Audience Ethnography: How Friends Move into Riverdale Every Week
30 May 2018
Description
The text to be explored in this audience ethnography is Riverdale. First airing on 26 January 2017, the show is produced by The CW and is adapted from Archie Comics’ characters beginning in 1941 by Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit, and John Goldwater (Murray). Greg Berlanti is the showrunner; additionally, he produces six other shows on The CW and 14 current shows overall (Adalian). At the time of this ethnography, two seasons have finished, consisting of 13 episodes in season one and 22 episodes in season two. It has been renewed for a third season, set to be released in fall 2018. Each episode runs for approximately 45 minutes with five commercial breaks to fill the hour time slot.
Viewers could watch Riverdale’s first season on Thursdays at 9:00 PM and its second season on Wednesdays at 8:00 PM with a paid cable plan including The CW. Reruns were also periodic on the network.
The CW’s 2011 licensing deal with streaming sites, Netflix and Hulu, expired in 2016 (Sandberg). The CW then entered a new and exclusive deal with Netflix to license all of its scripted content for years to come, releasing eight days after the show’s initial broadcast (Sandberg). Current shows from The CW have been removed from Hulu, and now a majority of the network’s content can be seen on Netflix in full with a paid subscription, or viewers can watch any of the shows’ latest five episodes (also known as “the rolling five”) on The CW’s website with commercial breaks for free.
Riverdale’s ratings peaked with its 2.3 million same-day viewers for its season two premiere on 11 October 2017 (Adalian). Generally, the show manages a little over 1 million same-day viewers each week (Adalian). Comparing between seasons, Riverdale’s women-under-35 demographic grew 140-percent and its teen demographic grew 467-percent (Adalian). According to Vulture, Riverdale tied or beat the major network’s Wednesday lineup among millennial and Gen-Z women for its second season (Adalian). These consumer growths are, in part, due to Netflix’s promotion of the show (alongside the new The CW/Netflix deal), its second season schedule change, and its original dedicated fanbase, as many viewers tune in for a childhood favorite, Cole Sprouse (from The Suite Life of Zack and Cody), and its oversexualized cast (e.g. KJ Apa, Lili Reinhart, Camila Mendes).
The CW excels with young adult narratives, crafting them to be overdramatic, filled with sex appeal, and other modes of catharsis that, from its demographics, teens and young adult women look for in programming. Audiences come to be shocked with Riverdale – to see sex, murder, fights, and queer-baiting/representation – they don’t come back for an overarching story, they come back because they know these characters will release some emotions in them, in whatever they do. And that hook of characters keeps a devout and active audience for The CW (who generate a lot of fanfiction, fanart, Twitter and Instagram accounts to replay the dramatic moments/theories, and gif-ability) who, in turn, cyclically impact how they themselves experience the text and how the show’s writers create future texts.
Observation and Field Notes
All Riverdale character names are in ALL CAPS. All participant names are in normal case and have been changed to protect their identity. The following is transcribed from a recording of two viewings of the show. A friend group of five (Adriane, Andrew, Jackie, Mary, Sarah) watched the last two episodes of Riverdale’s second season. References to understand actions and dialogue are provided in brackets. The following observations have major Riverdale spoilers.
S02, E21: Chapter Thirty-Four: Judgment Night [13 May 2018]
Episode Recap:
Andrew: “Remember how JUGHEAD skinned that girl?”, all laugh, “Remember how FANGS killed a guy?”
Adriane: “No, he got shot, but we don’t know if he died.”
Mary: “Oh, yeah, this happened!”
Sarah: “I think it’s MIDGE’S mom!”
Jackie: “Wait, who is that? My glasses are off.”
Episode:
All: “Oh my god CHERLY!”, light screams and laughter
Adriane: “Here’s Johnny!”
Andrew: “I think it’s HAL.”
Adriane: “You think it’s HAL?”
Mary: “Who’s HAL?”
Andrew: “Why is HAL!”, all laugh [reference to Avengers: Infinity War – seen with same group]
Jackie: “How is Johnny!”, more laughter, Andrew and Jackie, sitting adjacent lock eyes and smile
As FANGS is taken to the hospital, the group remains quiet.
Mary: “And ARCHIE drove him there without a license!”, some laughter [reference to Riverdale S02, E01]
Adriane: “And he didn’t even have a license!”, repeating to be included, then goes on phone
As CHERLY tells BETTY about her attacker, the group is dead silent. The silence continues into BETTY talking to her mom. Important information is being given. As Riverdale is being looted – the camera, content, characters are sporadic, we don’t know what’s going on, silence, no phones out.
