Touching objects: a psychosocial analysis of the BBC television series The Repair Shop.

Abstract

This study explores the construction of haptic visuality and the emotional significance of touch on the BBC lifestyle show The Repair Shop, (2017– ongoing) from 2017 until 2023: a time of social fracture, following the Brexit vote (2016), and tactile restraint during COVID-19 lockdowns. It takes a psychosocial approach (Yates, 2013, 2018; Bainbridge 2014, 2019) drawing on the object relations theory of Melanie Klein (1998). Previous studies of mediated hapticity concentrate on inter-cultural cinema (Marks, 2007), showing limited interest in its televisual application (Waade and Jorgenson, 2010; Zborowski, 2012). Methodological scaffolding of this qualitative study involved initial close textual analysis of representative episodes, preceding focus groups with members of the show’s main U.K audience demographic, aged 50+, discussing selected clips from the show and subsequent in-depth 1-2-1 interviews inviting participants to present their own inherited items. The result is a nuanced appreciation of emotional, tactile, and psychological relationships to the show and familial objects, both ‘good’, ‘bad’ and reparative in Kleinian terms. Contributions to knowledge comprise further insights into the construction of visual hapticity (particularly the use of sound and the pastoral in The Repair Shop), the evolution of lifestyle television, its consolatory significance, and reparative qualities, amidst ongoing social anxiety. This study combines insights concerning media objects, (Bainbridge, 2014,2019; Whitehouse-Hart, 2014; Yates, 2017) with psychological work on inherited material items (Turkle, 2007; Miller, 2008; McCarroll and Kirby, 2023) enhancing understanding of the uses of both. It also identifies ‘shadow objects’, a concept for psychologically ‘difficult’ material objects which I have adapted from Freud (1919) and Jung (1969), that are hidden or repressed: those introjected with difficult personal relationships, and those harbouring cultural apprehension. This study expands an understanding of psychological ‘shadows’ in relation to the depiction of mourning in lifestyle television which avoids melancholia (Freud 1917/2014), demonstrating how repressive inclinations operate in the structure of The Repair Shop to reinforce personal and national reparation.