Showing papers in "Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies in 2008"
TL;DR: In 2006, ABC TV encouraged families to ‘get healthy’ in conjunction with its new reality series, Shaq's Big Challenge, where NBA champion Shaquille O'Neal worked with a "dream team" of nurses.
Abstract: In June 2006, ABC TV encouraged families to ‘get healthy’ in conjunction with its new reality series, Shaq's Big Challenge. Each week, NBA champion Shaquille O'Neal worked with a ‘dream team’ of nu...
153 citations
TL;DR: In this article, race and class, class, justice and equity play a role in sustainability, and has the current environmentally focused sustainability movement not done a good job? Irrespective of whether we take a g...
Abstract: Why should race and class, justice and equity play a role in sustainability? Has the current environmentally focused sustainability movement not done a good job? Irrespective of whether we take a g...
140 citations
TL;DR: In reality television, fat people are greatly underrepresented on US television, and when they appear in fictional shows they are usually the objects of derision as discussed by the authors and derision is usually directed towards them.
Abstract: Fat people are greatly underrepresented on US television, and when they appear in fictional shows they are usually the objects of derision.1 Reality television, with its claims to authenticity and ...
104 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored the involvement of women viewers with reality TV as "circuits of value" and found that viewers tend to value care over condemnation, making judgements through pursuing connections with their own lives.
Abstract: Drawing on recent research from a project which included both textual and audience research, this paper will explore the involvement of women viewers with 'reality' TV as 'circuits of value'. These relationships cannot be adequately described as deconstructions of representations as in a text-reader framework of media theory. Rather, we examine these relationships as an extended social realm, whereby the immanent structure of reality television generates emotional connections to the labouring undertaken by participants on the programmes. 'Reality' television develops different traditions of women’s genres from melodrama, magazines to lifestyle television, it drawing attention to those who need transformation. By promoting different forms of women’s emotional, appearance and domestic labour, it parallels broader political shifts to an 'affective economy'. Rather than these texts producing wholly divisive moral reactions in viewers, we noticed how our audience participants assessed the forms of labour performed through their different classed resources, made judgements through pursuing connections with their own lives, and ultimately tended to value care over condemnation.
99 citations
TL;DR: In a world marked by deepening political, economic, cultural and environmental insecurity, it is little wonder that the question of what is real, whose lives are real, and how might reality be remade has been raised.
Abstract: What is real? Whose lives are real? How might reality be remade? (Butler 2004, 33) In a world marked by deepening political, economic, cultural and environmental insecurity, it is little wonder tha
75 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the way in which popular media culture has been marked by a growing concern with questions of civic responsibility and citizenship particularly in relation to the impact of con...
Abstract: This paper discusses the way in which popular media culture has been marked by a growing concern with questions of civic responsibility and citizenship particularly in relation to the impact of con...
67 citations
TL;DR: The skin-creeping buzz I felt from the anticipation of an impending new issue has returned, and I love it as mentioned in this paper, and I recently returned to the coast and started buying Tracks again.
Abstract: I recently returned to the coast and started buying Tracks again. I wanted to tell you that the skin-creeping buzz I felt from the anticipation of an impending new issue has returned, and I love it...
56 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine reader responses to a particular publication, highlighting the importance of star fashions and celebrity gossip for the target "twenty-something" female reader.
Abstract: Although the growth of celebrity gossip publications has recently outstripped that of the traditionally orientated women's weeklies, comparatively little work exists to account for the meaning and pleasures afforded by these particular texts. Although current research has proposed a textual reading of these magazines, this work has yet to engage with the ways in which audiences make use of such titles. Therefore, the present article will look at heat magazine and examine reader responses to this particular publication, highlighting the importance of star fashions and celebrity gossip for the target ‘twenty-something’ female reader.
47 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, Love-Fernández described what it was like when she saw the new person standing in front of her, and it was kind of almost like she was not in her own body.
Abstract: ‘What was it like when you saw the new you?’ ‘Shocking. Absolutely shocking. There was this person standing in front of you. It was kind of almost like you weren't in your own body.’ (Rachel Love-F...
45 citations
TL;DR: Lifestyle programming has been a long-running feature of many television schedules around the world as mentioned in this paper, from daytime magazine formats to cooking, gardening and DIY shows, and it has become a popular choice for many families.
Abstract: Lifestyle programming – from daytime magazine formats to cooking, gardening and ‘DIY’ shows – has been a long-running feature of many television schedules around the world. More recently these more...
42 citations
TL;DR: Ngarrindjeri vision for country Kungun Ngarrinderjeri Yunnan as discussed by the authors, "Our Lands, Our Waters, Our People, All Living Things are connected.