Adriane: “Motherfucker.”
Mary: “What?!”, Mary laughs, “Excuse me!”
Jackie: “She’s in distress!”
Adriane: “She’s in distress, that doesn’t give her an excuse to start a riot.”
As a commercial plays, Andrew and Sarah begin talking about the trailer for Dog Days that they watched separately before this viewing.
Andrew and Jackie give each other and shocked and interested smirk as KEVIN says, “I’m with MOOSE,” [reference to them shipping the two characters].
Mary: “What happened to lollipop?!” Mary seems distressed, as BETTY receives a call from an unknown number [reference to the BLACK HOOD/local serial killer calling her and giving her clues with the ringtone of “Lollipop”, but this call didn’t have the song, so immediate self-reflexivity]
Lots of people talking over each other during a commercial break.
Andrew: “I think it’s a home movie from GRAND PAPPY BLOSSOM.”
Mary: “I don’t understand Riverdale!”
Adriane: “No, they said home videos of them [BETTY/POLLY] growing up!”
Andrew: “Oh, I thought it was GRAND PAPPY BLOSSOM snuff films.”
Mary: “Snuff?!”, Mary laughs, confused and doesn’t believe it would happen
As the commercial changes to a Target swimsuit ad, which we’ve seen a lot before.
Adriane: “It’s not a snuff film.”
Sarah: “Hey, Adriane, remember that time all four of us went to Target?”
Adriane: “Fuck you!”, Adriane flips off Sarah [reference to Adriane saying all four of them went to Target the last time this ad played, but it was just three of them and not Sarah].
As the commercial break ends, all of the people become silent immediately. The scene is HAL explaining how the BLACK HOOD killed people and why. Those on the couch, Jackie, Mary, Adriane, Sarah, are hiding under a blanket – just their eyes are poking out.
ALICE asks HAL what they’re watching – confused, she asks if it’s a “snuff film”.
Andrew nearly sits up, throwing his hands in the air, smiling.
Mary: “Oh my god!”, all laugh
As HAL says that his great grand pappy actually killed the Blossom’s and not the other way around, which was a confusing plot point from season one the group found ridiculous.
Mary: “Wait, WHAT?!”, Mary smiles but doesn’t laugh, eyes burrowed.
Adriane: “Ugh?!”, Sarah and Mary give each other a confused look, but laugh after, and Jackie and Andrew smile at each other
As the BLACK HOOD enters the Andrews household and takes a shot at ARCHIE, FRED jumps in the way. Adriane and Mary scream loudly. Jackie pulls her blankets over her face again. Sarah looks at the rest of the group. When FRED is reveled to have a bullet-proof vest, the group all sighs in annoyance.
Mary: “What!”
Adriane: “Oh!”, Sarah gives her a look
During the commercial break, the CW always shows trailers for The Flash and Supergirl – both shows the group watches separately but aren’t caught up yet (they only watch entire seasons at a time on Netflix), so Andrew and Adriane scream to not hear the trailer, pulling a blanket over their heads, and Sarah closes her eyes.
The group remains quiet as the SOUTHSIDE SERPENTS discuss what to do after the riots to stay safe. Nearly five to seven minutes of silence. Then the group learns that FANGS is believed to be dead.
Adriane: “He didn’t make it.”, Adriane said seconds before the characters learned.
Andrew: “Oh my god, thank god.”, Andrew hates FANGS.
Another commercial break happens, the group forms more of a circle to talk.
Mary: “How is this episode still happening?”
Andrew tries to figure out the Cooper/Blossom family tree. He rolls up his sleeves to seriously figure it out, the rest of the group laughs, then Mary and Sarah yell over each other to explain.
Mary: “Wait, wait, wait, this is really funny!”
Andrew: “Wait, no, we have to figure this out before it comes back on!”
They spend the rest of the commercial break theorizing about what’s about to happen and figuring out what just happened, Andrew and Mary on the corners are bring the circle in more. The second the episode starts again, Sarah shushes everyone.
As JUGHEAD confesses his love to BETTY over the phone before he believes he will die, the reactions are oppositional. The group thinks the acting is phony, laughing at the parts and referencing vines [reference to the vine that says “I love you… bitch. I ain’t never going to stop loving you… bitch].
As the commercial is playing, Andrew asks the group to go down the line, “What do you think JUGHEAD offered?”
