A group of UNR Social Communication teachers and students created a club to share their passion for TV series.
Why do we get hooked on a series and can't stop watching it? What do we identify with? What makes us fall in love with a character? This is what they discuss in “Series Club”, a multimedia project that was born in 2021. In the midst of the pandemic, locked down, these series enthusiasts met virtually once a week to discuss what they had seen and exchange experiences.
Then the idea of making a podcast of the conversations arose. When the pandemic ended, they recorded it in the Sound Lab of the Faculty of Political Science and International Relations and are currently in their fourth season, which can be streamed on Spotify.
"We talk about series and analyze them based on theoretical foundations," say the founding members of this club, Hugo Berti, Ari Piccioni, and Flor Kuchen, linking this to their teaching roles in the seminar "Analysis and Critique of Fictional Series" for the Social Communication program. They try to break away from the commonplace "I like it" or "I don't like it," understand why, what drives people to become hooked on or fall in love with a character, and study it without losing the pleasure of watching a series and sharing the feelings it generates.
The project continued to grow with the production of a digital magazine: clubdeseries.com.ar which was presented at the 15th International Digital Journalism Forum held last month in the Universidad Nacional de RosarioThe idea was born from a production thesis by Florencia Kuchen. “I started as a seminary student and was interested in pursuing the project, producing a digital magazine to publish series analyses in different formats,” she says. From there, the club grew, currently with twenty members and many faculty, non-faculty, and student collaborators.
The magazine is composed of three sections: "Articles," which publish analyses and perspectives on current and past series. These productions include the final seminar projects. Another section is "Reviews," which, unlike the previous section, offers a value judgment on the series, which may or may not be current, meaning it is not governed by trends. Finally, "I Don't Know What to Watch," which includes recommendations. In addition to these, there are Video Essays, audiovisual essays on the series and podcast content. The club also has a YouTube channel and social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
In one year of circulation, the magazine published 126 articles across all sections, with a frequency of three per week. And over three podcast seasons, they produced 37 half-hour episodes, each with a central theme across various series. The recently released fourth season features ten 40-minute episodes with original music, analyzing series that marked a new era, from the late 90s to the present, such as "Sex and the City," "The Sopranos," "The Wire," "Six Feet Under," "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad," "Game of Thrones," "Dexter," "The Walking Dead," and "How I Met Your Mother."
The team also has a biweekly column on the program "Notas de Papel" on Radio Universidad, on Fridays at 14.30:XNUMX p.m. In this column, the commentaries are linked to current issues, and this content is also available in the digital magazine. Since last year, Club de Series has established itself as a study group on serialized television fictional narratives, part of the Research Institute of the Faculty of Political Science at the UNR.
Press play
"There are series I love so much that I need to watch them more than once. That motivation, sometimes without explanation, leads me to replay single episodes or entire seasons that stir in me unimaginable feelings of pleasure," says Ari Piccioni in the latest article published in the magazine, titled "Another Turn."
“One always returns to the old places where one loved life,” goes a song. “Whether it's classics or new series, revisiting familiar scenes, characters, and stories gives a second wind to what I experienced the first time I saw them,” it continues. “One day, talking at the Club, we were discussing whether there's enough time to watch everything we want or if we should choose to make room for new things…the answer we came up with is that we never get to catch up.”
Among the reviews, Hugo Berti writes one about the Argentine series "Bellas Artes" under the title "Caricatures of Progressive Culture": "The sequences in Bellas Artes link recognizable expressions of the cultural hegemony of progressivism. The caricature of the most controversial features of this period's climate and the pointing out of its contradictions are done from a perspective that is simultaneously lighthearted and profound, relying on intelligent humor as an excuse to avoid being associated with reactionary discourses."
“Comedy in Fine Arts works without offending either the left or the right because it has the attributes of a joke that laughs at oneself, a place where we socially recognize ourselves as subjects and objects of comedy. The series could provoke ideological interpretations of either exaltation or opposition, but they would be done outside the self-reflective critical intentions underlying its narrative.”
In the "I Don't Know What to Watch" section, student Denise Carbajo publishes recommendations under the title "Any Resemblance to Reality." These include biopics, crime reenactments, portrayals of people as characters, and reproductions of historical moments. These series adapt real events with fictional resources that serve as a serial narrative. Among them, she comments: “Cris Miró: Her”, “Unorthodox”, “Inconceivable” and “Alias Grace”.
To access the Series Club: clubdeseries.com.ar
Journalist: Victoria Arrabal