Volume 12, Issue 3, 2015

Transcription

Volume 12,
Issue 3, 2015
Contents
Page
The Humanitarian Makeover
229-251
“News with an Accent”: Hispanic Television and the Re-negotiation of US
Latino Speech
252-270
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo: A Cautionary Tale Starring White WorkingClass People
271-288
A Pressure Chamber of Innovation: Google Fiber and Flexible Capital
Undoing a First World Gaze: Agency and Context in Iron Ladies of Liberia
Red Tourism: Rethinking Propaganda as a Social Space
289-308
309-327
328-346
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies
ISSN: 1479-1420 (Print) 1479-4233 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rccc20
Shani Orgad & Kaarina Nikunen
To cite this article: Shani Orgad & Kaarina Nikunen (2015) The Humanitarian
Makeover, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 12:3, 229-251, DOI:
10.1080/14791420.2015.1044255
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2015.1044255
Published online: 15 Jul 2015.
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Shani Orgad & Kaarina Nikunen
We examine how the makeover paradigm is mobilized in contemporary humanitarian
communications—a practice we call “humanitarian makeover.” We demonstrate its
operation in the Finnish television programme Arman and the Children of Cameroon
and Plan’s 2013 International Day of the Girl event. The analysis shows how helping
distant others is configured within a makeover and self-transformation narrative,
providing a stage for performance of an “ethical self.” We argue that while the
humanitarian impetus is to disturb and redress global inequality and injustice, which
includes exposing and interrupting the failures of neoliberalism, the makeover
paradigm is intimately connected to and reinforces individualized “moral citizenship,”
which conforms to and reinforces neoliberal values.
Keywords: Makeover; Humanitarian Communication; Self-transformation; NGOs;
television
Introduction
Makeover culture is extending the traditional contexts of advertising, reality
television, lifestyle programming, and magazines, and the focus on remaking the
body.1 Makeover shows and forms are becoming important sites of popular
pedagogy, teaching audiences how to adopt “ethical” ways of living in relation to
contexts such as environmentalism, religion,2 and, recently we argue, humanitarianism. NGOs’ communications are incorporating and exploiting the makeover
paradigm3 in order to raise awareness, generate compassion, and mobilize monetary
donation for humanitarian causes. For example, Oxfam’s 2014 Food Heroes
programme involved a national reality-TV style competition to raise awareness—
initially in Tanzania—of women food producers.4 Oxfam UK’s 2013 See for Yourself
Shani Orgad is at the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political
Science. Kaarina Nikunen is at the School of Communication, Media and Theater, University of Tampere.
Correspondence to: Shani Orgad, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and
Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK. Email: s.s.orgad@lse.ac.uk.
ISSN 1479-1420 (print)/ISSN 1479-4233 (online) © 2015 National Communication Association
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2015.1044255
230
S. Orgad & K. Nikunen
campaign employed the makeover format to showcase the transformation of two UK
women from charity-sceptics to Oxfam supporters and “good” citizens, while
ActionAid’s Bollocks to Poverty programme employs a range of makeover techniques
and styles on social media and other platforms.5
How is the makeover paradigm mobilized in contemporary humanitarian
communications, and what are the implications of the marriage between two
seemingly contradictory communicative registers—humanitarian communication
and the makeover paradigm? This paper addresses this question by analysing two
recent cases of communications produced by the international development NGO,
Plan, whose work focuses on the promotion of child rights and assisting children in
poverty in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.6 The first is a Plan-sponsored Finnish
television programme, Arman and the Children of Cameroon, and the second is Plan
UK’s 2013 International Day of the Girl (IDG) event in London.
The paper is structured as follows. First, to situate the study, we discuss the concept
of the makeover paradigm and its use in contexts such as religion and environmentalism, which are substantially different and separate (at least historically) from those
associated with lifestyle and commercialized genres. Next, we focus on humanitarian
communication as a field that increasingly is appropriating the makeover paradigm
and its associated formats and techniques. We briefly review current transformations
in humanitarian communication and particularly critiques of its commodification and
marketization.7 Drawing on these two research areas, we exploit our cases to
demonstrate mobilization of the makeover paradigm in humanitarian communication
in two media: a reality television-style programme and a public event. Taken together,
these case studies demonstrate how helping distant others is configured through a
narrative of makeover and self-transformation, and how humanitarian communication
provides a stage for the performance and exercise of a “new ethical self.”8
We conclude by discussing the implications of marrying humanitarianism and
makeover. We consider how this recent practice, which we term “humanitarian
makeover,” could be a potentially effective way of stimulating Western audiences’
awareness, ethical engagement, and political action. At the same time, by situating
the humanitarian makeover within broader critiques of the neoliberal transformation
of media culture, we highlight the fundamental tensions in and challenges of the
alliance between humanitarianism and makeover. We argue that while the
humanitarian impetus is to disturb and redress global inequality and injustice,
which includes exposing and interrupting the failures of neoliberalism, the makeover
paradigm is intimately connected to and reinforces individualized “moral citizenship,” which conforms to neoliberal values.
The Makeover Paradigm and the Ethical Turn
Media representations, discourses, genres, and products that employ the makeover
paradigm, showcasing and celebrating the transformation of bodies, homes, cars,
pets, and parents, have flourished in recent years. Gill defines the makeover paradigm
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as a pervasive narrative, closely tied to neoliberal ideology. It is premised on the
notion that one’s life is somehow lacking or flawed and, crucially, is amenable to
reinvention or transformation through conformance to certain aesthetic, moral, or
political standards, and the advice of experts and practice of “appropriately modified
consumption habits.”9 The core of the makeover paradigm is a project of selftransformation,10 intimately linked to neoliberalism’s stress on individualization and
self-responsibility.11 The process of self-transformation is understood as a necessary
step towards the better, improved life that is both within reach and, crucially, one’s
own responsibility. The makeover paradigm proposes the self as the centre and agent
of transformation, and the makeover constitutes a form that enables redress of the
(constructed) distance between imagined social ideals and lived experience.12
Reality television shows are the flagship of the makeover paradigm. In their
seminal analysis of this genre, Skeggs and Wood13 discuss how such programmes
produce “new ethical selves,” in which particular forms of “upgraded” selfhood are
presented as solutions to the dilemmas of contemporary life.14 The authors suggest
that the makeover cultural form plays a key role in the expression and attachment of
values to people: coded predominantly as working-class, these shows’ participants
appear to display and dramatize themselves as inadequate, as needing selfinvestment. As put by Gill, “participants are then variously advised, cajoled, bullied
or ‘educated’ into changing their ways and becoming more ‘successful’ versions of
themselves.”15 Reality television reveals solutions to their deficit culture and
inadequate subjectivities through future person-production; a projected investment
in self-transformation that requires the participants to work on themselves and their
relationships, to make up for their deficiencies.16 This transformation is commonly
portrayed (e.g., in advertising) in “Before” and “After” images; participants are shown
to be released from the emotional and body dysfunctionalities that constituted their
“Before” self.17
Research concerning the makeover paradigm largely focuses on modes of
remaking and transforming self and body, in advertising, reality television, lifestyle
programming, and magazines.18 More recently, the makeover paradigm’s operation
has been examined in other contexts. For example, Deller shows how realitytelevision programmes use religion and spirituality as makeover tools facilitating a
journey of self-transformation, while Lewis examines a range of Australian “ecolifestyle” shows as sites of creative experimentation around green living and
citizenship that teach audiences to adopt ethical ways of living by moving from
consumption to self-sufficiency.19 Similarly, studies of television shows such as
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that focuses on people experiencing hardship
caused by natural disasters or illness, and Go Back to Where You Came From, which
tackles the issue of racism and migration, highlight the employment of makeover
modalities for “doing good” and promoting ethical causes.20 It is argued that such
shows make caring an explicit responsibility to be performed,21 and present care for
others and community work as the ultimate tasks in the management and betterment
of the self.22
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The shift towards “ethical entertainment” is underpinned by various processes
including larger economic transformations in media industry structures, a growing
interest of popular culture in the impacts and risks of capitalist modernity,23 and
increased financial pressure on NGOs promoting ethical societal causes such as
environmentalism and humanitarianism. Confronted by increasingly convergent
production settings, greater competition, and more fragmented audiences,24 the
media industry—particularly television and digital platforms—is recognizing that
ethical entertainment and philanthropist programmes can add value, tap into
audiences’ growing interest in escaping the pressures of modernity, engage new
audiences, and be profitable.25 NGOs, for their part, faced by scarce and limited
resources and growing competition and criticism, see the makeover paradigm (and
its associated genres and format) as an innovative framework through which to
communicate and engage audiences in societal and ethical causes.
The field of humanitarian communication has undergone a series of significant
interrelated and well-documented transformations whose discussion is beyond the
scope of this paper.26 They underpin a shift towards what Chouliaraki calls “posthumanitarian” communication:27 communication that is deeply influenced by
corporate logic, and adopts business, celebrity, advertising, and branding models. It
moves from demand for solidarity with vulnerable far-away others on the basis of
pity, to articulation of this demand as irony, based on a focus on “us” in the West,
marginalizing questions about justice, global inequality, and the root causes of
suffering.
We would suggest that it is in the context of the shift towards “posthumanitarianism”28 that humanitarian NGOs’ exploitation of the makeover paradigm should be understood. While the use in humanitarian communication of genres
such as celebrity, concerts, and films has received considerable scholarly attention,29
employment of the makeover paradigm and its communication formats have been
under-explored—a lacuna that this paper seeks to fill.
Methodology
The research employs a qualitative, in depth exploration of two case studies—Arman
and the Children of Cameroon and the International Day of the Girl (IDG) event.
They were selected for their several significant similarities. First, both cases exemplify
how NGOs incorporate the logic of the makeover paradigm in their communication
addressing Western publics. Both examples, albeit different in genre, employ several
similar tropes and strategies that are characteristic of makeover formats. They exploit
a narrative of transformation of the lives of Global South subjects from inadequate to
improved, tied in with transformation of the Western Self. Second, the contexts of
the two cases are similar: humanitarianism and humanitarian communication have
undergone similar structural transformations in Finland and the UK. In Finland, ever
scarcer resources and an increasingly competitive market have led aid organizations
increasingly to respond to and adopt commercialized forms to address the public
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while simultaneously reflecting on the ways in which these changes shape and alter
the core values of humanitarian work.30 In the UK, similar issues combined with
government pressure for NGOs to demonstrate impact in a work culture driven by
data and auditing, public scrutiny, criticism, and public distrust of NGOs have led to
greater professionalization and adoption of market logic and corporate techniques in
NGOs’ communication.
At the same time, the dissimilarity of these cases provides useful variation of both
medium and cultural context. Their media are different. Case 1 illustrates how the
humanitarian makeover is constructed and operates within a television programme,
which closely mirrors the reality television format and conventions. Case 2
demonstrates how the makeover paradigm is employed to communicate a humanitarian message through a public event that was part of the NGOs’ broader
communication and promotional strategy. There are differences also in the histories
of the UK and Finland, and how these histories have shaped their national publics’
relation to distant suffering and humanitarian aid. Finland was not involved in the
colonial project; rather, it has enjoyed an image of “innocent outsider,”31 free of the
burden of colonial and racist mastery of other peoples. In contrast, Britain’s colonial
past and its aftermath, especially post-colonial critique and colonial guilt, have
significantly shaped its governments’ consistent commitment to humanitarian aid,
and influenced the thinking and practice of UK-based humanitarian NGOs in
relation to their representation of the developing world.32 Nevertheless, Finland
shares the values of Western colonial thought and the sense of Western superiority,
and has been complicit in supporting imperial projects, specifically through
international development cooperation.33
Thus, these case studies offer suitable and compelling contexts for comparison.
They focus on the communication strategies of the NGO Plan, but illustrate practices
that extend beyond that NGO, demonstrated by the links offered in the analysis to
other studies of contemporary humanitarian communications.
We treat these case studies as cultural texts—sites of symbolic power that shape
moralities by offering specific ways of perceiving humanitarian situations and
relations to distant suffering.34
. Case study 1: the 50-minute long programme Arman and the Children of
Cameroon, broadcast in April 2014, was digitally stored and analysed by
Author 2, with detailed notes on scenes with time-coding. The related online
material on the websites of Channel Jim and Plan Finland was also digitally
stored and analysed by Author 2.
. Case study 2: Author 1 observed the public IDG event, taking detailed notes,
photos, and videos during and after the event, conducting informal interviews
with the event’s organizers and participants, and collecting online and printed
materials publicizing and reporting the event (e.g., Plan UK’s website, blogs,
Twitter).
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We used qualitative analysis to examine the textual, visual, and audio-visual
material collected within each case study separately. The analysis was informed by an
interest in the construction and operation of the makeover paradigm and its focus on
a narrative of self-transformation. We then juxtaposed our analyses, looking for
connections showing how, across the two cases, the makeover paradigm was used to
construct the humanitarian message. Note that some differences between the two
cases are made apparent through the description of the analysis. However, their
juxtaposition highlights aspects that resonated across the two cases, in relation to the
central characteristics of the makeover paradigm and in order to address the key
research question of how the makeover paradigm is mobilized in the humanitarian
message.
Analysis: Humanitarian Makeover in Action
Case Study 1: Arman and the Children of Cameroon
The 2014 Finnish television programme, Arman and the Children of Cameroon
(hereafter Arman), sponsored by the Finnish branch of the charity Plan and
produced by Armanin maailma (Arman’s World), is a vivid example of the ethical
turn in reality-television production, combining makeover with a humanitarian
message. The programme’s host, Iranian-born Arman Alizad, is famous in Finland
for his streetwise, outspoken, and extreme reality television series on the Finnish
commercial channel, Jim, and an acclaimed adventure reality series Arman and the
Last Crusade, aired in 2013. The latter followed Arman’s experience of extreme and
dangerous situations in different parts of the globe, e.g., hanging out with Brazilian
crime gangs, living in a slum in Manila, Philippines, and begging for money with
street children in Cambodia. Using reality-television-style footage and emotional oncamera address, Arman exposed the dire conditions of global inequality to Finnish
viewers. Capitalizing on the host’s previous television successes, recognizable
persona, and unpretentious streetwise reporting style, Arman seeks to increase
awareness of the plight of children living in poverty in the developing world, and to
promote the child sponsorship programme of the children’s development charity,
Plan. As the following analysis demonstrates, Arman acts as a typical makeover
expert who simultaneously exposes and accentuates subjects’ misery and flawed lives
while voicing concern about and care for them, and offering ways to “fix” them.
From the outset, the programme’s narrative is framed as makeover: a personal and
ethical quest for transformation of the Baka people, from suffering subjects, whose
misery is caused by a multinational, logging industry-driven environmental
catastrophe, into improved, salvaged selves. “I am here to find out how to improve
children’s lives on grassroots level and most of all, I am here to find my god-child
Assanga,” Arman states in the opening, slow motion, dramatic music-backed scene,
showing him dressed in casual black shirt, scarf, and khaki cargo trousers, walking
along a street in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon.
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The programme presents a ritualized journey from Before to After, structured
around the key phases of the formulaic regularity of the makeover show.35 The first
part of the programme constitutes the initial shaming of the premade inappropriate
subjects. Arman is seen visiting the slums of Yaoundé, accompanied by Jazz, a local
NGO worker collaborating with Plan International. The visual composition of this
visit vividly constructs the lives of the slum dwellers as lacking and inadequate,
characterized by extreme poverty, misery, and danger. Arman’s voiceover anchors
this construction by relating how the Cameroonians, lacking skills and education,
were uprooted and forced to move to the city, and now live in slums. Jazz and Arman
walk through narrow slum streets as the camera pans out to include children and
occasional residents gazing at them. Slow-motion images of young men sitting on the
margins of rundown streets and children passively staring at the camera are
accompanied by dramatic music, constructing a sense of misery and despair. In
close-up, Jazz explains to Arman the risks of life in the slums, disease and forced
marriage and prostitution especially affecting girls.
The camera then cuts to a very different image and we glimpse the results of a
successful Plan-sponsored project involving microloans for female entrepreneurs.
Arman is seen sitting next to a silent, middle-aged woman dressed in a colourful skirt
and a pink T-shirt who is making pastry. “The baking business is making profit and
now she even has some savings […] Only 60 Euros changed her life” Arman
explains, addressing the camera. Thus, microloans are presented by the expert as
the path to successful self-transformation, to transporting lives from misery to
salvation—the crux of the makeover journey. The inclusion in the early part of the
programme of these glimpses of alternative, improved lives symbolically sows
the seeds for the tenet of the makeover paradigm: a narrative of transformation.
The images suggest that the Baka people can (and should) be re-invented from
helpless victims to empowered, resilient agents—a familiar (and much criticized)
trope of humanitarian discourse,36 which capitalizes on the makeover construction of
misery transformed by self-investment.
Following the symbolic establishment of the Cameroonians as subjects of misery
whose lives are in need of and amenable to transformation, the programme then
moves to what Weber describes as typically the second phase of makeover shows:
moments for surveillance by audience and experts. Through the combination of
voiceover and Arman’s on-camera address, viewers are invited to scrutinize the plight
of the Baka people. For example, one scene shows a class of school children playing
on their own, with Arman’s voiceover highlighting the desperate need for teachers.
Their plight is further authenticated by showing Arman, breathless, accompanying
the Baka children on their daily, rough, and very long journey to school. Together
with a Plan expert, Arman relates a list of facts about lack of school equipment, loss
of land and livelihood, and increase in teenage pregnancies. Other scenes similarly
spotlight the local people’s everyday lives as extremely difficult, impoverished, and
inadequate. As in makeover programmes, the focus is on individuals whose Before
selves are constructed as flawed, providing the basis for their transformation later in
the programme into improved After selves. In one of several on-camera addresses,
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Arman voices his concern for the Baka people, and solidifies the need for change
with the help of Plan: “If they decide to move to the city and they have no education,
no job, nothing. The only place where their children will end up is the slums” (see
Figure 1). Thus, capitalizing on the premise of the makeover narrative, these images
of hope tell viewers that transformation is not just required but easily achievable by
following the advice of experts—humanitarian aid organizations such as Plan—and
practising appropriately modified behaviour—becoming entrepreneurs and gaining
education.
Arman performs what Weber describes as unique to the makeover narrative,
namely the “combined gesture of care and humiliation”37 from the makeover expert,
who exposes the misery of the subjects in order to facilitate their transformation.