Abstract: Ngarrindjeri Vision for Country Kungun Ngarrindjeri Yunnan (Listen to what Ngarrindjeri people have to say) Our Lands, Our Waters, Our People, All Living Things are connected. We implore people to ...
TL;DR: A great deal has been written about the complexity and multiplicity of the essentially divisive concept of sustainability (Becker and Jahn 1999; Dobson 1999; Harris et al. 2001; as discussed by the authors ).
Abstract: A great deal has been written about the complexity and multiplicity of the essentially
contested concept of sustainability (Becker and Jahn 1999; Dobson 1999; Harris et al.
2001; recent contributions include Baker 2006; Connelly 2007; Newman 2007; Redclift
2005). Many have lamented the slippery, shape-shifting nature of this concept and that it
has accumulated an absurd number of definitions. As early as 1988, Richard Norgaard
(1988, 607) observed that, with the concept meaning ‘something different to everyone, the
quest for sustainable development is off to a cacophonous start’. This quest has been not
only noisy but impassioned. Sustainability is a preoccupation that simultaneously engages
powers of reason, belief and feeling, messing up any neat separation of descriptive and
normative claims. An extraordinarily elastic concept, it is not surprising that ‘public
discussion concerning the environment has become primarily a discourse of sustainability’
(Torgerson 1995, 10).
TL;DR: This article explored the "indie" music scene in Brisbane, an Australian capital city undergoing rapid cultural and socioeconomic development, and found a music community working within an isolated cultural space plagued by instability and a degree of antagonism, thus bearing strong resemblance to Brisbane's mythologized punk rock past.
Abstract: The present article explores the 'indie' music scene in Brisbane, an Australian capital city undergoing rapid cultural and socioeconomic development. Within Brisbane, a dominant narrative of popular music-making has emerged from local history, promotion and music writing. This narrative depicts a commercially successful, professional present and, thus, separates Brisbane musicians of today from the city's troubled cultural/political past. Unfortunately, such readings of local music-making overlook marked similarities between musicians past and present. Drawing upon face-to-face interview data collected from musicians currently working in Brisbane's 'indie' scene, the present article strives to document current practice and to reconnect and contextualize the experience of this community with the city's music history. The resulting analysis reveals a music community working within an isolated cultural space plagued by instability and a degree of antagonism, thus bearing strong resemblance to Brisbane's mythologized punk rock past.
TL;DR: In 2006 Freehand TV produced the local version of the BBC lifestyle programme Honey We're Killing the Kids for Network Ten in a format deal with BBC Worldwide Australasia as discussed by the authors, and in 2004 the Seven Network...
Abstract: In 2006 Freehand TV produced the local version of the BBC lifestyle programme Honey We're Killing the Kids for Network Ten in a format deal with BBC Worldwide Australasia. In 2004 the Seven Network...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors draw out the links between creativity, textuality and social relations in an online environment and argue that the textual and social are often mutually constitutive, and that to ignore the textual aspects of online community or the social aspects to online texts is to erase at least some of their cultural significance.
Abstract: This paper draws out the links between creativity, textuality and social relations in an online environment. It argues that the textual and social are often mutually constitutive. To ignore the textual aspects of online community or the social aspects to online texts is to erase at least some of their cultural significance. Using the blog of knitting writer 'Yarn Harlot' as a case study, the paper looks at the way the aesthetic and social aspects of the community formed around this blog are entwined.
TL;DR: The sustainable development of the environment is one of the great hopes of Western governments and their technocracies for the twenty-first century as discussed by the authors, and sustainable development suggests that the environment has never been a pristine domain of nature set apart from human occupation, but is always a constructed milieu of naturally occurring material and cultural practices, structures and values that can be managed in various ways.
Abstract: The sustainable development of the environment is one of the great hopes of Western governments and their technocracies for the twenty-first century. The idea of sustainability suggests that the environment has never been a pristine domain of nature set apart from human occupation, but is always a constructed milieu of naturally occurring material and cultural practices, structures and values that can be managed in various ways. In short, an environment is a landscape in the sense initially proposed by Carl Sauer in the 1920s, as a ‘general system’ (Sauer 1963, 321) corresponding to laws and principles couched in scientific terms, and leading to calculations and predictions in the service of man’s control over the earth. Environments are an outcome of the rationalization of the earth, underway since colonial times, as the transformation of land into landscapes, reaching a zenith today through the application of what Nigel Thrift has called ‘landscape engineering’ (Thrift 2004, 68), or the myriad mechanisms of micro-power that inhabit and produce a landscape as a living, breathing space for human occupation. It is not difficult to see, then, how proposals for sustainable development of the environment are inevitably couched in human terms, as the definition in Our Common Future, the landmark Brundtland report from the United Nations suggests: ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (1987, 54). The idea of a sustainable environment retains a will to power over the environment as a means of managing resources for current human needs but with a view to the future. This constitutes a form of technological exploitation in which the environment is considered as a resource for human use. The environment is not something existing independently of human interests, but something that waits for humans as ‘standing reserve’, as Heidegger has argued in his essay ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ (Heidegger 1977, 17). Sustainability thus seeks to protect and manage the environment not on its own terms but as something already given to human being as that which needs to be preserved for future human generations. In essence, this is no different from the kinds of exploitation that programmes of sustainability are designed to counteract. In his book World Risk Society Ulrich Beck has argued that institutionalized scientific activities in the name of sustainable development are both the cause of and the solution to global environmental problems. This makes them, at best, a problematic response to the
TL;DR: Since the publication of Fiske, Hodge and Turner's Myths of Oz: Reading Australian Popular Culture (1987), Australian Cultural Studies has turned to the beach as a primary site for examining nation...
