggeridge 