Skeuomorphic Domestic Television’s Analog Divide: Television and Social Stratification in Singapore

Abstract

Through the ethnographic survey of the ownership, use, and display of television-related devices of forty households in Singapore, this article frames the concept of Skeuomorphic Domestic Television. This term describes the continued centrality of the traditional “living room television” amid digital media’s portability. Results from the stocktaking of the ownership of television-related devices in the surveyed households point to the narrowing of the digital divide arising from the greater affordability of media technologies. However, within the highly densely populated city-state, it was found that social distinctions from television cultures were maintained in the skeuomorphic luxury of the “TV-Sofa space” in living rooms of surveyed households. Such a space that distinguishes individuals watching television in cluttered rooms against the more communal viewing practices in designated spacious living rooms characterizes the “Analog Spatial Divide” of skeuomorphic domestic television cultures.