Cultural and Critical Studies 2008 Abstracts
Cultural and Critical Studies Division
“Did You See That?”: The Production and Reception of Socio-cultural Issues in Telenovelas • Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, University of Georgia • Consumed in over 130 countries around the world by audiences that transcend gender, age, class, national and cultural differences, telenovelas are fascinating media products that are particularly suitable for the examination of the dialogue between media, culture and society. In 2003-2004, Venezuelan telenovela Cosita Rica took the stage alongside the country’s political crisis and deep polarization around the figure of President Hugo Chávez.
Advertising and Globalization: The Transmission of Culture in Nigerian Print Advertising • Emmanuel Alozie, North Carolina A & T State University • This study uses textual analysis to examine the cultural values and symbols conveyed by Nigerian consumer advertisements. Working within the framework of imperial and dependency theories, this study aims to discern whether Nigerian advertising merely promotes products or services, or seeks to exploit Nigerian social conditions. The study found that Nigerian mass media conveys both negative and positive values to underscore Western rather than traditional African values and to perpetuate social division.
ZANU-PF’s Control, Power, and Influence: A De-Democratization of Zimbabwean Media • Erin Armstrong, E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Ohio University • This qualitative case study uses Rozumilowicz’s model of analysis by applying, in descending order, her four stages of transition in establishing free and independent media to illustrate how media in Zimbabwe have actually become less free and independent over the past 28 years. The paper further explores issues of control, power, and influence and concludes by addressing how globalization and new media may affect Zimbabwe.
The Political Economy of the Public Interest: How Media Research Can Stengthen FCC Policymaking • Jeffrey Blevins, Iowa State University; Duncan Brown, Ohio University • An examination of the studies used by the U.S. Federal Communication Commission (FCC) in its media ownership proceedings from 2003-2007 found an over-reliance on economic research to support the agency’s rule changes. We suggest that the broader inclusion of media critical cultural studies and social scientific research would strengthen the FCC’s policymaking process, with scholarship from the critical tradition of political economy providing a vital role in framing public interest issues.
Seeing What’s Important: Graham Nash and the Evolution of the Photography Collection • Robert Britten, University of Missouri; C. Zoe Smith, University of Missouri • A photograph is both a document and a documentation, a physical thing that can be held and a subjective, selected picture of the world. The available photographic record depends not only on what is photographed and by whom, but also on which images are collected and who is collecting them. We follow the collecting career of musician Graham Nash, of the American group Crosby, Stills & Nash.
He Says, She Says: (Inter)national Women’s (Mis)understandings of Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle Minority Portrayals • Tania Cantrell, University of Texas at Austin • Feminist Film Theory and Comic Feminist Film Theory backdrop this study, which struggles through Asian, Asian American and American women’s perspectives regarding a globalized popular culture minority portrayal(s). Textual analysis and audience study reveal that stereotypes nor beauty nor behavior standards are transborder, dual pan-ethnicization occurs, women’s limited space within the male-constructed public sphere is reified, and Straubhaar’s (1991) cultural proximity notion is challenged; gender experienced through comedy trumps several societal demarcations.
Embodying Deep Throat: Fitting Mark Felt into the Watergate Narrative • Matt Carlson, Saint Louis University • On May 31, 2005, a long-running journalistic secret came to an end when Vanity Fair revealed Deep Throat to be W. Mark Felt, the associate director of the FBI under President Nixon. While the announcement bought to a close thirty years of speculation and accusations concerning Deep Throats’ identity, it created new complications in promoting Watergate as a marker of journalistic success.
Individualism, Choice, & Empowerment: Young Female Viewers’ Response to Sexualized Characters on Reality TV • Mackenzie Cato, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Through focus groups, this study addresses young women’s response to the depiction of sexuality and sex-as-power imagery on the highly popular reality TV show The Girls Next Door. This study relies on literature based in postfeminist theory to discuss the recent shifts in female representation and its connection to issues surrounding women’s empowerment.
“Scripting” and “Exorcizing” Trauma: Female Survivors’ Testimonies of the No Gun Ri Killings • Suhi Choi, University of Utah • This paper examines female survivors’ testimonies in the No Gun Ri killings that refer to a tragedy in which United States troops, at an early stage of the Korean War, mistakenly killed South Korean refugees near and under the trestles of the No Gun Ri Bridge. Female survivors’ testimonies suggest that rhetors with trauma communicate their unutterable memories through both the act of scripting (articulation) and the act of exorcizing (letting out).
