This article utilizes a postcolonial theoretical framework to challenge and unsettle the ways in which media has been historicized in media studies where the time of the North Atlantic West is taken to be an unspoken normative assumption through which we chart media’s development. Further, this article attempts to move us to the Global South by calling attention to media objects and the mediated lives that function through those objects, that have not received any place in media history. Nor are they recognized as a media object. The basic questions that this article raises are: (a) what happens to our understanding of media’s development when we complicate the temporality (North Atlantic Western) through which we narrate the history of media, and (b) What happens to our understanding of what media is when 24/7 electrification is not taken as a norm in our recognition of a media or technology object. What other media objects and mediated lives might then become visible?
{"title":"When Postcolonial Studies Interrupts Media Studies†","authors":"R. Shome","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ020","url":null,"abstract":"This article utilizes a postcolonial theoretical framework to challenge and unsettle the ways in which media has been historicized in media studies where the time of the North Atlantic West is taken to be an unspoken normative assumption through which we chart media’s development. Further, this article attempts to move us to the Global South by calling attention to media objects and the mediated lives that function through those objects, that have not received any place in media history. Nor are they recognized as a media object. The basic questions that this article raises are: (a) what happens to our understanding of media’s development when we complicate the temporality (North Atlantic Western) through which we narrate the history of media, and (b) What happens to our understanding of what media is when 24/7 electrification is not taken as a norm in our recognition of a media or technology object. What other media objects and mediated lives might then become visible?","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131839249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
HBO’s Last Week Tonight has frequently featured host John Oliver’s critiques of global neoliberalism. His pronouncements are often not just the taking of an ideological position, but a moral one which borders on the theological, conceptualizing the entrenchment of inequality as a normative evil. It is a form of activism where he uses his platform to exhort his audience to fight back against large, impersonal forces that he portrays as taking advantage of them. This article analyzes the program’s mentions of the institutional effects of these policies on individuals and the economy and how mainstream media sources have either amplified or ignored his claims. “Serious” journalism is more likely to cover his stories that have simple, dramatic villains rather than complex causes.
{"title":"“The Mittens of Disapproval Are On”: John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight as Neoliberal Critique","authors":"Nickie Michaud Wild","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ021","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 HBO’s Last Week Tonight has frequently featured host John Oliver’s critiques of global neoliberalism. His pronouncements are often not just the taking of an ideological position, but a moral one which borders on the theological, conceptualizing the entrenchment of inequality as a normative evil. It is a form of activism where he uses his platform to exhort his audience to fight back against large, impersonal forces that he portrays as taking advantage of them. This article analyzes the program’s mentions of the institutional effects of these policies on individuals and the economy and how mainstream media sources have either amplified or ignored his claims. “Serious” journalism is more likely to cover his stories that have simple, dramatic villains rather than complex causes.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":"410 26","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134289700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Corrigendum to “A Shoppable Life: Performance, Selfhood, and Influence in the Social Media Storefront”","authors":"Emily Hund, Lee McGuigan","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ022","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114183879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In June 2015 Gawker Media became the first for-profit digital news organization to unionize its editorial workforce. True to their bombastic style, they did so publicly, publishing a post where staff commented on how they were going to vote regarding the union and why. This article examines the ensuing discussion to understand how this group of culture workers perceived their labor, and the value they sought not just from collective bargaining, but from doing so publicly. Gawker’s unionization was aimed not exclusively at Gawker, but spoke to a vision for the entire sector. Gawker staff were motivated to collective action by the precarity that besets digital media, while the publicness of the effort was aimed at their peer organizations. The public performance of unionism at Gawker may signal a shift in the discourse around collective bargaining among young creative workers as more digital outlets come to organize their workforce.
{"title":"An Organized Work Force is Part of Growing Up: Gawker and the Case for Unionizing Digital Newsrooms","authors":"R. Prasad","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In June 2015 Gawker Media became the first for-profit digital news organization to unionize its editorial workforce. True to their bombastic style, they did so publicly, publishing a post where staff commented on how they were going to vote regarding the union and why. This article examines the ensuing discussion to understand how this group of culture workers perceived their labor, and the value they sought not just from collective bargaining, but from doing so publicly. Gawker’s unionization was aimed not exclusively at Gawker, but spoke to a vision for the entire sector. Gawker staff were motivated to collective action by the precarity that besets digital media, while the publicness of the effort was aimed at their peer organizations. The public performance of unionism at Gawker may signal a shift in the discourse around collective bargaining among young creative workers as more digital outlets come to organize their workforce.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121722563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
“May the force be with you” were the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parting words as he ended his 2014 address to a rapturous crowd of Indian Americans in New York’s Madison square garden. Modi is the first PM to address the country through his own radio show, actively use social media, as well as technologies such as the 3D hologram. This article examines the ways in which Modi’s celebritized politics is strategically constructed and performed, honing in on Modi’s utilization of media, technology, and popular culture. It interrogates the processes such as the personalization of his political image through social media, the use of film stars to cultivate affect and allure by association, in constructing brand Modi.