Arman plays the role of humanitarian mediator who authenticates the victim and
offers viewers a lens to observe closely the misery of the Baka people. On the one
hand, this symbolic surveillance is predicated on and reinforces clear power relations;
the Western saviour gazing at and coming to the rescue of the needy Other. At the
same time, the programme seeks to diffuse this unequal hierarchy. Arman is
constructed as low-key, casual, and down-to-earth, a construction reinforced by his
continuous on-camera explanation of what is happening and what will happen next.
Unlike many celebrities who have assumed central roles as mediators in humanitarian communications,38 Arman is himself an other—an Iranian immigrant, who
through his fame as a television persona has come to represent “us”—the Finnish
people, and bridge between Finnish audiences and far-away others in developing
countries.
Figure 1 Arman introducing his quest to ﬁnd Assanga. (Source: Plan Youtube channel)
237
The bridging of distance is enacted in several scenes where Arman is seen playing
with the children, joining a festive dance, and fishing with the villagers. In posthumanitarian vein, these scenes blur self and other, stressing similarity and common
faith rather than difference and distinction between us and them. In this way the
programme exploits Arman’s outspoken and streetwise style to diffuse the unequal
power relations between Western humanitarian organizations and the Global South.
Through jokes and sometimes foul language, Arman injects the hierarchical
humanitarian address with informality and ordinariness, thus turning it from a
top-down, explicitly normative demand for ethical action, to a causal, unpretentious
approach, spiced with some humour and excitement. This distinctive mode of
address, reinforced by the show’s makeover narrative and Arman’s straightforward
style, infers that not only is transformation required, easy, and achievable, but also it
is fun.
Thus, rather than patronizing Western heroes who save the victims—a construction that has attracted harsh criticism, Plan and Arman are constructed as humble,
unassuming, and trustworthy partners—implicitly capitalizing on the image of
Finland and its people as the innocent outsider. This construction, coupled with an
informative documentary style and forms of product placement (frequent images of
Plan logos on vehicles and clothing), function to authenticate and validate
Plan’s work.
As Arman arrives at the village, he finally meets his sponsored “god-child,”
Assanga, who initially is reserved and distant towards her Western sponsor. Dressed
in a brown checked dress she stands submissively next to Arman, who interprets her
emotions to the audience: “She is tense and distant towards me,” he explains. Rather
than the emotional high-point towards which the narrative has built, the encounter
between benefactor and beneficiary is devoid of feeling. This reserved, unsentimental
scene departs from the narrative of grand emotion, which, historically, characterized
the humanitarian pledge,39 proposing instead an unpretentious, “authentic,” and lowkey narrative. The scene also diverts from the dominant humanitarian communication paradigm (encapsulated by the considerably critiqued Live Aid Legacy), which
casts the Western public (benefactor) in the role of “powerful giver,” and the African
public (beneficiary) as “grateful receiver.”40 Assanga is neither grateful nor
ungrateful, but rather, like her family members, is suspicious and guarded, avoiding
eye contact with Arman and the camera.
By showing the tension and distance between Arman and Assanga, the programme
seeks to underline both the sincerity of its message and the challenge that the process
of transformation entails. From this point onwards, Arman’s efforts to reduce the
distance between Assanga and himself, her sponsor, propel the narrative and
facilitate the move into the following phase of the makeover: subjects’ surrender to the
makeover. From images of deserted streets, and lack of school equipment and
educational tools, the camera begins to document the transformation provided by
Plan’s work to the lives of the Baka people as they surrender to the change: modern
school buildings, a new well in operation, children being taught how to farm
corn and cassava to provide their daily meals, and children carrying new school
238
books—the humanitarian commodity that symbolically encapsulates the promise of a
better life.
Significantly, the Baka people are shown as willingly and happily submitting to the
humanitarian authorities—Plan and Arman. The camera shows cheerful pupils
queuing for their class, studying their new books, and clapping and singing with
Arman in the classroom. Accompanied by dramatic music in a close-up scene,
Arman and Assanga write their names on the blackboard, a scene that dramatizes the
transformative power of education provided by the benefactor, Arman, who is
embraced by the beneficiary Assanga. It is on the basis of the programme’s
construction of Plan and Arman as down-to-earth, trustworthy and, thus, validated
and legitimized, that the Baka people are seen to surrender willingly, to be made-over
from illiterate and inadequate into educated, improved selves.
However, the emotional tension and distance between Arman and Assanga linger,
disturbing realization of a full surrender. Resolving the relationship becomes a
necessary step to complete the surrender and lead towards transformation. One of
the final scenes depicts a fishing trip when Assanga finally connects with Arman. As
Arman and Assanga walk from the river towards the village, Arman offers his hand
to Assanga who eventually surrenders and grabs it. The significance of the moment is
underlined by slow motion images and dramatic music. It is followed by a close-up of
a smiling Arman saying to the camera that it “feels amazing.” This is the “moment of
truth,”41 of surrender and connection, which resolves the makeover narrative and
confirms the recipient’s acknowledgement of the value of her makeover, which is
linked intimately to humanitarian aid and her benefactor’s good intentions and
actions. The makeover narrative and completion of the surrender serve to legitimize,
authenticate, and approve the good-doing of Western benefactors and international
aid organizations such as Plan. As a rebuttal to the growing criticism of international
aid NGOs’ misuse of funds, and questioning of the viability and legitimacy of
international aid more broadly, we see Assanga’s personal transformation—from
reserved and suspicious to trusting, reinforced by Arman’s constructed authenticity
and sincerity. In a voiceover, Arman states that they found a mutual language
through doing, rather than talking, echoing the leitmotif of humanitarianism as that
of being on the ground and engaging in physical action.42
The transformation achieves full closure in one of the final scenes showing Arman
buying rice, soap, and salt in a local store, and carrying these heavy sacks to
Assanga’s family and the villagers. This scene exemplifies for viewers “ethical
citizenship” and caring for those in need through donation and the physical effort of
doing good. Arman’s donation is met with celebration as grateful villagers gather to
thank him. The former silent, passive, and reserved villagers are transformed into a
joyful community that embraces its Western benefactors. In her After-body/self,
Assanga, dressed all in white, presents a bunch of flowers to her benefactor, to show
her gratitude. The villagers rejoice with Arman in a collective ritual dance, which
operates as the makeover’s “reveal ceremony,”43 suggesting that the new subjects
have gained access to a better self and an improved life. The makeover message is
confirmed: “subjects need the transformation made possible by the program since
239
without the aid the makeover provides, subjects would be compelled to live abjectly
in their Before-bodies [and selves] forever.”44 This final moment of the programme
when benefactor and beneficiary dance together signifies what Weber describes as the
culmination of the makeover: the “euphoria of the new improved subjects and
satisfied experts.”45
Thus, the programme’s makeover narrative operates at two levels. The lacking lives
of the Baka people are transformed into purposeful, cheerful, and empowered lives.
Simultaneously, this transformation is enabled by and, in turn, facilitates the selftransformation of Arman and the viewers, who, by donating time and money to help
far-away others, transform their selves and become improved ethical citizens. Like
other “doing good” reality makeover programmes, Arman draws on a promise of
empowerment that is realized through individualized practices of volunteerism and
philanthropy.46
Case Study 2: Plan UK’s IDG Event
On 11 October 2013, to mark the IDG and to promote awareness of the plight of the
65 million girls around the world who are denied access to the basic right of
education, the children’s charity Plan UK held a spectacle in London’s Trafalgar
Square. The event centred on the unveiling of a massive billboard erected in front of
the National Gallery, displaying an image of girls working at sewing machines,
signifying a sweatshop (Figure 2).
Figure 2 Plan UK billboard at the front of the National Gallery, London, 11
October 2013.
240
The magnified image of the girls acted as an opening “judgement shot.”47 Similar
to a reality television shot presenting the failing, insecure, and vulnerable
participants, the girls in the image are visually signified as victims of oppressive
patriarchal rule, somewhere in Asia. Their shoulders are bowed, their bodies are
slumped and subdued, and they gaze intently downwards. They are fairly uniformly
dressed and wear some sort of luminescent label on their blouses, reminiscent of an
identity tag. A threatening man, dressed in what appears to be a black jacket or
Macintosh, hovers over them. But it is the figure of the girl positioned at top right
that captures the audience’s attention. She focuses meekly on her work, her face
suffused with an expression of submissive dreaminess. The black and white image
adds to the sombre atmosphere of the room and renders it devoid of liveliness
or hope.
The depiction is typical of contemporary NGO imagery, which has moved away
from the realism of photojournalism that characterized earlier communications,48
and offers an illustration that deliberately does not identify the girls’ exact location.
They are, in Boltanski’s terms,49 “exemplary,” “standing” for all the girls denied
access to education. The girls in this magnified image are detached from the
particular contexts and sets of relations that make up their experience of the world.
These “representative” girls now are placed within another set of relations;
replanted in the heart of a Western global metropolis, displayed as objects for the
gaze of spectators, of Plan staff and supporters, of UK schoolgirls who congregated in
Trafalgar Square after a march to celebrate the IDG, and of TV presenters, tourists,
and passers-by. The poor, oppressed, docile girls pictured on the magnified onedimensional board are set against the impressively large, multidimensional National
Gallery building, immediately below its iconic columns. Against this background,
which epitomizes learnedness and European culture, this opening judgement shot of
the girls transports them from their existing social position to radically different
conditions, and offers the promise of transformation. The speeches delivered
(discussed below) explicitly articulate the contrasting environments—“here,” the
UK, and “there,” the developing world—a contrast that is a common feature of
makeover forms50 and provides a symbolic foundation to the promise of
transformation. The caption accompanying the magnified image anchors this
message of transformation as not only possible and desirable, but crucially, easily
achieved: “Erase the barriers to girls’ education. Take action with Plan UK to help 4
million girls transform their futures.” It tells Western spectators that it is both within
their reach and is their responsibility to translate the current Before version of the
picture to an imagined, but possible After version. These notions of the need and ease
of transformation, which are at the heart of the makeover paradigm and, as we saw
before, constitute the Arman narrative, run through the entire IDG event.
Once a substantial crowd had gathered in front of the image of the girls, it was
responded to by “experts,” who, displaying a sense of shock and urgency (similar to
makeover shows, see Skeggs),51 called for transformation and security. The event
started formally with addresses from a series of experts, including the UK
International Development Minister, television presenters, Plan UK’s Chair and
241
two members of Plan’s Youth Advisory Panel. The speakers delivered their speeches
standing alongside the billboard, leaving the magnified seamstresses in clear view.
The speakers made repeated references to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl
who has become a symbol of self-transformation: the “southern” girl/heroine who
courageously spoke out and stood up for her right to education in the face of the
violent and oppressive Taliban regime. The speeches included familiar tropes of the
“girl-powering” of development and humanitarianism, reiterating the notion of girls’
empowerment, sisterhood, and the economic rhetoric of investment in girls,52 and
depicting the “problem” of girls’ exclusion from education, in highly individualized
and personalized terms. For example, TV presenter Gillian Joseph invited the
audience in Trafalgar Square to repeat after her (echoing a therapeutic self-help
meeting) the statement “I am a girl and I matter.” Aimed at emphasizing the
humanitarian ethos of common humanity (similar to Arman), and invoking the
imaginary of the global working girl,53 this individualized rhetoric simultaneously
promotes a blurring of the difference between Western and southern girls and
obfuscates the radical differences in their life experiences, conditions, and structures,
rather than allowing recognition of the differences among them. The “girl power”
rhetoric was reinforced by the various speakers’ frequent self-congratulatory style of
address to the audience. For example, the CEO of Plan began by encouraging “all of
you, girls and young women who walked this morning to celebrate the second IDG,
give yourself a great cheer!,”54 a call that drew cheers, applause, and exclamations
from the audience gathered around the billboard.
Thus, the opening of the IDG event was based on a series of techniques employed
in both makeover shows (based on Skeggs)55 and humanitarian communications:
evaluation of the other (the judgement shot), dislocation (symbolic transporting of
the girls from the developing world to London’s Trafalgar Square), reification
(stripping out of identifying particularities to render the girls “under-qualified”56 and
standing for a million others, and objectification (objects of spectators’ gaze). The
convergence of these techniques, supported by discourses of girl power and tropes of
humanitarian communication, evoked a sharp distinction between the flesh and
blood UK audience in Trafalgar Square and the performers—the paper girls in the
sweatshop. At the same time, the opening “judgement shot” of the girls on the board
and the ensuing speeches, which position the (predominantly female) audience as
“sisters” of the southern girls, were geared towards eroding this distinction. One of
the key techniques employed to blur the distinction between spectators and
performers/others was identification. A 13-year old girl member of Plan’s Youth
Advisory Board said in her speech that “If I were born in Bangladesh, I could have
been forced to marry or wouldn’t have been able to go to school.” Another young
member of Plan spoke of her happiness, and her desire to share it with her far-away
sisters in the developing world. This exposition facilitated the transition to the central
makeover activity on which the event hinged: erasing the board/erasing barriers—
from sweatshop to school.
The Trafalgar Square audience was invited to approach the billboard and to rub
out (Figure 3) the image, which then revealed a full-colour image of the same girls,
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Figure 3 Participants erasing the Plan UK billboard picture.
sitting in a classroom. Scratch-off cards with similar “before” and “after” images were
distributed to the crowd.
The activity of “rubbing out” the billboard picture resembles the makeover
montage sequence of girls in the 1980s’ teen films analysed by Wilkinson.57 In those
filmic scenes, the girl’s body is surrendered to the hands of external experts; experts
treat her with specific products that help transform her body. At the IDG event, the
girls displayed in the magnified image, are literally in the hands of Western girls and
experts, whose physical act of erasure transforms their docile black and white
sweatshop worker bodies into colourful, happy proud learners in a classroom.
The transformation scenario is profoundly structured by class relations. In
television makeover shows, “often upper middle-class women are brought in to
provide ‘expert advice’ […] repeating a long legacy of using ‘advice’ to civilise.”58
Similarly, the sweatshop workers, coded as lacking and in need of improvement, are
set against respectable and aspirational female experts, such as ITV presenter Becky
Mantin whose vitality, clinging red dress, and blonde hair contrast starkly with the
colourless depiction of the girls. The transformation of the pictured girls from
passive, sad sweatshop workers (before) to active, happy school students (after)
depends on the experts’ erasing their former selves.
However, unlike the makeover programmes analysed by Wood and Skeggs,59 in
which rules and advice are offered (often by experts) as holding the key to the
transformation of the failing (working-class) participants, in the IDG event the
labour investment needed to transform the lives of the southern girls is completely
masked. The rubbing out of the picture on the board to reveal the new image is more
akin to the makeover home and gardening DIY programmes analysed by Philips:60
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[T]he emptying of the room and the removal of traces of the subject’s own
possessions and tastes are speeded up as though this were a trivial part of the
procedure. The majority of the programme is devoted to the teams carrying out the
designer’s instructions towards the final goal of a transformed space, with the work
of transformation achieved in speeded up, fast edited sequences. The final
unveiling is structured as an all round confirmation of the success of the enterprise
and the wisdom of the expert.
The IDG event aspired to a smooth transition to the final moment of the
transformed image, confirming, in a self-congratulatory manner, the success achieved
by the audience and the experts, including Plan, the event’s organizer. The event’s
participants adhered to this unwritten behavioural script, applauding one another’s
successful scratching out of the first image, taking photos of each other, and selfies of
themselves contributing to the rubbing out. These acts constitute a public display of
emotion, which, as Skeggs61 (drawing on Foucault) observes, is key to expression of
the moral project of the self: taking photos constitutes an explicit act of
demonstrating one’s proper, ethical, good citizenship in a public space, performing
an ethical self for the camera, and for the audience of these photos on social media
and the crowd in Trafalgar Square.
Thus, the grand humanitarian project of erasing the global barriers to girls’
education is converted into and articulated through a “cool,” fun and self-centred
activity that demonstrates what Chouliaraki62 calls “post-humanitarian” sensibility. It
privileges a self-oriented form of solidarity, of short-term and low-intensity, fleeting
engagement with distant others, whose particular life contexts are marginalized,
foregrounding the pleasure of the (Western) spectators as effective in making a
difference to distant others’ lives.
This post-humanitarian event moves away from earlier forms and modalities of
humanitarian communication, e.g., by consciously avoiding the much-criticized
photojournalistic realism of images of distant others and using, instead, an
illustration. However, the IDG event similarly capitalizes on the established “Western
saviour” trope in humanitarian narratives, re-establishing the Western spectator as
the powerful agent whose magic (eraser) wand seemingly is able to transform the
lives of those far-away others in need. Incidentally, Admiral Lord Nelson, a great
British saviour, looks down on the scene from his column in Trafalgar Square!
Drawing on the makeover paradigm, the IDG event, like Arman, makes change
appear easy were the subjects given a chance and be willing to try. The performers
(the sweatshop girls) are presented as lacking or flawed in some way, and as
requiring reinvention and transformation. However, unlike the process of transformation in makeover programmes, which occurs through conformance to
discipline and rules of behaviour, the IDG post-humanitarian event hides the
laboriousness of the process and its implications for those imputed to be in need of
improvement. Rather, it presents the solution as easily achieved through the
audience’s fleeting, amusing, and labour-free performance of the self.
As in makeover narratives, the IDG event dramatically visualizes a problem: girls
around the world being denied access to education. The event was a loaded and
244
coded situation in which the Asian girls (beneficiaries) were dislocated from their
cultural resources and objectified and reified—strategies that highlighted their radical
difference from their Western “sisters” and established their indigence and need for
transformation. However, the IDG event constructed the transformation of developing world girls’ lives as exclusively reliant on Western girls’ and experts’ exercise of
makeover techniques. Unlike the (working-class) participants in makeover shows,
who are exhorted to salvage their failed selves by investing in the necessary skills and
psychological techniques, in the IDG event it was the Western spectators—many of
them London schoolgirls, who were required to perform the act of transformation.
This transformation of the distant others is superficial—achieved as effortlessly as
cleaning the board of a picture, or attacking a scratch card. Rather than transforming
the unjust conditions of many girls’ lives in the developing world, the IDG event
provided a platform for Western girls’ and other spectators’ self-performance as
cosmopolitan “sisters” and compassionate consumers. Like the makeover scenes in
teen films, what was celebrated was the Western teenage girl’s ability to construct and
perform her own subjectivity. While the IDG spectacle undeniably performed a
pedagogical role by stressing the fate of being a girl, it obscured the complex lived
realities of the one-dimensional, monochrome placard girls, and the immense
difficulty, let alone legitimacy, of imposing universalist Western values and
judgements on their “failed” lives and selves.