Covering the Northside: Exploring Bias Through Service-Learning to Facilitate Effective Civic Journalism • Sue Ellen Christian, Western Michigan University • An off-site reporting course rooted in the pedagogical theory of service-learning and in the journalistic practice of civic journalism sought to address the issue of bias in reporting and writing. A class of majority-White students met at an off-campus community center in a neighborhood that is majority African-American. Students covered issues unique to the neighborhood and participated in exercises and discussions to heighten their awareness of bias and stereotyping, particularly as related to race and ethnicity.
The NFL and Big Ten Networks: Exploring the implications of league-specific cable and satellite networks • T.C. Corrigan, Pennsylvania State University • This research critically explores, using political economy and classical economic theory an emerging trend in the ‘sports/media complex’ – that of the league-specific cable and satellite network. The NFL Network and Big Ten Network, which have been involved in prolonged negotiations with major cable providers, are provided as case studies for an exploration of potentially anti-competitive behavior and negative effects on fans and consumers.
Virtual Worlds, Real Brands: A Critical Interrogation of Commodification in Second Life • Jia Dai, University of Texas • Employing the Marxist notion of commodification—the process through which use value is transformed into exchange value, this study examines how Second Life is being commodified while advertisement agencies advance brand name corporations into the virtual world. Mosco’s discussion on three forms of media commodity— content, audience and labor in the digital environment provides a framework for the analysis of the commodification process.
Representations of the Other and the Critical Irony of “Team America: World Police” • Jacob Dittmer, University of Oregon • Team America ironically parodies Hollywood’s slick-action genre by employing puppets, not actors. Through the implementation of postmodernism’s tools of rearticulation and reappropriation, Team America comments on the Hollywood film industry and provides a social critique of representations of the Other. The film utilizes all three elements of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque with humorous and critically ironic intentions. However, misinterpreting irony and parody can yield unintended consequences. Is Team America a modern-day carnivalesque text?
Created Heroes and Humanized Soldiers: A Fantasy Theme Analysis of Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima • Koji Fuse, University of North Texas; James Mueller, University of North Texas • Six decades after the Battle of Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood dedicated two movies—Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima—to respectively represent the viewpoint of each side of the fighting. This paper applies fantasy theme analysis to rhetorically critique dramatizing messages of those movies. This paper suggests a need for incorporating historical facts and audience analysis to delve into culturally defined hidden meanings of a media text.
Destroying the beast: An Analysis of Women’s and Animal Oppression in The Little Mermaid • Jeff Green, Denison University; Leland Morris, Denison University • The Little Mermaid is one of the most popular and successful Disney childhood films, yet its representations of women and animals are highly problematic. Building off existing literature, we examine the film’s ideologies of male and human superiority through the lenses of ecofeminism and hegemony theory. We argue that both animal exploitation and patriarchy are hegemonically negotiated in a way that strengthens both systems of oppression.
Governmentality and General Intellect in an Exemplar of Information Society: Dynamic Public Policymaking surrounding South Korean Game Industry • Choonghee Han, University of Iowa • This paper is aimed at discussing and analyzing public policy of a nation state, South Korea in this case study, with respect to the discourse of the information society. More specifically, public policy for online game industry is the main subject. Foucaultian theory of governmentality and autonomist theory were used as a theoretical framework. A textual analysis contextualized within deliberative and interpretive policy analysis was used in this paper.
Cascading Activation: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Bush’s War on Terrorism • Robert Handley, University of Texas at Austin • The study employ the cascading activation model and the indexing hypothesis to theorize a hegemonic process by which frames that reside at the functional level compete to reshape or maintain the shape of frames that reside at the ideological level. I apply the model to the post-9/11 framing struggle over whether the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was part of Bush’s war on terrorism. The data support the cascading activation model, but also build on it.
