This article investigates the contradictions and ambiguities of the representation of women invlogspublished by ordinary women on YouTube. The paper examines the origins of amateur videos on the ...Internet and the relationship between TV and web, discussing the characteristics of the television of intimacy. More specifically, the research analyses Flavia Calina’s channel, which has nowadays more than 800,000 subscribers and 130 million views. The investigation examines videos, comments from viewers and a meeting between thevloggerand her audience, in view of postfeminist criticism. The findings suggest that Flavia Calina, famous because of her digital reality show, synthesizes a kind of neoliberal middle class heroism, in which feminine empowerment is associated with the display of intimacy and the celebration of individual choices.
What does it mean to be modern outside the West? Based on a wealth of primary data collected over five years, Reality Television and Arab Politics analyzes how reality television stirred an explosive ...mix of religion, politics, and sexuality, fuelling heated polemics over cultural authenticity, gender relations, and political participation in the Arab world. The controversies, Kraidy argues, are best understood as a social laboratory in which actors experiment with various forms of modernity, continuing a long-standing Arab preoccupation with specifying terms of engagement with Western modernity. Women and youth take center stage in this process. Against the backdrop of dramatic upheaval in the Middle East, this book challenges the notion of a monolithic 'Arab Street' and offers an original perspective on Arab media, shifting attention away from a narrow focus on al-Jazeera, toward a vibrant media sphere that compels broad popular engagement and contentious political performance.
Prosser and Berlant focus on some paradoxes of autobiography: notably, that individual stories are impersonal too, in their formal and emotional conventionality. Relatedly, they discuss how different ...genres, media, and political situations produce the sense of immediacy, of belonging and survival that Berlant associates with what binds people to intimate publics.
O objetivo deste artigo é discutir a articulação entre as práticas dos especialistas psis e as modulações da intimidade a partir da sua exposição na mídia através do blog de um programa de televisão ...no formato de reality show. Foram analisados comentários dos seguidores do blog e cinco entrevistas semi-estruturadas com participantes do programa. Inspiradas em autores como Latour (2008) e Despret (2011), as pesquisadoras problematizam a distribuição da expertise a partir da análise do programa exibido no blog. Os resultados indicam que a distribuição da expertise ativa a todos que se articulam no dispositivo produzindo modos de subjetivar psicologizados. // Psi experts in action: on the distribution of expertise in a reality show. This paper aims to discuss the relationship between practices of psi experts and modulations of intimacy based on its exposure on a reality show microblog. Inspired by authors like Latour (2008) and Despret (2011), the researchers put in question the distribution of expertise in the reality show microblog. The results indicate that the distribution of expertise enables people who are articulated in the reality show enacting psychologized subjectivities.
Class is often overlooked in sociological studies of death, just as studies of class overlook death. The controversial media coverage of the death of Jade Goody provides a useful focus for exploring ...contemporary class-making. Recent sociological analyses of class representations in popular culture have demonstrated how denigration and humiliation serve as mechanisms which position sections of the white, working class (chavs) as repositories of bad taste. We argue that these are not the only (or even the most prevalent) affective mechanisms for class-making. In this article, we explore how cultural imperatives for 'dying well' intersect with what could be perceived as more positive or even affectionate representations of Jade to produce 'good taste' as naturalised properties of the middle class. As such, we demonstrate that the circulation of inequalities through precarious and dynamic cultural representations involves more complex affective mechanisms in class boundary work than is often recognised.
This article offers a cultural-sociological analysis of interpretations by viewers from different classes on the most popular reality show in Israel, namely, Big Brother. The findings of this study ...show dramatic differences in viewing practices according to class and ethnic distinctions of the viewers. Viewers from the upper socioeconomic class primarily addressed the way in which the subjects from the low socioeconomic class and marked ethnic groups appear in their eyes: that is, the processes affiliated with Othering. These ethno-class distinctions were translated into unique viewing practices: the identification of what are called, "cult moments" or "grotesque moments." These moments are depicted as ridiculing the "exaggerated" behavior of members of the low socioeconomic class and specific ethnic groups. Viewers from the low socioeconomic class offer more imminent (and less distant) perspectives on the Big Brother program. They relate to a broad spectrum of content that was broadcast in the program, identify with the participants from their group, criticize the judgments and the cultural hierarchies of marked group members, and describe how political anger accompanies their viewing of the reality program. The discussion section suggests the connection of these subjective interpretations and widespread cultural scenarios about class and ethnic identities.
This article examines how cultural representations of deviant bodies vary based on historically informed narratives of bodily stigma. Using content analysis of 40 episodes of reality television ...programming, I contrast cultural representations of dwarfism and obesity. Over time, dwarfism became constructed as an identity project with the aim of bodily acceptance, whereas obesity became regarded as a body project with the goal of body transformation through weight loss. The mostly positive historical characterizations of dwarfs allowed them to easily adopt the tenets of the disability rights movement as they evolved from freak show performances to television as an educational platform. They have adopted a social model of disability, positive social identity, self-acceptance, and full social participation. By contrast, the past and contemporary representations of obesity have been overwhelmingly negative. Obese freak show performers were openly mocked, and classifying obesity as a disability has not yet gained traction as a civil rights movement. Instead, obesity is viewed through the lens of individual responsibility and limits of social participation are emphasized. Body modification through weight loss constructs an identity based on self-change. Generally, this article suggests that cultural representations as de-stigmatization projects are enabled or constrained by historical factors and the nature of the bodily stigma.
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