[Commlist] New book: Streaming Privilege. How Television Teaches us to Accept Inequality

Streaming Privilege. How Television Teaches us to Accept Inequality
Hanna Kuusela
(Manchester University Press, 2026).

The book is published open access:
https://www.manchesterhive.com/display/9781526190062/9781526190062.xml



*Book Description*

/Streaming Privilege/ examines the powerful role that today’s serial 
television plays in legitimating the ‘new Gilded Age’ of extreme 
inequality. It is a book about contemporary television series, culture, 
power, ideology, family and inequality. Through its sharp cultural 
analysis, the book reveals popular culture’s obsession with wealth, the 
super-rich and dynastic families. Focusing on four major series – 
/Downton Abbey, The Crown, Succession/ and /Yellowstone/ – the book 
explores what today’s most-watched television dramas reveal about 
contemporary attitudes toward wealth. As dynastic structures once again 
dominate economy, stories of wealthy families offer a cultural lens 
through which middle- and working-class audiences make sense of economic 
disparities. Darwing on the traditions of cultural studies and critical 
sociology, the book introduces the concepts of family succession drama 
and luxury television to highlight the role that quality television and 
its viewing practices play in producing consent to patrimonial forms of 
capitalism and today’s inheritocracy. The specific interest is in how 
families, wealth and moral norms intersect in serial television, as this 
intersection is at the heart of contemporary accumulation processes. The 
book suggests that much of today’s quality television is politically and 
morally ambivalent, and that the power of these shows to legitimise 
inequalities lies precisely in this (metamodernist) ambivalence that 
reflects today’s perceived societal anomie. Despite their complexities 
and ambiguities, the four series and other dramas about the rich tend to 
legitimise, perpetuate and deepen our contemporary inequalities, which 
are inextricably linked to the socio-economic role of the family.//

*Table of Contents*

Introduction: Streaming privilege
1 Family matters
2 From pleasure to ideology: Reading popular narratives of privilege
3/Downton Abbey/: A benevolent dynasty for the common good
4///The Crown/and the burden of privilege
5///Succession/: A fantasy for the middle class
6///Yellowstone/and the nostalgia for the present
Conclusion: Fighting inheritocracy and familialism

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