Fifty Shades of Grey (FSOG) is argued to be a female-focused mainstream cult film that deliberately fosters a simultaneity of viewing modes. This multiple address highlights how the lauded qualities of cult texts are standard in feminine narratives that need to appeal to a large cross section of women. Cult discourse still depends on misogyny and masculinized distinction even when the mainstream mode seems to break down gendered fandom. Contradictions emerge because cult was traditionally defined against the mindless consuming of women. However, the cultish consumption patterns for FSOG are deliberately fostered by merchandising strategies. Thus, the same element that shows cult tendencies is used to denigrate the film as the antithesis of cult: women as consumers.
{"title":"The Mainstream Cult of Fifty Shades of Grey: Hailing Multiple Women Audiences","authors":"Dana Och","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Fifty Shades of Grey (FSOG) is argued to be a female-focused mainstream cult film that deliberately fosters a simultaneity of viewing modes. This multiple address highlights how the lauded qualities of cult texts are standard in feminine narratives that need to appeal to a large cross section of women. Cult discourse still depends on misogyny and masculinized distinction even when the mainstream mode seems to break down gendered fandom. Contradictions emerge because cult was traditionally defined against the mindless consuming of women. However, the cultish consumption patterns for FSOG are deliberately fostered by merchandising strategies. Thus, the same element that shows cult tendencies is used to denigrate the film as the antithesis of cult: women as consumers.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122863219","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}
Since its premiere in 2002, The Bachelor (ABC) and its spinoffs have entertained television audiences with their depiction of individuals vying for love. However, the franchise has been critiqued for the lack of racial diversity in its contestant pool. This article examines the racialized and gendered logics of representation that frame the casting of the first black Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay. This article discusses the industrial conditions of possibility at the ABC network that led to Lindsay’s casting in 2017, which center on the cultivation of diversity in primetime programming. Yet the courting of a black female lead is done without a commitment to the specificities of targeting a black woman to be at the forefront of the competition to find love. This article details the construction of the African American female lead’s romantic journey and audience response at the intersections of race, gender, and the cultural politics of desire.
{"title":"Introducing the First Black Bachelorette: Race, Diversity, and Courting Without Commitment","authors":"Brandeise Monk-Payton","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ019","url":null,"abstract":"Since its premiere in 2002, The Bachelor (ABC) and its spinoffs have entertained television audiences with their depiction of individuals vying for love. However, the franchise has been critiqued for the lack of racial diversity in its contestant pool. This article examines the racialized and gendered logics of representation that frame the casting of the first black Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay. This article discusses the industrial conditions of possibility at the ABC network that led to Lindsay’s casting in 2017, which center on the cultivation of diversity in primetime programming. Yet the courting of a black female lead is done without a commitment to the specificities of targeting a black woman to be at the forefront of the competition to find love. This article details the construction of the African American female lead’s romantic journey and audience response at the intersections of race, gender, and the cultural politics of desire.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130519171","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}
The premier of Empire in January 2015 drew 9.8 million viewers and became FOX's highest-rated series debut in three years. In this episode, we are introduced to the terminally-ill CEO of Empire Entertainment, Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard), who must decide which of his three sons will inherit the family business. To further complicate the decision, his ex-wife, Cookie (Taraji P. Henson), is released from prison after 17 years. The strength of the performances from the main cast, and those of celebrity guest stars, bolster the drama that unfolds, explaining why Empire was incredibly popular with audiences, and black audiences in particular. We examine the series's representations of blackness through focus group interviews with 31 black women viewers, exploring how they made sense of Cookie and compared her to black female leads on other series. Our interviews reveal that Cookie's complexities inspire identification and anxiety, engage broader debates about popular culture representations, and clarify black women's desires to see multifaceted images of themselves and their communities on television.