Jackie: “Is it not over?”
Andrew: “Down the line!’
Sarah: “I think he’s gonna die.”
Andrew: “Let’s go down the row! Mary!”
Adriane: “I think he’s gonna kill himself.”
Andrew: “Down the line!”
Mary: “What?”
Andrew: “What did JUGHEAD offer…?”
Jackie: “Hiram.”, Jackie and Andrew look at each other and laugh, Andrew tilts his head closer to her and thanks her.
Mary: “I don’t know.”
Andrew: “I have a joke, but it’s not getting to myself yet.” Andrew laughs hard, the group laughs after, telling him to go anyway. “I think he’s [JUGHEAD played by Cole Sprouse] gonna give him his hotel he owns in Pennsylvania or wherever [reference to Suite Life of Zack and Cody]. The group doesn’t really laugh, Andrew goes to high-five Jackie, she is reluctant, but does it. They eventually get the joke.
JUGHEAD is brought out of the woods, presumably dead.
Jackie: “They can’t kill him off in season two.”
Andrew: “Half the people who are watching are watching for him! I mean that doesn’t look great, but…”
Adriane: “He’s fine.”
Jackie: “Yeah, they can’t kill the biggest star.”
Andrew: “Unless like Kevin is getting a bigger role!” Jackie and Andrew exchange looks, and Adriane laughs leaning closer towards them.
S02, E22: Chapter Thirty-Five: Brave New World [17 May 2018]
Episode:
As an imagined JUGHEAD’s grave is revealed, so is his full name (Forsythe Pendleton Jones III), which catches the group off guard.
Mary: “Woah, what?”
Sarah: “Jughead’s name is Forsythe Pendleton Jones III!”
FANGS is revealed to still be alive, and much more exposition is going on. The group doesn’t seem that engaged, and they aren’t reacting. Jackie and Mary both take large sips from their water bottles. The group seems tired. Their heads are back against the couch, and they’ll slumped over. For the first five to seven minutes of the episode, the group seldom speaks.
As CHERLY goes to hand her mother her emancipation paperwork (and house deed to evict her mother), Adriane gasps.
Adriane: “Burn it down!”, [reference to when CHERLY burnt down her old home when her mom was in it – trying to scare her after CHERLY discovered that her dad killed her brother and then himself).
Andrew: “Oh my god, she’s gonna walk in on them [CHERLY’s mom and uncle].”
Adriane: “Oh, they’re so banging.”
Mary: “Hiram?!”
Jackie: “Stranger things music!”
Adriane: “They need to move!”
During a commercial break, Andrew and Mary discuss COMA GIRL from Life of the Party.
Mary: “Remember coma girl?”, [in reference to JUGHEAD being in a coma].
Andrew: “Yeah, for eight years.”
Mary: “Eight? I thought it was five.”, Andrew and Mary laugh hard.
Andrew: “I didn’t believe her until halfway through the movie.” Mary laughs extremely hard, eating more Flaming Hot Cheeto Limes. Adriane looks confused, looking to Sarah and Jackie for clarification. No one else is talking, and only Andrew and Mary saw Life of the Party (together).
JUGHEAD tells BETTY, “I love you too.” Mary laughs, covering her mouth while chewing.
Andrew: “That’s not funny.”
Mary: “I’m sorry.”, Mary is still laughing hard, hand still covering her mouth.
KEVIN and MOOSE kiss. The group is dead silent before. The group all gasps. Andrew and Jackie look at each other. Jackie goes aww. Andrew gasps the loudest.
Jackie: “He’s not gonna be into it.”, brief pause, “Oh, yeah, he is.”
The group cheer, Andrew goes yeahhh in a high pitch, Adriane claps, Mary goes woo.
Andrew: “Simon [reference from Love, Simon] is quaking!”
The group laughs and smiles facing the screen.
The next eleven minutes, the group does not talk at all. Mary and Jackie continue to share a bag of Flaming Hot Cheeto Limes. During the commercial break after this time, Mary stares into the camera and tells the group to do a wave.
Mary: “Ready?”, the group nods. The group then does the wave from Sarah to Adriane to Mary to Jackie to Andrew. The group is noticeably bored and tired.
And for the first time in this group’s history the stop mid-episode. This is in part because it’s 1:00 AM after a long event the group worked at [a Love, Simon screening on campus] and because the episode, in their opinion, was a boring finale. Additionally, every week this group watches Dynasty and Riverdale [both the CW], and as Dynasty got progressively good, Riverdale got progressively bad for this group, and they already watched Dynasty that night, so they decided to finish Riverdale some other time. The stop after the second commercial break.
