Streaming Privilege: How Television Teaches Us to Accept Inequality

By Hanna Kuusela

Streaming Privilege examines how contemporary serial television helps legitimise today's "new Gilded Age" of extreme inequality. Through sharp cultural analysis, the book reveals popular culture's fixation on wealth and dynastic families, and how these narratives contribute to sustaining economic divides. Focusing on Downton Abbey, The Crown, Succession and Yellowstone, it explores what today's most-watched dramas suggest about contemporary attitudes toward privilege and power. At its core is an interest in the intersection of family, wealth and morality, showing how stories of dynasties help audiences make sense of widening disparities. The book argues that television does not simply reflect inequality but actively shapes public understandings of it. Streaming Privilege is essential reading for scholars and students of media, culture and economic sociology, as well as general readers interested in how popular culture influences perceptions of inequality.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1526190052
• ISBN13: 9781526190055
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 1.11 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"