Somewhat ironically, the weather on the day of this highly orchestrated and
planned event was wet, and the supposedly erasable image, after being rained on,
resisted initial attempts to rub it out. Transforming the “before” image into its
desirable “after” proved a longer, more arduous and time-consuming process, and
the final result was far from a perfect clear image of schoolgirls in a classroom, a
symbolic reminder of the limits to the communication of humanitarianism within
the makeover paradigm. In the discussion section, we reflect on these limits and the
potential avenues opened by humanitarian makeover.
Conclusion: The Makeover of Humanitarianism?
In line with other studies of current “post-humanitarian” communications, our
analysis shows how employing the makeover paradigm to communicate humanitarian causes transforms a communication whose core concern is social change—
tackling and redressing the misfortune and unjust and unequal conditions of the
other, becomes an entertaining experience emphasizing fun and easy transformation
of the individual. Why are NGOs, whose commitment is to expose and interrupt
systemic inequality and help redress global injustice, turning to this genre, which is
grounded on and promotes the seeming opposite: neoliberal values and in particular
a focus on the self and its transformation, self-responsiblization, self-empowerment,
and self-governance?
As mentioned earlier, humanitarian NGOs are facing growing distrust of their
efficacy and legitimacy, and criticism of their communications as patronizing,
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orientalizing, and dehumanizing. The makeover paradigm offers them new ways to
convey their messages. Echoing and building on the demotic turn of communication,
the makeover helps NGOs to attract attention, engage audiences, and endow both
message and messenger with a sense of ordinariness, ease, simplicity, unpretentiousness, popularity, accessibility, authenticity and, especially, credibility, and
trustworthiness.
The makeover’s self-transformation narrative is exploited to communicate the
bigger, complex, and often hard-to-explain story of transformation that propels the
humanitarian project: in Arman, the adventure surrounding Arman’s personal quest
to find his sponsored child and transform her life (through monetary sponsorship), is
tied in with and used to tell the bigger story of the need to transform the lives of the
Baka people by fighting the destructive global logging industry. In the IDG event, the
humanitarian project of removing the barriers to education for girls in the developing
world is articulated through a cool, fun, and self-centred activity of erasing an image,
making this highly complex project of social and political transformation appear easy
and smooth, if only benefactor and beneficiary are given the chance and are willing
to try. In their attempts to communicate a “bigger-than-self”63 problem, both cases
build on the makeover paradigm, presenting transformation as easy and fun, and
proposing the self as the centre and agent of the transformation.
As the analyses of the two case studies demonstrate, as part of the broader trend
towards “ethical entertainment,” the marriage of makeover and humanitarian
communication opens up opportunities for new pedagogical ways to engage existing
and new audiences with humanitarian causes. Humanitarian communication is a
profound site where value is produced; it is a discursive space loaded with value and
moral distinctions between us and them, here and there, deserving and undeserving,
and good and bad. The makeover paradigm provides humanitarian organizations
with a productive model to express and legitimize these values and communicate
solutions, ways to resolve the humanitarian problem. It proposes a narrative of
improvement of one’s own and distant others’ lives, while blurring the boundary
between us and them and promoting a sense of shared experience, kinship, and
“sisterhood.”
Crucially, the makeover paradigm provides NGOs with a communicative structure
that purports to address, and offer a corrective to, criticisms of humanitarian
communication’s past failures. It seems to replace patronizing, infantilizing,
orientalizing, and normative discourses and modes of address with an eye-level,
unpretentious, light-touch and egalitarian communicative approach. The normative
educational tone of humanitarian campaigns is substituted by an “authentic,” casual
and accessible entertainment style. Like humanitarian NGOs’ use of “intimacy at a
distance” in their communications,64 the makeover paradigm, too, serves as a
discourse and a technique to achieve credibility, authenticity, and ethical authority, at
a time when NGOs and humanitarian aid are being subjected to considerable
scrutiny, criticism, and public distrust. Indeed, both cases analysed were reported by
Plan to have attracted attention and generated donations (though it would be
246
valuable and interesting to explore whether and how audiences negotiated the
communications’ meanings).
However, the seemingly smooth and unproblematic appropriation of the makeover
by NGOs to deliver humanitarian messages begs critical introspection. Critical
literature stresses how the makeover functions as contemporary citizenship training;
makeover programmes act as laboratories of conduct that articulate and reinforce the
values and ideals of neoliberal citizenship. What then are the implications of
communicating the cause of redressing global structures of inequality and injustice
through a genre so intimately linked to neoliberal logic? More specifically, (how) can
neoliberalism and its detrimental role in the creation, sustenance, and reproduction
of global injustice and suffering be disrupted by and through the makeover—a
narrative that is predicated on, publicizes, and normalizes neoliberal democracy’s
values?
Three central tensions arise from our analysis in response to these questions. The
first concerns the problem of voice, as elaborated by Couldry in his critique of the
neoliberal transformation of media culture.65 The humanitarian makeover arguably
could exemplify a domain that facilitates and amplifies the marginalized other’s
voice. Humanitarianism is focused on the plight of distant others, an important part
of its endeavour—especially in the “alchemical” branch—being the recovery of their
suppressed and silenced voice. Evidently, so much of humanitarian organisations’
discourse is about “giving the subject a voice.” Makeover shows are a central domain
of popular voice; subordinate subjects are given expertise and authoritative agency,
thus, the programmes allow for expression outside the typical normative bourgeois
subject positions.66 Yet, as Couldry observes, where media (such as the humanitarian
makeover) might be expected to increase voice, on closer inspection all too often they
fail to do so. Arman centres on the host’s exciting and adventurous journey, telling
the story predominantly from his, not Assanga’s or her people’s, point of view. It is
Arman’s understanding of the situation, and his evaluation of the flawed lives and
need for transformation of Assanga and her people that are presented as guarantors
of the truth, validating the Baka people’s need, and the significance of the aid
provided by Plan. As the programme’s host, Arman is the sole mediator and
interpreter of events. Subscribing to the morality of post-humanitarian solidarity,67
Arman acts as the expert whose proffered views and advice hold the key to the
transformation of both the Baka people and the Western viewers. Similarly, the IDG
event relied exclusively on UK girls’ and experts’ exercise of makeover techniques to
communicate the need and means to transform the lives of girls in the developing
world denied access to education. The voices of these girls were entirely missing, and
their paper images destined to be erased by their UK “sisters.” While the grand
narrative underpinning the IDG event was one of challenging the unjust conditions
of girls’ lives in the developing world—including silencing of their voices by
oppressive patriarchal regimes—the event highlighted the experience of UK girls
performing ethical citizenship, and their exclusive voices, performed to the Trafalgar
Square crowd (and their peers on social media).
247
A second tension derives from the makeover’s alignment with and legitimation of
a culture of judgement, self-disciplining, and surveillance. Humanitarian communication (led by international NGOs based in the West) has been critiqued extensively for
reproducing a patronizing, orientalizing, and fundamentally asymmetric gaze of the
West over the “other”in the Global South. The analysis showed that the makeover
enables a move away from this much-criticized symbolic asymmetry, through a shift
in the tone and address of the humanitarian message, from educational and explicitly
normative, to casual, ordinary, unassuming, and unpretentious. However, as Weber
notes, “television makeover … positions spectacular to-be-looked-at-ness as normal”
where “makeover subjects are not made to engage in public sphere discourses but to
circulate as public sphere spectacles.”68 Indeed, in Arman, the Baka people and
Assanga and her family in particular, are subjected to the camera’s (and thus
viewers’) ongoing surveillance, mediated and normalized through Arman’s gaze. The
absence of their own voice or perspective is never questioned. The “success” of the
transformation is based on a series of judgements that the programme invites viewers
to make about their Before lives as inadequate as opposed to their After improved
lives. In the IDG event, the paper muted girls constitute a spectacle to be consumed
and worked upon by their Western sisters, through the act of erasing and speaking
on their behalf. Thus, the humanitarian makeover ultimately normalizes rather than
disrupts the asymmetric gaze on the Other. Furthermore, the makeover is based on
putting subjects through various exercises including supposedly objective critique
from strangers.69 In the humanitarian makeover, it is always Western critique,
coordinated and voiced through NGOs and celebrities, that mediates the relations
between spectators and far-away others. This critique is predicated on the values of
neoliberal democracy, which proposes “to make lives happier and participants more
powerful, and thus freely able to compete in a global marketplace,”70 deeming
anything that does not conform with such values inappropriate and in need of
transformation.
Finally, a third tension in the marriage between the makeover paradigm and
humanitarian communication relates to difference and inequality. The makeover’s
neoliberal ideology evinces a deep cultural desire for a coherent, stable, well-regulated
and celebrated self that flattens difference to underline very specific normative
identity roles.71 The makeover works to displace questions of inequality and
difference into simple and unambiguous categories; binary oppositions that can be
easily demonstrated in the transportation of participants from their Before to After
bodies and selves. Humanitarianism, by contrast, is predicated on acknowledgement
and respect of difference, and on a deep commitment to addressing inequality.
However, as our analysis shows, casting this commitment into the makeover
paradigm undercuts this very recognition: both Arman and the IDG event offer a
simplified, personal, self-centred narrative of seemingly effortless transformation,
which foregrounds the pleasures of Western spectators and their exercise of ethical
citizenship, but fails to offer a programme that engages with structures of inequality.
Both Arman and the IDG event offer a “fix” that draws on individualized neoliberal
forms of action, geared primarily towards monetary donation. Thus, even were
248
spectators informed about some of the structures underpinning subjects’ suffering (in
Arman, the environmental catastrophe brought about by the multinational logging
industry, in the IDG event, patriarchal oppressive, and violent regimes) the solutions
they are presented with are individualistic and ad hoc rather than structural and
systemic.
Couldry argues that the new range of reality media, for all its counterhegemonic
promise, provides a space for amplifying, normalizing, and reinforcing explicit
neoliberal values.72 NGO communications like those analysed in this paper, in their
employment of the makeover paradigm, corroborate this critique: they seem little
different from commercial makeover programmes and their emphasis on neoliberal
values, in particular, individualistic work on the self geared towards a smooth and
easy transformation to a better self, be it the Western benefactor’s, the beneficiary’s,
or both. Therefore, the humanitarian makeover may signal a worrying makeover of
the identities of humanitarian NGOs: from agents of emancipatory social transformation concerned with redressing injustice—which includes interrupting the
failures of neoliberal democracy—and are firmly distinguished from profitable
organizations and corporate culture, to organizations promoting and reinforcing
new avenues for the pursuit of self-improvement and projects of the self within
neoliberal societies.
Situating the analysis of the humanitarian makeover within broader critiques of
contemporary media culture highlights the various ways in which this recent media/
NGO communicative outlet may be undermining the critical impetus of humanitarianism. At the same time, as Attwood and Deller73 usefully observe, narratives of
transformation and makeover can also be “starting points for experimentation and
originality, for political and spiritual activity.” Our study seeks also to acknowledge
this possible, though very hard to realize, potential of the humanitarian makeover in
the current context of global inequality where care for the other ought to be part of,
but seems all too far from, global, national, and individual prime agendas.
Notes
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
Feona Attwood and Ruth Deller, “Introduction: Transforming the Makeover,” International
Journal of Cultural Studies. Online first 16 January 2014: 1–5.
Tania Lewis, “‘There Grows the Neighbourhood’: Green Citizenship, Creativity and Life
Politics on Eco-TV,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 15, issue 3 (2012): 315–26;
Ruth Deller, “Religion as Makeover: Reality, Lifestyle and Spiritual Transformation,”
International Journal of Cultural Studies. Online first 16 January 2014: 1–13.
Rosalind Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility,” European Journal of
Cultural Studies 10, issue 2 (2007): 147–66.
www.oxfam.org/en/grow/countries/bahati-muriga-jacob-female-food-hero-2014 (accessed April 9,
2015).
www.actionaid.org.uk/bollocks-to-poverty (accessed April 9, 2015).
Plan’s work belongs to what Barnett calls the “alchemical” branch of humanitarianism. See
Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (New York: Cornell
University Press, 2011).
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]
[23]
249
Lilie Chouliaraki, The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-Humanitarianism
(Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013); Shani Orgad, “Visualizers of Solidarity: Organizational
Politics in Humanitarian and International Development NGOs,” Visual Communication 12,
issue 3 (2013): 295–314; Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte, Brand Aid: Shopping Well to
Save the World (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011); Anne Vestergaard,
“Branding the Humanitarian: The case of Amnesty International,” Journal of Language and
Politics 7, issue 3 (2008): 200–216.
Helen Wood and Beverly Skeggs, “Notes on Ethical Scenarios of Self on British Reality TV,”
Feminist Media Studies 4, issue 2 (2004): 205–8.
Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture.”
Attwood and Deller, “Introduction.”
Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Institutionalized Individualism and its Social
and Political Consequences (London, UK: Sage, 2002).
Brenda Weber, Makeover TV: Selfhood, Citizenship and Celebrity (Durham, NC: Duke
Beverly Skeggs and Helen Wood, “The Labour of Transformation and Circuits of Value
‘around’ Reality Television,” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 22, issue 4
(2008): 559–72.
Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture”; Helen Wood and Beverly Skeggs, “Spectacular Morality:
Reality Television, Individualisation and the Re-making of the Working Class,” in The Media
and Social Theory, eds. David Hesmondhalgh and Jason Toynbee (London, UK: Routledge,
2008), 177–93.
Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture,” 156.
Beverly Skeggs, “The Value of Relationships: Affective Scenes and Emotional Performances,”
Feminist Legal Studies, issue 18 (2010): 29–51.
Weber, Makeover TV.
Mike Featherstone, “Body, Image and Affect in Consumer Culture,” Body & Society 16, issue
1 (2010): 193–221; Alison Hearn, “Brand me ‘activist,’” in Commodity Activism: Cultural
Resistance in Neoliberal Times, eds. Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser (New York:
New York University Press, 2012), 23–38; Meredith Jones, “Media-Bodies and Screen-Births:
Cosmetic Surgery Reality Television,” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 22,
issue 4 (2008): 515–24; Tania Lewis, “‘He Needs to Face His Fears with These Five Queers!’
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Makeover TV, and the Lifestyle Expert,” Television & New
Media 8, issue 4 (2007): 285–311; Skeggs and Wood, “The Labour of Transformation.”
Deller, “Religion as Makeover”; Lewis, “There Grows the Neighbourhood.”
Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette, Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (New York:
New York University Press, 2009); Laurie Ouellette, “Citizen Brand: ABC and the Do Good
Turn in US Television,” in Commodity Activism, eds. Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah BanetWeiser (New York: New York University Press), 57–75; Kate Douglas and Pamela Graham,
“Go Back To Where You Came From: Stunt Documentary, Conversion Narrative, and the
Limits of Testimony on Australian Television,” Biography 36, issue 1 (2013): 124–47;
Kaarina Nikunen, “Real Suffering: Affective Economy in the Humanitarian Reality
Television Show,” European Journal of Cultural Studies (2015, forthcoming); Emma Price,
“Empathy or Entitlement? Humanizing and Othering Discourses in Go Back To Where You
Came From,” Journal of Popular Television 2, issue 1 (2014): 97–110.
Skeggs and Wood, “The Labour of Transformation.”
Gay Hawkins, “The Ethics of Television,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 4, issue 4
(2001): 432–26; Deller, “Religion as Makeover.”
Tania Lewis, Smart Living: Lifestyle Media and Popular Expertise (Oxford, UK: Peter Lang;
2008), Lewis, “There Grows the Neighbourhood.”
250
[24] John Caldwell, “Convergence Television: Aggregating Form and Repurposing Content in
Culture of Conglomeration” in Television after TV, eds. Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 41–74; Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture:
Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006); Sonia
Livingstone, “The Challenge of Changing Audiences: Or, What is the Audience Researcher
to Do in the Age of the Internet?,” European Journal of Communication 19, issue 1 (2004):
75–86.
[25] Lewis, “There Grows the Neighbourhood”; Olivier Driessens, Stijn Joye and Daniel
Biltereyst, “The X-Factor of Charity: A Critical Analysis of Celebrities’ Involvement in the
2010 Flemish and Dutch Haiti Relief Shows,” Media, Culture & Society 34, issue 6 (2012):
709–25.
[26] These transformations include intensified competition among aid organizations, public
criticism of and disillusion with humanitarian aid, growing questioning of NGOs’ efficacy,
legitimacy and use of donated money, declining resources and consequent increased
dependence on the corporate sector and on “playing the media’s game” for their income,,
the rapidly changing global and commercialized media environment in which humanitarian
messages are produced, disseminated and received, and the growing commodification and
commercialization of humanitarian communication. See: Chouliaraki, The Ironic Spectator;
Simon Cottle and David Nolan, “Global Humanitarianism and the Changing Aid Field:
‘Everyone was dying for footage’’,’ Journalism Studies 8, issue 6 (2007): 862–78; Orgad,
“Visualizers of Solidarity”; Shani Orgad and Bruna Seu, “‘Intimacy at a Distance’ in
Humanitarian Communication,” Media, Culture and Society 36, issue 7 (2014): 916–34.
[27] Chouliaraki, The Ironic Spectator.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Chouliaraki, The Ironic Spectator; Andrew F. Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy (Boulder,
Colorado: Paradigm, 2008); Driessens et al., “The X-Factor”; Hearn, “Brand Me ‘Activist’”;
Jo Littler, ‘’‘I Feel Your Pain’: Cosmopolitan Charity and the Public Fashioning of the
Celebrity Soul,” Social Semiotics 18, issue 2 (2008): 237–51; Neil Narine, “Global Trauma and
the Cinematic Network Society,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 27, issue 3
(2010): 209–34; Kate Nash, “Global Citizenship as Show Business: The Cultural Politics of
Make Poverty History,” Media, Culture & Society 30, issue 2 (2008): 167–81; Richey and
Ponte, Brand Aid.
[30] Frank Johansson (ed.) Hyvän tekeminen ja valta [Doing Good and Power] (Helsinki:
Gaudeamus, 2014); Marianna Laiho, Sankarina matkalla [Travelling Hero] (Kumppani
7–8/2014), 44–45.
[31] Ulla Vuorela, “Colonial Complicity: the ‘Postcolonial’ in a Nordic Context,” in Complying
with Colonialism: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Nordic Region, eds. Suvi Keskinen, Salla
Tuori, Sari Irni, and Diana Mulinari (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), 21.
[32] Orgad, “Visualizers of Solidarity.”
