essay question

'Representations of social, cultural and historical events can vary within long form television dramas from different countries'

 Discuss how and why audiences might respond to and interpret these representations differently.

- introduce both texts 'D83', ST' - episode 1
- compare audiences of both


Long form television drama is defined as a high concept narrative with complex characters and story lines that develop over a number of episodes in a narrative. This is evident in both stranger things (ST) and Deutschland 83' (D83').

Both dramas are set in  the 1980's however vary in different social, cultural and historical representations. The distributor of Stranger Things , Netflix, is a platform agnostic international company with over 160 minion monthly subscribers with a vast audience. Netflix is lightly regulated as their HQ is in Amsterdam, whom have different rules to the UK and therefore overseeing a much larger proportion of popular shows aside from Netflix (Channel 4 D83). This highlights ST's freedom to produce content that has a range of complexity. Deutschland 83' however, was co produced by RTL and ABC networks with Sun dance TV between Germany and America , but was broadcasted on Channel 4 in the UK. Channel 4 has  a reputation for showing diverse LFTVD's which are aimed at an intelligent ABC1 demographic, who are culturally aware and have knowledge of events such as The Cold War in D83 .  Ofcom regulated D83, which meant it had to be shown at 9pm watershed due to its content. Due to its German audience, D83', had many elements of verisimilitude therefore it was unpopular at first as the historical context represented Germany negatively at times. On the other hand, in the UK it was very popular with 5 million views of the first series in a month of it being shown, this is because of political views that differ throughout the countries, creating an interest for the LFTVD.

ST was set in a 1980's Spielbergian culture, as the Duffer Brothers try to reinforce 80's nostalgia for an older audience with the characters clothing,  Dungeons and dragons and chopper bikes. This creates a sense of normality for the audience which supports Todorov's theory of equilibrium as the narrative disruption is the monstrous event at the beginning  and ends with wills abduction at the end. This further creates an enigma for the episode and a narrative drive for the search of will.

Bualdrillard - hyperrelity

  Due to the conglomerate being so successful worldwide, well known clothing brands such as Top shop, Zara and Primark used synergy with ST and created items of clothing with ST characters on. This therefore makes the LFTVD  known worldwide as fans become more aware of the drama and it acts as a self marketing campaign.