Pub Date : 2023-10-05DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2023.2251544
William Joseph Sipe
ABSTRACTShonda Rhimes’ latest televisual sensation updates her post-racial and post-feminist fantasies for a post-Trump world. Discarding her trademark colorblind casting, Bridgerton confronts racial tensions and gender disparities within a fanciful reimagining of the aristocracy of colonial Britain. Yet, in a move familiar to longtime viewers of Shondaland, the means of resistance to such injustice is gratuitous displays of interracial relationships. Bridgerton constructs a historical fantasy that centers authentic love and desire as the exclusive mechanism for constructing a post-racial and post-feminist society. Through love, the English aristocracy is transformed into a permissive, racially inclusive matriarchy wherein one’s duty is to live and love authentically. While previous scholarship has contextualized Rhimes’ work within neoliberalism, I argue that the racial and gendered politics of Bridgerton are more adeptly understood through Fisher’s theory of capitalist realism, which describes contemporary capitalism’s investment in mystifying authority and equating authentic consumption with identity construction.KEYWORDS: Post-racial politicspost-feminist politicscapitalist realismtelevisionpopular culture Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
{"title":"Post-racial politics and the mandate to desire: interracial love as liberation in <i>Bridgerton</i>","authors":"William Joseph Sipe","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2023.2251544","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2023.2251544","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTShonda Rhimes’ latest televisual sensation updates her post-racial and post-feminist fantasies for a post-Trump world. Discarding her trademark colorblind casting, Bridgerton confronts racial tensions and gender disparities within a fanciful reimagining of the aristocracy of colonial Britain. Yet, in a move familiar to longtime viewers of Shondaland, the means of resistance to such injustice is gratuitous displays of interracial relationships. Bridgerton constructs a historical fantasy that centers authentic love and desire as the exclusive mechanism for constructing a post-racial and post-feminist society. Through love, the English aristocracy is transformed into a permissive, racially inclusive matriarchy wherein one’s duty is to live and love authentically. While previous scholarship has contextualized Rhimes’ work within neoliberalism, I argue that the racial and gendered politics of Bridgerton are more adeptly understood through Fisher’s theory of capitalist realism, which describes contemporary capitalism’s investment in mystifying authority and equating authentic consumption with identity construction.KEYWORDS: Post-racial politicspost-feminist politicscapitalist realismtelevisionpopular culture Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"116 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134947093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2023.2249079
Yasemin Y. Celikkol, Marwan M. Kraidy
{"title":"Neo-Ottoman cool west: the drama of Turkish drama in the Bulgarian public sphere","authors":"Yasemin Y. Celikkol, Marwan M. Kraidy","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2023.2249079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2023.2249079","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"85 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87383180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-30DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2023.2249541
Michael Brewer
{"title":"And Just Like That … misogyny reigns supreme: disciplining womanhood in the critical framings of Sex and the City’s new chapter","authors":"Michael Brewer","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2023.2249541","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2023.2249541","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81206278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-30DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2023.2249077
Abigail N. Burns
{"title":"Containing visions of justice: on the assimilation, alienization, and disappearance of Black Lives Matter in Scandal’s “The Lawn Chair”","authors":"Abigail N. Burns","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2023.2249077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2023.2249077","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"100 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76367916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-08DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2023.2245440
Brad Limov
ABSTRACT Incremental structural adjustments define attempts to advance representational diversity in Hollywood. This essay considers U.S. media industry events as catalysts for change. Using the 2020 Austin Film Festival and Writers Conference as a case study, I examine how attendees platformed the topic of inclusion after summer protests reignited calls for equity throughout media industries. Participant observation across the festival's virtual spaces locates my critical deconstruction of four panels wherein representation of historically underrepresented groups, including Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), was a focal point. Although the festival did not overtly engage with the political moment, it platformed people who did. Conversations on craft fed into a ubiquitous conference concern with “truth” in storytelling, foregrounding sociohistorical contexts and individual specificities when representing diverse experiences, and highlighting positionality when empowering writers to tell their stories. Despite the constraints of dominant production norms, events enable underrepresented groups and their allies to shape industry discourses.
