1st Edition
Netflix, Dark Fantastic Genres and Intergenerational Viewing Family Watch Together TV
Focusing on Netflix’s child and family-orientated platform exclusive content, this book offers the first exploration of a controversial genre cycle of dark science fiction, horror, and fantasy television under Netflix’s "Family Watch Together TV" tag.
Using a ground-breaking mix of methods including audience research, interface, and textual analysis, the book demonstrates how Netflix is producing dark family telefantasy content that is both reshaping child and family-friendly TV genres and challenging earlier broadcast TV models around child-appropriate family viewing. It illuminates how Netflix encourages family audiences to "watch together" through intergenerational dynamics that work on and offscreen. The chapters in this book explore how this "Netflixication" of family television developed across landmark examples including Stranger Things, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, and even Squid Game. The book outlines how Netflix is consolidating a new dark family terrain in the streaming sector, which is unsettling older concepts of family viewing, leading to considerable audience and critical confusion around target audiences and viewer expectations.
This book will be of particular interest to upper-level undergraduates, graduates, and scholars in the fields of television studies, screen genre studies, childhood studies, and cultural studies.
1. Family Viewing in the Age of Netflix 2. The Intergenerational Dynamic and "Family Watch Together TV" on Netflix: Stranger Things as Dark Family Telefantasy Prototype 3. The New "Family Watch Together TV": A Series of Unfortunate Events 4. Affective Contagion: Lost in Space’s Old Fans and Young Viewers 5. The Haunted Nostalgia of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance 6. Raising Dion: Paratexts, Genre Creep and the Horror Next Door 7. New Frontiers in Family Viewing: From Stranger Things to Squid Game
Biography
Djoymi Baker is a Lecturer in Cinema Studies at RMIT University, Australia. She has published work on children’s television history, film and television genres, stardom, and intergenerational fandom. Djoymi is the author of To Boldly Go: Marketing the Myth of Star Trek (2018) and the co-author of The Encyclopedia of Epic Films (2014).
Jessica Balanzategui is a Senior Lecturer in Media at RMIT University, Australia, and was previously Deputy Director of the Centre for Transformative Media Technologies at Swinburne University of Technology. She has published widely on "problematic" children’s screen genres in journals including New Media Society and Convergence, and is the author of The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema (Amsterdam UP, 2018).
Diana Sandars is an academic in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She has published widely on the children of Australian and Hollywood screens. Diana is the author of What a Feeling: The Hollywood Musical After MTV (Intellect, forthcoming) and co-editor of Gothic in the Oceanic South: Maritime, Marine and Aquatic Uncanny in Southern Waters (Routledge, forthcoming).
“Even as streaming offers individual user accounts, the death of family viewing has been greatly exaggerated. Family Watch Together TV shows instead how Netflix’s embrace of dark telefantasy produced new intergenerational viewing cultures and transformed the way parents and children approach programming. It expertly reveals how Netflix has changed television, while more broadly reminding us of the complex, dynamic nature of genre.”
Professor Derek Johnson, author of Transgenerational Media Industries: Adults, Children, and the Reproduction of Culture, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies in the Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“A timely and very important contribution to the new reception and consumption contexts for streaming and platform services. The focus on ‘dark fantasy genres’ in the context of family viewing is well considered and incredibly fruitful, and one that offers an exciting entry point to understanding the datafication of viewing and its impacts upon the notion of the ‘family’ viewer. The authors anchor their innovative approach through the mutability of genre alongside a strong histography. The chapters often draw on the issue of fandom but from different perspectives: this is an intriguing, original ‘pivot’ since the book addresses these attachments through the idea of family relationships. This is a must have monograph in what is the new age of family viewing.”
Professor Sean Redmond, author of Liquid Space: Digital Age Science Film and Television, Professor of Film and Television, Deakin University.
“This is a totally original approach. The material is very timely, as this is a new categorization style for Netflix. The writing style is accessible and yet academically rigorous.”
Professor Kim Akass, Editor of Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond and Critical Studies in Television Online and Critical Studies in Television (Journal), Professor of Radio, TV and Film, Rowan University.
