ABSTRACT

This essay explores discourses on American quality serial television in Sweden’s leading newspapers, and how a gradual discursive repositioning of quality TV – from the extraordinary to the everyday – is linked to Swedish television’s transition into a screen culture increasingly dominated by commercial streaming services. The analysis of the newspaper material shows that the campaign to legitimate quality serial television as respectable art subsided after 2012, to give way to a wider set of conceptualizations of the program form and its role in Swedish television culture. Although the newspaper press includes a range of perspectives, from celebratory approaches to on-demand culture to concerns over audience atomization and diminishing artistic distinction, it is also possible to discern a more general reversal of terms – from originality to sameness, from scarcity to plentitude, and from distinction to mediocrity – that discursively relocates American quality serial TV from the sphere of extraordinary art to the sphere of everyday commercial mass culture. This discursive shift reflects a redefined field for cultural criticism, but also reads as an index of a transformation of television culture in Sweden in the wake of the breakthrough of commercial streaming around 2012.

摘要

本文探讨了瑞典主要报纸上关于美国优质连续电视的论述，以及优质电视的逐渐话语重新定位——从非凡到日常——如何与瑞典电视向日益由商业流媒体服务主导的屏幕文化的转变联系起来。对报纸材料的分析表明，将优质连续电视合法化为受人尊敬的艺术的运动在 2012 年之后消退，让位于更广泛的节目形式概念化及其在瑞典电视文化中的作用。尽管报刊媒体涵盖了一系列观点，从对按需文化的庆祝方式到对观众分散和艺术差异减少的担忧，也有可能发现更普遍的术语颠倒——从原创到相同，从稀缺到丰富，从卓越到平庸——将美国质量连续剧从非凡艺术领域转移到日常商业大众文化领域. 这种话语转变反映了文化批评领域的重新定义，但也被解读为 2012 年左右商业流媒体取得突破后瑞典电视文化转型的一个指标。