Abstract: Since the publication of Fiske, Hodge and Turner's Myths of Oz: Reading Australian Popular Culture (1987), Australian Cultural Studies has turned to the beach as a primary site for examining nation...
TL;DR: This article examined theories that may help to explain the social rationale of makeover television, viewed as a genre concerned with the evaluation and modification of citizens. But they did not consider the usefulness of models of reflexive modernization to help account for the reflexivity that participants display in the construction of lifestyle projects.
Abstract: This paper examines theories that may help to explain the social rationale of makeover television, viewed as a genre concerned with the evaluation and modification of citizens. It considers the usefulness of models of reflexive modernization to help account for the reflexivity that participants display in the construction of lifestyle projects. However, I argue that a materially grounded notion of reflexivity is necessary to account for the overarching logic of makeover narratives: i.e. the social production of value through consumption. In this respect, makeovers can be seen as consistent with other textual forms of consumer culture that symbolically invest commodities with promises of personal life-improvement. In the spirit of the shows themselves, makeover television is subject to continual modification. Media industry efforts to keep programming fresh mean that new angles and topics appear on our screens continually. At the same time these innovations seem to constitute exercises in creative recycling of what has worked previously (Morris 2007). Accordingly, while the makeover is a specific genre of lifestyle television that emerged in the 1990s (Moseley 2000), it can also be thought of as a kind of meme, an idea that catches on in a given context through its appeal to a wide array of ‘hosts’ that help to replicate it and adapt it successfully (Blackmore 1999). The fact is that after initially being confined to familiar lifestyle concerns of the appearance of body and home, the makeover has proved to be a device that is useful for the portrayal of almost any social practice, from hotel ownership to debt management and toddler taming. Whatever the issue, the core elements of the makeover show centre around what Jack Bratich (2007) refers to as the fairytale-like ‘powers of transformation’ that develop through the narrative. Makeovers are inherently optimistic. They rely upon a clear contrast between before and after, whereby the after is always seen as better than what went before. Ordinary people are presented as beneficiaries of consumer advice about ‘improving practices’ (Bonner 2003, 106). Questions of what to do and how to act are applied to their personal cases by figures who have privileged authority to judge: lifestyle experts (Powell and Prasad 2007). These are not detached talking heads, but advisors determined to solve the problems inherent in one particular life situation. After having broken down the larger problem into its parts and explained each necessary step in the improvement plan, the overall effect is shown in the narrative climax, the ‘reveal’. This is the point where we see the combined effect of all changes for the first time: in the toddler tamed, the post-surgery body, the beautiful home. Despite the great entertainment value often derived from the dramatization of the change process, there is a pedagogic rationale in this. People are represented as learning (whether or not they really do) from experts various skills and items of knowledge that enhance their ability to act in the world. My interest here is that the notion of well-being entailed by all this is a particular contemporary sense that people can do things well by choosing well. The very narrative form
TL;DR: In this article, the importance of Perth's culture as a crucial context in which the popular music of Perth has developed is discussed, and the authors argue that the Perth music scene as described in this article has arisen in a particular geographic place with specific qualities and these qualities have had identifiable effects on the music produced in Perth.
Abstract: In the present article, I think about the importance of Perth's culture as a crucial context in which the popular music of Perth has developed. In the case examined in the present article, Perth music in the 1960s and 1970s can be understood as a scene that evolved in situ. Its localism was certainly not a function of any attempt to market ‘Perth music’. Rather, as we shall see, the Perth music scene as I describe it has arisen in a particular geographic place with specific qualities and, as I will argue, these qualities have had identifiable effects on the music produced in Perth.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors seek to bring critical attention to the idea of "scene" in relation to musical activity in Darwin, an iconic northern, remote, (post)colonial city.
