Saturday, January 13, 2018

Do tone and aesthetics make TV audiences self-selecting?

Even before the PTSD plotline, there was some discussion around whether Star Trek: Discovery was appropriate for children.  Some have fond childhood memories of watching Star Trek and want it to be suitable for their children, others pointed out that even if children did enjoy it, it was always intended for adults.

TNG is my primary Star Trek, which I watched and enjoyed starting in my preteen years.  However, when DS9 and Voyager came out, I wasn't able to enjoy them because they were too dark for me at that age.

The interesting thing is I could tell by looking at them that they were too dark for me.  I perceived this to be a function of lighting and set design, although incidental music may also have had an impact (I wasn't mindful of incidental music at the time, and blithely allowed it to manipulate my emotions without giving it a single thought.)  I watched like half an episode of each, and I just felt like "This is going to be too scary or sad for me," so I stopped watching.

Aesthetically as well as tonally, Discovery is even darker than DS9 and Voyager.  So I wonder if my child-self's reaction to the aesthetic darkness of DS9 and Voyager is typical and, if so, people who aren't ready for Discovery will screen themselves out?

As an interesting side note, other shows that I found too dark aesthetically as a child were Cheers and MASH.  I've watched both of them in adult life and they worked for me, but I do think they were too adult for my younger self.

My parents watched Doctor Who in the mid-80s, and I found the theme music so scary that I'd leave the room. Many people talk about hiding behind the sofa when the scary parts of Doctor Who came on, but I didn't even get that far because the theme music so accurately conveyed to me that it would be scary!

I wonder if TV shows also work this way for other people?

2 comments:

laura k said...

This post makes me want to see ST Discovery to see how I react to it.

I'm curious about MASH and Cheers, too -- what about those shows seemed dark to your younger self, especially Cheers.

impudent strumpet said...

What was dark about Cheers to me was all the literal dark wood in the set. Somehow, this conveyed to me "This is not for you."

The way it was actually not for me was not in the darkness, but in the adultness.

For example, here's the first 58 seconds of the first episode of Cheers, in which a teenage boy comes into the bar and tries to buy a beer with a fake ID saying that he's a 38-year-old military veteran. My adult self would characterize that scene as light, straightforward, comedically effective, and unremarkable.

However, my child self didn't know what a bar was, didn't know what beer was, and had never been exposed to the idea that a not-quite-grownup would try to buy stuff that was for grownups only, or that it was illegal for the bar to sell it to them. I didn't know what ID was (either in general or in the specific context of checking ID at a bar), couldn't recognize that the young man was nowhere near 38, had no clue that claiming to be a veteran was a particularly laughable ploy, and didn't realize that the word "gross" was completely unidiomatic for a military veteran to describe war.

In short, it was not for me because I wasn't adult enough to understand it. And the dark hues of the set decoration somehow conveyed to me "this is not for you", even though that it seemingly unrelated to (albeit PG-rated) adultness.

MASH put me off because I couldn't tell the characters apart. To my eye, they were all grownup men in the same clothes. The subject matter was also too adult for me, similar to how the subject matter of Cheers was too adult for me - I just didn't know enough about the world to get it. But somehow, the costuming conveyed to me "this is not for you - it's too difficult".