By Phoebe Arslanagić-Little
As Clarkson’s Farm viewers swing behind Labour, Phoebe Arslanagić-Little asks if our TV viewing habits are becoming as polarised as our politics?
In 2019, viewers of the TV show Clarkson’s Farm were most likely to vote Tory. But according to polling data from the think tank More in Common, Clarkson’s Farm viewers have now swung to Labour more than any other TV viewing group, by a stunning 35 points. Viewers of Strictly Come Dancing, previously Tory stalwarts who leaned Conservative by 21 per cent, now also go for Labour by nine points.
Dividing voters into tribes along their pop culture preferences is a fascinating idea – we talk a lot about political polarisation, but what about cultural polarisation?
An American paper published in 2022 looked into what the authors termed the political ‘oil spill’ of polarisation into the cultural arena. They found that certain TV shows, music genres and sports were indeed more likely to be favoured by right-leaning or left-leaning Americans. Non-polarised culture, enjoyed by both right and left-leaning Americans in equal measure, was most likely to be either widely known and “overtly banal” (the authors cite Coldplay as an example) or specialised and niche, such as rowing.
If a major force, cultural polarisation will mean that there are extremely popular cultural products that simply pass vast swathes of people by.
Take the hit American TV show Yellowstone. Starring Kevin Costner, Yellowstone features the anti-hero Dutton family, who battle vegetarian coastal elites and biker gangs to maintain and grow their vast ranching empire. If you get into Yellowstone (as my parents have) you can expect drive-by shootings, vicious property disputes, and people voluntarily agreeing to be branded. To give you a sense of just how astonishingly popular Yellowstone is, its 2021 premiere drew an astonishing 14.7m viewers (with no streaming included). Yet I had never heard of it.
Compare that to Succession, whose top episode drew 2.9m viewers when it aired. Yet for years, I was unable to go online without encountering think pieces, analytical essays, and memes about the show. So, where are the Yellowstone memes?
Despite its wild popularity, Yellowstone isn’t part of my cultural landscape and that wasn’t a choice, I simply didn’t know it existed. Others have noticed Yellowstone’s failure to make an impression on the urban educated consciousness and point to the show’s reputation as red meat for Republicans and its greater popularity in rural areas. Is the fact that my friends know who Logan Roy is but not John Dutton (the protagonist of Yellowstone) a symptom of a new era of cultural fragmentation?
Consider how, in TikTok-style, the world’s biggest streaming service, Netflix, uses an algorithm to analyse the behaviour of users. The algorithm then pushes recommendations based on what users have enjoyed watching and what other users with similar likes and dislikes enjoy. That’s why, if you see someone else’s Netflix landing page, it looks completely different to your own. What other people in your society are watching and enjoying becomes irrelevant to you.
Perhaps we can blame the all-seeing eye of the algorithm for our fallen Tower of Babel-like pop cultural separation. Or maybe we are in fact self-sorting. After stirring myself to try out a new series recently, I grimaced involuntarily at an unsubtle political message delivered by a main character. But if the sentiment expressed had gelled rather than clashed with my own beliefs, I suspect it would have slipped down so pleasantly that I might not even have noticed it.
It seems obvious that the culture we consume can become yet another echo chamber. We are entertained while our own ideas and values are affirmed and spoon-fed back to us – delicious!
Clarkson’s Farm is now the only show I watch, and I haven’t shown any sign of turning into a Labour voter, though I am now considerably more interested in farming and slightly more supportive of culling badgers. But for the sake of balance, and to better understand my fellows, perhaps I should put on an episode of Yellowstone. And maybe you should too.
Phoebe Arslanagić-Little is a columnist at City A.M. and head of the New Deal for Parents at Onward