{"title":"One Tough Cookie: Exploring Black Women’s Responses to Empire’s Cookie Lyon","authors":"Melissa A. Click, Sarah Smith-Frigerio","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The premier of Empire in January 2015 drew 9.8 million viewers and became FOX's highest-rated series debut in three years. In this episode, we are introduced to the terminally-ill CEO of Empire Entertainment, Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard), who must decide which of his three sons will inherit the family business. To further complicate the decision, his ex-wife, Cookie (Taraji P. Henson), is released from prison after 17 years. The strength of the performances from the main cast, and those of celebrity guest stars, bolster the drama that unfolds, explaining why Empire was incredibly popular with audiences, and black audiences in particular. We examine the series's representations of blackness through focus group interviews with 31 black women viewers, exploring how they made sense of Cookie and compared her to black female leads on other series. Our interviews reveal that Cookie's complexities inspire identification and anxiety, engage broader debates about popular culture representations, and clarify black women's desires to see multifaceted images of themselves and their communities on television.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121691857","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}
The 2010s saw a boom in television comedies, created by, written, and starring women, that explored the bawdy and chaotic lives of protagonists who were experiencing some form of arrested development. These comedies sought to build intimate connections with their imagined audiences by crossing boundaries—social, bodily, and physical—to produce comedies of discomfort. Drawing in part on Rebecca Wanzo’s consideration of “precarious-girl comedy” (2016) I examine how two British television comedies intensified these intimate connections through the use of direct address, binding the audience tightly to the sexual and social misadventures of their twenty-something female protagonists. Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum (E4, 2015–2017) follows naïve and desperately horny black working-class Londoner Tracey in her quest for sexual experience, and Phoebe-Waller Bridges’ Fleabag (BBC Three, 2016–) documents an unnamed upper-middle-class white woman’s sharply misanthropic journey through grief. In both programmes direct address serves to intensify the embrace of bodily affect and intimate access to interiority found in the “precarious-girl comedy” (Wanzo, 2016), producing moments of comic and emotional repulsion. Each program uses direct address’s blend of directness and distance to different ends, but both draw audiences at times uncomfortably close to the singular perspective of their protagonists, creating an intensely affective comic intimacy.
{"title":"Too Close for Comfort: Direct Address and the Affective Pull of the Confessional Comic Woman in Chewing Gum and Fleabag","authors":"Faye Woods","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ014","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The 2010s saw a boom in television comedies, created by, written, and starring women, that explored the bawdy and chaotic lives of protagonists who were experiencing some form of arrested development. These comedies sought to build intimate connections with their imagined audiences by crossing boundaries—social, bodily, and physical—to produce comedies of discomfort. Drawing in part on Rebecca Wanzo’s consideration of “precarious-girl comedy” (2016) I examine how two British television comedies intensified these intimate connections through the use of direct address, binding the audience tightly to the sexual and social misadventures of their twenty-something female protagonists. Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum (E4, 2015–2017) follows naïve and desperately horny black working-class Londoner Tracey in her quest for sexual experience, and Phoebe-Waller Bridges’ Fleabag (BBC Three, 2016–) documents an unnamed upper-middle-class white woman’s sharply misanthropic journey through grief. In both programmes direct address serves to intensify the embrace of bodily affect and intimate access to interiority found in the “precarious-girl comedy” (Wanzo, 2016), producing moments of comic and emotional repulsion. Each program uses direct address’s blend of directness and distance to different ends, but both draw audiences at times uncomfortably close to the singular perspective of their protagonists, creating an intensely affective comic intimacy.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130341996","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}
Using principles of Cultural Fusion Theory (Croucher & Kramer, 2017), this study focuses on representations of Syrian refugees in mainstream Turkish newspapers to determine: (a) how the host culture media portrays newcomers; and (b) what the implications of these portrayals are in terms of an effective cultural fusion between the two communities. The study entailed content analysis of five Turkish newspapers. A keyword search of the words Syrian (Suriyeli) and refugee (mülteci) were entered into the archives of these newspapers. The search yielded a total of 2,887 news articles and 373 commentary items. The results display the significance of Cultural Fusion Theory principles and challenges that exist to achieve effective cultural fusion.
