Cultural StudiesPub Date : 2023-10-04DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2023.2261951
Aria Halliday, Ashleigh Greene Wade
{"title":"Editors’ introduction: remembering blackly","authors":"Aria Halliday, Ashleigh Greene Wade","doi":"10.1080/09502386.2023.2261951","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2023.2261951","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTShows like Moesha and Fresh Prince both fictionalized and revealed the twentieth-century dreams of Black folks who like Moesha’s family had just established themselves in Lamert Park or like Will had recently left gang and drug-infested urban streets. Friends like Tony and Joan or Khadijah and Maxine typified the friendships that many Black women had just developed in college settings like A Different World. They dated people like Lynn, Kyle, or Martin and created the material wealth that generations past could not access. These Black cultural productions positioned Black people, their conversations and their aspirations, as part of a larger project of inclusion and made our dreams seem possible. Remembering or engaging anew with Black cultural production of the 1990s and 2000s via streaming platforms re-introduced these dreams and the ways that the ‘too-rough fingers of world’ had made them immaterial. Seeing them again, with our new twenty-first-century eyes, forced us to bring our concerns to social media, to visual art and to music – sites where we continue to think, aspire and work collectively to manifest Black futures. The essays in this special issue then take seriously the complex nuances of remembering Blackly through and beyond these cultural productions. We charged the authors to think critically about nostalgia and how Black cultural production in Western contexts has not only shaped our understanding of contemporary discourses, but also in how we shape the future based on the (remembered) past across Black cultures. We hope that these essays provide further insight into the ways our contemporary moment will continue to shape our present and future renderings of the past. In addition, we envision that the authors’ ideas will affect how we access those pasts. Black nostalgia will mould our understanding of everything we think we remember.KEYWORDS: Nostalgiablacknessfuturepasttelevisionfilm Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).","PeriodicalId":47907,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Studies","volume":"306 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135597607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cultural StudiesPub Date : 2023-10-04DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2023.2261962
Anna P. Wald
{"title":"Tiffany Pollard GIFs and nostalgia for the negative","authors":"Anna P. Wald","doi":"10.1080/09502386.2023.2261962","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2023.2261962","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThis essay asks how the nostalgic attachments to particular Black women’s performances on reality television inform current uses of those images through internet GIFs and memes. Examining the usage and exchange of files depicting the mid-2000s reality television star Tiffany Pollard on Twitter, I compare appropriation of black women’s humour within digital spaces alongside appreciation of ‘bad television’ [McCoy, C.A., and Scarborough, R.C., 2014. Watching “bad” television: ironic consumption, camp, and guilty pleasures. Poetics, 47, 41–59] and the useful potentials of ‘negative’ representation [Gates, R.J., 2018. Double negative: The black image and popular culture. Duke University Press]. Debates about representational politics are complicated when circulating digital images and files that invoke nostalgic response through racialized gendered performances. What does circulation of these GIFs and memes say about nostalgia for a unique moment in reality television where ‘ratchet’ behaviour [Brock, A., 2020. Distributed blackness. New York University Press] was encouraged and the limits of respectability politics were experimented with? Examining how some have labelled exchange of these GIFs as perpetuating ‘digital blackface’ [Jackson, L.M., 2017. We need to talk about digital blackface in reaction GIFs. Teen vogue, 2], I theorize how contemporary accusations of exploiting stereotypical depictions of Black people in order to gain online social capital mirrors the history of American minstrelsy’s purported nostalgia for ‘authentic’ Black performance. As the majority of popular GIFs of Pollard present ‘ugly feelings’ [Ngai, S., 2005. Ugly Feelings. Harvard University Press] such as irritation, resentment and disgust, the relationship between nostalgia for so-called better times, and desire for a recent moment in cable television’s past in which the boundaries of ‘good representation’ were pushed and disregarded become entangled. By looking to animation of disembodied digital images in the use of GIFs as moving image files that are looped, refigured and circulated, I draw attention to new sites of digital racialization, popular culture criticism and examination of digital affect as it corresponds with Black diasporic cultural production.KEYWORDS: Digital blackfaceappropriationdigital affectmemesdigital counterpublicsreality television Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Retrieved from https://twitter.com/chuuzus/status/1338410369547710465 1/10/20212 This account, which I have 6 mutual followers with, but am not personally ‘friends’ with, has 9932 followers as of 1/10/2021.3 Other popular GIFs that depict black women’s performances from reality television include cast members from the Real Housewives of Atlanta and Potomoc, images of Cardi B and other cast members from Love & Hip Hop, and Tyra Banks from America’s Next Top Model. For more on popular memes of black women from reality telev","PeriodicalId":47907,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Studies","volume":"194 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135597250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cultural StudiesPub Date : 2023-10-04DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2023.2261959