{"title":"“May the Force Be With You”: Narendra Modi and the Celebritization of Indian Politics","authors":"S. Rai","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ013","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 “May the force be with you” were the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parting words as he ended his 2014 address to a rapturous crowd of Indian Americans in New York’s Madison square garden. Modi is the first PM to address the country through his own radio show, actively use social media, as well as technologies such as the 3D hologram. This article examines the ways in which Modi’s celebritized politics is strategically constructed and performed, honing in on Modi’s utilization of media, technology, and popular culture. It interrogates the processes such as the personalization of his political image through social media, the use of film stars to cultivate affect and allure by association, in constructing brand Modi.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121951379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Itinerant films represented a substantial media and cultural phenomenon during the first half of the 20th century, and provided a localized form of a mass culture product. Through an analysis of archival materials and newspaper accounts related to the production of 11 itinerant movies filmed in the Midwestern United States in the 1920s, this article examines the relationship between the itinerant films and community newspapers. By supporting these productions, these newspapers used a relatively new communication technology as a way to solidify their civic position. They helped create an intensely local product featuring recognizable landmarks, businesses and people that offered readers a way to combat the loss of community and place in an increasingly networked society.
{"title":"Hollywood in the Hinterland: Newspapers, Itinerant Films and Community Identity in the 1920s","authors":"Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ016","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Itinerant films represented a substantial media and cultural phenomenon during the first half of the 20th century, and provided a localized form of a mass culture product. Through an analysis of archival materials and newspaper accounts related to the production of 11 itinerant movies filmed in the Midwestern United States in the 1920s, this article examines the relationship between the itinerant films and community newspapers. By supporting these productions, these newspapers used a relatively new communication technology as a way to solidify their civic position. They helped create an intensely local product featuring recognizable landmarks, businesses and people that offered readers a way to combat the loss of community and place in an increasingly networked society.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115273710","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Muslims in the West are under pressure to perform nationalism and hegemonic gender ideology to neutralize themselves as threats. This has triggered a series of “blindfolded hug” viral videos that show individual Muslim males standing blindfolded in a busy street asking for hugs from passersby who “agree” that they are not a danger to society. In this article, I examine 51 such videos and argue that the visual of a minority male made abject reifies state might while building an aesthetic of peacefulness that Western Muslims are compelled to demonstrate. Such an aesthetic relies on the rhetorics of disability, the affective circulation of hate, and the stripping off of oppositional gazing to be read legibly by White audiences.
{"title":"Blind Submission","authors":"Lamiyah Bahrainwala","doi":"10.1093/ccc/tcz027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcz027","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Muslims in the West are under pressure to perform nationalism and hegemonic gender ideology to neutralize themselves as threats. This has triggered a series of “blindfolded hug” viral videos that show individual Muslim males standing blindfolded in a busy street asking for hugs from passersby who “agree” that they are not a danger to society. In this article, I examine 51 such videos and argue that the visual of a minority male made abject reifies state might while building an aesthetic of peacefulness that Western Muslims are compelled to demonstrate. Such an aesthetic relies on the rhetorics of disability, the affective circulation of hate, and the stripping off of oppositional gazing to be read legibly by White audiences.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133504316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article argues that television recaps are a unique critical genre that provide uncommon attention to women-targeted content. As an episodic form of critical engagement, recaps provide new opportunities for emerging female writers and writers of color to comment upon television’s representational challenges and successes. As women-targeted media gains new traction in the marketplace, recaps can not only be an important vehicle for needed commentary about undervalued content, but they also may serve as a marker of the value of these programs for a historically underserved audience. Featuring interviews with five recappers and two editors from major entertainment-focused publications including The AV Club, Vulture, Vox, Hello Beautiful, Go Fug Yourself and Buzzfeed, this article explores the recap as a distinct genre with feminist potential to elevate new voices, to disrupt traditional taste hierarchies, and to embrace pleasure as a measure of quality.
