European Journal of Cultural Studies current issue

The bodies of law: Performing truth and the mythology of lawyering in American law shows

Bainbridge, J. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:24:30 PDT

This article considers the way lawyers are represented in American television legal series. Countering the view that their focus on lawyers' theatrics makes these texts unworthy of study, this article argues that it is this very focus on physicality, and more particularly the performing bodies of these lawyers, that makes these series so interesting and important. They offer us alternative ways of thinking about lawyers' functioning by making visible how heavily lawyers' bodies are implicated in the processes of law. They reveal the ways in which lawyers embody and perform competing notions of truth and they demonstrate how law itself is constructed as spectacle. Given the global popularity of American legal series, it is concluded that they are constructing a new mythology of lawyers and lawyering that transcends cultural specificities, despite the apparent disjunction in the representation of a system of law which does not operate in the country of the consumer.

Visible victims and the politics of suffering in Omagh

Blaney, A. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:24:30 PDT

This article situates a film based on the struggle of victims of the Omagh bombing in the broader context of a post-conflict society attempting to come to terms with a violent past. The film's circulation in a concrete historical and local context is examined in an effort to appreciate the cultural significance of the film's production at a crucial juncture in the lives of members of the Omagh community.

Anxiety, helplessness and 'adultescence': Examining the appeal of teen drama for the young adult audience

Feasey, R. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:24:30 PDT

Although much work on the long-running Charmed series focuses on the popular appeal of the programme for the teen or 'tween' audience, this article examines the ways in which the show can be seen to appeal to the young adult audience. It argues that those themes, characters and intertextual reference points that appeal to the adolescent viewer also can be seen to speak to the twenty to thirtysomething generation who have turned their back on marriage, mortgages and secure employment in favour of a less rigid definition of adult maturity.

Pop goes the canon: Consumer culture and artistic value in screen adaptations of literary classics

Grixti, J. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:24:30 PDT

This essay considers how contemporary perceptions of literary classics as exponents of cultural value have been modified by the commercial demands of contemporary popular media. Rather than eliminating traditional distinctions between high and low culture, the now habitual interactions and mutual borrowings between 'high' and 'pop' have given rise to significant changes in the discourse surrounding artistic value. Even as they appear to be evaporating or merging into each other, the old distinctions between 'low' and 'high' continue to pop up in dramatically different guises, repetitively reinscribing themselves in new forms of popular as well as educated artworks, but to new ends. The main focus of analysis are film and television adaptations of canonical literary texts, with particular emphasis on the types of choices made by screenwriters and producers when they adapt canonical works of literature with the aim of making them widely appealing to contemporary audiences.

Stigma, or sort of cool: Young adults' accounts of smoking and identity

Scheffels, J. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:24:30 PDT

The aim of this article is to explore young adult smokers' constructions of identity, as revealed in accounts of their smoking experiences. A qualitative study was conducted in which interviews were held with 21 male and female smokers aged 18-23. The data were analyzed based on principles from a social constructivist approach to grounded theory, acknowledging the role of language and discourse in the construction of reality. Three key identities were read out of the interviewees' accounts: 1) the performative smoker, a construction related mainly to smoking initiation; 2) the defensive smoker; and, 3) the negotiating smoker. The smoker identities constructed by young adult smokers in this study appear to be characterized by considerable contradiction: a 'split vision' between classical positive meanings of smoking as a symbol of freedom, courage and individuality together with conflicting yet parallel meanings positioned by a strong discourse of smoking as stigmatized, immoral and undistinguished.

Mediated class-ifications: Representations of class and culture in contemporary British television

Morley, D. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:24:30 PDT

This article takes, as its point of departure, recent debates about the representation of working-class life, especially the lives of the 'feckless poor', on reality television in the UK. These issues are contextualized by reference to a set of wider-ranging historical debates about: a) the category of class as a mode of social determination (and as an explanatory model); b) the relations of language, class and culture in educational sociology and in community publishing; and, c) in relation to classical Marxism's theorization of both the 'respectable' working class and the lumpen proletariat. The article concludes with a consideration of debates about the representation of the working class in the contemporary British TV drama series Shameless.

Book review: Sam Binkley, Getting Loose: Lifestyle Consumption in the 1970s. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. 296 pp. ISBN 9780822339891, $79.95 (hbk); ISBN 9780822339892, $22.95 (pbk)

Hollows, J. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:24:30 PDT

Book Review: Paul du Gay, Organizing Identity. London: Sage, 2007. 193 pp. ISBN 9781412900119, {pound}60 (hbk); ISBN 9781412900126, {pound}21.99 (pbk)

Spinoy, E. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:24:30 PDT

Book Review: Malin Sveningsson Elm and Jenny Sunden (eds), Cyberfeminism in Northern Lights: Digital Media and Gender in a Nordic Context. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. 295 pp. ISBN: 9781847180896, {pound}34.99

De Vries, K. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:24:30 PDT

Book Review: Ronald L. Jackson II and Sonja M. Brown Givens, Black Pioneers in Communication Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007. 267 pp. ISBN: 9780761929925, $94.95 (hbk); ISBN: 9780761929952, $38.95 (pbk)

Alexander, B. K. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:24:30 PDT

Book Review: Chris Rojek, Cultural Studies. Cambridge: Polity, 2007. 184 pp. ISBN: 9780745636832, {pound}42.75 (hbk); ISBN: 9780745636849, {pound}12.99 (pbk)

Schafer, F. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:24:30 PDT