From Spectatorship to “Survivorship” in Five Critical Propositions

Abstract

Often theorized through the negative framework of addiction or passivity, binge-watching has been transformed into a civic duty and a mode of survival during the COVID-19 pandemic. Exploring this recent plot-twist in bingeing scholarship, this article proposes five new ways to study the most dominant spectatorial mode under corona-capitalism. These propositions include studying how the pandemic turned bingeing into an antidote to “languishing,” a feeling of sadness and exhortation that, if unrecognized, might lead to depression; exploring co-watching apps in order to move away from the cliché of bingeing as an individual activity; unpacking the importance of narrative causality during the pandemic’s prolonged structure and temporal limbo; paying close attention to interface design decisions, such as the addition of a “playback speed” feature to Netflix in August 2020; and, finally, demonstrating how binge-watching trains viewers to ignore their basic biological needs while turning them into unpaid laborers.