[33] Suvi Keskinen et al. Complying with Colonialism. See also Vuorela, “Colonial Complicity.”
[34] Luc Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1999); Lilie Chouliaraki, “Discourse and Mediation,” in Rethinking
Communication: Keywords in Communication Research, ed. Stuart Allan (Cresskill, NJ:
Hampton Press, 2010): 95–108.
[35] Weber, Makeover TV.
[36] Kaplana Wilson, “‘Race,’ Gender and Neoliberalism: Changing Visual Representations in
Development,” Third World Quarterly 32, issue 2 (2011): 315–31.
[37] Weber, Makeover TV, 30.
[38] Chouliaraki, The Ironic Spectator; Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy; Littler,“I Feel Your Pain.”
251
[40] Andrew Darnton with Martin Kirk, “Finding Frames: New Ways to Engage the UK Public in
Global Poverty,” 2011. from http://findingframes.org/report.htm (accessed April 9, 2015).
[41] Laura Grindstaff, The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of Television Talk Shows
(Chicago. IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
[42] Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (Berkeley, CA:
California University Press, 2012).
[46] Laurie Ouellette and James Hay, Better Living Through Reality TV: Television and Postwelfare Citizenship (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2008).
[47] Skeggs and Wood, “The Labour of Transformation.”
[49] Boltanski, Distant Suffering, 12.
[50] Skeggs, “The Value of Relationships.”
[51] Skeggs, “The Value of Relationships,” 76.
[52] Ofra Koffman and Rosalind Gill, “‘The Revolution Will be Led by a 12 Year Old Girl’: Girl
Power and Global Biopolitics,” Feminist Review 105, issue 1 (2013): 83–102; Wilson, “‘Race,’
Gender and Neoliberalism.”
[53] Angela McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change (London/
California: Sage, 2009).
[54] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po3X0eUlX1M (accessed April 9, 2015).
[56] Boltanski, Distant Suffering, 12.
[57] Maryn Wilkinson, “The Makeover and the Malleable Body in 1980s American Teen Film,
International Journal of Cultural Studies. Published online 16 January 2014: 1–7.
[58] Skeggs, “The Value of Relationships,” 69.
[59] Wood and Skeggs, “Notes on Ethical Scenarios.”
[60] Deborah Philips, “Transformation Scenes: The Television Interior Makeover,” International
Journal of Cultural Studies 8, issue 2 (2005): 213–29.
[63] Darnton with Kirk, “Finding Frames.”
[64] Orgad and Seu, “‘Intimacy at a Distance.’”
[65] Nick Couldry, Why Voice Matters? Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism (London, UK:
Sage, 2010).
[66] Weber, Makeover TV.
[68] Weber, Makeover TV, 255, 261.
[71] Weber, Makeover TV, 257–8.
[72] Couldry, Why Voice Matters.
[73] Deller, “Religion as Makeover,” 4.
“News with an Accent”: Hispanic Television and the
Re-negotiation of US Latino Speech
Christopher A. Chávez
To cite this article: Christopher A. Chávez (2015) “News with an Accent”: Hispanic Television
and the Re-negotiation of US Latino Speech, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 12:3,
252-270, DOI: 10.1080/14791420.2015.1037778
Published online: 15 May 2015.
Article views: 84
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“News with an Accent”: Hispanic
Television and the Re-negotiation of US
Latino Speech
Christopher A. Chávez
Using Bourdieu’s concept of “linguistic capital” as an analytical concept, I examine the
value of language as both a means of comprehension and a product that has currency
in the television marketplace. Focusing on Fusion, an upstart cable network designed to
engage Latinos civically and in English, I examine the ways in which television
networks employ language as a device through which to create audiences. I argue that
Fusion and other networks are attempting to re-constitute the Latino audience in ways
that more closely align with the dominant culture, leading to forms of erasure that
challenge the legitimacy of Spanish altogether. I further argue that in the process of
pursuing the acculturated Latino, the network pivots away from those most isolated
from civic discourses.
Keywords: Latina/o; Television; Linguistic Capital; Spanish; Language Ideology
Introduction
On October 27, 2013, George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s Sunday news program
This Week, moderated several discussions around civic issues of the day. During the
episode, experts and politicians provided analysis on a range of topics including
problems associated with the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, accusations of
spying levied against the National Security Agency, and the viability of prospective
candidates for the 2016 presidential election. During the episode, which included
interviews with former Vice President, Dick Cheney, and former DNC chair, Howard
Dean, Stephanopoulos also conducted a short interview with Univision anchor Jorge
Ramos, who was there to announce the launch of Fusion, an upstart cable network
Christopher A. Chávez is at School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon. Correspondence
to: Christopher A. Chávez, 330 Allen Hall, 1275 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA. Email:
cchavez4@uoregon.edu.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2015.1037778
News with an Accent
253
scheduled to launch the following day. When asked by Stephanopoulos to describe
Fusion, a joint venture between ABC News and Univision Communications, Ramos
explicitly articulated the network’s mission:1
We’re trying to reach a very young audience. For them that traditional definition of
news is no longer valid. So for them, news could be from a tweet to a video to a
revolution to a war … To do that, we also have to reach Latinos. Today there are
55 million Latinos. In 30 years from now there are going to be 150 million Latinos.
So the future is about exactly that, how to reach that part of the audience. And
that’s what we want to do with Fusion.
In recent years, there has been a proliferation of upstart cable networks targeting US
Latinos, but Fusion is remarkable because it promises to engage Latinos civically and
in English. In the media marketplace, Latino television has generally been
characterized by Spanish-language telenovelas, fútbol, and variety shows, but Fusion
promises to provide something more substantial for young, Latino viewers by
addressing topics such as immigration, finance, health and wellness; issues that are
said to be of particular importance to Latinos. In a joint press release written both in
Spanish and in English, president of ABC News, Ben Sherwood, described the vision
for the new network as follows: “Fusion will be the indispensable meeting place for
English-speaking Latinos … Our goal is for this young, vibrant and media hungry
audience to come to Fusion and be informed, entertained and empowered.”2
By targeting “English-speaking Latinos,” Fusion is pursuing an ideal audience that
has become strategically important for advertisers in recent years. Designated by
television industry practitioners as the “new Latino,”3 this iteration of the Latino
audience has been re-defined according to its youth, its proficiency in English, its biculturality and its prolific use of digital media. While this version of the Latino
audience may be appealing to prospective marketers, it also deviates from strategies
typically employed by Univision and other Spanish-language networks, which have
historically defined the audience as linguistically and culturally foreign.
The re-articulation of the Latino audience as English-speaking may be seen as an
attempt by powerful English-language television networks to claim an audience that
has been previously lost to their Spanish-language counterparts. Using Bourdieu’s
theory of practice as an analytical framework, I examine the degree to which Fusion
can serve its mission of delivering civic-minded programming within the constraints
of marketplace dynamics. As more upstart cable networks enter the marketplace,
competing networks are compelled to distinguish themselves from one another by
marking their difference with those already in the field. On the other hand, the
television industry is conservative in that networks that hold dominant positions
within the field will ultimately seek to maintain the status quo. Consequently, Fusion
may also represent ways in which dominant players are employing new strategies for
exploiting the economic potential of the Hispanic market.
While economic and cultural capital are said to be of particular importance within
fields of cultural production, I am interested in what Bourdieu terms “linguistic
capital” or the capacity to produce expression á propos for a particular market.4
Here, I argue that the emergence of English-language Latino networks reflects a shift
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C. A. Chávez
in how the Latino audience has been imagined by industry professionals. In doing so,
I invoke Ang’s argument that the audience is not an ontological given, but rather a
rhetorical construction that is created in the interest of commercial media
organizations.5 Because the definition of audience sets the preconditions for
television programming, I argue that these shifts in practice fundamentally shape
the network’s capacity to fulfill the crucial function of engaging Latinos in civic
discourses.
Beyond the Spanish–English Binary
For much of the past fifty years, the television landscape has been framed along a
false binary: a mainstream audience that consumes English-language media, and a
Hispanic audience that consumes Spanish-language media. The conflation of
Hispanic television with Spanish-language television began very early on with the
establishment of the Spanish International Network (SIN), which would later evolve
into Univision. Established in 1961, SIN began with the primary mission of
importing Spanish-language programming from Mexico.
As one of the most prolific producers of Latino cultural production, Univision has
consistently characterized US Latinos as a Spanish-speaking audience, a strategy that
has enabled them to assert a unique expertise within a highly competitive
marketplace. Consequently, the Spanish language has served Univision and other
Spanish-language networks well by enabling them to secure a unique point of
difference within the television marketplace. By providing unique programming for
an audience that was believed to be linguistically remote, Hispanic television
networks could make the case that they alone offered a unique vehicle for accessing
Latino buying power.
Over time Univision has been diligent about policing these linguistic boundaries, a
strategy not necessarily motivated by an inherent desire for linguistic plurality but
rather to protect its point of difference, what Del Valle refers to as a “linguistic
oilfield.”6 According to Del Valle, globalizing forces have undermined the traditional
relationship between location, identity, and forms of speech. In the new paradigm, the
relationship between a language and collective identity has been rearranged, leading to
different values placed on different types of linguistic competence. Therefore, one’s of
speaking can be considered a commodity with value in the open marketplace.
The characterization of the audience as “Spanish-speaking,” however, is problematic not only because it is at odds with the actual linguistic practices of US Latinos
but also because it presumes a pure linguistic community, an ideal that would
exclude most if not all real communities in the world. All communities show some
degree of linguistic, sociological, and cultural difference, and demonstrate some
linguistic mixing whether in the form of two very different linguistic varieties or in
the form of dialectical or stylistic differentiation.7 Thus, bilingualism is a fact of
everyday life for most Latinos. According to the Pew Research Center, 38 percent of
News with an Accent
255
US Latinos identify as Spanish dominant, while another 24 percent identify as
English dominant. Roughly 38 percent consider themselves to be bilingual.8
Because the Hispanic television marketplace is an oligopoly, in which a limited
number of players dominate, a singular construction of the Latino audience has been
able to persist. However, innovations in communication technologies hold the
promise of a more diverse Hispanic television landscape. Specifically, the “Open
Skies” concept suggested that cable television would make the world a better place by
empowering any company with the financial and technical capacity to launch its own
communications satellites.9 The belief was that this would lead to a proliferation of
independent channels available at much lower cost and with greater variety than was
previously available. For ethnic minorities who have traditionally been excluded in
mainstream programming, cable was promoted as a remedy for a primarily white
television world.10
Furthermore, cable television allowed for the possibility of upstart networks that
could compete with more established players in defining the Hispanic media
landscape. In 2004, the first full-time cable channel dedicated to reaching US Latinos
in English was established. Sí TV was founded by comedian turned television
executive, Jeff Valdez, and Bruce Barshop, founder of Barshop Ventures. In past
interviews, Valdez, an acculturated US born Latino, framed the establishment of Sí
TV as a personal mission. As he tells his story, Valdez’s initial idea was motivated by
his early experiences seeking work as a comedian. As a Latino, Valdez was frequently
told that the natural destination for him was at Univision, a network to which he
recounts as having little affinity. Describing the dominance of Spanish-language
networks as “Spanish imposition,” Valdez made the argument that there is a sizeable
and growing Latino population that is not currently being served by either Spanishlanguage or English-language media. This absence in the marketplace can lead to
opportunities for producers who can deliver acculturated Latinos, what Valdez
described as “the golden goose.”11
At the time of its launch Sí TV was heralded as a transitional moment in which
Latinos would break into the mainstream, but the network never grew substantially
enough to fulfill its promise of serving as a true alternative within the marketplace. In
2006, Jeff Valdez stepped down as head of programming, and in 2011, the network
went through a significant re-branding effort. In 2013, singer, actress and
entrepreneur, Jennifer Lopez, was appointed Chief Creative Officer at NuvoTV, but
her role at the network was not enough to stabilize the network. In his own analysis
of the network, Puente12 argued that the future of NuvoTV was doubtful given the
number of dominant players entering this space, a concern that proved to be valid. In
early 2015, it was announced that NuvoTV would be phased out as it merged with
Fuse, a music-oriented network owned by Nuvo’s parent company, Sí TV Media.
Sí TV’s inability to generate a significant following may be attributed to intense
competition from more established players that have been emboldened by deregulatory policies that began in the 1990s. For example, the Telecommunications Act of
1996 has impeded minority ownership by lifting restrictions to competition between
the telephone, cable, satellite, broadcast and utility companies, making way for the
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C. A. Chávez
rise of large multimedia corporations that account for yet are not necessarily driven
by minority interests. Like other established networks, Univision and NBC Universalowned Telemundo have been able to expand their reach by acquiring more
properties. For example, the 2003 merger between Univision and the Hispanic
Broadcasting Corporation (HBC) resulted in the combination of the largest Spanish,
Spanish-language television and radio industries. The merger essentially consolidated
the power of Spanish-language media, despite protests from both legislators and
competing entities.13
As Latinos have become an economic force, dominant media organizations have
entered the Hispanic television marketplace, including Disney, Newscorp, and NBC
Universal, and as more competitors enter the marketplace there has been a softening
of the strict Spanish/English binary that has long dominated the marketplace.14
Bilingual networks such as Viacom’s MTV Tr3s and NBC Universal’s mun2 have
been competing for over a decade, but a more recent trend has been targeting US
Latinos through English-language programming.
In 2013, the El Rey Network launched, largely with resources provided by Comcast
as part of the terms of their acquisition of NBCU. Established by the director Robert
Rodriguez in partnership with John Fogelman and Cristina Patwa of Factory Made
Ventures, Rodriguez has created a network for second and third generation Latinos
who may be bilingual but speak English as their primary language. With
programming that features a significant amount of action and science fiction fare,
El Rey is designed to appeal to young men and what Rodriguez has called “kick ass
females.”15 Currently, the network includes a mix of reality shows, scripted series,
sports, and animated programming. Under the rubric of “iconic TV”, the network
also offers vintage programs including Miami Vice, Starsky and Hutch, Dark Angel,
and the X-Files. Furthermore, the network has entered into partnership with Hong
Kong’s Celestial Pictures, which will include a number of vintage martial arts films.
That same year, Fusion launched as a partnership between Disney-owned ABC
News and Univision Communications. According to network executives, Fusion was
created to meet a need in the marketplace by engaging Latinos and Millennials in
civic discourses. On one hand, scholars see the potential for these new networks to
provide a more inclusive and accurate reflection of the actual linguistic practices of
US Latinos. An alternative point of view, however, argues that the suppression of
Spanish simply reflects a move toward homogenization and merely indicates that
dominant players are employing new strategies for exploiting the economic potential
of the Latino market.16
To examine how industry practices shape the network’s social mission, I draw
heavily on Bourdieu’s theory of practice. In his analysis of television industry
practices, Pierre Bourdieu describes the industry as both conservative and
transformative in nature. 17 The industry can be conservative in that agents that
hold dominant positions within the field will ultimately seek to maintain the status
quo. However, fields are also dynamic, marked by a constant influx of new agents
who struggle to add some small point of difference to an otherwise homogenous
landscape. Thus, they have the potential to act as forces of transformation in that
News with an Accent
257
they can only establish themselves by marking their difference with those already in
the field.18 While challenges to the status quo are met with resistance from those who
are invested in the current system, Bourdieu argues that these newcomers, who
possess unique profits of distinction, may benefit from shocks and changes from
neighboring fields including new political orders, changes in media systems, and
demographic shifts.
Under ideal circumstances, these newcomers have control over the instruments of
production as well as the freedom to address a range of topics. However, all networks
confront various forms of censorship. Explicitly, networks face economic censorship
whether by the owners or by the advertisers who subsidize them.19 Implicitly,
however, censorship may occur when television practitioners succumb to the logic of
the field itself. Ultimately, owners are beholden to the professional practices that
govern television production. Furthermore, Schultz argues that agents acquire a
“professional habitus,” or the mastering of a specific professional game in a specific
professional field .20 In other words, in the process of becoming inculcated into the
field of television production, television practitioners acquire the tacit and
naturalized acceptance of ideals and practices that govern the field.
From this perspective, I am interested in ways in which industry logic dictates the
degree to which Fusion can act as a transformative agent within the field of television
production. In doing so, I employ a case-study approach that is conducive for
investigating a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context and when the
boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident.21 In this paper,
I focus on three specific industry practices. First, I examine how Fusion defines its
ideal target audience. Second, I discuss the kinds of Latino practitioners who have
been recruited to create programming for this audience. Here, I focus on the shifting
nature of linguistic capital and the diminishing value of Spanish in Hispanic
television production. Finally, I examine how Fusion’s organizational decisions
ultimately set the preconditions for the specific nature of its content. As part of this
discussion, I discuss the promise and failure of the network to engage Latinos in civic
discourses.
Fusion and the Ideal Latino Viewer
Like other commercial television networks in the United States, Hispanic networks
are, first and foremost, commercial enterprises that must deliver audiences that
prospective advertisers will find appealing. However, as Ang reminds us, the
“audience” does not necessarily reflect social relations as they exist in the real
world.22 Instead, media practitioners are actively involved in shaping the contours of
particular communities in order to present a credible, desirable market.
Today, television executives are facing a crisis of the television-viewing audience
that is becoming older and whiter relative to the rest of the population. Currently,
half of broadcast television audiences are fifty-four and older, a phenomenon that is
associated with an overall aging of the populace. However, the television industry has
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C. A. Chávez
been disproportionately impacted. While the median age of Americans has increased
three years, from thirty-four years old to thirty-seven years old in the past twenty
years, the median age of broadcast TV viewers has increased by thirteen years from
forty-one to fifty years old.23
Exacerbating the issue of age is that younger television viewers are consuming
media differently. A 2013 study conducted on behalf of the New York Times found
that 34 percent of Millennials watch no broadcast television.24 This in turn has
corresponded with less television news consumption amongst younger audiences. In
2014, the Pew Research Center found that in 1985, an average of 48 million
Americans watched one of the network newscasts each evening, but by 2013, that
number had fallen to 24.5 million.25
With a network tagline of “Pop culture. Satire. News.,” Fusion has positioned itself
as a cable news channel designed specifically for Millennials aged eighteen to thirtyfour. To accommodate the media consumption habits of its younger audience,
Fusion includes programming content produced in short segments that can be easily
shared and downloaded. For example, Fusion’s website features “mini docs”, short
documentaries approximately five minutes in length. Furthermore, Fusion is
designing content in a way that members can accommodate a second or third
screen experience in which audience members can access content via the television,
their smart phones, or tablets.
