Retrospective Media Consumption Experiences & Young Audience's Impacts on Horror Hosting: Article Review

Tora Korsvold’s article, “Childhood and Children’s Retrospective Media Consumption Experiences: The case of Norway” (2017) discusses the impact of ‘retrospective childhood media consumption experiences’ in a historical context, exploring the concept through focus group interviews. Firstly, Korsvold establishes the connection of childhood media consumption to generations, arguing that generations are a facet of how cultural meanings are created through practices such as sharing media (pp. 98-99). Children have an active role in meaning making surrounding media, as well as in consumer practices around media (pp. 98-99) . Korsvold aims to use ‘memory studies’ where individuals reflect on their memories, to examine the meaning-making process of children with media (p.99). She also notes that passion and nostalgia surrounding childhood media are powerful factors in intergenerational media consumption and meaning-making (p.99). Korsvold describes the cultural and media context that her participants would have grown up in, in post World War II Scandinavia when overall consumption was low and alarmist narratives around television and children’s media were high (p. 100). She explains her methodology, and her goal of understanding “how children as actors seek meaning and how adults look back on their own childhood, especially in terms of how time and space and the material culture of children are interwoven” through a phenomenological study (p. 101). Korsvold identified several themes in the focus group interview transcripts, including discussions of communal media consumption experiences with family, especially when the programs were broadcast at a specific time every day that could become a part of the family routine (pp. 104-105). Korsvold also noted the interaction of imagined representations of the past with true memories in the way that the adults reflected on their childhoods (p. 108). Fascination and passion created the strongest associations in the participants' memories, and collective memories were identified due to the shared place and time of the members of the focus groups (pp. 108-109).

Overall, this piece is useful to me because it discusses how childhood media memories impact cultural meanings, the ways that adults remember them and the factors that made them impactful. For my own project, I am looking at media that became impactful largely because of its audience of primarily children. Horror hosting was successful at the time, and remains an enduring trend, because so many children loved it. In this way, children were actively involved in the meaning-making surrounding horror hosting, especially since it was often participatory in nature. It reminded me of an anecdote from American Scary (2006) where, if I’m remembering correctly, the original Svengoolie appointed a young Rich Koz as the new ‘son of Svengoolie’ because he had written so many letters to the host with ideas for bits to incorporate on the show. It seems that it would be difficult to overstate the importance of young audiences on the horror hosting trend overall. I found Korsvold’s (2017) discussion of generational meaning-making interesting, and it could definitely relate to cultural fears that are passed down from parents. For example, the things that my mom found scary when she was a kid were also some of my first horror experiences. The continual mention of the importance of communal media experiences is also of note here. Many of the audience memories I’ve found so far and some of the academic literature have mentioned that watching things communally made for a more impactful experience. Additionally, this relates to the ‘communal’ experience created between the horror host and the audience when they watch the film featured together. The mention of timing is also relevant, since many horror hosting programs were broadcast late at night when kids were meant to be in bed, which I’m sure contributed to their effect. All of these things can serve to explain why certain programs are impactful to kids, and many of them apply to horror hosting shows. I also found Korsvold’s methodology interesting, I had never heard of the concept of ‘memory studies’ specifically. It may be useful to reference her methods when I gather material for my own project, in order to gather the most useful oral histories possible especially when it comes to childhood memories. 

This week I’ve continued to work through my documentary training modules, doing some more of this course that I began before and starting this one. It’s been good to brush up on some post-production knowledge, I am definitely a bit rusty since I did very minimal editing during my gap year. Admittedly I am a little behind on meetings, but I plan to prioritize it this week, to schedule meetings and follow up with the committee member that I haven’t heard back from in a while.

References

Hudgens, E. J. (Director). (2006). American Scary [Film]. Cinema Libre Studio.

Korsvold, T. (2017). Childhood and children’s retrospective media consumption experiences. Nordicom Review, 38(2), 97–112. https://doi.org/10.1515/nor-2017-0394