Consumers of culture : on the specific modes of soap opera’s interpretations on former socialist agrocooperatives milieus

This paper discusses the reception of two popular TV series among socially excluded Polish women living in rural areas. It is based on the fi ndings of research project that I conducted from November of 2011 to March of 2012. I have conducted four focus groups combined with a projection of random episodes of two TV series: “M jak miłość” (“M as love”), the most popular soap opera in Poland, and an American program “Modern Family”, which breaks some social stereotypes. The main objective of the project was to fi nd out how socially excluded women decode social and ideological messages included in the TV series. According to Stuart Hall’s ‘encoding/decoding model’, I was focused on their common interpretation patterns. The main question was: are they able to understand the meanings of simple cultural symbols (e.g. a mustache, white briefs) or recognize popular actors and brands placed in a movie to the same extent as urban people? One other general question, which arises here, is if this popular culture is so popular?