European Journal of Cultural Studies current issue

Political culture and television fiction: The Amazing Mrs Pritchard

Corner, J., Richardson, K. — 2008-10-21

Recently, the study of politics has expanded its scope by recognizing the constitutive power of `political culture' at the same time as cultural studies has become more interested in formal political processes and their relationship to popular culture. This article is a case study of political culture in the United Kingdom, focusing on one example of fictional expression, a television drama series broadcast in 2006: The Amazing Mrs Pritchard . The premise of the article is that the imaginative work of political fiction provides an opportunity to explore the cultural mediation of uncertainties and tensions in contemporary politics and political values. The framing of the series involves a generic mixture of realism and fantasy unusual in the British context and the key themes, which include political trust and the limits of political action, are discussed in relation both to their fictional articulation and their wider reference.

The musicalization of `reality': Reality rap and rap reality on Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet

Danielsen, A. — 2008-10-21

A recurring theme in the theorizing of documentary film is the nature of the relation between image and reality. This article deals with reality effects and documentary aspects in reality rap, focusing on Public Enemy's album Fear of a Black Planet (Def Jam, 1990). Specific attention is given to the use of samples from `real life' locations, the inclusion of mass media debates and the use of sonic montage. The article discusses the exchange of music and reality in Public Enemy's music, arguing that the musicalization of reality both enhances the expressive power of their music and makes it possible to produce new meanings in an informational sense.

Othering through genderization in the regional press: Constructing brutal others out of immigrants in rural Sweden

Elsrud, T. — 2008-10-21

By far, most of the research into processes of discrimination and ethnification in Sweden considers urban settings. This article focuses on how the regional press in a rural area of south-east Sweden represents immigrants in a residential area in the outskirts of the Kalmar township. It points at the urgent need for researchers and decision-makers to take into account both subtle and palpable stigmatizing processes that meet immigrants who reside the countryside. An analysis of two local newspapers shows a continuous construction of `otherness' through pictures and texts, in which the identities of minority ethnic groups are stereotyped and subverted. One of the most persistent themes in this work of representation is the brutalization of the masculinity of `others', stressed even further by a `traditionalization' and feminization of a weak, caring female other. Both these gendered images serve a higher purpose, that of maintaining a positive image of a taken-for-granted Swedishness.

Descendants of Slaves: The articulation of mixed racial ancestry in a Danish television documentary series

Marselis, R. — 2008-10-21

The aim of the Danish television documentary series Slavernes Slægt (Descendants of Slaves, 2005) has been to enhance public awareness of Danish colonial history. As is typical of contemporary mediated memories, the account of national history is combined with `small histories' that focus on live stories of individuals and their families. Participating in the series are present-day descendants of enslaved Africans who, as a result of an interest in family historical research, have found information about their black ancestry. The series challenges the supposed historical homogeneity of Nordic nation-states by pointing out the historical presence of black individuals. However, this article will show how discourses of family history (e.g. the focus on bloodlines) converge with old `race' theory; the result of which is that the series inadvertently reproduces processes of visual Othering.

National media events: From displays of unity to enactments of division

Mihelj, S. — 2008-10-21

Despite the conspicuous presence of nationhood and nationalism in existing studies of media events and rituals, explicit conceptualizations of the link between these media phenomena and nationhood remain scarce. Drawing on existing literature and research on the topic, this article proposes to shift attention away from ceremonial occasions primarily aimed at celebrating national unity, towards the more distressing events and mobilization marathons enacting partition and instituting divisions among nations, ethnicities, cultures, races or religions. It provides a series of propositions regarding the involvement of media events in the transformation of audiences into nations, and discusses two categories of media rituals that are linked closely to contemporary forms of national mobilization: rituals of partition and mobilization marathons. Given the disentanglement of nations and states and the multi-ethnic nature of modern states and media spaces, such media occasions ought to receive more sustained attention in the future.

The nation has two `voices': Diforia and performativity in Athens 2004

Tzanelli, R. — 2008-10-21

This article explores the contemporary conditions of national self-presentation, inviting students of national identity to reconsider the nature of national self-narration through new conceptual tools. It is argued that contemporary nations have two `voices': one is addressed to their members, another speaks to the nation's external interlocutors. Both voices contribute to the performance of identity: for nations which are the product of colonial and `crypto-colonial' encounters, narration is characterized by a negotiation of the boundaries between private and public voices and slippage in utterance. The article introduces a new concept in the study of culture, `diforia', which accounts for both this split meaning of utterance and national performativity in public. The concept is mobilized to examine and deconstruct a recent case of Greek diforia enacted in the context of the opening and closing ceremonies of Athens 2004.

Book review: Nick Couldry, Sonia Livingstone and Tim Markham, Media Consumption and Public Engagement: Beyond the Presumption of Attention. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. xiv + 247 pp. ISBN: 9781403985347, {pound}50.00 (hbk)

Rowe, D. — 2008-10-21