Kristyn Gorton: 'They saw this massive decline in numbers when they came back'

On Tuesday afternoon, Bonnier guest professor Kristyn Gorton, delivered a speech on 'Media, Emotion and Resilience' at Stockholm University. After the pandemic she found out how the conditions for the production of tv fiction drastically had changed as the Covid-19 virus swept around the globe.

Professor Kristyn Gorton Photo: Svante Emanuelli © Stockholm May 17, 2022
After the pandemic professor Kristyn Gorton talked to the executive producer of the tv series Fair City. "I then interviewed the executive producer Brigie de Courcy to ask her about how covid-19 affected the soap production during the pandemic", she told the crowd gathered in JMK-salen on Tuesday. Photo: Svante Emanuelli © Stockholm May 17, 2022


PUBLISHED: May 17, 2022
UPDATED: May 18, 2022

Before the pandemic, in early 2020, she had just started interviewing a tv producer on 'resilience'.

"And then the pandemic happened", Kristyn Gorton told the audience in JMK-salen adding that:

"I then interviewed the executive producer Brigie de Courcy after the pandemic to ask her about how covid-19 affected the soap production during the pandemic".

It suddenly became increasingly difficult trying to create  intimacy. And Gorton said that: 

"And that was the hardest thing, she said, was to try and create that kind of intimacy between parent and child, or lovers, without getting people very close to each other".
 



People lost the habit of watching soaps


The two most interesting things Kristyn Gorton noted was that "soap has always been a habit. And went the soap went off the air, they saw this massive decline in numbers when they came back, because people got out of the habit. They started watching other programs on television, and they just didn’t got back. So for the first time ever they had to spend a lot of money on promos for the soap", she said adding that:

Image from the Fair City tv series. Photo: Courtesy of RTE Press Centre © May 2022
"And went the soap went off the air, they saw this massive decline in numbers when they came back, because people got out of the habit", professor Kristyn Gorton recounted what the executive producer Brigie de Courcy of the tv series Fair City, told her in an interview on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic tv production. Photo: Courtesy of RTE Press Centre © May 2022


"And then the other was that the storytelling itself had changed. So soaps, and this is the same with contemporary television, rely on a lot of characters seeding story, and kind of letting the gossip move around. And telling somebody here and telling somebody there. And they couldn’t use those characters, cause they had to limit the set. So they had to completely restructure the way they told those stories. So, it definitely had a strong impact".



The breaking of the fourth wall


"I think the other thing we saw was a breaking of the fourth wall, that didn’t seem to happen before. Because I think, you know what I was saying at the start, that there became a resurgence of intimacy with television. People were watching a lot more, getting closer to it and then suddenly we wanted [inaudible] comfortable with our characters talking to us. And (we) wanted even more intimacy than I think was kind of desired before", Kristyn Gorton said.

Public lecture based on an upcoming paper | Stockholm University, May 17, 2022

The Covid 19 pandemic highlighted the power of television to transmit not only information but also emotion. Television, as a medium, acted as a source of not only storytelling, but also as an emotional anchor to viewers who relied on it for comfort and reassurance.

Her upcoming paper will consider the extent to which television can be understood as a ‘caring technology’ through a discussion of how emotion is constructed within television programmes.

The paper will also introduce and discuss the concept of ‘resilience’ that has circulated so frequently through the media in order to consider ‘resilient characters’ within television drama. In so doing, this paper will challenge the demand inherent to the concept of resilience and consider forms of feminist resistance explored in contemporary television drama.