le coin débat...

ROH C'est magique...

Conclusion de mon travail sur les séries de l'année dernières... je serai ravie de savoir ce que vous en pensez..

Citation :

During my TFH, I tried my best to answer my question: “Do series praise the American culture across the world?”, studying the evolution of series and the way they work here and in the States.

My conclusion: Yes and no. Yes because series are made for the American people, and, consequently, they are made of American culture, and “no”, because ‘pride’ is not the main purpose of the channels : they adapted their products to the needs of their audience to make profit, money being of course the first reason, more than imposing a culture and a way of thinking
and behaving.

In the history section, I spoke about decades and I think this is – like I said in the introduction – the most important and significant part of my work when it comes to understanding how and why this or that kind of series was born. After I wrote this section, it seemed more than obvious that each series was only the result of thoughts and expectations of a time. Though, series have revealed to be an extraordinary loyalty tool, and consequently, they offer opportunities to make people think more than cinema, and that’s what we began to understand in the nineties. The audience wants reflexion, astonishment and shock, and consequently, for economic reasons it became the main purpose of the channels and networks. Little by little, series became a creativity and speech tool. The limits of the little screen are expanding so slowly that it’s difficult to see the incredible evolution and changes that the series have been through.

There are so many other questions we could try to answer too : do we have to worry about the influence and the place that series take in our society? Are series going to be seen as an art, or stay in the limits of American culture, only considered as a mass product? Is it possible to say that series are “mass art” after all?

Until now, they’ve been considered as typically American because of their
success based on their economic interest, but they have this paradoxical power to denounce certain operations of society as never before. Series are representative of our globalisation climate. They are a universal voice, based on consumption and capitalism: The less profitable series are smashed, no matter whether they’re good or not. This way to work is in opposition with the perception that we have of art. Art mustn’t be based on its success, but on the artist’s job, it has to deserve its place and it has to be accessible to a certain elite. How can a thing set up on such commercial bases ever have access to the statute of Art?

Are the series, the image of so many things in the USA, a product of consumption without spirit and soul? I don’t think so…

I think American series are the reflection of the worst and the best of a
neo-liberal society, a great creativity in a spiral of sad constraints.