But Fusion is also tapping into a second industry insight, which is that Millennials
are ethnically diverse. Insight into Fusion’s intended audience can be glimpsed from
the network’s positioning strategy, which states:
Fusion is a news, pop culture and satire TV and digital network. Everyday it
engages and champions a young, diverse, and inclusive America with a unique mix
of smart and irreverent original reporting, lifestyle, and comedic content.
By positioning itself as a network for a “young, diverse and inclusive America,”
Fusion is hoping to capitalize on current demographic changes. Largely as a result of
globalizing forces, there has been a greater influx of immigrants from non-European
countries. At the same time, the rate of growth for non-Latino whites has decreased,
a trend is expected to continue in future years. Demographic projections indicate that
by the year 2023, groups traditionally categorized as minorities will account for a
majority of the country’s population.
Given these demographic changes, US Latinos figure prominently in how
television network executives imagine their audience of the future. Today, US
Latinos account for more than 16 percent of the population and by 2050 this number
is expected to grow to 30 percent.26 However, the relative youth of the audience
makes US Latinos a particularly appealing television audience to television networks.
Demographic data indicate that Latinos skew younger compared with the general
population; the median age for Latinos is twenty-seven compared with thirty-seven
for non-Latinos.27 As a function of their relative youth, Latinos are said to be
proficient in the use of emerging technologies. Nielsen’s research on the media
practices of US Latinos indicates young Latinos are comfortable with consuming
News with an Accent
259
television content in a variety of mediums, pointing out that compared with nonLatino whites, Latinos spend 68 percent more time watching video online and 20
percent more time watching video on their mobile phones.28 Additional research
conducted on behalf of NBC Universal also points to the proliferation of HDTV,
laptop computers, smart phones, and gaming consoles within Latino homes.29
In his discussion of the network, Fusion’s president Lee Isaacson has been candid
in his assertion that focusing on young Latinos is simply good business, stating that
“all the projects that are focusing on Millennials are doing the right thing, because if
you understand that Hispanics and Millennials are the two most important
demographic waves since the baby boom, you will see that the bet is right on.”30
While Isaacson’s comments reflect the overall rhetorical shift in re-framing the
Latino television viewer as “ambicultural,” Fusion’s architects appear to push the
audience even further toward the mainstream. In press statements, executives at
Fusion have argued that younger Latinos not only appreciate but have a preference
for the English language, a position that represents a reversal of the longstanding
industry practice of privileging Spanish.
During an interview with the Miami Herald, Isaacson justified the network’s
programming strategy by invoking the network’s own proprietary research, stating
that “Hispanics were put off by the idea of a television channel centered on their
ethnicity.”31 In a separate interview with Buzzfeed, he further made the case that
Latinos were turned off by the notion of a Latino media space, stating, “If we produce
content to appeal only to Latinos, they’re not going to like it.”32 “You cannot treat
young Hispanics as Hispanics,” Isaacson asserted during an interview with the New
York Times; “they want to be part of one conversation in one room. They don’t want
to be ghettoized.”33
Fusion’s rhetorical strategy of re-framing the Latino television audience as fully
bicultural and bilingual is one that connects with larger industry discourses. In a
report titled State of the Hispanic Consumer, Nielsen points out to prospective
advertisers that nine out of ten Hispanic parents and parents-to-be want their
children to be able to speak both Spanish and be fluent in English,34 and in their own
report, A Brave New World of Consumidores (2011), advertising agency Alma DDP
describes the Latino audience “as ‘Fusionistas: English oriented [Hispanics] with dual
cultural affinity.’”35 As the television industry shifts the audience closer to the
mainstream, however, there are implications not only for who gets to be involved in
television production but also for who is invited to participate in media discourses.
The Diminishment of Spanish as a Form of Linguistic Capital
In his opening monologue for the launch of Fusion’s news magazine program
America, host Jorge Ramos described the mission of the show. In doing so, he
pointed to his own accent as a reflection of America’s ethos:
Now just a quick note about the name of the show … America. Well, as many of
you know, America has two completely different meanings. Here America is our
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C. A. Chávez
home, our country of course. But America, with an accent, really encompasses the
entire hemisphere from Canada to Chile, from Los Angeles to Rio. So we want to
be a bridge between those two Americas. In other words, our show will be news
with an accent and, of course, that will include my own. So here we go, this is
America.36
Ramos makes an interesting claim that the mere pronunciation of a word can conjure
up a different referent altogether. Furthermore, by invoking the collective “we”
Ramos is assuming that an audience thinks trans-nationally. Thus he is implicitly
suggesting that Fusion will reflect not only a broader use of language but a broader
worldview. This, however, is not necessarily what I encountered during my research.
Instead, Fusion reflects a remarkable shift in the Hispanic television space, which has
traditionally favored fluent Spanish-speakers who were primarily new immigrants.
In his discussion of linguistic practice, Bourdieu refers to the value of one’s
linguistic habitus, or dispositions acquired in the course of learning to speak in
particular contexts37. Under specific conditions, proficiency in Spanish can serve as a
form of linguistic capital that can be converted into other forms of capital. In a
television landscape in which Spanish-language television networks have dominated
the Hispanic space, Latinos who had a strong command of Spanish had a clear value.
Furthermore, within the television division of labor, the linguistic habitus of various
Latino practitioners served them well in particular roles in television production,
including writers and on-air personalities. For these positions, it is not adequate that
one “knows Spanish.” Rather, in the process of developing and delivering scripted
programming, they must assume multiple voices, construct rhetorical arguments, and
invoke a range of parlances.
Because such roles require a strong command of Spanish, there has traditionally
been a concerted effort to recruit native Spanish-speakers who began their
professional careers abroad. As the industry shifts toward English, however, there
has been an interest in recruiting acculturated Latinos with a perfect command of
English. For example, Fusion’s headliners, including Alicia Menendez and Gio
Benitez, as well as featured contributors including Alexis C. Madrigal, Fusion’s
Silicon Valley Bureau Chief, and Arielle Castillo, Fusion’s culture editor, all
demonstrate an ability to write and perform capably in English.
In most speech occasions, those who occupy dominant positions within the field
possess a linguistic hiatus, which enables them to respond with relative ease to the
demands of most formal or professional occasions. As Bourdieu says, they reap the
benefits by speaking in a way that comes naturally to them. However, Bourdieu also
describes cases where an encounter between a habitus and a field are, to varying
degrees, incompatible with one another in such a way that on occasions there is a
lack of congruency between the two.
In an environment in which the English-language is privileged, native-Spanish
speakers have diminishing value. Consider Jorge Ramos, who in addition to his
duties on America also headlines Noticiero Univision, Univision’s flagship news
program. During Fusion’s initial launch, Ramos had become the face of the network
and continues to serve as a link between both networks. At the time Ramos discussed
News with an Accent
261
how his decision to join Fusion was based on professional advantage, expressing a
sober awareness that broadcasting in Spanish limits the degree to which he can have
a cultural impact, stating “it’s like being invisible. Other than appealing to the 55
million Latinos, sometimes we are in a parallel world in which people are not even
aware we exist.”38 Ramos’s claim is not without merit. Current research on the
content of nightly news broadcast coverage indicates that English-language newsnetworks continue to fixate on the United States and Western Europe while leaving
significant portions unaccounted for, particularly Latin America, Eastern Europe, and
East Asia.39 With news bureaus located in Mexico City, Lima, Bogota, Managua, and
San Salvador, Noticiero Univision, Univision’s flagship news program, helps to
remedy this absence. However, Ramos acknowledges that Univision’s coverage of
Latin America goes largely unrecognized by a larger, more influential Englishmonolingual audience. According to Ramos:
It is incredibly frustrating to depend on translation to be relevant in this country …
Every single day, we have great stories, and nobody knows we are doing it, unless
you speak Spanish. (With Fusion), language won’t be an excuse anymore not to
pay attention to us.40
While Ramos has successfully developed a loyal following amongst Spanishdominant Latinos, he is addressing the limitations of Spanish as a form of
professional and cultural currency. As Ramos suggests, producing news content in
Spanish essentially ensures that his broadcasts will not be seen by an Englishmonolingual mainstream audience and peer group, essentially leading to de-facto
segregation within the broadcast industry. As a result of this separation, Ramos does
not enjoy the same social and cultural capital afforded to other broadcasters who are
working in English-language television. In order to elevate his own professional
standing, Ramos has acknowledged that it is necessary for him to communicate with
an English-speaking audience, stating, “I have to reinvent myself to reach that market
… these are kids who meet me and never say, ‘I watch your newscast’. They say, my
mom and dad watch you or ‘my grandparents watch you’.”41
When describing how particular ways of speaking may be either an advantage or a
liability, Bourdieu refers to the concept of linguistic habitus, which includes accents,
intonations, and articulatory styles that reflect particular classes or speech communities. Often, those who speak minority languages must make an effort to adapt their
linguistic expressions to the demands of the formal markets. As a result of the
incongruency between a linguistic habitus and a field, their speech is often
accompanied by anxiety, tension, and hypercorrection.
Despite his extensive career in professional broadcasting, Ramos’ incursion into
English-language broadcasting has not necessarily been an easy transition. Ramos,
who was born and educated in Mexico City, has spent his entire career broadcasting
in Spanish-language media. Consequently, headlining an English-language news
program has forced him to report in a language that does not come naturally to him.
In several interviews, Ramos has expressed an overt awareness of his heavy accent,
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C. A. Chávez
but he has attempted to frame his way of speaking as evidence of Fusion’s
commitment to diversity.
Given Ramos’ popularity amongst US Latinos, executives at Fusion have
demonstrated a commitment to accommodating his speaking style; however, less
recognized Univision employees appear to be more vulnerable in the ABC-Univision
venture. Historically, Univision’s exclusive focus on Spanish-language programming
has necessitated a workforce of practitioners who are highly proficient in Spanish.
Consequently, writers who began their careers in Latin America were at a
competitive advantage over their US-born counterparts who were comparatively
less proficient in Spanish.
To maximize efficiencies and synergy between both Univision and Fusion and
increase its capacity to generate original content, both networks share professional
talent. However, the linguistic skills that gave Spanish-language writers their value at
Univision will not convert to value at Fusion. During an interview with the
Washington Post, one Fusion executive admitted that even though almost all of
Univision’s news employees speak English, many do not write well enough in English
to develop scripts for an English-language network.42 In short, the currency
associated with writing in Spanish appears limited to one context, but does not
readily transfer to a new context in which English language and bilingual
programming are becoming commonplace. Given the demands for writing formally
for Fusion, the task of writing much of Fusion’s content will therefore fall to writers
who can demonstrate a stronger command of the English language, likely US-born
professionals and writers currently at ABC. The heavy reliance on acculturated
Latinos, in turn, will have an indelible impact on the content itself.
News with an Accent
They initially started as the network for Hispanics … Now it’s all Millennials, and
we’re winking at Hispanics.”43—Yannis Papis, cohost of The Morning Show
Several months prior to its launch, Fusion publicly changed its positioning from a
news network dedicated primarily for young Latinos to one that was intended for
Millennials generally. The relative ease with which the network was able to pivot in
this direction suggests that Fusion’s Latino audience had always been intended to
align more closely with the general market audience.
Furthermore, in the months before it launched, network delegates employed a
range of tropes designed to temper Fusion’s Latinness. Ramos had referred to his
own program as “news with an accent” while news editor Maritza Puello stated that
Fusion’s programming will have “what we call a little Hispanic seasoning.”44 Mariana
Atencio, cohost of Fusion’s The Morning Show, indicated that her show will have a
“Latin touch,” stating that “we may not be 100 percent white Americans, but we still
identify with the mainstream.”45 Catherine Sullivan, senior VP-ABC News Sales,
provided one of the most insightful glimpses into the network’s programming,
News with an Accent
263
stating that “we are winking at Hispanic, it is not overtly Hispanic … If you are not
Hispanic, you won’t feel like ‘the network isn’t for me.’”46
Certainly, there is an economic incentive to define the audience more broadly. In
fields of cultural production, economic capital serves as a dominant form of
hierarchization and as Bourdieu states, if a cultural producer wishes to reach a
broad public, “it has to dispense with sharp edges and anything that might divide or
exclude readers.”47 From this perspective, Fusion’s pursuit of the acculturated Latino
must be seen as an economic decision. However, these practices will have important
implications because they dictate the parameters of civic discourse. As a news outlet,
Fusion’s purported mission is to perform a civic engagement function, framing issues
of importance to a developing electorate that has traditionally been disenfranchised
by news media, but Fusion’s articulation of the ideal Latino audience suggests that
such discourses are clearly not open to all. In the process of defining their target
audience, Fusion is in essence determining which Latinos get to participate in civic
discourses. Furthermore, Fusion’s conception of the audience does not benefit those
most marginalized within political processes.
Fusion’s capacity to fulfill its civic function is partially reliant on the ways in which
the network delivers news to its intended audience. Satire is central to the network’s
positioning, but its humor is presumed to be universally accepted and does not fully
account for the fact that what the audience finds funny reflects the tastes and
sensibilities of particular classes. To “get the joke,” after all, one must have the
requisite cultural knowledge of what is being satirized. In his own work on humor in
British popular culture, Friedman48 has argued that appreciation for comedy is a
function of class position and that the culturally privileged have the capacity to
maintain their distinction by consuming culture in a way that is inaccessible to those
with fewer cultural capital resources.
Furthermore, one’s capacity to appreciate the “right kind” of humor is dependent
on one’s cultural capital, which may include knowledge, skills, and other cultural
acquisitions as exemplified by such things as education credentials, technical
expertise, general knowledge, verbal activities, and artistic sensibilities.49 One’s
cultural capital is a condition of one’s individual habitus, which begins with the
process of cultural socialization, whereby those from the dominant classes are
inculcated with certain cultural dispositions that orientate them toward a naturalized
and embodied understanding of “legitimate” tastes. Friedman further argues that
those who have acquired cultural capital through socialization and education will
then activate those resources by consuming particular kinds of humor. Conversely,
working-class children are inculcated into a different system and therefore do not
acquire an appreciation for the same tastes. Consequently, the consumption of
popular culture may be used as a point of distinction.
In both their digital and television spaces, Fusion’s satire represents a sort of
progressive politics, taking clear and affirmative positions on issues such as the
legalization of marijuana, immigration reform, and marriage equality, but delivers
these positions in a way preferred by educated liberals. Thus, having acquired the
tastes of the dominant class, Fusion’s writers and producers appear to be creating
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C. A. Chávez
content for other educated elites. Consequently, it is not surprising that a feature
story can be found on Isaac Cordal, a Spanish artist who uses urban spaces to create
social commentary. Cordal’s art addresses issues ranging from social inequality to
global warming, but the decision to feature the artist presumes an audience that has a
taste for high art. At the same time, network’s treatment of news also assumes a
highly informed viewer. Research suggests that viewers of satire are more likely to
watch and read traditional news sources as well.50 Consequently, the network is not
engaging Latinos who have been isolated from civic discourses, but is engaging those
who are already immersed in them.
This is also reflective of the perspective that the network assumes. Consider
Fusion’s decision to broadcast Half Like Me, a one-hour special produced by and
starring Al Madrigal, who at the time served as “Señor (pronounced “senior”) Latino
Correspondent” for John Stewart’s The Daily Show. Playing with the concept of Black
Like Me, John Howard Griffin’s book about a white reporter who travels through the
south passing as a black man, Madrigal also structures his story as a road trip in
which he explores his ethnic identity and encounters several characters along the
way. Positioned as a humorous but thoughtful exploration of what it means to be
Latino, the show is really a vehicle for comedy built around Madrigal’s anxiety of
only passing as Latino.
In several ways, Al Madrigal is a perfect fit for the network. In public statements,
executives at Fusion have explicitly stated that their model for the network is
Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. During an interview with National Public Radio,
Mariana Atencio, host of Fusion’s Morning Show articulated this position, stating,
“NPR meets The Daily Show those are the two things that we tell ourselves every
single morning.”51 To help establish this relationship, the network has frequently run
on-air promotions featuring clips of Jorge Ramos engaging with John Stewart, host of
The Daily Show. More substantively, the network has hired David Javerbaum, a
former producer and head writer for The Daily Show, as well as Billy Kimbell, former
writer of the animated comedy series, The Simpsons.
Madrigal is also a perfect fit for Fusion because of his level of assimilation. Like
other personalities on the network, Madrigal is an acculturated Latino and who has a
full command of the English language. A recurring joke in the special is that
Madrigal, who is half-Latino and not functional in Spanish, is constantly being
corrected by others on how to pronounce Spanish words properly, including a group
of white students attending a Spanish-immersion school. In another segment,
Fusion’s Jorge Ramos even educates Madrigal on how to pronounce his own name.
During interviews promoting Half Like Me, Madrigal has stated that the point of
the special is to demonstrate that there is no single way of being Latino and that
language is not really a true marker of Latino identity, a narrative that fits well with
Fusion’s own conception of its audience. In her own show AM Tonight, Alicia
Menendez promoted Madrigal’s special by holding a special discussion with other
self-identified “halfies” including Alexis Madrigal (no relation to Al Madrigal),
Silicon Valley Bureau Chief for Fusion and Bettina Inclan, communications
consultant. During the discussion, Menendez commiserated with her guests about
News with an Accent
265
the unique challenges of being a light skinned Latino who speaks little Spanish.
Menendez expressed frustration that her authenticity as a true Latino is constantly
being questioned, stating, “Halfie is a term that only halfies can use … I think it’s
pretty annoying to pretend that I’m half Cuban. Because I feel totally Cuban and I
feel totally American.”52
Menendez’s comments are meant to point out the fallacy of claiming an authentic,
Latino identity, but in listening to Menendez discuss her bi-culturality it becomes
clear that she is invoking a Latino that has the capacity to move freely between two
worlds. Menendez, who graduated from Harvard and is the daughter of Senator
Robert Menendez, has ample social and cultural capital to experience her Cuban and
American identities on her own terms. This discussion brings to mind Bauman’s53
concept of the “tourist.” According to Bauman, a privileged few have the capacity to
adopt and discard different identities at will. Bauman compares these fortunate
individuals with what he terms the “vagabond,” those with less control over their
mobility and who are likely to be poor, and a member of a maligned ethnic group. By
invoking these two concepts, Bauman highlights the division between those who have
the freedom to choose where to be and those who have much less control over their
physical and social mobility.