{"title":"Platforming inclusion at U.S. media industry events: confronting Hollywood’s lack of representational diversity","authors":"Brad Limov","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2023.2245440","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2023.2245440","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Incremental structural adjustments define attempts to advance representational diversity in Hollywood. This essay considers U.S. media industry events as catalysts for change. Using the 2020 Austin Film Festival and Writers Conference as a case study, I examine how attendees platformed the topic of inclusion after summer protests reignited calls for equity throughout media industries. Participant observation across the festival's virtual spaces locates my critical deconstruction of four panels wherein representation of historically underrepresented groups, including Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), was a focal point. Although the festival did not overtly engage with the political moment, it platformed people who did. Conversations on craft fed into a ubiquitous conference concern with “truth” in storytelling, foregrounding sociohistorical contexts and individual specificities when representing diverse experiences, and highlighting positionality when empowering writers to tell their stories. Despite the constraints of dominant production norms, events enable underrepresented groups and their allies to shape industry discourses.","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"2022 1","pages":"227 - 241"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74303352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-08DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2023.2249082
Ashley Hinck
ABSTRACT On July 23, 2014, the fiftieth anniversary of Disney’s Mary Poppins, Funny or Die released a video titled, “Mary Poppins Quits with Kristen Bell,” earning more than 4 million views. In the video, Mary Poppins sings to the tune of “A Spoonful of Sugar” while calling for an increase to the federal minimum wage. Understanding fan-based citizenship performances like “Mary Poppins Quits” requires understanding how affect moves between popular culture, fans, and citizens. I argue that Mary Poppins functions as a figure that conducts affect across and between fan-citizens, calling on fans to treat minimum wage workers through the same affective orientation with which they treat Mary Poppins. To make this argument, I draw on work in fan studies and rhetorical studies to define fannish affect and public affect. Turning to my analysis of the “Mary Poppins Quits” video, I argue the video conducts affect through celebrity personae, destabilizes the “worthiness” discourse that often frames minimum wage workers as unworthy of a higher wage, and demands new orientations to one’s fellow citizens. Ultimately, I argue that moving affect from popular culture objects to the public sphere opens up new opportunities for solidarity but carries limitations as well.
{"title":"Fan-Based citizenship in “Mary Poppins Quits”: fannish affect, public affect, and the potential for solidarity","authors":"Ashley Hinck","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2023.2249082","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2023.2249082","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT On July 23, 2014, the fiftieth anniversary of Disney’s Mary Poppins, Funny or Die released a video titled, “Mary Poppins Quits with Kristen Bell,” earning more than 4 million views. In the video, Mary Poppins sings to the tune of “A Spoonful of Sugar” while calling for an increase to the federal minimum wage. Understanding fan-based citizenship performances like “Mary Poppins Quits” requires understanding how affect moves between popular culture, fans, and citizens. I argue that Mary Poppins functions as a figure that conducts affect across and between fan-citizens, calling on fans to treat minimum wage workers through the same affective orientation with which they treat Mary Poppins. To make this argument, I draw on work in fan studies and rhetorical studies to define fannish affect and public affect. Turning to my analysis of the “Mary Poppins Quits” video, I argue the video conducts affect through celebrity personae, destabilizes the “worthiness” discourse that often frames minimum wage workers as unworthy of a higher wage, and demands new orientations to one’s fellow citizens. Ultimately, I argue that moving affect from popular culture objects to the public sphere opens up new opportunities for solidarity but carries limitations as well.","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"76 1","pages":"213 - 226"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81034351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-08DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2023.2245437
Ragan Fox
ABSTRACT In this queer reading of the 1985 horror sequel Freddy’s Revenge, I use Halberstam’s theory of queer failure to interrogate cultural mechanisms that validate and invalidate a film’s memory. The 2019 documentary Scream, Queen! guides my queer celebration of Freddy’s Revenge. The movies converge to create profound, low theoretical insights into queer desire at the apex of the AIDS pandemic. The essay challenges heteronormative impulses commonly used to frame a media artifact as significant and successful enough to merit investigation.