We Have Ways to Make People Talk: Giving Voice to “No Comments” through News Quotation Strategies • Joseph Harry • Newspaper stories using “no comments” from sources were examined within a developing qualitative narrative perspective (free-linking indirect speech, FLIS) to first sketch out and make a case for FLIS as a useful news-discourse analysis approach, based in the long-studied quotation style known as free-indirect speech. Within this perspective, a New York Times article is examined mainly with respect to its use of indirect-quotation and FLIS modes, and general textual and quotational patterns are assessed.
Hari and Hallyu: Consuming Japaneseness and Koreanness in Taiwan • Shuling Huang, University of Maryland • Recently the Japanese and Korean popular cultures have swept across East Asia, giving rise to such trends as hari (craving for Japan) and hallyu (Korean wave) in Taiwan. This paper argues that those trends have created an immense consumption space associated with all things Japanese or Korean. This space is orchestrated by the Japanese and Korean culture industries but is also facilitated by the Taiwanese media and businesses.
And the myths live on: How the U.S. press told the tale of the bird-flu virus, 1996-2006 • Kunka Ignatova • This study examined ten years of U.S. press coverage of the H5N1 bird-flu virus and the possible pandemic (1996-2006). One elite and three regional newspapers were used. Framing analysis facilitated by the QDA Miner looked at the role the myths of the “other world,” the “victim,” and the “hero” played in coverage. The myths the four newspapers used in their reports transcended the particularities of the papers and presented a story ripe with news values.
Crazy Like Me: Critical Analysis of Pro-online Game Players as New Media Force • Dal Yong Jin, Simon Fraser University • Professional online game players as a new job category have recently developed in South Korea. With the rapid growth of knowledge-based information technology, such as broadband and online gaming, pro online gamers—who play each other rather than the computer—have become one of the most sought after jobs for youth. Moreover, pro online gamers have been spotlighted as new celebrities in digital economy and culture.
Neo-Nationalism Seeks Strength From the Gods: Yasukuni Shrine, Collective Memory and Hegemony in the Japanese Press • Matthew Killmeier, University of Southern Maine; Naomi Chiba, University of Southern Maine • This article examines Japanese press coverage of Premier Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine from 2001-2006, and their domestic and geopolitical impact. It expands media hegemony via the concept of collective memory to examine how the visits complemented neo-nationalists’ revision of WWII via press discourses.
The Meaning of Lost as a Cultural Product in South Korea • Hyo Jin Kim • This study looks at the cultural meaning of the U.S. television show Lost in South Korea. Through the first season, this study examines the portrayal of Korean culture in the U.S. program through Korean consumers’ perspective. In the analysis, this study looks through Korean culture in four moments of the circuit of culture (du Gay et al., 1997). In addition, this paper examines the value of Lost as a cultural commodity in South Korea.
Ideal Image: A Re-conceptualization of Ideal Image within a Capitalist Society • Rachel King, Syracuse University, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications • The popularization of plastic surgery, continual issues of low self-esteem with women, and a variety of inadequately defined terms for the ideal image is reason to complete this study. In addition, the ideal image is now a commodity within the US and its capitalist society. A literature review was conducted to analyze the role of ideal image and the variety of terms used in similar ways.
Marxist Theory of the Media or Theory of the Media by Marxists? Reconciling Adorno with other Marxist Media Theorists • Farooq Kperogi, Georgia State University • Although Marx himself did not explicitly theorize the media, a fact that constitutes legitimate grounds to proclaim that there is no Marxist theory of the media, his postulations and adumbrations about the dialectics of cultural and ideological mediation have provided a robust springboard for the flowering of what can also legitimately be called a Marxist theory of the media.
A Discourse Analysis of Plastic Surgery Television Programs • Shu-Yueh Lee, University of Tennessee • This study explores the dominant meanings of plastic surgery television programs via utilizing discourse analysis and feminist perspectives to analyze the visual, audio, and textual presentations of plastic surgery television programs. In plastic surgery television programs, the norms of women’s beauty are repeatedly reinforced. Plastic surgery is portrayed as not only a starting but also an ultimate means to enhance and maintain women’s beauty.