It becomes very clear at the onset of Madrigal’s film that Half Like Me is intended
not necessarily for Latinos but for an audience that has relatively little knowledge
about Latino cultural life. Throughout the special, Madrigal essentially replicates his
role as Señor Latino Correspondent on The Daily Show in which he acts as tour guide
for a presumed white audience. After all, the play on words only works if you
pronounce “Señor” in Anglicized fashion. At one point during the special, he asserts
proprietary knowledge about Latino concerns. “There’s no more controversial issue
for Latinos than immigration,” he informs the intended viewer, “and being a product
of the American dream, I’m inclined to think, the more the merrier. But that’s not
how everyone sees it.” To explore the topic further, Madrigal interviews Jim Gilchrist,
founder of the Minuteman Project, a volunteer organization in which armed
residents patrol the border. By employing The Daily Show’s technique of conducting
interviews with both noted personalities and “ordinary citizens” and then editing
those interviews in order to elicit a comedic response, Madrigal uses Gilchrist’s own
words as a way to highlight the fallacy in nationalist movements. In one particularly
provocative moment, Madrigal convinces Gilchrist to wear a mask of the Chupacabra
as a strategy for warding off undocumented immigrants.
On one hand, Half Like Me is designed to counter the toxic discourses around
immigration. As Calafell and Delgado argue, certain media texts can play an
important role by providing counternarratives by asserting to “Latina/os and nonLatina/os alike who we are and where we belong.”54 At the same time, the special is
bounded within the parameters of those same discourses. In their study of how
Latinos are represented on television, Dixon and Linz55 found that Latinos are
overwhelmingly depicted as problematic, criminal, and perpetually foreign. Madrigal’s interview with Gilchrist remains beholden to that assumption. Furthermore, in
its attempt to be progressive, the segment is relatively conservative in nature.
266
C. A. Chávez
Madrigal’s dismantling of clearly racist views is meant not to challenge the audience
but to humor an audience that is already predisposed to accept the claim.
Madrigal’s show, like much of Fusion’s content, is conservative because it presents
Latinos as ideal citizens. As a self-promoted “product of the American dream,”
Madrigal is living proof that Latinos can be easily integrated into mainstream society.
Consequently, rather than serving as an explicit form of advocacy, Fusion’s
programming more typically celebrates the current social order, fulfilling what
Gutiérrez describes as Hispanic media’s role as an “instrument of social control.”56
The way in which the reification of a hegemonic worldview pervades Fusion’s
programming was particularly evident in a series of vignettes called “My Multicultural Experience,” in which various celebrities such as Kevin Hart and John
Leguizamo share their personal experiences growing up in a diverse society. As part
of the theme, viewers are also invited to submit their own vignettes under the call of
“What’s your multicultural experience?” The narrative of these submissions is
generally a celebration of diversity that is made possible only in an America that is
generally regarded as an open and tolerant place. In one vignette, DJ Oscar G invokes
his experiences growing up in a Cuban exile community. In reflecting on his
upbringing, he concludes that growing up as an expatriate “gives you perspective of
how lucky you are to live in a country like this. My multicultural experience has been
to live in the US and be free to express myself as an artist.”57 The presentation of a
perfectly integrated world, however, is incongruous with the lived experiences of
most ethnic minorities, who continue to face institutional marginalization. Furthermore, by positioning Latinos as ideal consumer-citizens, Fusion’s narrative obscures
the persisting social and economic inequalities that have grown in the wake of the
economic downturn and which have had a particularly profound impact on black
and Latino communities.
Conclusion
Over the past 200 years, US Hispanic media have become an important alternative to
the dominant discourses presented in mainstream media, but also serving as a
dedicated space for Latino cultural production and forms of expression. As Peñaloza
points out, Hispanic media developed largely in response to Latino exclusion in
mainstream media and partly in response to demands from the community to
address issues that impacted Latinos.58 Language, of course, has been instrumental to
this process, serving as a de-facto boundary that limits Hispanic media primarily to
communication amongst Latinos. In doing so it has provided a space where in-group
conversation can occur outside white public space. As Casillas writes, Spanishlanguage media is a place where working-class Latinos are not scorned for being poor
or for speaking Spanish.59
At the time, Peñaloza expressed concern as to whether or not Hispanic media will
continue to serve this role in the face of buyouts and takeovers. My analysis of Fusion
suggests that Peñaloza’s concerns are immediate. The relative speed in which Fusion
News with an Accent
267
invoked and then abandoned the Latino audience suggests that Fusion’s civic
function was always subordinated by its economic function. After all, television
networks are in the business of buying and selling audiences, and both ABC and
Univision stand to benefit from Fusion’s success by enabling each network to expand
its product portfolio and garner a larger share of the market.
Within the larger culture, Bourdieu has argued that a nation’s “legitimate”
language is one that is semiartificial and that must be sustained by continuous efforts
of correction, the task of which falls both to individuals and to social institutions. In
the United States, the gravitational pull toward English monolingualism is enacted
not only directly through formal legislative efforts (of which there have been many)
but also indirectly through large-scale cultural production. But such attempts at
mainstreaming the Latino audience are inherently political because they involve the
suppression of the Latino culture and forms of speech. If successful, this project of
erasure has important implications. The emergence of a formidable US Spanishlanguage media, while certainly problematic in its own ways, has at least allowed for
the possibility of an alternative system of cultural production and new of forms of
expression. The recent entry of English-language networks into the Hispanic media
space, however, reflects an effort to re-exert hegemonic domination within ethnic
markets.
However, these industry practices have led to a more auspicious form of erasure
that challenges the legitimacy of Spanish altogether. The aggressive promotion of the
trope of the “new Latino” may be seen as a continuation of a longstanding tradition
of erasing US Latino speech. Bourdieu makes clear that dynamics within fields of
cultural production are inextricably linked to dynamics within the larger field of
power. From this perspective, Fusion’s decision to communicate with Latinos in
English is not simply a gesture of inclusivity but a form of ideological domination in
which the network hails audiences as participants within a consumer economy while
simultaneously exploiting social hierarchies.
Ultimately, the re-articulation of the Latino television audience is an exercise in
power because by converting Latinos into targets for action and by re-framing
Latinos in their own image, television executives reproduce structures of ideological
domination. While such moves benefit commercial media organizations, they
simultaneously further marginalize those who are in particular need of civic
engagement. Today, Latinos still remain disenfranchised in political processes. Only
51 percent of Latinos are registered to vote compared with 78 percent overall.60
Furthermore, despite gains made in the 2012 election, Latinos remain underrepresented in national electoral politics relative to their overall numbers.61 The
literature also suggests that largely due to a heavy reliance on Spanish, Latinos have
traditionally been left out of civic discourse and have not been the targets of political
contact or recruitment. For example, a study conducted by Jones-Correa and Leal
found that only 18 percent of Latinos had been asked to participate civically versus
34 percent of Anglos.62 Finally, existing research suggests that Latino immigrants
may not typically benefit from strong discursive environments exacerbated by their
associational, linguistic, and cultural isolation from the mainstream community.63
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C. A. Chávez
When we consider the broader state of Latinos in American society, the need for
alternative media is more important than ever. However, the articulation of the
audience in ways that more closely align to the dominant population is significant
because it determines who gets to be included in public discourses and who gets left
out. The shifting Hispanic landscape toward the dominant mainstream favors those
who are most conducive to consumer society, but by providing merely “news with an
accent,” Fusion does little to provide what still remains out of reach for so many
Latinos.
Notes
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
Jorge Ramos, interview by George Stephanopoulos on This Week, October 27, 2013. http://
fusion.net/America_with_Jorge_Ramos/video/jorge-ramos-talks-fusion-abcs-week-156154.
ABC and Univision, “ABC and Univision Introduce Fusion,” news release, February 11, 2013
https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/sites/default/files/ABCNewsUnivisionFusion.pdf.
Christopher Chávez, “Building a ‘New Latino’ in the Post-Network Era: mun2 and the
Reconfiguration of the US Latino Audience,” International Journal of Communication 7
(2013): 9.
Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1991), 18.
Ien Ang, Desperately Seeking the Audience (New York: Routledge, 1991), 13.
Jose Del Valle. “US Latinos, La Hispanofonia, and the Language Ideologies of High
Modernity,” in Globalization and Language in the Spanish-speaking World, ed. Clare MarMolinero and Miranda Stewart (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 43.
For more information on the characteristics of speech communities, see Alessandro Duranti,
Linguistic Anthropology (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1997) and John
Gumperz, “The Speech Community” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New
York: Macmillan, 1968).
Pew Hispanic Center, “5 Demographic Realities Behind the Creation of Univision/ABC News’
Fusion channel,” news release, October 28, 2013 http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/
10/28/5-demographic-realities-behind-the-creation-of-univisionabc-news-fusion-channel/.
Robert Horwitz, “On Media Concentration and the Diversity Question,” The Information
Society, 21, issue 3 (2005): 181.
For insight into the impact of deregulation on minority interests, see Kristal Zook, Color by
FOX: The FOX Network and the Revolution in Black Television (London, UK: Oxford
University Press, 1999) and Berretta Smith-Shomade, Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy: Selling Black
Entertainment Television (New York: Routledge, 2008).
Jeff Valdez, “The Spanish Imposition,” Huffington Post, June 4, 2013, http://www.
huffingtonpost.com/jeff-valdez/the-spanish-imposition_b_3381187.html
Henry Puente, “NuvoTV: Will it Withstand the Competition?” in Contemporary Latina/o
Media: Production, Circulation, Politics, ed. Arlene Davila and Yeidy M. Rivero (New York:
NYU Press, 2014), 78.
Luis V. Núñez, Spanish Language Media after the Univision-Hispanic Broadcasting (New
York: Nova Sciences Publishers, 2006).
Juan Piñon and Viviana Rojas, “Language and Cultural Identity in the New Configuration of
the US Latino TV Industry,” Global Media and Communication 7 (2011): 129.
Frazier Moore, “Rodriguez Gives It to Viewers Straight with El Rey,” AP, March 10, 2014,
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/rodriguez-gives-it-viewers-straight-el-rey.
News with an Accent
269
[16] Mari Castañeda Paredes, “The Reorganization of Spanish-language Media Marketing in the
United States,” in Continental Order? Integrating North America for Cybercaptialism, ed.
Vincent Mosco and Dan Schiller (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001),
120–135.
[17] Pierre Bourdieu, On Television (New York: The New York Press, 1998).
[18] Pierre Bourdieu. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993), 57.
[19] Bourdieu, On Television.
[20] Ida Schultz, “The Journalistic Gut Feeling: Journalistic Doxa, News Habitus and Orthodox
News Values,” Journalism Practice 1, issue 2 (2007): 193.
[21] Robert K. Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 4th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, 2009).
[22] Ang, “Desperately Seeking the Audience.”
[23] Nielsen, The State of the Hispanic Consumer: The Hispanic Market Imperative, 2012.
[24] New York Times Customer Insight Group, 2013: The Year of Video Survey, 2013.
[25] Pew Research Center, News Consumption Survey, 2012.
[26] The US Census Bureau, Statistical Report, 2012.
[27] Nielsen, The State of the Hispanic Consumer.
[28] Ibid.
[29] NBC Universal, Familia Americana Moderna Study, 2012.
[30] Adrian Carrasquillo, “Meet Fusion, the ABC-Univision Frankenbaby that Wants Millennials
to Laugh and Get their News On, Buzzfeed, October 27, 2013, http://www.buzzfeed.com/
adriancarrasquillo/meet-fusion-the-abc-univision-frankenbaby-that-wants-millenn.
[31] Douglas Hanks, “Just a Dash of Latino Flavor Accents Fusion’s TV Debut,” Miami Herald,
October 27, 2013, http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/27/3715419/just-a-dash-of-latinoflavor-accents.html.
[32] Carrasquillo, “Meet Fusion”.
[33] Larry Rohter, “Speaking to Young Latinos, in English,” New York Times, October 2, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/arts/television/fusion-sets-its-sights-on-a-multiculturalgeneration.html?_r=0.
[34] Nielsen, The State of the Hispanic Consumer.
[35] Alma DDB, A Brave New World of Consumadores: Introducing young Fusionistas, 2011,
http://almaad.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Alma_YellowPaper_Fusionistas1.pdf
[36] Jorge Ramos, opening monologue for first episode of America, October 28, 2013, http://
fusion.net/justice/story/good-evening-im-jorge-ramos-fusion-159856.
[37] Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 81–9.
[38] Stephen Battaglio, “Jorge Ramos Breaks New Barriers on Fusion,” TV Guide, October 24,
2013, http://www.tvguide.com/News/Jorge-Ramos-Fusion-1072461.aspx.
[39] Tyndall, Year in Review Report, 2013, http://tyndallreport.com/yearinreview2013/
[40] Rohter, “Speaking to young Latinos, in English”.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Manuel Roig-Frianzia and Peter Wallsten, “Univision, ABC News Team Up on TV network
for English-speaking Latinos,” Washington Post, February 18, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/univision-abc-news-team-up-on-tv-network-for-english-speak
ing-latinos/2013/02/18/02ab1434–7957–11e2-a044–676856536b40_story.html.
[43] Hanks, “Just a Dash of Latino Flavor Accents Fusion’s TV Debut”.
[44] Ibid.
[45] National Public Radio, “Fusion Wants Young Latinos to Turn on Their TV’s,” October
26, 2013.
270
C. A. Chávez
[46] Jeanine Poggi, “Winking at Hispanic: Where Does TV’s New Fusion Channel Fit,”
Advertising Age, October 28, 2013, http://adage.com/article/media/fusion-s-big-bet-cablenews-hispanic-millennials/244951/.
[47] Bourdieu, On Television, 29.
[48] Sam Friedman, “The Cultural Currency of a ‘Good’ Sense of Humor: British Comedy and
New Forms of Distinction,” British Journal of Sociology 62, issue 2 (2011): 351.
[49] Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, 7.
[50] Dannagal Young and Russell Tsinger, “Dispelling Late Night Myths: News Consumption
Among Late-Night Comedy Viewers and the Predictors of Exposure to Various Late-Night
Shows,” International Journal of Press/Politics 11 (2006): 113–134.
[51] National Public Radio, “Fusion Wants Young Latinos to Turn on Their TV’s.
[52] Alicia Menendez, interviews with Alexis Madrigal and Bettina Inclan, AM Tonight, January
22, 2015, http://fusion.net/video/40170/al-madrigal-is-a-half-y-and-proud-of-it/
[53] Zygmunt Bauman, “From Pilgrim to Tourist—Or a Short History of Identity,” in Questions
of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (London, UK: Sage Publications, 1996),
28–30.
[54] Bernadette Marie Calafell and Fernando Delgado, “Reading Latina/o Images: Interrogating
Americanos,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 21, issue 1 (2004): 17.
[55] Travis Dixon and Daniel Linz, “Race and Misrepresentation of Victimization on Local
Television News,” Communication Research 27, issue 5 (2000): 547.
[56] Felix Gutiérrez, “Spanish Language Media in America: Background, Resources, History,”
Journalism History 4, issue 2 (1977): 38.
[57] DJ Oscar G, “My Multicultural Experience,” http://fusion.net/video/178/my-multiculturalexperience-dj-oscar-g/
[58] Lisa Peñaloza, “Ya Viene Aztlan! Latinos in US Advertising,” Media Studies Journal 8, issue 3
(1994): 137–8.
[59] Delores Inés Casillas, “A Morning Dose of Latino Masculinity: US Spanish-language Radio
and the Politics of Gender,” in Latina/o Communication Studies Today, ed. Angharad
Valdivia (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 163.
[60] Gallup, In US, Voter Registration Lags Among Hispanics and Asians, news release, November
6, 2013.
[61] National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO), Directory of National Association
of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, 2014.
[62] Michael Jones-Correa and David L. Leal, “Political Participation: Does Religion Matter?”
Political Research Quarterly 54, Issue 4 (2001): 751.
[63] Douglas Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of
the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo: A Cautionary Tale
Starring White Working-Class People
Tasha R. Rennels
To cite this article: Tasha R. Rennels (2015) Here Comes Honey Boo Boo: A Cautionary Tale
Starring White Working-Class People, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 12:3,
271-288, DOI: 10.1080/14791420.2015.1053957
Published online: 19 Jun 2015.
Article views: 136
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Here Comes Honey Boo Boo:
A Cautionary Tale Starring White
Working-Class People
Downloaded by [Gazi University] at 00:56 10 October 2015
Tasha R. Rennels
Depictions of white working-class people are steadily on the rise in reality television.
To understand this phenomenon, and the ways in which it articulates white workingclass people in the United States today, I analyze Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, a
popular reality series on TLC featuring a self-described “redneck” family. I argue that
this series highlights the family’s inability—because of their working-class status—to
conform to “ideal whiteness,” a whiteness that displays dominant cultural standards
bolstered by neoliberalism, such as wealth, rationality, personal responsibility, and
self-control. The family members consequently become exemplars of “inappropriate
whiteness,” a marginal identity presented as humorous and, through the use of
surveillance and spectacle, authentic.
Keywords: Whiteness; Surveillance; Reality TV; Class; Neoliberalism
“What’s this yellow stuff?” asks seven-year-old pageant princess, Alana Thompson,
pointing to a chunk of pineapple in the cake she is devouring. “It’s pineapple, baby,”
says her disheveled mother, June, who is seated next to Alana and Miss Georgia 2011
(Micheala Lackey) at a quaint café. Alana opens her mouth, bats her eyes at Miss
Georgia, and pulls the chunk of fruit out of her mouth while passing gas. Miss
Georgia’s eyes open wide while June turns to Alana and says, “What did you just
do?” With a laugh, Alana says, “I farted,” as crumbs of cake fall from her mouth
(season 1, “A-Choo!”).
Tasha R. Rennels is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD. She
would like to thank Rachel Dubrofsky, Carolyn Ellis, Matthew Rennels, Emily Ryalls, as well as the editor and
anonymous reviewers for their wisdom, guidance, and encouragement. Correspondence to: Tasha R. Rennels,
Department of Communication Studies, Augustana College, 2001 South Summit Avenue, Sioux Falls, SD 57197,
USA. Email: tasha.rennels@augie.edu.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2015.1053957
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Bodily functions, as illustrated here, are a common occurrence on Here Comes
Honey Boo Boo, a weekly reality series on TLC that aired from August 8, 2011 to
August 14, 2014. The storyline revolves around a white working-class family who
lives in a cramped clapboard house in rural McIntyre, Georgia. Railroad tracks—a
common symbol of poverty—run through the backyard and are featured frequently
in each episode to remind viewers of the family’s class status. Alana (a.k.a. “Honey
Boo Boo”), the main character, is a self-proclaimed chubby and hyperactive
seven-year-old with sass who dreams of being the future Miss America. Alana’s
biggest fan is June (a.k.a. “Mama June”), her 33-year-old, 300-plus pound mother
who wears the pants in the family. For the past nine years, June has been dating
Alana’s biological father, Mike (a.k.a. “Sugar Bear”), a short 43-year-old who labors
in chalk mines seven days a week to support the family. Before meeting Mike, June
had three other daughters: 13-year-old Lauryn (a.k.a. “Pumpkin”), 15-year-old Jessica
(a.k.a. “Chubbs”), and 18-year-old Anna (a.k.a. “Chickadee”), who recently had a
baby named Kaitlyn.
