Debating Sexual Consent in the Teen Series The Hockey Girls: Reactions of Instagram Audiences

ABSTRACT

This article analyses discussion of a narrative concerning sexual consent in a 2019 Spanish television series broadcast on Netflix called Les de l’Hoquei (The Hockey Girls). A thematic analysis was conducted on 105 comments made in response to three posts on the show’s official Instagram account (all dated 27 May 2019), which summarise the series’ storyline about the absence of sexual consent in the relationship between two main characters. The findings revealed two contrasting views. On the one hand, there were comments that interpret the situation by referring to stereotypes of romantic love, ignoring the conflict over sexual consent and instead treating the break-up as a problem that the couple should resolve in their own private way. On the other hand, there were comments that identify what happened as a situation of sexual non-consent, where the aspects that generated the most controversy were the use of the word ‘rape’ and the male character’s responsibility for not having heeded the non-verbal signals given to him by his partner. From the perspective of relationships and sex education, it is concluded that audiovisual content and exchanges on social media can be useful tools when it comes to learning to acknowledge non-verbal signs of non-consent.

KEYWORDS:

• sexual consent
• teen series
• social media
• Netflix
• audience
• media literacy

Acknowledgments

We thank the editor of the journal and the three anonymous reviewers for their excellent feedback and very useful comments. Calderón-Sandoval acknowledges the support provided by the DIGISCREENS: Identities and Democratic values on European Digital Screens: Distribution, reception, and representation project (Reference CHANSE-94).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Quote from the Twitter account (13 March 2020): ‘If you want to keep up to date with everything that’s coming up on #LesDeLHoqueiTV3, follow us on Instagram http://instagram.com/lesdelhoqueitv3 and at http://tv3.cat/lesdelhoquei’/‘A lot of surprises await in the new season… but they can’t be followed on this Twitter account, because it will no longer be updated #LesDeLhoqueiTV3’

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the I+D+i research project LGBTIQ+ SCREENS (Reference PID2019-110351RB-I00) funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.