Comunicar 39-ingles - Revista Comunicar

116Comunicar, 39, XX, 201224 to 29 age group finds it hard to identify with them.Fiction does not tend to serve as a reference as theinterviewees cope with their day-to-day problems.However, even though some of the plots are not veryrealistic, there are youngsters of all ages who try toextrapolate the ideas from the fiction to their own reality,a more marked trend among critical viewers. Infact, the sentimental relationships and entertainment ofthe main characters are the representations that theparticipants in the focus groups wanted to imitate themost often. Some youngsters also identified with theattitude and actions of the characters, contextualisedaccording to their own experience.4. Conclusions and discussionTelevision fiction is the macro-genre preferred bythe interviewees, especially the females, whose greaterloyalty to their favourite programmes is coherentwith their preference for dramatic shows (mainly soapoperas). Conversely, the males’ inclination for comedycorresponds to the much more discontinuous nature ofmale viewing. On the other hand, the social class ofthe participants in the focus groups did not seem toinfluence their television viewing, nor did their origin(local or foreign). Generally speaking, the intervieweescan be classified into the four groups proposed byMillwood and Gatfield (2002) according to theirreception patterns and attitude towards the programmes:• Fanatics: they are deeply enthusiastic about televisionfiction and follow it regularly, usually withoutquestioning it.• Ironic: they like television fiction, but they experiencecontradictory feelings, which sometimes leadthem to adopt a critical attitude towards the programmes.• Non-committed: they are attracted by televisionfiction but only follow it sporadically when seeking an«easy» form of entertainment.• Dismissive: these viewers are full of prejudicesagainst television fiction and never or almost neverwatch it.Females’ loyalty to their favourite fiction showspartly contradicts much of the spontaneity that Morleyattributed to female viewing in 1986 and reveals thefact that the most casual planning and viewing are linkednot to viewers’ gender but to programme genre.More familiar topics and typically Spanish humourare among the most highly valued aspects, as well asthe characters’ problems and controversial themes(Tufte, 2007). However, even though some intervieweeswere disdainful of Spanish fiction (compared tothat of the US), others appreciated its greater familiarityand recognised that it had a certain didactic value.Thus, the enthusiasm shown by adolescents andyoung adults for the Catalan show «Polseres vermelles»,a drama featuring a group of children and adolescentshospitalised for serious illnesses, reveals theeducational potential of fanfiction in adolescents’ personaldevelopment, as noted by authors like RebeccaW. Black (2008).The youngsters expressed their preference for thecharacters who are their age (Harwood, 1997). Howe -ver, self-assured characters, as well as those who arerebels and ambivalent, aroused greater interest thanthe others, an indication of a possible cathartic identificationaimed at reconciling the similarities betweenthe characters and the viewer with the extraordinarynature of the narrative, as noted by Gripsrud, followingJauss (Gripsrud, 2005). Nonetheless, the ironicinterviewees clearly understand that the characters arestereotypes and that their experiences do not resemblethose of real youngsters (Spence, 1995), while thefanatics believe that the general features of the characterstend to be realistic (in the emotional sense of theconcept as defined by Ien Ang in 1985). The desire toimitate the most admired characters 4 , as well as thesimilarities between the ways these characters speakand the viewers’ speech patterns, also bring the lattercloser to the fiction and reveal the constant process ofmutual feedback induced by television viewing (GalánFajardo & del Pino, 2010; Lacalle & al., 2011).The interviewees’ preferences reaffirm the in -fluence of gender in television viewing (Lemish, 2004;McMillin & Fisherkeller, 2008), since the females prefergood-looking characters, while the males tend toprefer the unusual ones, or «geeks» even though thedispersion of male tastes makes it difficult to generalise.In any event, both appreciate the image of eternal adolescenceprojected in fiction by the young characters,who spend most of their time between recreation andsentimental and sexual relations (Bragg & Buckingham,2004).The interviewees of all ages, especially the females,preferred to watch fiction by themselves due totheir divergent tastes with their parents. This thusrevalidates the relationship between family roles andtelevision viewing noted by and Morley (1986),Silverstone (1994) and Lull (1990), except that in single-parentfamilies headed by mothers (more numerousin the analysis sample than single-parent familiesheaded by men), the mother now controls the maintelevision set. Contrary to what Bragg and Buckingham(2004) claim, youngsters who tend to watch television© ISSN: 1134-3478 • e-ISSN: 1988-3293 • Pages 111-118