In its first season, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo drew an average 2.4 million viewers
per episode and became TLC’s third-highest-rated series in 2012. The finale of this
season attracted more 18–49-year-old viewers (the demographic deemed most
important by advertisers) than Fox News’s coverage of the Republican National
Convention and CNN’s coverage of the Democratic National Convention.1
Subsequent seasons have also been popular, making Here Comes Honey Boo Boo
one of TLC’s top ten most successful shows of all time.2 In addition to its high
ratings, the show has permeated popular culture. A series of trending topics have
appeared on Twitter (e.g., #redneckognize), and in 2012, Alana was named one of
Barbara Walters’s “10 Most Fascinating People”—alongside Prince Harry and
Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas.3 Since the show’s cancellation, the family
has received ongoing media attention and criticism regarding their conflicts, finances,
eating habits, and more. Honey Boo Boo continues to be a household name in
tabloids.
White Working-Class People in Reality Television
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is premised on the continuous observation of white
working-class4 people. Surveillance cameras follow Alana and her six family
members, capturing their everyday lives on film. Like any reality television (RTV)
show, members of the production staff edit the footage to create episodes. Editing
therefore plays a large role in creating the final product.5 As Kraszewski states,
“media that attempts to document reality actually shapes it, filtering it through a
variety of discourses and unequal fields of social power.”6 Consequently, identities of
participants on RTV shows come to reflect the desires of producers and directors in
terms of how they want to shape each story.7 We see this identity work on Here
Comes Honey Boo Boo when family members engage in behaviors presented as
unorthodox through choices in lighting, camera angles, framing, and sound, my
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo
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primary focus. Sounds of common bodily functions like burping, for example, are
almost always amplified. Highlighting these and other behaviors through stylistic
choices like amplification articulates certain ideas about white working-class people
to which we should be attentive. Because RTV shows emphasize a desire to portray
the real by featuring “real people” doing “real things,” these ideas are promoted as
authentic.8 Such authentication reinforces the cultural demonization of white
working-class citizens that has remained intact since the late nineteenth century
when upper-class southerners began to elevate themselves by using the term
“redneck” to describe poor, southern, uneducated, white, male farmers whose necks
were frequently sunburnt from working in the fields.9
Critical scholars are doing important work to address the oppressive ways in which
white working-class people have been portrayed in US media. According to their
research, this population is often depicted as stupid, criminal, racist, dirty, lazy, and
riddled with addiction.10 My work is also concerned with how mediated portrayals
mirror and reinforce the cultural Othering of white working-class people, but I focus
specifically on RTV11 because it is the genre in which this population is featured
most.12 Additionally, RTV shows centered on white working-class people (e.g.,
Moonshiners, Swamp People, and Trailer Park: Welcome to Myrtle Manor) are
steadily on the rise, creating what has been called a “redneck reality” subgenre.13
I analyze how one show that is representative of this subgenre contributes to the
cultural Othering of white working-class people, and what this means in the context
of neoliberalism, a conservative political agenda that has been prevalent in the United
States since the 1980s. At the heart of neoliberalism is the deployment of policies
such as economic deregulation, the privatization of social provision, and cutbacks in
government expenditures like welfare. Each of these policies is designed to shift
responsibility away from the government and onto individual people.14 Advice, as
opposed to injunction, has become the primary mode of governance.15 Much of this
advice comes from mainstream media, which reinforces neoliberal ideals. For
example, neoliberalism’s emphasis on personal responsibility is widely promoted
throughout the RTV genre when “experts” are called in to help less-educated, lowerincome participants escape their “lack” so they can become more self-sufficient. By
helping people help themselves, RTV functions as an apparatus that generates
consent for the welfare reform embedded in neoliberalism.16
In this essay, I build upon the work of scholars who contend that RTV is a
technology of neoliberalism17 by illustrating how white working-class individuals
within the genre are made to seem irresponsible and helpless despite the intervention
of experts. This type of neoliberal ethos frames the hardships white working-class
people face as rooted from individual failures, which ultimately renders them
undeserving of support. Consequently, the opportunity to critique structural
inequalities is foreclosed and neoliberal ideals such as personal responsibility are
strategically reinforced to eliminate welfare and restore class stratification. Though
this claim about damning white working-class individuals within the context of RTV
has been established,18 I add an important and often neglected aspect: the stylistic
choices, primarily related to sound, that foster this damnation.
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Method
This article is driven by the following questions: What dominant cultural ideas about
white working-class people does a RTV show like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo
articulate? How do these ideas come to be authenticated within the genre of RTV,
and what role do stylistic choices play in this process? Why is it important to make
this process of authentication visible in the neoliberal era? To answer these questions,
I conduct a close textual analysis of all 34 episodes from seasons 1 to 3. I view these
episodes as highly mediated products because I do not assume there is an accessible,
authentic reality displayed on the screen. Instead, I contend that the action on Here
Comes Honey Boo Boo is a constructed fiction, similar to what occurs on scripted
shows.19
My analysis is guided by the recognition that these episodes are “symptomatic
texts”20 informing us of cultural phenomena—in this case, the ongoing stigmatization of white working-class people in the neoliberal era. An example of this
stigmatization can be found in the media’s recent resurrection of the Nancy Kerrigan
and Tonya Harding scandal where Harding’s working-class roots are still, twenty
years later, factoring into the blame and criticism cast upon her.21 By analyzing
episodes of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo as “symptoms,” clues about the workings of a
larger cultural context can be accessed. As Bonnie Dow explains, television
contributes to culture in important and meaningful ways because it can define,
mediate, represent, and reinforce social issues; thus, it is the goal of media critics to
account for the role of television in public discourse.22
Establishing the Boundaries of Whiteness
Central to this essay are Foucault’s notions of spectacle and surveillance as
disciplinary mechanisms. Spectacle puts deviant bodies on public display (e.g.,
mugshots) to warn others of the dangers of defying a society’s modus operandi.
Surveillance subjects bodies to a relentless gaze to foster control (e.g., the modern
prison system).23 Although Foucault historically demarcates practices of spectacle
and surveillance, I argue that Here Comes Honey Boo Boo makes use of both—a
combination that is on the rise in popular culture.24 Within the series, footage from
surveillance cameras is used to make a spectacle of Alana and her family, highlighting
their failure—because of their working-class status—to conform to “ideal whiteness,”
a whiteness privileged for displaying dominant cultural standards inspired by
neoliberalism such as wealth, rationality, personal responsibility, and self-control.25
Alana and her family are marked “white Others” because of this failure. They are cast
beyond the boundaries of “ideal whiteness” so that this form of whiteness can
maintain its superiority. Frankenberg’s claim that there are two types of whites—
those of privilege and those who are marginalized because of additional variables
such as class, gender, and sexuality26—comes to fruition in this text.
Building upon the link scholars have established between authenticity and
surveillance,27 I show how surveillance functions in the service of whiteness and
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class to authenticate a deviant form of whiteness, an “inappropriate whiteness,”28
with which the family is associated. Alana and her family are presented as authentic
exemplars of inappropriate whiteness when a series of clips from surveillance footage
highlight their “shortcomings.” Whether the clips feature Mama June’s deformed toe
or Alana grabbing the fat of her stomach and using it as a puppet, we are invited to
see the family as genuinely unable to conform to ideal whiteness. In other words,
through surveillance, Alana and her family become “real” spectacles for viewers to
gaze upon, laugh at, and learn what not to do and who not to be in the United States
today. The family’s projected failure to conform to dominant cultural standards is the
raison d’être of the show—a setup that reinforces working-class limits to propriety in
the neoliberal era. To illustrate this setup, I describe what inappropriate whiteness
looks like, how it is constructed as humorous, and, finally, how it is authenticated
throughout Here Comes Honey Boo Boo to remove us from feeling implicated in the
family’s marginality.
Laughing at Inappropriate Whiteness
Whiteness functions as a privileged state of being in US contexts.29 To be “just white”
is to possess no racial identity.30 Whiteness is invisible: the “unraced center of a
racialized world,”31 meaning it exists as a standard against which all other
racializations are considered deviant.32 My work focuses on how whiteness becomes
visible and racialized when combined with poverty, as evidenced by the term “white
trash,” commonly applied to white people who are poor or part of the workingclass.33 DiAngelo explains that this term signifies the pollution of whiteness—a
pollution that can be attributed to the exceeding of class and racial etiquette required
of white people to preserve their power and privilege.34 Those who rupture the
etiquette of whiteness are dubbed traitors to their race.35 White working-class girls
and women are considered especially repellant for their inability to conform to
standards of ideal white femininity such as beauty, refinement, wealth, morality,
responsibility, intellect, civilization, and subordination to men.36 Consequently, these
girls and women have to work incessantly to avoid ridicule from middle-class
observers. The problem, however, is that their attempts to conform to ideal white
femininity are often rendered comical.37 Several of these moments can be witnessed
on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, and, because they are captured via surveillance
cameras, the show presents them as if they are authentic. The working-class girls and
women on the show do not just fail to conform, they really fail. A boundary between
inappropriate whiteness and ideal whiteness is forged.
A poignant moment of failing to conform to ideal white femininity occurs in
“Gonna be a Glitz Pig” (season 1) when Mama June hires Barbara Hickey, owner of
the Etiquette School of Atlanta, to teach Alana some lessons after she is critiqued by
judges at a previous pageant for being unrefined. Mama June forces Pumpkin,
Alana’s sister, to join in on the lessons, too. Ms. Hickey’s visit illustrates a common
trend on RTV shows—inspired by neoliberalism—when experts intervene to help
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bring less-educated, lower-income participants up to middle-class standards.38 A
pageant coach, wedding planner, beauty queen, dance instructor, and makeup artist
are some of the many experts who appear throughout Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
When Ms. Hickey arrives, a long shot reveals that she is white, middle-aged, has
shiny brown hair, and is well put together: her ironed black dress, pink blazer,
manicured nails, and matching jewelry are presented in stark contrast to Alana,
Mama June, and Pumpkin who stand on a porch petting Glitzy, their pet teacup
pig, while a series of close-ups highlight their disheveled hair and wrinkled clothing.
Ms. Hickey tries to introduce herself to the family but Glitzy’s squeals are
strategically amplified to drown out her words, reinforcing the contrast we see.
Ms. Hickey asks the girls to join her in the dining room for lessons on proper
dining etiquette. While she sets the table, a camera zooms in on Pumpkin who picks
up a clean white cloth and uses it to blow her nose, making a sound that is amplified
by producers to ensure this action is the focal point of the scene. We then see a closeup of Ms. Hickey who stops midsentence and stares at Pumpkin in disbelief. The
next scene features Alana who, wearing a different outfit (indicating this was filmed
at a different time), says to the camera: “Picking your nose is not ladylike because it’s
not pretty and it’s nasty.” Immediately following this declaration, the camera zooms
in on Alana as she picks her nose. This is an explicitly produced moment of
situational irony viewers are hailed to laugh at, especially considering its strategic
placement in the midst of a lesson on proper etiquette. Moments such as these, where
characters unselfconsciously display bodily functions, are a staple of RTV shows
featuring working-class people.39 The frequency with which these moments occur
supports the paradox Stallybrass and White have observed: “what is socially
peripheral is also frequently symbolically central,”40 meaning that acts or persons
considered to be deviant often become a central spectacle. This observation helps
explain why nearly every episode begins and ends with burps, farts, sneezes, or the
sounds of a flushing toilet. By putting the bodily functions of Alana and her family
on center stage, it becomes difficult to imagine them as capable of performing the
ideal white behavior that would provide access to upward mobility; they are
presented as too grotesque (i.e., their bodies are too open and secreting as evidenced
by frequent and overt bodily functions41).
In the last moments of her visit, Ms. Hickey stands alone in the yard to reflect on
the lesson. “There’s some habits they have to break,” she says to the camera with a
smirk. “The bodily function thing, we don’t do that.” The focus transitions to
Pumpkin who says, “I’ll stop passing gas when I’m dead.” Despite Ms. Hickey’s
teaching efforts, the girls seem content with who they are. They comfortably display
what Valverde refers to as “diseases of the will”: failures of responsible self-control42
shown in a humorous light. Unlike Pumpkin and Alana, Ms. Hickey is presented as if
she is immune to “diseases of the will.” She is made to be the voice of reason, both
literally and figuratively. When she speaks, captions are not provided, and the same
can be said for all of the middle- to upper-class people who appear on the show. The
assumption is that we understand what these people are saying. But when the girls, or
any of their working-class family members speak, captions are regularly used,
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suggesting they are unintelligible. Captions, however, are not used every time the
girls speak; they are interjected strategically, often when the girls are discussing topics
like burping and farting. In this way, the captions literally spell out and emphasize
how “out of control” and “grotesque” they are. Even more telling is the camerawork.
Whenever the girls cough, sneeze, sniffle, blow their noses, or display any
combination of these bodily functions, the camera zooms in on their faces to
emphasize the occurrence. Ms. Hickey, on the other hand, is never featured excreting
anything from her body and consistently appears calm, cool, and collected as if to
suggest that she is always this way, both on and off camera, thus authenticating her
ideal white identity.
When Ms. Hickey ends the scene saying, “The bodily function thing, we don’t do
that,” she sets herself apart from Pumpkin and Alana and thus protects her race and
class privilege. Her statement reinforces Nakayama and Krizek’s claim that whiteness
can maintain its invisibility and superiority by assigning negative qualities (e.g.,
bodily functions) to white identities associated with marginalized characteristics, such
as poverty.43 Ms. Hickey’s use of the pronoun “we” is particularly troubling because it
suggests that she is speaking on behalf of all white middle to upper class people,
alluding to an “us” versus “them” dichotomy where whiteness, despite its invisibility,
has clear boundaries. White people who are rational, middle- to upper-class, and in
control of their presentation of self (e.g., Ms. Hickey) stay within these boundaries
because they display an ideal whiteness—a whiteness that conforms to dominant
cultural standards. White people who are working-class, uneducated, and seemingly
out of control (e.g., Alana and Pumpkin) exemplify inappropriate whiteness, and, as
such, are relegated to the margins.
We see similar racial border work in “A-Choo” (season 1) when Alana and Mama
June meet Miss Georgia 2011 (Michaela Lackey) at a clothing boutique. This scene is
significant because it is the first time Alana comes face to face with someone she and
her family would like her to be: a beauty queen. The contrasts that emerge are
noteworthy because they make a mockery of Alana’s pageantry pursuits, which
permeate the first season. Viewers are invited to laugh at Alana as she repeatedly fails
to perform white, middle-class, subordinate femininity—the standard for beauty
pageants44—in contrast to Miss Georgia, who effortlessly embodies these qualities.
The bulk of the humor on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is couched in this type of
failure. If Alana were to succeed at being more like Miss Georgia, there would be no
narrative tension on the series and the series therefore would not exist.
While waiting for Michaela to arrive, Mama June says, “We’re hoping she can give
us some advice,” which illustrates her frequent reliance upon experts. Moments later,
Alana, whose hair is tied together in a lopsided ponytail, and is wearing a cotton
sunflower dress that hugs her round stomach, spots Michaela. “There she is, Mama!
There she is!” The instrumental country soundtrack shifts to a chorus of angelic
women’s voices complete with chimes. We hear this same soundtrack in “Runaway
Bride” (season 2) when Mama June lays her eyes on a table full of pizza at her bridal
shower, letting the audience know that Michaela and the pizza are both objects of
desire. The scene cuts to Michaela who is featured in slow motion walking toward the
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boutique. She is wearing an ornate, short, white dress tied together with a brown belt
emphasizing her thin waist. Michaela’s conventional femininity is emphasized by her
accessories and makeup: turquoise feather earrings, high heels, gold bangles, ruby red
lips, and long, dark hair that sways from side to side. The camera captures the sun
radiating around Michaela while she makes her way to the boutique. Her glowing
appearance reinforces Dyer’s claim that idealized white women are often bathed in
light.45 Alana, who is immersed in shadows next to Mama June, puts her hands up to
her eyes, as if looking through a set of binoculars, to focus on the bright image of
ideal femininity.
Alana, Mama June, and Michaela go to a café for dessert. A waiter arrives with
several pieces of cake, one of which Alana grabs with a fork and shoves in her mouth.
The piece is too large and dangles from her lips as she looks up at Michaela and
smiles—a moment the camera zooms in to capture, highlighting Alana’s lack of
manners. With a furrowed brow and halfhearted smile, Michaela looks down at
Alana and says, “That’s not cute. That’s not cute. Let’s not do that.” Alana laughs and
continues to play with her food. Throughout this scene, Alana is presented as
unselfconscious about what she is doing “wrong,” which authenticates her inappropriate whiteness and makes her dream to follow in Michaela’s footsteps seem farfetched. We see a stark contrast emerge between the “classical body” and “grotesque
body.”46 Michaela represents the classical body, which is transcendent, symmetrical,
and sleek—the standard of beauty and perfection as illustrated by her glowing,
angelic-seeming presence. Alana, with her tattered appearance, represents the
“grotesque body,” which is irregular, secreting, and protruding. This juxtaposition
reminds viewers that no matter how hard Alana tries, she will never be a beauty
queen; she is constructed as too aberrant. Instead of legitimizing the family’s dream
for Alana to win a grand supreme title—the highest award in the child beauty
pageant cirtcuit—Michaela’s presence makes this dream laughable. We know Alana
will never be a winner, unless she is competing in a blueberry pie-eating contest
(season 3, “Funk Shway”). Her attempts at pageantry are inevitably futile, but funny
nonetheless. Interestingly, Alana gives up on pageants in subsequent seasons and
instead tries ballet (season 2, “It’s Always Something with Pumpkin”) and
cheerleading (season 3, “The Birds and the Boos”). Alana’s attempts at both of these
historically white, feminine, and middle- to upper-class activities47 are presented
much like her pageantry pursuits. A series of clips show Alana falling on her face,
disobeying instructions, or moving out of sync with the predominately young white
girls by which she is surrounded, thus reinforcing her marginality.
