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University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol
Thursday 12th and Friday 13th July 2007
> Click here to view the detailed programme overview (online)
> Click here to download the detailed programme overview (pdf)
Conference Programme - Abstracts
Panel 8: Popular Culture
Chair: Helen Kennedy
Death becomes them: stardom and the spectacle of death
Cath Davies, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff
stardom, celebrity, representation, spectacle, death
During its transmission on 29 December 2006, CNN presented coverage of hordes queuing in Harlem to catch a glimpse of James Brown’s corpse in an open casket, the funeral of Gerald Ford and, at the same time, awaited news of the imminent execution of Saddam Hussein, (an event that would be broadcast directly via the internet only hours later). This coverage offers insights into a range of media and public responses to celebrity and death, highlighting the relationship between fame, mortality and constructions of the ‘acceptable’ face of death.
Death, preferably tragic and unexpected, is generally considered to be a key signifier in identifying an icon within popular culture. As part of wider research investigating the characteristics that elevate a star into the realm of ‘an icon’, this paper will examine the meanings inherent in the spectacle of death.
In a postmodern culture preoccupied with a nostalgic recycling of images from the past, how prominent is an untimely death within contemporary media representations of certain stars like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis and John Lennon? How does death function as an integral ‘meaning system’ in the understanding of a star’s persona and iconic identity? What issues are raised when particular stars/celebrities like Muhammad Ali, George Best and Marlon Brando fail to die at the pinnacle of their youth and fame?
Through textual analysis of images and newspaper coverage, this paper will identify the tension between presence and absence in images involving death and discuss mourning, preservation and resurrection as essential ingredients of iconic significance.
Affective empires: bio-political production in Oprah and Dr. Phil
Kiel Hume, McMaster University
media studies, affect theory, popular culture, post-structuralism
Recently there has been a renewed interest in theorizing an affective dimension of social and political power. In their groundbreaking books Empire and Multitude, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue that the present moment is one characterized by a bio-power that is in various ways fundamentally different from that which was originally conceived by Foucault. Bringing bio-politics back into the material realm, Hardt and Negri stress the productive aspects and potential of this theoretical tool, setting themselves apart from a “Biopower that stands above society, transcendent, as a sovereign authority that imposes its order. Biopolitical production, in contrast, is immanent to society and creates social relationships and forms” (Multitude 94-95). This refined, more precise idea of bio-political production invests not just the individual body, but the entire social body, the body politic, and the networks of relations and subjectivities, indeed the very interactions that make up this landscape.
As a central aspect of human experience that is both individual and shared, affect is one site of immaterial labour located within biopolitical production. Affect here is not to be narrowly understood as emotional experience but experience more generally, coextensive with the body and operative throughout a wider range of subjective and corporeal existence. We can think of affect as a point of intersection between being and doing, or acting and reacting.
We can see here how the media and celebrity culture are prime candidates for applying these ideas. Affective production, of the type we find in the media and culture industry, is a form of
labour, and as labour what are produced are “social networks, forms of community, biopower” (Multitude 293). My paper looks at the Oprah and Dr. Phil phenomena, and how these programs, with their individual stars who are equally brands selling a lifestyle, represent real interventions into an affective landscape that is at once social, cultural, and economic. I argue that Oprah and Dr. Phil operate primarily at the level of bio-political production and affect, specifically making use of the confession to evoke an affective experience. In effect/affect, these programs
(re)produce a mode of being in the world that reinforces certain types of social subjectivities and relations, and we can locate these subjectivities in a liberal cultural economy privileging affect and introspection, consuming practices and normative ideologies.