本文认为,电视重播是一种独特的批评类型,为女性目标内容提供了罕见的关注。作为一种情节式的批判性参与形式,摘要为新兴的女性作家和有色人种作家提供了新的机会来评论电视的代表性挑战和成功。随着以女性为目标的媒体在市场上获得新的吸引力,摘要不仅可以成为对被低估的内容进行必要评论的重要工具,而且还可以作为这些节目对历史上服务不足的观众的价值的标志。本文采访了来自主要娱乐出版物(包括The AV Club、Vulture、Vox、Hello Beautiful、Go Fug Yourself和Buzzfeed)的五位重述者和两位编辑,探讨了重述作为一种独特的类型,具有女权主义潜力,可以提升新的声音,打破传统的品味等级,并将愉悦作为质量的衡量标准。
{"title":"The Recappables: Exploring a Feminist Approach to Criticism","authors":"Karen Petruska","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ006","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that television recaps are a unique critical genre that provide uncommon attention to women-targeted content. As an episodic form of critical engagement, recaps provide new opportunities for emerging female writers and writers of color to comment upon television’s representational challenges and successes. As women-targeted media gains new traction in the marketplace, recaps can not only be an important vehicle for needed commentary about undervalued content, but they also may serve as a marker of the value of these programs for a historically underserved audience. Featuring interviews with five recappers and two editors from major entertainment-focused publications including The AV Club, Vulture, Vox, Hello Beautiful, Go Fug Yourself and Buzzfeed, this article explores the recap as a distinct genre with feminist potential to elevate new voices, to disrupt traditional taste hierarchies, and to embrace pleasure as a measure of quality.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131081045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A key difference between Magic Mike (2012) and Magic Mike XXL (MMXL, 2015) is the latter films narrative shift toward the viewing experience of its targeted female audience. The hyper-lean storyline that streamlined all the indulgences of Steven Soderbergh’s original transformed the franchise into a spectacle for women. The goal of this article, then, is to examine how MMXXL’s sonic and visual structures create the resonance that then translates to pleasure and a more holistic kind of representation for female viewers. By exploring how this film deploys not only the visual cues of beautiful male bodies to create bodily responses in its largely female audience but also querying how the sound cues create sonic visibility, I aim to illustrate how MMXXL enables women viewers from a cross section of intersectional identities the opportunity to not only feel seen but also desired.
{"title":"The Pleasure Principle of Magic Mike XXL: Sonic Visibility Toward Female Audiences","authors":"Kristen J. Warner","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ018","url":null,"abstract":"A key difference between Magic Mike (2012) and Magic Mike XXL (MMXL, 2015) is the latter films narrative shift toward the viewing experience of its targeted female audience. The hyper-lean storyline that streamlined all the indulgences of Steven Soderbergh’s original transformed the franchise into a spectacle for women. The goal of this article, then, is to examine how MMXXL’s sonic and visual structures create the resonance that then translates to pleasure and a more holistic kind of representation for female viewers. By exploring how this film deploys not only the visual cues of beautiful male bodies to create bodily responses in its largely female audience but also querying how the sound cues create sonic visibility, I aim to illustrate how MMXXL enables women viewers from a cross section of intersectional identities the opportunity to not only feel seen but also desired.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":"90 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127135713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores how Monique Samuels’s role in The Real Housewives of Potomac (TRHOP) and in her Not For Lazy Moms (NFLM) branded spaces, works both for and against the new momism to make visible black women’s experiences navigating essentialism, choice, and the identity work of black motherhood. Samuels’s positionality as a black woman leveraging her essential oils storyline into building a brand for herself brings the franchise into new cultural terrain: “the new momism.” Douglas and Michaels (2004) describe the new momism as a celebration of motherhood that encourages agency and autonomy but ultimately centers on intense devotion to childrearing. Samuels’s TRHOP storylines and extratextual self-fashioning deploy the tenets of the new momism and disrupt its inherent white supremacy to authenticate her identity through essential oils as a wellness commodity and curate an affective space for black women with her NFLM lifestyle brand.
{"title":"“Not for Lazy Moms”: The Real Housewives of Potomac’s Monique Samuels and the Branding of Black Motherhood","authors":"Elizabeth Hornsby","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ015","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article explores how Monique Samuels’s role in The Real Housewives of Potomac (TRHOP) and in her Not For Lazy Moms (NFLM) branded spaces, works both for and against the new momism to make visible black women’s experiences navigating essentialism, choice, and the identity work of black motherhood. Samuels’s positionality as a black woman leveraging her essential oils storyline into building a brand for herself brings the franchise into new cultural terrain: “the new momism.” Douglas and Michaels (2004) describe the new momism as a celebration of motherhood that encourages agency and autonomy but ultimately centers on intense devotion to childrearing. Samuels’s TRHOP storylines and extratextual self-fashioning deploy the tenets of the new momism and disrupt its inherent white supremacy to authenticate her identity through essential oils as a wellness commodity and curate an affective space for black women with her NFLM lifestyle brand.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133387927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}