Netflix’s 2020 release Indian Matchmaking drew a massive backlash particularly from South Asian and diasporic audiences who felt it normalized the experiences associated with arranged marriages. Audiences took to the internet to express how much they loved hating the show but at the same time also continued to obsessively watch despite their reservations. My paper takes up this paradox of simultaneously loving and hating a media product. By drawing from interviews with the showrunner, members of the production team and a close reading of the show’s texts and paratexts, I argue that “hatewatching” or “cringe-binge” as a mode of spectatorship only seems an oppositional form of viewing or an act of resistance to the reification of dominant hegemonic values. Far from being a function of spectatorial agency, I demonstrate how the platforms utilize “hatewatching” as a lucrative form of viewership and consumer habit to cultivate stickiness for their content.
BourdieuPierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
11.
BrophySarah. 2019. “The Stickiness of Instagram: Digital Labor and Postslavery Legacies in Kara Walker’s ‘a Subtlety.’”Cultural Critique105: 1–39.
12.
CaldwellJohn. 2008. Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
13.
ChamberlainDaniel. 2011. “Scripted Spaces Television Interfaces and the Non-Places of Asynchronous Entertainment.” In Television as Digital Media, edited by BennettJamesStrangeNiki, 230–254. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
14.
ChunWendyKyongHui. 2017. Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
15.
CloughPatricia Ticineto. 2009. “The New Empiricism: Affect and Sociological Method.” European Journal of Social Theory12 (1): 43–61.
16.
CunninghamStuartCraigDavid. 2019. Social Media Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. New York, NY: New York University Press.
17.
CunninghamStuartSilverJon. 2013. Screen Distribution and the New King Kongs of the Online World. New York, NY: Palgrave Pivot.
18.
DouglasSusan J.2013. “Jersey Shore: Ironic Viewing.” In How to Watch Television, edited by ThompsonE.MittelJ., 148–56. New York, NY: New York University Press.
GilbertAnne. 2019. “Hatewatch With Me: Anti-Fandom as Social Performance.” In Click in Anti-Fandom: Dislike and Hate in the Digital Age, edited by ClickMelissa A., 62–81. New York, NY: NYU Press.
21.
GrayJonathan. 2010. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers and Other Media Paratexts. New York, NY: NYU Press.
22.
GrayJonathan. 2019. “How Do I Dislike Thee? Let Me Count the Ways.” In Anti-Fandom: Dislike and Hate in the Digital Age, edited by ClickMelissa A., 25–52. New York, NY: NYU Press.
23.
GriersonJohn. 1933. “The Documentary Producer.” Cinema Quarterly2 (1): 7–9.
24.
HallStuart. 1991. “Encoding, Decoding.” In The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by DuringS., 90–103. London: Routledge.
25.
HavasJuliaSulimmaMaria. 2018. “Through the Gaps of My Fingers: Genre, Femininity, and Cringe Aesthetics in Dramedy Television.” Television & New Media21 (1): 75–94.
26.
HermesJoke. 2005. Re-Reading Popular Culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
27.
HoreckTanya. 2011. “‘Netflix and Heal’: The Shifting Meanings of Binge-Watching during the COVID-19 Crisis.” Film Quarterly75 (1): 35–40.
LobatoRamon. 2019. Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution. New York, NY: NYU Press.
33.
LukácsGeorg. 1971. History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Translated by LivingstoneRodney. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
34.
MannDenise. 2014. “Introduction.” In Wired TV: Laboring Over an Interactive Future, edited by MannDenise, 1–27. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
35.
MittelJason. 2001. “A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory.” Cinema Journal40 (3): 3–24.
MurraySusan. 2009. “I Think We Need a New Name for it: The Meeting of Documentary and Reality TV.” In Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, edited by MurraySusanOuilletteLaurie, 65–81. New York, NY: NYU Press.
39.
NgaiSianne. 2005. Ugly Feelings. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
40.
NicholsBill. 2001. Documentary: An Introduction. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
SconceJeffrey. 2007. “Movies: A Century of Failure.” In Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics, edited by SconceJeffrey, 1–16. Durham: Duke University Press.
45.
SeaverNick. 2019. “Captivating Algorithms: Recommender Systems as Traps.” Journal of Material Culture24 (4): 421–36.
46.
SedgewickEve. 1997. “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction Is about You.” In Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction, edited by SedgewickEve, 1–37. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
van DijckJosé. 2013. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
51.
VermaTarishi. 2021. “Cultural cringe: How Caste and Class Affect the Idea of Culture in Social Media.” Feminist Media Studies21: 159–61.
52.
WhelehanImelda. 2017. “Hating Hannah: Or Learning to Love (Post) Feminist Entitlement.” In Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls: Feminism, Postfeminism, Authenticity and Gendered Performance in Contemporary Television, edited by NashMeredithWhelehanImelda, 31–44. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