Francesca Sobande
{"title":"Black media nostalgia in Britain","authors":"Francesca Sobande","doi":"10.1080/09502386.2023.2261959","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2023.2261959","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on Black media, cultural, and digital studies, this work considers the relationship between nostalgia and the media, cultural productions, and experiences of Black people in Britain. Engaging with Hesse's (2000) work on ‘Diasporicity: Black Britain's Post-Colonial Formations', I explore how media representations of Black Britain and connected production processes have changed since the 90s, in ways entwined with Black nostalgia and generational (be)longing. Since Hesse (2000, p. 97) observed that ‘Black Britishness is a discourse whose increasing currency has yet to be conceptualized seriously', research and writing on Black Britishness and Black life in Britain has significantly expanded. Informed by such work, I delve into some of the details of Black media experiences in Britain to consider how Black nostalgia manifests in and through these contexts. Inspired by Ahad-Legardy's (2021) work on ‘Afro-nostalgia' and how visual culture aids archives of Black ‘historical joy', I consider the digitally mediated, comforting, conflicting, and historical nature of Black media nostalgia in Britain, and Black nostalgia more generally. Such discussion distinguishes between Black people's nostalgic media experiences and Black media nostalgia which centers Black creative expression and the kaleidoscopic gazes of Black audiences. Nostalgia's enigmatic quality cannot be comprehended via empirical analysis, alone. Thus, sculpted by understandings of ‘sociopolitical strategies of presence' (Osei 2019, p. 733), this work conceptualizes Black nostalgia in ways based on key media examples, research interviews, researcher reflections and the possibilities and playfulness presented by influx ponderings. Overall, shaped by Hall's (1993; 1997) work on representation and popular culture, this manuscript yields insights regarding dynamics between nostalgia, media, and Black life in Britain. Such work highlights the need for specificity (e.g., whose gaze(s), geographies, generations) when articulating Black people’s experiences in Britain, and the power of nostalgia in Black media and culture, which spans decades and different devices.","PeriodicalId":47907,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Studies","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135645186","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cultural StudiesPub Date : 2023-10-04DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2023.2261961
Cara Hagan
{"title":"Dancing for laughs: signifyin(g) bodies and the Black American sitcom","authors":"Cara Hagan","doi":"10.1080/09502386.2023.2261961","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2023.2261961","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThis work examines the presence and impact of dance in Black sitcoms from kinetic, historical, and cultural perspectives. In a sitcom, the role of dance is one where actors can communicate with their bodies what they cannot verbalize. Signifying, or the use of mockery, repeated motifs, riddles, and other such devices as an embodied practice means that actors dancing in sitcoms are asserting their agency as performers and their legitimacy as human beings in a world that does not share this sentiment. The practice of signifyin(g) harkens back to minstrelsy, a realm of the performing arts from which sitcoms are a direct descendant. By looking at sitcoms from each of the designated sitcom eras as expressed by media scholar Robin R. Means Coleman, this article connects dance and comedy forms dating back to the mid-1800s and contemporary constructions of these forms in the bodies of actors like Will Smith, Alfonso Ribeiro, and Janet Hubert of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. As the fields of dance, screendance, and media studies ignore the importance of the moving body in Black sitcoms, the fields miss out on through lines between minstrelsy and present-day performing arts where dance is not a stand-alone genre. Dance has never been a stand-alone practice in the context of the Black body. In sum, Black dance in sitcoms offers viewers a welcome break from the trauma stories often depicted on screen, while still honouring the complexities of Black experiences and most notably, compelling us to settle into our own groove from the comfort of our living rooms.KEYWORDS: Televisionminstrelsydanceracismsexismactors Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 John B. Quick’s Minstrels, 1920.2 Minstrel ad in Darkest America.3 Original New Orleans Minstrels, 1876.4 John B. Quick’s Minstrels, 1920.5 Amos ‘n’ Andy would change formats from a nightly program to a weekly program, then to a disc jockey program.6 Jenny Craig Weight Loss, 1995.7 Dexatrim Diet Pills, 1990.8 Slimfast, 1999.9 Special K, 1990.","PeriodicalId":47907,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Studies","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135644069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cultural StudiesPub Date : 2023-09-28DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2023.2261954
Jiro Hane