{"title":"Queer failure in Freddy’s Revenge and Scream, Queen! A documentary’s recuperation of Elm Street’s queer memory","authors":"Ragan Fox","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2023.2245437","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2023.2245437","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this queer reading of the 1985 horror sequel Freddy’s Revenge, I use Halberstam’s theory of queer failure to interrogate cultural mechanisms that validate and invalidate a film’s memory. The 2019 documentary Scream, Queen! guides my queer celebration of Freddy’s Revenge. The movies converge to create profound, low theoretical insights into queer desire at the apex of the AIDS pandemic. The essay challenges heteronormative impulses commonly used to frame a media artifact as significant and successful enough to merit investigation.","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"33 1","pages":"185 - 198"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81638796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-08DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2023.2244574
Linsay M. Cramer, Gabriel A. Cruz
ABSTRACT Drawing from strategic whiteness and guided by racial rhetorical criticism, this article analyzes Disney’s Zombies movie trilogy. Situated within the context of anti-Critical Race Theory policies and the use of children and K-12 education as political pawns, the timely release of Zombies as a postracial narrative motivates this research. Through the positioning of humans, zombies, werewolves, and aliens as fixed symbolic racial groups within the imagined utopian United States town of Seabrook, Zombies presents an ideology of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that sustains white power and fluidity. This rhetorical analysis presents three conclusions. First, the imaginary utopian town of Seabrook is a postracial space developed around stereotypical racialized characters and narratives that contribute to the historical marginalization of Indigenous, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), and Black people. Second, through the protagonist Zed and the cinematic construction of zombies, the trilogy perpetuates a postracial anti-Blackness via the inscription of a policed and controlled monstrosity onto Black identity. Third, the second protagonist, Addison, engages in the propagation of whiteness via voyeuristic racial tourism and white purity. In total, the children’s mediated narrative upholds white centrality and power obviated by contemporary DEI discourses and representations.
{"title":"Black monstrosity and the rhetoric of whiteness in Disney’s Zombies trilogy","authors":"Linsay M. Cramer, Gabriel A. Cruz","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2023.2244574","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2023.2244574","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Drawing from strategic whiteness and guided by racial rhetorical criticism, this article analyzes Disney’s Zombies movie trilogy. Situated within the context of anti-Critical Race Theory policies and the use of children and K-12 education as political pawns, the timely release of Zombies as a postracial narrative motivates this research. Through the positioning of humans, zombies, werewolves, and aliens as fixed symbolic racial groups within the imagined utopian United States town of Seabrook, Zombies presents an ideology of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that sustains white power and fluidity. This rhetorical analysis presents three conclusions. First, the imaginary utopian town of Seabrook is a postracial space developed around stereotypical racialized characters and narratives that contribute to the historical marginalization of Indigenous, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), and Black people. Second, through the protagonist Zed and the cinematic construction of zombies, the trilogy perpetuates a postracial anti-Blackness via the inscription of a policed and controlled monstrosity onto Black identity. Third, the second protagonist, Addison, engages in the propagation of whiteness via voyeuristic racial tourism and white purity. In total, the children’s mediated narrative upholds white centrality and power obviated by contemporary DEI discourses and representations.","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"7 1","pages":"256 - 269"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85245469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-08DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2023.2249076
Courtney J. Dreyer
ABSTRACT This essay argues that the Christian independent film series God’s Not Dead operates to further affective investment in white Christian nationalism. I combine Lundberg’s (2009) analysis of evangelical publics with Kelly’s (2020) concept of ressentiment to explore how the series acts as performances of white Christian marginality Further, the felt marginality of conservative Christians in the series is aligned with civil rights movements and identity politics. I argue that the God’s Not Dead series is an illustrative example of how media in the conservative Christian culture can operate to maintain investments in white Christian nationalism that can motivate political action and justify violence.
{"title":"The right to believe: constructions of white Christian victimhood in the God’s Not Dead series","authors":"Courtney J. Dreyer","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2023.2249076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2023.2249076","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay argues that the Christian independent film series God’s Not Dead operates to further affective investment in white Christian nationalism. I combine Lundberg’s (2009) analysis of evangelical publics with Kelly’s (2020) concept of ressentiment to explore how the series acts as performances of white Christian marginality Further, the felt marginality of conservative Christians in the series is aligned with civil rights movements and identity politics. I argue that the God’s Not Dead series is an illustrative example of how media in the conservative Christian culture can operate to maintain investments in white Christian nationalism that can motivate political action and justify violence.","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"128 1","pages":"242 - 255"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88042814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-02DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2023.2237095
Tira J. Murray
"Sustaining black music and culture during COVID-19: #Verzuz and Club Quarantine." Critical Studies in Media Communication, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2
{"title":"Sustaining black music and culture during COVID-19: #Verzuz and Club Quarantine","authors":"Tira J. Murray","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2023.2237095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2023.2237095","url":null,"abstract":"\"Sustaining black music and culture during COVID-19: #Verzuz and Club Quarantine.\" Critical Studies in Media Communication, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135015528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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