Rewatching, Film, and New Television

Abstract

Those of us who are captivated by new television (the sort of serialized television that began largely in the early 1990s), often find ourselves rewatching episodes or whole series. Why? What is the philosophical significance of the phenomenon of rewatching? In what follows, I engage with the ontology of television series in order to think about these questions around rewatching. I conclude by reflecting on what the entire discussion might suggest about the medium of new television, about ourselves, and also about our world and the possibilities of art in it.

Keywords

• stanley cavell
• aesthetics
• television
• art
• phenomenology
• worldhood
• world
• meaning
• hermeneutics
• genre