Interview
After the group decided to pause the season finale on 17 May 2018, I interviewed Jackie about her connection with Riverdale and her overall habits of media consumption and participation. She is a 20-year-old white woman who was born in Southern California and is majoring in aerospace engineering and minoring in creative writing at the University of California, San Diego.
Jackie watches the show with her friend group of five. Her friend group watches Riverdale one day after its initial release, this year on Thursdays at 9:30 PM – “the instant that the entire friend group is free”. I asked her why “the instant”, and she responded that Sarah gets spoiled a lot on Instagram explore, so the sooner they can watch the show, the better. “Even though the plot is stupid, it’s worse when you know what’s going to happen… It’s fun to guess,” she said. From this, I’ve gathered that audience consumption can be heavily dependent on social media or other digital forms. Because live television is unpopular with teens and young adults, there has been a growing fear of spoilers on social media with time-shifted viewing – it’s become a paradox of wanting to follow your favorite actors and any parody accounts, but risking spoilers if they live tweet or see it before you. Jackie quotes Sarah gets spoiled a lot because Instagram explore is, ostensibly, random, so seeing a spoiler is unknowingly easy to do. Adriane deletes her Twitter app from Wednesday to Thursday to ensure she doesn’t get spoiled, Jackie said, but Jackie herself doesn’t go that fair. Social media effectively alters an audience’s behavior, watching a show time-shifted, but time-shifted as soon as possible and sometimes even dramatically altering how other medias are interacted with during this live-until-watched period.
Although Jackie is exactly in the middle of The CW’s target demographic with the show (teen/women-under-35), she said she wouldn’t watch Riverdale outside of her friend group, citing that she’s tried, but she gets bored or hates it too much. What brings her in to actually watch the show is the group dynamic – how everyone comments, theorizes, and overreacts to moments. “It’s an excuse for us to get together,” she said. Her friend group watches two The CW’s shows every week, so Riverdale is more of a suitable genre her friend group than it is a specific text she likes and relates to. Interestingly enough, both of the shows they watch are adaptations, Riverdale from Archie Comic characters and Dynasty from the 1980s series of the same name. Jackie also cannot watch other The CW shows, like The Flash, Supergirl, or Jane the Virgin, which a combination of the rest of her friend group watches alone and talks about them constantly.
Jackie’s identity and interests aren’t clearly represented in Riverdale or other The CW shows. She told me her current favorite shows are The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Crown, Game of Thrones, and 13 Reasons Why. From this I’ve gathered her audience habits are for more “serious” shows – not to say that Riverdale doesn’t touch on serious topics, in fact, there is a lot of overlap between Riverdale and 13 Reasons Why, but she is more comfortable with realistic, muted, and historical representations (and untraditional season lengths). The kind of overzealous quality of The CW turns her off, she implied. Jackie is the odd one out in her friend group, as “they were bored with The Crown [and Game of Thrones]”, so I wouldn’t say she is an “typical” audience member for the show or even within her friend group.
Analysis
During the two episodes viewed, I set up a camera to record the reactions of the friend group. This was to allow for more detailed notetaking, as I could now have quotes verbatim and be able to catch any subtle reactions or a wider range when a peak dramatic moment occurs. But most importantly, recording the viewing sessions allowed me to remain in the friend group – my own friend group – in my normal, weekly capacity, without a major Hawthorne effect (although, there will always be some). Due to this setup, I was actually able to record my own experiences and interactions with the media that I was unaware I was participating in.
Compared to other methods, like writing notes live or observing from a separate room, it may be possible to capture more a confined social dynamic, but because the group I observed was my own friend group, it’s difficult to write about the participants’ identities and interests based of this single media without importing my own knowledge of their consumption habits.
Pierre Bourdieu, author of Distinction a Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, discussed the idea of how texts shape who viewers are by their connection to these “realities and fictions” and how it will impact future experiences with texts (Bourdieu 6). “Social subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make,” (Bourdieu 6). Effectively, Bourdieu stated that how you talk about texts to others describes you own identity and not the text itself – social groups are needed in order for a distinction to be made and you need choices within these groups. For viewers of Riverdale, when they tell others that they hate the show, like in Jackie’s case, that doesn’t imply that Riverdale is bad, but rather it implies that Jackie wants to be differentiated from the common themes of that text (melodrama, oversexualization, unrealistic, etc.). Yet her distinctions change between social groups: she hates the show alone and will tell strangers she does, but she love-hates the show within her friend group, so she is re-presenting herself to strangers that she is “above the teen fiction” to be in a higher cultural class (as Riverdale is low culture) but re-presents herself conversely to her friends to achieve a different cultural standing (“a part of the squad”, “chill with it”, etc.).
