Consumption of television series, waiting times and their impact on the distribution of domestic space

Abstract

In the rhythm of the dizzying social changes that post-modern society experiences, new ways of building social ties are identified, of being linked to jobs, training spaces and of course, experiencing leisure in terms of free time. In this framework, this article presents a brief analysis of the relationship that Argentines have built with the series, postulating that the remote control grants a power equivalent to that of the He-Man sword, avoiding the waiting times that were historically assumed TV programs and placing the subjects as protagonists and sole decision-makers of the content to consume. This impacts on family ties and on the distribution of domestic space (the scene of disputes when families had only one radio and / or one television), since watching a series can be an activity that is shared with others or loneliness, since in general, in homes there is more than one technological device per member of the group.

These new dynamics show that the social identities constructed during the development of modernity were quite different since they were developed on the basis of the subjects' belonging to consolidated units of meaning, such as the family and the National State. Today, identity is no longer only built from identification with institutions that give meaning to the human experience, but it was also being de-localized, crossing the geographical borders that have historically limited the horizon of cultural experiences.