The methodological scope of this project is mainly
post-structuralist while retaining something of a Marxist perspective. Indeed, the celebrity system is one that is implicated in producing and complicating the identities between stars and star consumers while always having an unmistakably economic aspect. This paper attempts to account for both of these areas of interest to some degree. Beginning with the media’s role in producing social subjectivities I examine the basic ideas behind bio-political production, immaterial
labour, and affect in the social and cultural realm. I then move on to a more detailed examination of how affect functions in Oprah and Dr. Phil, looking closely at the experience of confession in these shows. Central to this analysis is the productive capacity of the affective experience, and how both the show’s guests and viewers participate in their own ways. I also try to account for some of the ideological and normative implications in these programs, adopting Hardt and Negri’s idea of “caring labour” or how certain functions are performed that are traditionally family centered. Finally, the question of an economic base is addressed. Here, the focus is on Oprah and Dr. Phil as brands, lifestyles that can be lived and consumed daily, as well as at various points throughout everyday life. One of the tasks of this section is to put to question the economic and bio-political implications of the very idea of “lifestyle” as life-styling or life-fashioning.
[Vice Magazine and the authority of fashion commodity]
Kim Charnley, University of the West of England, Bristol
[fashion commodity, magazine, baudrillard]
‘Vice’ Magazine is a free glossy magazine based in New York, but now with semi-independent editions in Europe, including in the UK. The publication is known for its controversial content with an often, though not always, ironic take on debauchery, sex, drugs and violence as well as social issues including racism and class. As a text it is potentially interesting because its main source of income is fashion advertising – alongside articles that are often deliberately edgy or offensive.
This presentation will undertake a textual analysis of the format of the magazine, as well as some of the articles to examine in detail how it positions itself as a self-consciously ‘edgy’ and subversive youth product, that has now developed its own fashion label, record label and tv production company. The question asked is: to what extent does this publication affirm capitalism and the authority of the fashion commodity, and to what extent does it resist it?
In order to give this enquiry a theoretical context I will refer to the understanding of fashion provided by Jean
Baudrillard. Most importantly, Baudrillard claimed that it is impossible to resist fashion because fashion has no
programme: any rejection of fashion’s orthodoxy in itself becomes re-absorbed as a fashion statement. In this paper I will ask how useful this perspective is in understanding the combination of affirmation and resistance exhibited in ‘Vice’ magazine.
Little Englander' - Fawlty Towers - A textual analysis of nationalistic ideology
Matthew Bartley, University of Sunderland
textual analysis, thematic, narrative, visuals
By studying several textual examples of British sitcoms in an analysis of the representation of community, it became clear that there was one overriding theme in the example of Fawlty Towers. Namely, the idea that a small community can become a mini-construction of Britain complete with its ‘strengths’ and ‘traditions’. This paper then, will elaborate through the analysis of narrative developments, thematic concerns and visual and linguistic analysis of the characters, just how Fawlty Towers showed this notion put into practice.
It will take into consideration just what is considered to be the essence of ‘Britain’ in a textual example of a sitcom and how this ideological notion can have a direct affect on the immediate surroundings and community of the narrative setting. This includes which characters are deemed worthy of inclusion in this mini-Britain, and why they are (or aren’t), and which ideological beliefs are tied up with a notion of ‘Britishness’. It will also show that this can be a flawed attempt at control, as the notion of nationalism encompasses both flaws and strengths.
Panel 1: Imperialism and Globalisation
Panel 2: Online Citizens and Democracy
Panel 3: Television Audiences
Panel 4: Mediating Identity 1
Panel 5: Reporting the Conflict
Panel 6: Journalism and Social Responsibility
Panel 7: Sexual Representations in Cinema
Panel 8: Popular Culture
Panel 9: Still Image
Panel 10: Branding, Advertising and Corporate Cultures
Panel 11: Film and Theatre
Panel 12: Alternative Film
Panel 13: Feminism, Gender and Identity
Panel 14: Fan Culture and Online Audiences
Panel 15: Public Service Broadcasting and Radio
Panel 16: Design for Screen
Panel 17: Uses of Music and Sound in Film
Panel 18: Mediating Identity 2
Panel 19: Citizens, Interaction and the Public Interest
Note: Please be aware that the programme might be subject to changes. Please refer back to this page for a final programme overview nearer the conference. The final programme will also be communicated to delegates via email.
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