What is the War on Terror? Exploring Framing Through the Eyes of Journalists • Seth Lewis, University of Texas at Austin; Stephen Reese, University of Texas at Austin • This study explored the framing of the War on Terror through interviews with journalists at USA Today. We tested the presumption that, because frames are organizing principles whose manifestations extend beyond the level of content alone, journalists’ personal discourse will reflect and reinforce frames found in the text. We discovered that reporters “transmitted” the War on Terror as shorthand for policy, “reified” the frame as concrete and uncontested, and “naturalized” it as a taken-for-granted condition.
Negotiating Masculinity and Male Gender Roles in Korean TV Drama • Jing Li, Ohio University • Korean TV dramas are believed to be the battlefield of the Korean feminism. Previous research has paid great attention to media’s representations of female gender roles in Korean TV dramas. However, there is an absence of study on representation of males, the indispensable counterpart in the social negotiation of gender roles. This study aims to examine the redefining of masculinity in two South Korean TV dramas, My Lovely Sam Soon and Full House.
Ideological Underlying the Discourse: A Textual Analysis of Xinhu News Agency’s Coverage of the Campaign Against Falun Gong • Matt Louis, College of MCMA, Southern Illinois University Carbondale; Lisa Brooten • In this ideological analysis, I explore the ideology underlying Xinhua News Agency’s coverage of the immolation of seven Falun Gong (FLG) practitioners in Beijing. These stories and one editorial serve as a window through which one can for the first time explore how official media in China handle a political crisis within a social context totally different from the Mao era.
“Community, Content, and Commerce”: Alloy.com and the Commodification of Tween/Teen Girl Communities • Sharon Mazzarella, Clemson University; Allison Atkins • Begun in 1996 as a “‘media platform to reach hard-to-reach young consumers,’” Alloy.com is an online “magalog” targeted to girls aged 12-24. While serving ostensibly as an online catalog for girls seeking access to the latest fashions, Alloy.com has become an interactive, magazine-like virtual community for tween/teen girls, and is part of parent company Alloy Media and Marketing’s attempt to target young people through traditional and non-traditional media alike.
The Nutty Professor and the Nut Paragraph: Social Control of Intellectual Deviance in (and by) the Newsroom • Mike McDevitt • We explicate a dynamic in which media are simultaneously an agent and subject of social control in depictions of intellectual deviance. In a case study of newspaper coverage of Ward Churchill, textual analysis showed how devices within the bounds of conventional objectivity enabled newspapers to operate as an unobtrusive agent of social control. We also interviewed reporters and editors to gain insights on attitudes that help to explain motives associated with control of intellectual deviance.
Rubles, Dollars, and Bhat, Oh My!: Commodification and Foreign Ownership in England’s Barclay’s Premier League • Anne Osborne, Louisiana State University; Danielle Sarver • Sport has been particularly useful for examining globalization and commodification phenomena largely because of its resistance to them. Sports, such as British Premier League football, seem to maintain, and in fact draw strength from, the cultural rootedness of their fans. Even though sport has been able to resist globalization it has not been immune; media have played a key role in accelerating the process.
Moral Dilemmas of an Immoral Nation: Gender, Sexuality, and Journalism in Page 3 • Radhika Parameswaran, Indiana University • Venturing into the yet uncharted territory of journalism’s popular representations in India, this paper examines representations of tabloid journalism in relation to gender, class, and sexuality in Madhur Bhandarkar’s award-winning 2005 film Page 3. The paper begins by tracing the historical, social, and economic contexts of Indian journalism in globalizing India, contexts that shape the potential meanings of Page 3 as a cultural critique of commodity journalism.
Going Places: Mobility, Domesticity, and the Portrayal of Television in New Yorker Cartoons, 1945-1959 • Randall Patnode • The installation of television in the American home following World War II was more than a revolution in technology and visual content. It merged Americans’ residual desire for greater mobility with their newfound yearning for domestic harmony. This article introduces the concept of “symbolic mobility,” as revealed in the contemporaneous cartoons of The New Yorker magazine, to explain how Americans adopted the new sensibilities of television.
How Women Negotiate Identity through the Viewing of Reality Makeover Programs • Lisa Pecot-Hebert, DePaul University • This paper examines makeover programs, particularly Extreme Makeover and The Swan, two shows that incorporate cosmetic surgery as a tool to permanently transform the body. Utilizing in depth interviews as a methodology, this paper explores how female audiences create meaning through the viewing of Extreme Makeover and The Swan, and examine how women incorporate these texts into their daily lives as they relate to their own bodies.
