Watching Nostalgia: An Analysis of Nostalgic Television Fiction and its Reception

✍ Scribed by Stefanie Armbruster

• Publisher: transcript Verlag
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 436
• Series: Cultural Studies; 48
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

What is nostalgia in television? How far does a nostalgic text trigger nostalgic emotions? And how are nostalgic series received by different audience groups?
Stefanie Armbruster uses an interdisciplinary approach as analytical and theoretical basis. Her detailed analyses identify nostalgia in reruns, remakes and period dramas such as "Knight Rider" or "Mad Men". Focus group discussions with German and Spanish viewers give new insights into its reception.
The in-depth study helps to understand the interrelation of nostalgic texts and nostalgic reception better and explores a decisive part of a phenomenon that is omnipresent in our current TV landscape.

✦ Table of Contents

Content
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
PART I – THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND METHODOLOGICAL DESIGN
2. Nostalgia
2.1 A first definition – the origins of the term and its development
2.2 Literature review – discourses of nostalgia
2.2.1 Nostalgia as a contemporary malaise
2.2.2 Nostalgia and identity
2.2.3 Nostalgia: death of historicity or paradigm shift
2.2.4 Nostalgia and the (re)construction of ‘history’
2.2.5 Nostalgia and cultural style
2.2.6 Nostalgia in Germany and Spain
2.3 Conclusion on the discourse and transition to following research steps
2.3.1 Nostalgia ‘mood’
2.3.2 From the cognitive-emotional to the textual part of nostalgia
2.3.3 The bandwidth of nostalgia
3. Two ‘archives’ – nostalgia’s relationship to the past
3.1 Memory
3.1.1 Personal memory
3.1.2 ‘Collective’ memory
3.1.3 Postmemory and prosthetic memory
3.1.4 Media memories
3.2 Physical and digital archives
3.2.1 Television archives in Germany and Spain
3.3 Conclusion
4. Aesthetic emotions – on nostalgia’s relationship to the present
4.1 The discourse of emotions in film and television studies
4.2 Characteristics of emotions
4.2.1 Nostalgia as an emotion
4.3 Aesthetic emotions
4.3.1 Fiction emotions
4.3.2 Artefact emotions
4.4 Making the transfer to nostalgia in television: conclusions, hypotheses, and transition to the analytical parts
4.4.1 A combination of the approaches – towards the ‘modules’ of analysis
4.4.2 Methodology
PART II – TEXT
5. The ‘genres’ of nostalgic fiction
5.1 Television reruns
5.2 Television remakes
5.3 Period dramas
6. Case studies on nostalgia on the textual level
6.1 Reruns and nostalgia
6.1.1 Analysis of nostalgia in Knight Rider
6.1.2 Analysis of nostalgia in The Avengers
6.1.3 A first conclusion on reruns as potential triggers for nostalgia
6.2 Remakes and nostalgia
6.2.1 Analysis of nostalgia in Knight Rider (NBC, 2008)
6.2.2 Analysis of nostalgia in The Avengers (Chechik, 1998)
6.2.4 First conclusion on the remakes as potential triggers for nostalgia
6.3 Period dramas and nostalgia
6.3.1 Analysis of nostalgia in Mad Men
6.3.2 Analysis of nostalgia in Borgia
6.3.3 First conclusion on period dramas as potential triggers for nostalgia
6.4 Conclusion on the television analysis and transition to Part III
PART III – RECEPTION
7. The reception of nostalgia
7.1 Excursus – empirical research on nostalgia in television
7.2 The process of the investigation
7.2.1 Focus groups
7.2.2 Questionnaire
7.2.3 Analysis of the group discussions
8. Presentation of results
8.1 Reception of the reruns
8.1.1 The reception of the Knight Rider rerun
8.1.2 The reception of the The Avengers rerun
8.1.3 Conclusion on reruns as potential triggers of nostalgia
8.2 Reception of the remakes
8.2.1 Reception of the Knight Rider remake
8.2.2 Reception of The Avengers remake
8.2.3 Conclusion on remakes as potential triggers for nostalgia
8.3 Reception of the period dramas
8.3.1 The reception of the period drama Mad Men
8.3.2 Reception of the period drama Borgia
8.3.3 Conclusion on period dramas as potential triggers of nostalgia
9. Discussion of the results of the reception study
9.1 The cases of nostalgia
9.1.1 General characteristics of the objects of nostalgia
9.1.2 The ‘genres’ of nostalgia
9.1.3 Triggers of nostalgia
9.1.4 Reception and appropriation
9.1.5 Necessary time spans of nostalgia
9.1.6 Relevance of the reflexive pre-focus of the text
9.1.7 Inter-group differences
9.1.8 Intra-group differences
9.2 Outlook
10. Afterword
11. Bibliography
12. Appendix