{"title":"Friend or Foe: Cultural Fusion Theory and Media Coverage of Syrian Refugees in Turkey","authors":"Nurhayat Bilge","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Using principles of Cultural Fusion Theory (Croucher & Kramer, 2017), this study focuses on representations of Syrian refugees in mainstream Turkish newspapers to determine: (a) how the host culture media portrays newcomers; and (b) what the implications of these portrayals are in terms of an effective cultural fusion between the two communities. The study entailed content analysis of five Turkish newspapers. A keyword search of the words Syrian (Suriyeli) and refugee (mülteci) were entered into the archives of these newspapers. The search yielded a total of 2,887 news articles and 373 commentary items. The results display the significance of Cultural Fusion Theory principles and challenges that exist to achieve effective cultural fusion.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122215906","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 study develops upon recent scholarship about subversive design that emerged in response to hegemonic structures such as capitalism, by introducing how racial identity informs disruptive design practices. Based upon a two-year ethnography with nine black artists during a period of racial unrest, this study presents how their experiences as black Americans informed distinctive, critical design dispositions. The participants’ deeply personal and labor-intensive design processes were both technical and political processes that involved intense prototyping, research and self-reflection. Their designs resulted in oppositional films, photography exhibits and paintings that contested racial metonymy through visceral and visual discourses that present black identities and histories within a more complex racial language. The participants also designed empathic spaces where oppositional discourses could take root and that supported communal healing, mourning and celebration. The ethnographic accounts of this study offer a meaningful way to engage and bridge scholarship about race, design and oppositional art.
{"title":"Oppositional Designs: Examining How Racial Identity Informs the Critical Design of Art and Space","authors":"Krishnan Vasudevan","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ001","url":null,"abstract":"This study develops upon recent scholarship about subversive design that emerged in response to hegemonic structures such as capitalism, by introducing how racial identity informs disruptive design practices. Based upon a two-year ethnography with nine black artists during a period of racial unrest, this study presents how their experiences as black Americans informed distinctive, critical design dispositions. The participants’ deeply personal and labor-intensive design processes were both technical and political processes that involved intense prototyping, research and self-reflection. Their designs resulted in oppositional films, photography exhibits and paintings that contested racial metonymy through visceral and visual discourses that present black identities and histories within a more complex racial language. The participants also designed empathic spaces where oppositional discourses could take root and that supported communal healing, mourning and celebration. The ethnographic accounts of this study offer a meaningful way to engage and bridge scholarship about race, design and oppositional art.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123919387","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}
What kinds of social, cultural, and political narratives emerge when we pay attention to how media are physically rendered as trash? By reducing media to their material forms and tracing their journey from use to disuse, the stories behind media activism start to appear. This article studies where Beirut’s media waste goes and who brings it there. A women-only beach, a refugee camp from the early 20th century, and some of the most vulnerable populations in Lebanon all exist alongside Beirut’s trash. They are part of the story of media in the Arab world because media are waste. While media activism in the Arab world is often marked by the visibility of bodies in protest, media waste in Lebanon is governed by a politics of invisibility that covers and hides the very social problems that media activism seeks to address.
{"title":"A City by the Sea: Uncovering Beirut's Media Waste","authors":"Blake Atwood","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ011","url":null,"abstract":"What kinds of social, cultural, and political narratives emerge when we pay attention to how media are physically rendered as trash? By reducing media to their material forms and tracing their journey from use to disuse, the stories behind media activism start to appear. This article studies where Beirut’s media waste goes and who brings it there. A women-only beach, a refugee camp from the early 20th century, and some of the most vulnerable populations in Lebanon all exist alongside Beirut’s trash. They are part of the story of media in the Arab world because media are waste. While media activism in the Arab world is often marked by the visibility of bodies in protest, media waste in Lebanon is governed by a politics of invisibility that covers and hides the very social problems that media activism seeks to address.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122924983","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}
Univision, historically the number one Spanish network, departed from its long tradition of safeguarding neutral Spanish to embrace not only English, but also Spanglish and Spanish-Caribbean accents in 2015. This article explores Univision’s new linguistic flexibility via two emblematic reality TV shows: Nuestra Belleza Latina (2007–) and La Banda (2015–). Through a textual analysis of these shows and industrial analysis of the strategies deployed by the network, the authors argue that Univision’s targeting of “billennials”—bicultural and bilingual millennials—prompted a linguistic flexibility that challenges the traditional lineup of neutral, Spanish-only, television, and is more inclusive of Latina/o audiences’ language use.