{"title":"The tyranny of magicalized science and its collapse by the masses: fear and modernity in the Japanese mask norm","authors":"Jiro Hane","doi":"10.1080/09502386.2023.2261954","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2023.2261954","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThis article discusses the tyranny of science and the masses’ reaction to it, considering the situation in which the overturned mask norm, which is different from the medically desirable mask norm, has been practiced in Japanese society. The model of the human being that science assumes is frequently inclined to be limited to a very narrow model of the modern citizen or a rational, ideal human being with sufficient information to make decisions. Such a metaphysical understanding of human beings and society does not assume that the masses will not accept it. As a result, science has no choice but to use mathematically derived fear to control the masses. Science will always have a tyrannical and magical character in the sense that fear is necessary for the realization of the scientific expectations of experts. To incite fear, technology should be not only scientific but also symbolic (ritualistic) in the society in which it is used. However, once the fear becomes a reality, the masses, instead of being increasingly frightened by it, begin to doubt the scientific explanations of the experts. As a result, the tyranny of science starts to collapse. It is in the masses, who are perceived as the furthest removed from science, that the opportunity exists for science to be relativized.KEYWORDS: COVID-19technocracymaskriskfearmasses Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsJiro HaneJiro Hane, born in Yokohama, Japan, is an associate professor in the school of Political Science and Economics, Meiji University, Tokyo. In 2010, he graduated from the Graduate School of Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, with a Ph.D. His research focuses specifically on modern Chinese history and contemporary Chinese studies. Some of major works include “Butteki Chugoku-ron (China from a Material Perspective)” (Tokyo: Seidosha, 2020).","PeriodicalId":47907,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Studies","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135425785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cultural StudiesPub Date : 2023-09-27DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2023.2261953
Helena Wu
{"title":"Distance and proximity: the spectatorship of trauma and film viewing in postmillennial Hong Kong","authors":"Helena Wu","doi":"10.1080/09502386.2023.2261953","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2023.2261953","url":null,"abstract":"We are all spectators of the times to varying extents. With the commencement of the twenty-first century, our spectator experience began to transform, becoming more scattered, divergent, and unsettled in response to technological advancement and the decline of consensus around social values, cultural meanings, and political agendas in the face of changes. In post-handover Hong Kong, a breach of meaning has been cumulatively caused by divided opinions on priorities (e.g. economic, democratic) and intensified by the contested narratives around history, identity, and reality. In the aftermath of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) Movement, a discursive construction of authority and legitimation has taken place in legislative affairs, a renewed school curriculum, and official speeches, among other organized patterns of action. Against this backdrop, this paper will focus on the spectatorship of trauma that has been generated by community screenings and documentary filmmaking. Two case studies will be presented in terms of their distance (distant vis-à-vis immersive) from the epicentre of these traumatic events. The first case study will explore the spectatorship of visual trauma, in which authoritarian experiences were transmitted through social movement-themed documentaries (e.g. Ukraine’s Winter on Fire) and drama films (e.g. South Korea’s 1987 and A Taxi Driver) that gained popularity and stirred up noise in Hong Kong in the lead-up to 2019. The second case study will explore traumatic responses through bodily reactions to pain and suffering as captured in post-2019 Hong Kong cinema. On the whole, the paper will demonstrate how viewing experiences embody shared and individualized responses (e.g. resistance, resilience, retreat) and how understanding spectatorship allows us to discern the social sentiments, cultural implications, and affects generated at a particular time.","PeriodicalId":47907,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Studies","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135581825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cultural StudiesPub Date : 2023-09-27DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2023.2261969
Junxiao Yang
{"title":"Communication totalitarianism in Japan: ‘Decontextualisation’ and ‘Recontextualisation’ and the digital communication environment","authors":"Junxiao Yang","doi":"10.1080/09502386.2023.2261969","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2023.2261969","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTIn Japan, young people are becoming increasingly apathetic about politics, while at the same time they are experiencing a rightward leaning and a growing sympathy for totalitarianism and authoritarianism. To understand this contradiction, we need to look at the digital communication environment in which they engage in political discourse. One of the most representative opinion leaders in this regard is Hiroyuki Nishimura. In recent years, Hiroyuki has become widely known as the ‘King of Refutation’ and is immensely popular among the young generation. He is very active in political