The Politics of Domestic Consumption by Stevi Jackson Shaun Moores

Author:Stevi Jackson, Shaun Moores [Stevi Jackson, Shaun Moores]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, Marriage & Family, Media Studies
ISBN: 9781317903642
Google: 0XjXAwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-06-06T04:59:38+00:00

Power and control over programme choice

Masculine power is evident in a number of the families as the ultimate determinant on occasions of conflict over viewing choices. (‘We discuss what we all want to watch and the biggest wins. That’s me, I’m the biggest’.) It is even more apparent in the case of those families who have a remote-control device. None of the women in any of the families uses the remote-control device regularly. A number of them complain that their husbands use the device obsessively, channel-flicking across programmes when their wives are trying to watch something else. Characteristically, the remote-control device is the symbolic possession of the father (or of the son, in the father’s absence), which sits ‘on the arm of Daddy’s chair’ and is used almost exclusively by him. It is a highly visible symbol of condensed power relations:

Daughter: Dad keeps both of the automatic controls – one on each side of his chair.

Woman: Well, I don’t get much chance, because he sits there with the automatic control beside him and that’s it… I get annoyed because I can be watching a programme and he’s flicking channels to see if a programme on the other side is finished so he can record something. So the television’s flickering all the time, while he’s flicking the timer. I just say, ‘For goodness sake, leave it alone’. I don’t get the chance to use the control. I don’t get near it.

Woman: I don’t get the chance to use the automatic control. I leave that down to him. It is aggravating, because I can be watching something and all of a sudden he turns it over to get the football result.

Daughter: The control’s always next to Dad’s chair. It doesn’t come away when Dad’s here. It stays right there.

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