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A Comparative Analysis of the Reception of Domestic and US Fiction 83

As illustrated in Table 6.4, summarizing the main tendencies of the case study,
this interplay takes quite divergent forms: people clearly developed different
decoding practices in relation to comparable domestic and US commercial
fiction programmes. People were, as expected and in spite of the critical horizon
of expectations, considerably more involved with the home-made drama. This
high involvement on many levels seems to be grounded in a better literal com-
prehension or recognition of the configurations in the indigenous drama. This
better command of the codes in this programme provokes a generally more com-
plex and extreme decoding, explicit normative positions, ‘politicized’ discus-
sions and divergent views. Here the domestic programme functioned as a
strongly value-loaded discourse (Barthes, 1972), provoking an open forum on
different social, cultural and political issues. While the recipients, as an interpre-
tive community, were characterized by a higher degree of unanimity in the mere
‘literal’ comprehension of the characters in the domestic drama, it seems that this
unanimity ebbed away during the discussion. This type of reception process
could be called a process of introspection: a higher form of recognition and inter-
pretation of ‘common’ codes is confronted with a critical, politicized application
of them on the basis of recipients’ own lives and experiences.
A quite different evolution in the interplay of ‘moments’ can be found in the
reception process of the US drama, where the involvement of the (same) recipients
was of another order. Here we could speak of more fixed, linear decodings, a
mixed personal involvement and consensus-forming process in relation to the
presented configurations. While the reception process of the domestic drama
was characterized by an evolution of ‘high unanimity’ to ‘divergent positions’ in
the discussion, the reception of the US drama developed from ‘low unanimity’
to ‘consensus’.
It is safe to say that the indigenous drama functioned as a forum for intro-
spection to consider themes of identity and current political, cultural and social
issues, while in the responses to the US programme such issues hardly ever arose
(cf. Katz and Liebes, 1990: 59).

Conclusions: Impact, Decoding and
Characteristics of US Fiction

What can be learned from our case study about the world-wide success and
hegemonic functioning of American programming? Here several central concepts
on the impact and appeal of US fiction have to be questioned and re-evaluated.
Of course, the results of this study are only indicative on many levels and care is
needed in venturing generalizations (due to the rather small sample size and
limited choice of programmes). One could also argue that several findings in this
case study are quite predictable in a comparative construction with domestic
drama. Indeed, this study is only one way of treating the problem of the con-
sumption of imported American programming; other studies in other cultural
collectivities, using other types of programmes and other genres, should be con-
ducted in order to gain a better view of the nature of such consumption and the