Abstract: In the present article, we seek to bring critical attention to the idea of ‘scene’ in relation to musical activity in Darwin, an iconic northern, remote, (post)colonial city. The idea of ‘scenes’, ...
TL;DR: There has been a veritable explosion in home and property shows in the last two decades, swamping television schedules with tips on how best to revamp kitchens on a budget, build outdoor entertainm...
Abstract: There has been a veritable explosion in home and property shows in the last two decades, swamping television schedules with tips on how best to revamp kitchens on a budget, build outdoor entertainm...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the role of hip-hop as a voice of a generation of black youth in popular culture, and discuss its racial and gender representations and its role in black youth culture.
Abstract: Whether it is condemned for its racial and gender representations or lauded as the voice of a generation, hip-hop has brought black youth culture to the forefront of popular culture. In this paper ...
TL;DR: In the twenty-first century, digital imaging techniques are able to modify each and every pictorial representation of reality at will as discussed by the authors, and any taxonomy of reality can be modified at will.
Abstract: Once atomised into pixels … digital imaging techniques are able to modify each and every pictorial representation of reality at will … (Amelunxen 1997) In the twenty-first century any taxonomy of ‘...
TL;DR: One Bride and Prejudice (Gurinder Chadha 2004) comes alon...I can't keep it inside my head anymore! All this preaching by the Western media about what I should appreciate from my own popular culture.
Abstract: I can't keep it inside my head anymore! All this preaching by the Western media about what I should appreciate from my own popular culture. One Bride and Prejudice (Gurinder Chadha 2004) comes alon...
TL;DR: The virtual idol, a computer-generated media starlet largely confined to Japan, takes the logic of corporately managed celebrity and simplifies it to the point of caricature as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The virtual idol, a computer-generated media starlet largely confined to Japan, takes the logic of corporately managed celebrity and simplifies it to the point of caricature. However, despite the s...
TL;DR: The makeover has become a ubiquitous cultural phenomenon. Once relegated to the realm of women's magazines and daytime television, over the past decade, it has taken up an increasingly pro...
Abstract: The makeover has become a ubiquitous cultural phenomenon. Once relegated to the realm of women's magazines and daytime television, over the past decade the makeover has taken up an increasingly pro...
TL;DR: In this paper, the impacts of branding and commercialization on the Australian indie music festival scene through an in-depth examination of the use of corporate sponsors is investigated, in particular, the "experience enhancement" techniques used by sponsors and festival organizers of the Big Day Out and Falls festivals.
Abstract: The present article investigates the impacts of branding and commercialization on the Australian indie music festival scene through an in-depth examination of the use of corporate sponsors. In particular, it investigates the ‘experience enhancement’ techniques used by sponsors and festival organizers of the Big Day Out and Falls festival. It will explore the festival goers' views on the commercialization of the contemporary festival space and the discursive strategies they use to negotiate this scene. It is further argued that the commercialization of the festival scene ultimately impacts on the meanings created by the festival goers.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors look at both the musical performances and related identity performances that occur in Brisbane's queer club scene and demonstrate how the local queer scene's musical eclecticism corresponds to its multifarious performances of queer sexuality, suggesting that the musico-sexual synergy that accommodates an array of sexual perversities and musical tastes.
Abstract: Brisbane's queer scene is relatively obscure; outside those who actively participate in it, little is known of it and practically nothing is written about it. Broadly speaking, queer culture works in direct contrast to the coherent and commodified culture of the gay mainstream and collectively rejects conventional ‘gay music’, favouring instead a multiplicity of musical styles and performances. This is particularly evident in the local context where queer clubs and events were born to facilitate the musical desires of those dissatisfied with the music spun weekly at mainstream gay venues. The present paper demonstrates how the local queer scene's musical eclecticism corresponds to its multifarious performances of queer sexuality, suggesting that queer musical performances and events produce a musico-sexual synergy that accommodates an array of sexual perversities and musical tastes. The paper looks at both the musical performances and related identity performances that occur in Brisbane's queer club scene...
TL;DR: The virtual is opposed not to the real but to the actual as mentioned in this paper, and virtual possibilities and worlds are real as a limited actual articulation of the virtual; see, e.g., as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: ‘The virtual is opposed not to the real but to the actual’ (Deleuze 1994, 208) As this quote reminds us, virtual possibilities and worlds are real As a limited actual articulation of the virtual,
TL;DR: In this paper, the key aims of Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history are outlined and explained through three examples: the film Russian Ark, the music style "Turbo-folk" and the Apple iPod.
Abstract: This essay will outline the key aims of Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history, and explain through three examples—the film Russian Ark, the music style ‘Turbo-folk’, and Apple iPod—how it can be ...