Timed Essay 3

Why do long form television dramas from different countries offer different representations?

In this essay I will look at why long form television dramas from different countries offer different representations. The two television dramas I will be discussing in this essay are Stranger Things and Deutschland 83.

The first long form television drama is Stranger Things, which aired on Netflix and is a Netflix original series. It was created by The Duffer Brothers, who also directed a large number of the episodes released so far, specifically the Pilot episode which we have studied. Netflix are a global streaming service that has a total of 207.64 million subscribers as of the first quarter of 2021 and 74 million of these are from the US and Canada. Netflix has more subscribers worldwide than all of its competition (such as Amazon Prime and Disney+) and its seemingly still growing. Netflix are a global brand and have a huge worldwide reach which allows for maximum accessibility. Their main purpose is to provide escapism and entertainment through their TV shows and their films, something they were able to capitalise on during the recent global pandemic. Even while a lot of other brands were losing money and subscribers, Netflix continued to gain as people began to use the service to escape from the real world. Like Stranger Things, most of Netflix’s products are made to appeal to a mass audience, which is often a younger target audience like teenagers.

The second-long form television drama is Deutschland 83, which was created and produced by Walter Productions. The show has since become the highest rated and most viewed foreign drama in UK television history with around 2.5 million viewers. However, Deutschland 83 wasn’t much of a success in Germany and has frequently been called the biggest flop in the history of German television as many believed it was overly sympathetic to East German agents. Their target audience is a lot smaller than Stranger Things in general as the topic of the show is something older people are more likely to be interested in or people interested in history would watch.

Stranger Things presents a traditional ideology with its gender roles and values. This is most obvious in the Wheeler household, as the mother stays at home and is a housewife and the father go off to work to make the money for the family. Mike is a typical teenage boy, who plays nerdy games like Dungeons and Dragons with his other friends. All of the authority roles in the town are male held, such as the police force, the headteacher in the school, the other teachers and even the leader of the government-type organisation. Deutschland 83 is almost the opposite in terms of representation, presenting a socialist ideology and even challenging gender roles throughout the first episode. Lenora is a woman in a position of power in the government, something that breaks gender stereotypes. The target audience outside of Germany would not be used to the socialist ideology presented in this show as they are so used to their own capitalist society. The east was seen as the enemy by the target audience (western society) and the west were seen as good, which is reinforced by the binary opposition of the narrative in the show. The show focuses on the conflict between the east and the west, but flips the focus, challenging the audience and their norms and values.

Stranger Things and Deutschland 83 both tackle identity and representation in different ways. Stranger Things presents a society that the audience would be used to and would take a preferred reading to, a capitalist one in which the characters are relatable through their family norms and values as well as their interests and hobbies but Deutschland 83 presents a society that the audience aren’t used to, a socialist one where they would take an oppositional reading to their ideologies and way of living. Identity theory can be applied to Stranger Things as the older target audience are likely to seek out this show as it would likely share the same views and beliefs as them, and the younger audience will likely relate to the teenagers in the show.

Stranger Things appeals to a younger audience mostly but features intertextual references from the 80’s that an older target audience would understand and potentially become interested in the show through. Deutschland 83 appeals to an older audience in general due to its depiction of the Cold War and how a lot of younger audience members wouldn’t be as interested.