{"title":"“Targeting Billennials”: Billenials, Linguistic Flexibility, and the New Language Politics of Univision","authors":"Manuel G. Avilés-Santiago, Jillian M. Báez","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ012","url":null,"abstract":"Univision, historically the number one Spanish network, departed from its long tradition of safeguarding neutral Spanish to embrace not only English, but also Spanglish and Spanish-Caribbean accents in 2015. This article explores Univision’s new linguistic flexibility via two emblematic reality TV shows: Nuestra Belleza Latina (2007–) and La Banda (2015–). Through a textual analysis of these shows and industrial analysis of the strategies deployed by the network, the authors argue that Univision’s targeting of “billennials”—bicultural and bilingual millennials—prompted a linguistic flexibility that challenges the traditional lineup of neutral, Spanish-only, television, and is more inclusive of Latina/o audiences’ language use.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115177061","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 the digital age of branding when advertisements appeal to consumers’ belief systems, Procter & Gamble’s Tide uses ads that feature loving fathers doing the laundry. Building on masculinity studies and branding discourses, I explore representations of Tide’s dads as part of a wave of “dadvertising,” or advertising that uses fathers to represent ideal masculinity centered on involved parenting and emotional vulnerability. The advertisements in my case study show a spectrum of performance, from dads who justify their domestic labor with appeals to hegemonic masculinity to dads who seem at ease in historically feminized roles. All of these examples reveal dadvertising’s root in neoliberal gender politics and commodity activism, wherein evolving masculinities are personalized and commoditized into consumerist actions.
{"title":"Dadvertising: Representations of Fatherhood in Procter & Gamble’s Tide Commercials","authors":"C. Leader","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In the digital age of branding when advertisements appeal to consumers’ belief systems, Procter & Gamble’s Tide uses ads that feature loving fathers doing the laundry. Building on masculinity studies and branding discourses, I explore representations of Tide’s dads as part of a wave of “dadvertising,” or advertising that uses fathers to represent ideal masculinity centered on involved parenting and emotional vulnerability. The advertisements in my case study show a spectrum of performance, from dads who justify their domestic labor with appeals to hegemonic masculinity to dads who seem at ease in historically feminized roles. All of these examples reveal dadvertising’s root in neoliberal gender politics and commodity activism, wherein evolving masculinities are personalized and commoditized into consumerist actions.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115803270","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 examines the role consumer background check companies play in the construction of reputation anxiety. Through an examination of corporate blogs and sponsored stories, this article argues these companies cultivate risk along two related axes: (a) fear of dangerous others; and (b) fear of the threat posed by personal information available to others. Through sponsored stories and promotional material, these companies encourage people to mitigate risk by using consumer background check services to seek out information about others and review available details about themselves. Consistent with other forms of risk anxiety in modern cultures, the advice offered by these companies encourages the acceptance of personal responsibility around the acquisition of and response to this information. This article concludes by arguing the cultivation of reputation anxiety around digital skeletons—belonging both to others and to oneself—is rooted in gendered notions of safety and personal responsibility.
{"title":"Reputation Anxiety: Consumer Background Checks and the Cultivation of Risk","authors":"Nora A Draper","doi":"10.1093/CCC/TCZ010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CCC/TCZ010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines the role consumer background check companies play in the construction of reputation anxiety. Through an examination of corporate blogs and sponsored stories, this article argues these companies cultivate risk along two related axes: (a) fear of dangerous others; and (b) fear of the threat posed by personal information available to others. Through sponsored stories and promotional material, these companies encourage people to mitigate risk by using consumer background check services to seek out information about others and review available details about themselves. Consistent with other forms of risk anxiety in modern cultures, the advice offered by these companies encourages the acceptance of personal responsibility around the acquisition of and response to this information. This article concludes by arguing the cultivation of reputation anxiety around digital skeletons—belonging both to others and to oneself—is rooted in gendered notions of safety and personal responsibility.","PeriodicalId":300302,"journal":{"name":"Communication, Culture and Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115715762","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}
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