Watching “bad” television: Ironic consumption, camp, and guilty pleasures

Abstract

This research examines how people watch “bad” television–television programs that the viewers themselves label as “trash,” “stupid,” and “awful.” Such viewers experience a normative contradiction; while they have created or embraced a symbolic boundary between “good” and “bad” television, they find themselves transgressing that boundary by consuming and, in some cases, enjoying the shows that they condemn. By conducting 40 in-depth interviews, this research identifies the strategies used by television viewers to deal with this normative contradiction. Beyond “traditional viewing,” we show how viewers employ “ironic consumption,” a “camp sensibility,” and frame their viewing as a “guilty pleasure” to consume “bad” television.