When Jackie actively tries to “distinction herself” away from Riverdale, she does so because she has an oppositional reading to the text. Stuart Hall, author of Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse, examined three types of responses to any given text: dominant, negotiated, and oppositional (Hall 170-3). When common themes, tropes, actions, motifs, etc. of Riverdale illicit an unintended response, it is considered to have an oppositional effect on the viewer. For example, when FRED was shot (again), but then revealed a bullet proof vest, Jackie and the friend group sighed and were visibly annoyed. The shock factor and permanence of being shot was immediately erased, making the viewer feel that actions don’t matter so why get invested, which is against the desired effect from The CW – to bring about a catharsis and emotional attachment to the characters (viewers share characters’ traumas). Rarely is this friend group having many dominant readings of the text, laughing at inopportune times and getting annoyed by the “heroes”.
This feeling of being taken out of the text in that oppositional reading for the friend group can also be examined as self-reflexivity, or as Jason Mittell, author of “Phineas & Ferb: Children’s Television”, called it “reflexive self-awareness” (Mittell 59). This self-reflexivity occurs when a text changes its plot formula or does something that unsuspends disbelief for a viewer to a point that they remember that they’re watching a television show – it isn’t real, and showrunners are using specific techniques to hook me in (Mittell 61). This occurred a lot for the friend group watching Riverdale. Whenever a participant referenced an outside source (e.g. “Here’s Johnny!”, “Why is HAL?”, “Yeah, they can’t kill the biggest star.”, and “Wait, wait, wait, this is really funny!”). However, these moments of self-reflexivity increased visible happiness and engagement with the text due to the friend group setting. It may have adverse effects to single viewers.
Regardless of readings, viewers make up the Riverdale fandom, which can be understood through Fan Studies from the 1990s and 2000s, as well as the politicization of audiences and brands. Maybe the text doesn’t give them immense pleasure, but the structure of characters being reworked in fanfiction, fanart, etc. still can. Jackie vows to never read fanfiction, but Andrew, Adriane, and Sarah all definitely do. Through this lens of “the fandom” a text’s pleasure can be exponentially heightened with a new ability of control (AU, “divorcing the author”, canon, recreating queer relationships outside of the text’s queer-baiting, etc.) and amount of content (13 to 22 episodes a year doesn’t satisfy a viewer anymore).
Although this sample size is too small to generalize Riverdale viewers as a whole, it does provide insights into a type of consumption: hate-watching. The friend group watches Riverdale ironically, finding oppositional readings to dialogue and actions that result in unintended humor for the friend group. But this reading of the text only occurs within their specific group, as Jackie pointed out, they read the text differently when they’re alone. In conclusion, I can say that texts have different readings in different social settings and that texts can benefit from many of these different types of readings (i.e. just because the reading is oppositional, doesn’t mean viewers tune away, in fact, it may result in increased viewership). It’s not possible to be more specific from this one audience ethnography due to a lack of data and, more so, the understanding that audiences act based on their unique identities that are never fully shared with anyone else and can’t be fully reported, categorized, nor understood to the extent that a generalization needs to be 100-percent effective. But we can always still try.
Works Cited
Adalian, Josef. “Riverdale’s Premiere Ratings Are Stunning - and Netflix May Be the Reason Why.” Vulture. Vulture, 12 Oct. 2017. Web. 30 May 2018.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction a Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge, 1984. Print.
Hall, Stuart. Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. Birmingham: U of Birmingham, 1973. Print.
Mittell, Jason. "Phineas & Ferb: Children’s Television." How to Watch Television. Ed. Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell. New York, NY: New York UP, 2013. 56-64. Print.
Murray, Noel. “‘Riverdale’: Everything You Need to Know About Dark ‘Archie’ TV Show.” Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone, 23 Jan. 2017. Web. 30 May 2018.
Sandberg, Bryn Elise. “It’s Official: Netflix, The CW Reach New Streaming Pact.” The Hollywood Reporter. The Hollywood Reporter, 05 July 2016. Web. 30 May 2018.