and social issues, arguing in a logical and neutral manner. However, despite his enlightened mode of argumentation, his arguments have been perceived as accommodative to totalitarian and authoritarian perceptions. This paper argues that at the heart of this mode of refutation is a process of ‘decontextualisation’ and ‘recontextualisation’ which has resulted in reducing the complexity of the issue, making it comprehensible to the majority while oppressing minorities. And this mode of refutation and the processes of ‘decontextualisation’ and ‘recontextualisation’ are at the centre of the various digital communication platforms that he operates and that have become hubs of political communication around the world: 2channel, 4chan, Nico Nico Douga and YouTube clips. In this sense, the totalitarianism and rightward leaning of the young generation is not due to a specific ideology but is strongly conditioned by the communication environment. ‘Communication totalitarianism’ can be used to describe the totalitarianism and right-wing tendencies taking place in Japan.KEYWORDS: DepoliticizationcommunicationCMCtotalitarianismrightward leaning2channel Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 5channel, https://5ch.net (last access: January 25, 2023)2 For example, follow video have made a re-criticism to Western medias’ criticism of Covid-19 Policy of the Chinese Government. Guancha.cn(观察者网),【Understanding Something(懂点儿啥)48】Fang Fang’s Wuhan diary published, the familiar recipe has that taste (方方武汉日记出版,熟悉的配方有内味了). April 10 2020, https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1AT4y1G7rQ?share_source=copy_web (last access: January 25, 2023)Additional informationNotes on contributorsJunxiao YangJunxiao Yang is currently an Assistant Professor in the faculty of Letters, Arts and Science at Waseda University in Japan. He obtained his PhD in Literature from Waseda University. He writes critiques about literature, subculture, and media for general media, in addition to his academic research.","PeriodicalId":47907,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Studies","volume":"84 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135536611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cultural StudiesPub Date : 2023-09-27DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2023.2261967
Jayoung Park
{"title":"Male youth’s self-narrative and the discourse of meritocracy in South Korea","authors":"Jayoung Park","doi":"10.1080/09502386.2023.2261967","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2023.2261967","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTIn South Korea, which has seen a drastic power transfer from a progressive to an authoritarian government, a new form of the ‘weak-victim’ narrative has emerged in recent years, and changes and ruptures in the discourse on the weak have occurred. Young men in South Korea claim that they have been excluded from institutions, policies and systems and denied equal opportunities compared to women. It is brought to the fore the discourse of fairness.This article notes that a sense of faith in meritocracy is one of the contributors that generated the discourse of fairness. It examines how seemingly progressive policies conflicted with and were left stranded by the logic of fairness and meritocracy and takes a close look at why this happened. In addition, it reconstructs the social conditions that brought up the issue of fairness, investigating how the discourse of fairness emerged and how the significance of ‘fairness’ was shifted and re-conceptualized. Meanwhile, as the idea of meritocracy has become prevalent in society, a critical analysis of it was also conducted from multilateral angles. This article analyzes various aspects of the criticisms of meritocracy, discussing how we should view these criticisms and we can find possibilities to overcome the problematics of meritocracy.KEYWORDS: Meritocracyfairnessjusticethe weak-victim narrativeauthoritarianismSouth Korea Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 For example, see Al-Ghazzi’s article, ‘We will be great again: Historical victimhood in populist discourse’ (Citation2021). Meanwhile, Nancy Fraser pays attention to the harms experienced by the working class, who are leaning toward right-wing populism, and reassigns it as a component of progressive populism. Fraser Citation2019. The old is dying and the new cannot be born. Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 35.2 The Tang Ping (or lying flat) movement went viral when a user named Kind-Hearted Traveller shared a post that said, ‘Lying flat is justice’ on Chinese search engine Baidu’s discussion forum on the Chinese population in April 2021. Tang Ping is an attitude toward life that chooses to lie down with no zeal instead of struggling to meet social expectations. The term was banned in China soon after spreading online. Strictly speaking, lying flat-ism is not a term limited to men, but most memes portray young men lying down, so it can be said that young men represent the vanguard of this movement. 好心的旅行家, 2022. 躺平卽是正義[online]. 白度中國人口吧. available from: https://gnews.org/articles/380156 [Accessed 17 November 2022]3 Korean newsweekly SisaIn and public opinion research firm Hankook Research conducted an in-depth survey of 1,000 Korean adult men and women aged 19 or older on the topic of the ‘men in 20s phenomenon’ from March 20 to 22, 2019. The large-scale web-based survey with a total of 208 questions found that the attitudes of Korean men in their 20s were peculiar, distinguished from those of any other ","PeriodicalId":47907,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Studies","volume":"68 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135536897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}