We Are What We Watch (The Logic of Identification)
5. We Are What We Watch (The Logic of Identification)
Finally, the U & G tradition suggests that one of the most powerful and enduring aspects of viewer engagement is television’s role in “identification.” As a term, identification describes the range of ways in
which engagement with television content may both help viewers to formulate and/or reaffirm their personal identities (self-identification) and allow them to express and signal those self-perceived identities to others
(social identification).
5.1. Self Identification
According to McQuail, work in U & G suggests that a viewer’s engagement with media content can influence a viewer’s self-perception by (1) providing reinforcement for personal values; (2) offering new models of behavior; (3) encouraging viewers to identify themselves with media figures; and (4) offering viewers insight into their own personalities, values and identities. In addition, Russell et al have also articulated a number of practices that describe the various ways in which a television program can contribute to a viewer’s self-perception and identity. These practices include “modeling” (relating one’s own life to that of a character), “fashioning” (being influenced by a character’s appearance), and “aspiration” (the desire to be on the show, akin to the desire for extratextual immersion, or “in” the show, akin to the desire for textual immersion).
Validation. A somewhat less pathologizing interpretation of these practices is that viewers might
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embody traits that they perceive or value in themselves. Thus, as McQuail has suggested, viewers might demonstrate deeper engagement with shows that seem to re-affirm or validate the viewer’s online lifestyle,
behavior and decisions. Emancipation. In his work on role-playing games, Mackay has proposed that the experience of
assuming and acting out roles offers a form of “emancipation,” and explains that RPG players often assume new identities and relate to their characters in order to free themselves from existing social bonds. 19 A
similar process of experimentation may help explain a practice that Russell and Puto have described as “imitation,” wherein a viewer imitates the behavior or mannerisms of a television character.
5.2. Social Identification
The desire to signal one’s personal preferences and affiliations to others may also help explain the motives of viewers who acquire branded products and collectible merchandise. As Lancaster has suggested:
These different objects become a means for people to enact fantasy, to panoptically display oneself, which, according to Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, is a way “to show with respect to others what one would not reveal
about oneself — one’s body, person and life.” 20
Thus, while the practices of wearing branded apparel and displaying branded merchandise may function (as suggested earlier in this chapter) to further a viewer’s sense of textual immersion, the same practices might also represent a form of signaling one’s affiliation with a television text, or with themes, characters and values identified with that text.
The five logics of engagement discussed in this chapter, along with the framework for developing the ‘expanded television text’ discussed in chapter two, point to a possible route forward for television within an experience economy. Television’s future in a cluttered, fragmented media space seems to hinge on its ability to transform itself in response to new modes of use, rather than the industry’s ongoing attempts to
19 Mackay. 28.