Television's unintended audience

Abstract

Jayasinhji Jhala introduced the idea of the “unintended audience” in his 1994 article of the same title in which he explored the impact of ethnographic films on those viewers who are generally not considered by the filmmaker as being included in his or her intended audience.1 I borrow this concept here in discussing subaltern audiences2 of First World television. The “other” viewing the “self” highlights the ramifications of the question “Who are ‘they'?” vis‐à‐vis notions of “Who are ‘we'?” I contend that the answer to the former directly shapes and informs the latter as Fourth World people are forced to negotiate their identity upon exposure to First World television. The result is a transformative process whereby Fourth World viewers reassign the roles of “self” and “other” in order to preserve, defend, and construct their own selfhood.