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: A Critical Interrogation of the Broadcast Ownership Divide • Lyle Perkins, Louisiana State University • Democratic theory operates from the assumption that a robust exchange of diverse ideas is necessary for effective self-government. Given that mass media have largely supplanted traditional modes of political interaction, racial and ethnic minorities require access to these media in order to participate meaningfully in civic discourse. In practice, the American media system has never adequately lived up to the idealistic goals of diversity.
Beyond Vanity: Women’s Perceptions of Beauty • Larisa Puslenghea, Department of Advertising, University of Illinois • This paper investigates women’s conceptualizations of the underlying meanings of beauty (‘natural’ versus ‘artificial’, inner versus outer) and the way Eastern Europe women navigate through these formulations in the process of negotiating their identities. The study elaborates on traditional, feminist and postmodern theories of the body and uses this framework to analyze self-reflexive beauty perceptions and the way perceptions materialize in beauty practices.
“Fighting Back the Heathens”: Sex, Controversy, and Censorship in the Modern Campus Media • Daniel Reimold, Ohio University • College newspaper sex columns have received worldwide media attention and triggered levels of scrutiny and controversy unmatched by anything else in collegiate journalism over the past decade. This study is the first to focus specifically on the controversies, exploring their collective impact along with the acts of censorship aimed at suppressing them. Related information was culled from interviews with student columnists and editors, an historical review, and an examination of news reports and primary documents.
The American Filter • Indira Somani, University of Maryland • This study explored how a cohort of Asian Indians who migrated to the U.S. nearly 40 years ago have become acculturated to watching Indian television via the satellite dish. The study used two concepts of the integrative communication theory: enculturation and acculturation. Oral history interviews were conducted with 10 couples from the Washington Metro area.
From the Dance Hall to Facebook: Analyzing Constructions of Gendered Moral Panic in Girls and Young Women in Public Spaces • Shayla T. Thiel-Stern, University of Minnesota • The dominant cultural discourses surrounding MySpace and Facebook are reminiscent of the discourses surrounding the rise of dance halls in the late 19th and early 20th century, and specifically, girls’ and young women’s use of them. Much like MySpace and Facebook, there is some detectable panic about young women in public space. These discourses constitute what many scholars would refer to as a moral panic, or an overreaction to a perceived threat to society.
24, Torture, & Getting Your Hands Dirty in the Name of Ideology • Ryan Thomas • This paper responds to Spigel’s (2004) call for greater research into fictional television formats in the post-9/11 era. It conducts a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the fourth season of the popular television show 24 to determine what ideologies the show adopts in its portrayal of torture, given that the show has been the subject of much criticism from journalists.
Telling the story of Darfur through online video game: Narratives of genocide • Olesya Venger, University of Pennsylvania; Tyler Buckley; Juvenalis Asantemungu, Marquette University; Darele Bisquerra, Marquette University • Using narrative analysis, this study analyses a video game Darfur Is Dying in its attempt to spread awareness about the humanitarian crisis that is happening in Darfur, Sudan.
Jump Back Jack, Mohammed’s Here: A discourse analysis of Fox News’s construction of Islamic peril • Fred Vultee, Wayne State University • This discourse analysis uses Said’s concept of Orientalism to explore the ways in which Fox News uses the tools of news practice to create a uniquely menacing image of Islam. As Said (1979) suggested, within this image, Islam is inseparable from what Muslims do, and Muslims are inseparable from each other. The modern image of an irrational, unassimilable East confronting the rational, progressive West strongly echoes centuries of Orientalist conventional wisdom.
Ringing the Departed Dance: Hollywood Remakes of East Asian Films and the Emergence of Cultural Reinvasion • Shaojung Wang, University at Buffalo, State University of New York • This study delves into the implications of Hollywood’s recent remakes of Asian cinema on re-articulating the notion of globalization. Taking three remakes, The Ring, Shall We Dance, and The Departed, as examples, this paper argues that Asian films are Hollywoodized at the cost of losing their originality, resulting in the “dis-location” of Asian culture. Hollywood profits itself by invading Asian markets with the help of the culture it conquers, deteriorating the cultural industry it exploits.
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