PBS and its Social Capitalists

Being completely new to PBS, my commentary on its relation to taste is based on a relatively small and randomized “sample size”. I have concentrated on two broad areas of content—PBS “Masterpiece” and PBS “Frontline”. These two categories of content coincide with two different “genres” (if one may use the term)—television drama and television documentary.

I have not actually watched “Masterpiece” within the PBS structure of content, but I am familiar with some of the shows that have been featured under the Masterpiece banner. What is striking about the Masterpiece series is the overwhelming presence of British television drama. Having grown up watching Agatha Christie’s Poirot and having recently binge-watched Wallander (to the point that finding out there was no fourth season, caused major heartbreak) and Sherlock, I was I was wondering what it was about British television drama that made it to the “upper echelons” of American television, so to speak.

Mike’s post on Masterpiece succinctly points out the shift in tenor from the old opening sequence to the new one, where the “indications of class and Britishness that so characterized the original” have all but disappeared. I am not too well placed to comment on what this shift indicates. Perhaps this entails a move towards positing that it is the act of appropriating the content, rather than the content itself, that is an indicator of taste. “Britishness”, particularly a nostalgic, middle-class imagination of Britishness haunts the content of shows such as Downton Abbey and Poirot.

However, now even within the British context, a show such as Wallander remade from the Swedish version complicates the notion of (good) taste as lying within the realm of “Britishness”—perhaps there is a move towards a notion of “quality television” that transcends the trappings of that categorization and begins to reflect an eclecticist approach to television drama. The appropriation of British content within the Masterpiece banner therefore, does not reflect as much a deification of a nostalgic idea of Britishness, as it reflects what Bordieu has called a tendency of self-distinguishing.

This self-distinguishing tendency also marks PBS’ branding of Frontline. As a series of documentaries focusing on “tough, controversial issues or complex stories”, Frontline’s self-branding as “the last best hope for broadcast documentaries” is indicative of a desire to posit itself as “smart” television for “smart” viewers. It is worth mentioning, as a side note, that Frontline is produced by WGBH-TV, the same PBS affiliated, Boston based television station that produces Masterpiece. Again, because Frontline has featured more than five-hundred films till now, I was forced to rely on a viewing of three films—Raising Adam Lanza (2013), Opium Brides (2012) and The Secret State of North Korea (2014).

Raising Adam Lanza deals with the relationship between Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and his mother Nancy. The documentary ostensibly seeks to explore the more “human” side of Adam and his mother who have both been subjected to endless post-mortem speculative scrutiny. The emphasis seems to be on reinstating the perpetrator as a human subject in an introspective analysis of the American domestic scenario. In contrast, there is a stark difference in the other two documentaries—both of which deal with America’s global “others”. Opium Bride which explores the practice of opium harvesting in Afghanistan and The Secret State of North Korea, which is a film devoted to exposing the “cruelty” of the North Korean communist regime are both treated with an ethnocentrist lens. 

The issue at stake here is not whether or not these practices exist in those countries or not, but the ways in which they reinforce an essentialist notion of “Afghan-ness” or “North-Korean-ness” and in effect, an idea of a preferable American socio-political system is upheld. PBS’ branding of Frontline as “serious” documentary—a taste-based category operates in this case to define the other. In other words, “tasteful” documentary functions politically here, to posit what is not to be aspired towards. This branding has come under criticism in a few occasions in which it has been alleged that funding for some of the documentaries came from sources that had influenced the shape of the films. A couple of pieces in the LA Times and Salon for example, criticized this trend and warned against PBS turning into a “Plutocrat Broadcasting Service”. What is crucial to note in both examples—Masterpiece and Frontline, is the emphasis on branding. Commercial imperatives are masked behind a notion of good taste that is generated both through an allegiance to real or imagined referents of “quality” as in Masterpiece, or the emphasis on “truth” and social responsibility as in case of Frontline.

In conclusion however, it might be apt to ask, if television programming is an active function of class and taste, who exactly is watching? While I do not have any indicators for Masterpiece, Frontline’s website tries to describe its viewing base as:  “affluent and well-educated. They are more likely to hold executive or professional employment positions than the general population and the average public television viewer. FRONTLINE viewers are social capitalists as PBS has defined them: Americans who are engaged in, contributing to, and participating in their communities. They are civic-minded and active in public affairs” (emphases mine). 

“General population” and “average public television viewer” are the key terms here, because these are the terms against which the “ideal” viewer is defined. The ideal viewer here is also an ideal citizen—contributing to and participating in the creation of community activities, and also community standards. Here “taste” both classifies the ideal viewer and is inscribed with class; “social capitalists” as the website puts it. PBS, it seems, is keenly aware that its viewers, “social capitalists” are also the owners of cultural capital.