Similar to Alana, all of the white working-class characters on Here Comes Honey
Boo Boo are presented as hypervisible, marked by an undesirable white racial identity
when juxtaposed against ideal white people like Ms. Hickey and Michaela. This
contrast becomes especially clear in “Never Boo-fore Seen” (season 3) when Alana
and her family compete against the white, wealthy, and world-renowned “Cake Boss”
family in the popular American television game show, Family Feud. Instead of
showing the entire game, we see several clips of the “Honey Boo Boo” clan providing
wrong answers, indicated by the sound of a buzzer and large red x’s that appear
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across the screen. We never see the “Cake Boss” team make errors. Predictably, Alana
and her family lose the game and the scene transitions to their living room where
each member is gathered around a couch wearing different outfits, indicating this
was filmed at a different time. With sullen expressions on their faces, they state the
following in unison: “And the survey says, we didn’t win.” Following this strategically
inserted moment is a shot of the “Cake Boss” family celebrating their victory in the
Family Feud studio by jumping around and hugging one another. As they continue
to celebrate, the camera captures Alana and her family slowly walking backstage.
Here, Pumpkin grabs piles of free food spread across a table, and Mama June passes
gas audibly, thanks to the production process, while shoving a free donut in her
mouth—a moment of hypervisibility bolstering the family’s marginal status, as if
losing the game did not send a clear enough message.
We see a similar juxtaposition in “Big Girls Wear Lace Ups” (season 2) when
Mama June and Sugar Bear take a ballroom dance class to prepare for their
upcoming commitment ceremony, a celebration of their love in lieu of a wedding
since June refuses to marry Sugar Bear because he has already had two failed
marriages. As they enter the dance studio, they are greeted by four married couples
and two women instructors—all are white and middle-aged, and appear as middle- to
upper-class in that they are well groomed and clad in ironed dress clothes, formal
ballroom dance shoes, and jewelry consisting of precious stones and rare metals.
Sugar Bear is presented as standing out through a series of close-up shots
emphasizing his dirty brown baseball cap, gray hiking shoes, and dark blue t-shirt
tucked into faded and wrinkled blue jeans. The same can be said for Mama June, who
is the only woman wearing no makeup, has her hair pulled back into a messy bun,
and is sporting her signature black stretch pants, a light gray v-neck shirt with short
sleeves, and plain white sneakers. Based on their wardrobe alone, Mama June and
Sugar Bear do not look like they belong in this elite space typically reserved for
middle- and upper-class people,48 a point made increasingly clear as the scene
unfolds.
At the start of the lesson, Cindy, one of the instructors, looks directly at the camera
and offers advice. “If people can dance together, they can live together,” she says with
big eyes and a smile. “It’s push and pull, give and take.” We then see a close-up of
Mama June stepping on Sugar Bear’s feet as they attempt to dance—strategically
placed to suggest the couple cannot dance together and should not be together. They
are the only couple in the class shown out of sync with each other and the music,
making them hypervisible. Moments later, their hypervisibility is reinforced with a
close-up of Sugar Bear’s left foot stepping on Mama June’s right foot. The instant his
foot touches hers, we hear a dinging bell to emphasize the error. As they continue
trying to dance, June says to Sugar Bear, “Come on! Where are you going? What are
you doing?” while the camera spins around them and shakes, signifying instability.
The focus switches to a couple dancing gracefully and flawlessly nearby. June says to
Sugar Bear, “Look at them.” Sugar Bear responds, “We might be like that one day,” as
the camera features him and June out of sync with each other once again, clearly
mocking Sugar Bear’s hopeful statement. We are invited to recognize and laugh at
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the fact that ballroom dancing is not meant for inappropriate white people, especially
those who do not abide by neoliberal ideals of family where stable marriages between
two heterosexual parents are revered49; this activity is reserved for the ideal white
married couples who surround them. Dichotomous setups like these, which feature
Alana and her family’s overt and seemingly natural inability to blend in with those
who embody ideal whiteness, are what make the show funny, thus couching humor
in failure—a trope that permeates Here Comes Honey Boo Boo; white Othering, in
essence, becomes laughable.
Authenticating Inappropriate Whiteness
Despite the white Othering that occurs throughout Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,
Alana and her family are constructed as content with who they are—a setup that
removes us from feeling implicated in their marginality and the disadvantages they
face as a result. To describe this setup, I draw upon and expand Dubrofsky’s notion
of the “therapeutics of the self,” defined as “the process of affirming a consistent
(unchanged) self across disparate social spaces, verified by surveillance.”50 The
“therapeutics of the self” is useful for my argument because it illuminates how
surveillance functions within the genre of RTV to confirm the authenticity of
participants. I specifically apply the term to show how surveillance is used on Here
Comes Honey Boo Boo to authenticate the inappropriate whiteness with which the
family is associated. The “therapeutics of the self” can be found in almost every
episode when Alana and her family make self-reflexive, therapeutic statements like,
“we are who we are” and “it is what it is,” expressing contentment with who they are
and how they are portrayed. Statements like these are therapeutic not because they
express a desire to change, but because they express self-knowledge, acceptance, and
affirmation. As Dubrofsky explains:
People enacting the “therapeutics of the self” are not, as they are in therapeutic
models, admitting something “bad” about the self to change this “bad” part… but
rather, they admit something “good” about the self and embrace it or admit that
one’s “true” and “authentic” self is good (no matter what that self is like).51
In other words, the therapeutic impetus in the “therapeutics of the self” is selfaffirmation, exemplified in statements like “we are who we are” as well as Pumpkin’s
previously mentioned declaration, “what you see is what you get.” Therapeutic
statements such as these are often strategically positioned against a backdrop of
compiled images from surveillance footage highlighting the family’s deviation from
ideal whiteness, which is made to seem consistent as if the family is always aberrant,
with or without the presence of surveillance cameras.
When Alana and her family engage in the “therapeutics of the self,” they confirm
the consistency in their behavior across disparate social spaces and consequently
authenticate and appear content with their “white Other” status. This contentment
trivializes the material struggles the family’s marginal status affords. As mentioned,
the seven family members live off of only one reported source of income: Sugar
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Bear’s wage from chalk-mining. Though the family does make money from the
show,52 this is never mentioned and therefore not part of how they are constructed.
We see them experience material disadvantages, evidenced primarily by the cramped
three-bedroom, one-bathroom house in which they live. In addition to dealing with
the ear-splitting sound of passing trains in the backyard, the family must sacrifice to
make the most of their small living space: bedrooms are shared, Mama June and her
daughters wash their hair in the kitchen sink, and the dining room functions both as
a place to eat and as a storage space for stockpiles of discounted goods. Privacy is also
compromised. For instance, in “Turn This Big Mama On” (season 2), Sugar Bear
attempts to seduce Mama June in their bedroom but Chubbs bursts through the door
saying, “I gotta pee.” We then see Sugar Bear say to the camera: “It’s kinda hard
getting any privacy in the house because to get to the bathroom, the laundry room,
uh the other girls’ room they have to come through mine and June’s room to get
there. June and I get no privacy.” The family also eats unhealthy bulk food to save
money, and experiences related health problems like obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Frequent shots of laughter and joy, accompanied by family members expressing
contentment via the “therapeutics of the self,” tend to overshadow these and other
disadvantages.
The “therapeutics of the self” first appears in “This is My Crazy Family,” (season 1)
when Mama June introduces her family. While June is speaking, a country-infused
slapstick soundtrack plays in the background as we see clips of family members
engaging in the following activities while smiling and laughing: Sugar Bear flipping his
four-wheeler into a muddy ditch, Alana sitting on a couch with her family as they
collectively admire their loudly squealing pet pig, Alana throwing mud on Chubbs’s face
in the back of a pickup truck, and Chubbs diving headfirst into a mud pit. Most of these
activities involve mud, which, as Hartigan states, “produces a bit of ‘color’ to
whiteness,”53 and, in this case, literalizes the hypervisibility with which the family is
associated. What we witness, however, is not a new phenomenon. Poor and workingclass white people have been perceived as dirty since the mid-eighteenth century54—a
perception that defies the invisibility associated with normative ideal whiteness. As
similar clips of family activities continue to be shown, Mama June says: “Our family is
crazy. We like to be ourselves. You either like us, or you don’t like us. We just don’t
care.” Here she engages the “therapeutics of the self” because she makes a series of selfaffirming statements expressing how content she is with her consistently crazy, dirty,
and happy family—a consistency verified through the images compiled from
surveillance video clips, which appear on the screen.
June’s expression of the “therapeutics of the self” is most noticeable when she says
her catchphrase, “It is what it is,” which suggests she is comfortable with how she and
her family are portrayed. June says this phrase so often it becomes the title of the last
episode in the first season. At the end of this episode, June narrates over a series of
clips, filled with laughter, featuring the family’s summer adventures: a trip to the
“Redneck Games” (where Alana and her sisters compete in, and subsequently lose,
the “mudpit belly flop”), a futile attempt to raise a pig (evidenced by when it
ejaculates on the family’s kitchen table), two pageant competitions (both of which
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Alana loses), and a trip to the waterpark. Each of these activities is made to seem
unorthodox through a country-infused slapstick soundtrack that plays in the
background as well as camera angles, which do things like make Mama June appear
too large to fit on a waterslide and in an inner tube at the water park. While these
“unorthodox” activities appear on the screen, June uses her famous catchphrase,
affirming her family’s seemingly consistent deviant behavior and their contentment
despite this.
A similar moment involving the “therapeutics of the self” occurs in “She Ooo’d
Herself” (season 1), when Mama June sets up the “redneck slip ‘n slide” in her
backyard, a tarp lined with baby oil and soap that her daughters—fully clothed—take
turns sliding across as she sprays them with the water hose. A camera is placed at the
end of the tarp so the girls look as if they are sliding toward us while the familiar
slapstick soundtrack plays in the background. We are invited to gaze upon these girls
as they happily and unselfconsciously defy conventional norms of femininity by
rolling around in mud, water, soap, and grass. While this occurs, periodic shots of a
train and railroad crossing sign appear to reinforce and remind us of their class
status: they live on the “wrong side of the tracks.” June, as the scene comes to a close,
says, “We are who we are. We like having fun. If you’re not having fun doing it, then
why do it to begin with?” Although the behaviors of June’s daughters are framed as
deviant, June, by saying “we are who we are,” reframes these behaviors as integral to
her family’s identity. Her words exemplify the “therapeutics of the self” because they
communicate personal and familial knowledge, acceptance, and pride.
What is significant about this scene—and other scenes in which we witness the
“therapeutics of the self”—is that the family members are displayed as having
complete autonomy in how they present themselves, and their contentment with this
presentation, under surveillance. While the family is featured laughing and having
fun, producers interject therapeutic statements they make (e.g., “it is what it is”)
justifying the appropriateness and authenticity of their behavior. Taking into account
the production process, positioning these statements against a backdrop of
consistently “deviant” surveilled behaviors is a strategy. As Jones indicates, the
constructedness of a RTV show can help confirm the authenticity of participants. If,
under surveillance, they appear to behave naturally in an artificial context, their
actions can be trusted and considered sincere.55 In the context of Honey Boo Boo,
surveillance, when combined with the “therapeutics of the self,” does not just affirm
the family’s consistency; it affirms their consistent failure to abide by the standards
associated with ideal whiteness” such as rationality, invisibility, and self-control—
standards the middle- to upper-class white people who appear on the show are
presented as naturally possessing. Consequently, the family’s consistent display of
inappropriate whiteness is authenticated.
As mentioned, Alana and her family seem content despite the white Othering that
occurs. Their family unit is strong. From helping Chickadee through her pregnancy
to attending every one of Alana’s pageant competitions, they share a bond that is
hard to sever—one that challenges the idealization of traditional, white, middle-class,
nuclear families because it demonstrates that blended families can work. As well,
283
Mama June and her daughters break several conventions of femininity: they eat what
they want, are agentic and outspoken, openly flaunt and talk about their bodily
functions, and wear clothing that is generic and comfortable rather than fashionable
and restrictive. In these ways, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is progressive; the show
provides a glimpse into the lives of white working-class people who are happy and
who defy gendered, racial, and familial ideals. At the same time, the show is
regressive because the family’s defiance is amplified, authenticated, and premised on
their class status, which becomes the source of humor. Instead of sympathizing and
identifying with white working-class people, shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo
teach us to laugh at them, making it difficult to access larger critiques about
structural inequalities.
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is also regressive because it reinforces what Thomas
and Callahan call “the myth of the happy poor,” or the idea that “money doesn’t buy
happiness.”56 A quintessential moment illustrating this idea occurs in “Funk Shway”
(season 3). In this episode, the family members are piled together in a tangled heap
on top of Mama June and Sugar Bear’s camouflage decorated bed after an
unsuccessful attempt at searching for a bigger house. “Okay, the grand finale,” says
Mama June, “we’re going to stay in McIntyre!” The girls cheer, and the scene
transitions to an aside featuring Sugar Bear, who says, “I’d love to get another
bathroom in this house but heck if I had a porta potty, I’d settle for it.” Back in the
bedroom, we see the family members gather their hands together and then lift them
high as they collectively shout, “Making memories!” Mama June echoes the
sentiment with her infamous phrase, “It is what it is,” expressing contentment with
the family’s housing situation. As everyone continues to cheer, Mama June’s
contentment is elaborated in a strategically inserted private confession: “If it’s not
broke, don’t fix it. We got a roof over our head. We’re together. I know we’ve got a
trailer in our front yard and we’re on top of one another. Even though we’ve gotta
wait for a while to take a poop, I mean so be it, I mean it’s our home.” Scenes like
this, which perpetuate the “myth of the happy poor,” function to limit social mobility
and preserve the status quo. When poverty is equated with happiness, material
struggles are trivialized. This is not to say the family is not genuinely happy at times,
but when their happiness is foregrounded enough to obscure the economic hardships
they face, we are invited to become complacent. We need not feel implicated in this
family’s struggles if they always seem happy despite them.
A Cautionary Conclusion
Throughout Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, producers use Alana and her family to
demonstrate and reinforce working-class limits to propriety. As Lawler indicates,
entry to the middle class can be difficult for white working-class citizens because of
the ways in which they are ridiculed.57 RTV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo
amplify this ridicule when using surveillance to make the “deviant” behavior of white
working-class citizens seem consistent and authentic; through this process, people
284
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like Alana and her family become exemplars of inappropriate whiteness. Surveillance,
in essence, works in the service of authenticating a naturalized form of whiteness that
is bad; and, by default, bolsters an ideal form of whiteness. The classed bodies of
Alana and her family are put on display, like a spectacle, to warn viewers what can
happen when people refuse to conform to dominant cultural standards affiliated with
ideal whiteness: they are pushed to the margins and not taken seriously. In short,
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo combines surveillance with spectacle to create a
cautionary tale that re-centers ideal whiteness and reinforces neoliberal ideals: be
wealthy, rational, personally responsible, and in control, or else. While shows like this
offer white working-class people a chance to be in the spotlight and have their voices
heard, their sole function in this spotlight is to show what not to do and who not to
be in the United States today. This damning setup is part of a larger neoliberal
framework that reinforces the demonization of the white working-class population,
which continues to prevail in the US cultural landscape.
At the same time Alana and her family are constructed as authentic exemplars of
inappropriate whiteness, they also seem content with who they are—a contentment
that, though seemingly genuine, is heavily emphasized to conceal the hardships they
face. Viewers are invited to become complacent by recognizing that the marginality
of white working-class people is deserved and—as verified through surveillance—
natural. White working-class people can never succeed even if they try, so we need
not worry. Through this logic, neoliberalism’s push to dismantle the welfare state is
reinforced, widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
In a highly popular show like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, it is not surprising to
find a setup like the one described above, where problematic ideas centered on class,
race, and gender are reinforced. Critical scholars of RTV should not only point out
these ideas but also continue to develop strategies for understanding and describing
how these ideas come to be authenticated within the genre, and the role stylistic
choices play in this process. With the increasing growth of the RTV genre where
representations of poor and working-class citizens are abundant,58 as well as
neoliberalism’s push to hold these individuals accountable for their struggles, this
task is now more important than ever. The more scholars can make the process of
authentication visible, the more they can challenge the narrow ideas that emerge to
make room for emancipatory possibilities, which can benefit those who have
experienced disenfranchisement in the neoliberal era.
Notes
[1]
[2]
Adam Kepler, “‘Honey Boo Boo’ Has the Ratings, if Not the Critics”, The New York Times
Online, September 8, 2012, http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/honey-boo-boohas-the-ratings-if-not-the-critics/ (accessed December 15, 2013).
Michelle Tauber, “TLC Cancels Here Comes Honey Boo Boo Amid Sex Offender Scandal,”
People, October 14, 2014, http://www.people.com/article/honey-boo-boo-canceled-tlc
(accessed December 21, 2014).
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
285
Jennifer Kizer, “Redneckognize! Why Honey Boo Boo Captivated Us This Year”, iVillage,
December 12, 2012, http://www.ivillage.com/why-honey-boo-boo-captivated-us-year/1-a508171 (accessed December 15, 2013).
For more information about this term, see David Shipler, The Working Poor: Invisible in
America (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2004); and Michael Zweig, The Working Class
Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011),
86. Shipler explains that the working-class, also known as the working poor, consists of
people who work for wages, especially low wages, including unskilled and semiskilled
laborers. Zweig adds that the working-class is not immune to poverty. In fact, more than half
of this population experiences poverty at least once over a ten-year period, meaning they are
forced to rely on public assistance to survive. Throughout this essay, whenever I mention the
working-class, I am referring to those who, whether they are experiencing poverty or not,
engage in intensive labor and still struggle to make ends meet.
Mark Andrejevic, Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched (New York: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2004); Rachel E. Dubrofsky, “The Bachelor: Whiteness in the Harem,” Critical
Studies in Media Communication 23, issue 1 (2006): 39–56; Richard Kilborn, Staging the
Real: Factual Programming in the Age of Big Brother (Manchester, UK: Manchester
University Press, 2003)
Jon Kraszewski, “Country Hicks and Urban Cliques: Mediating Race, Reality, and Liberalism
on MTV’s The Real World,” in Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, ed. Susan Murray
and Laurie Ouellette (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 179–96.
Mark Andrejevic and Dean Colby, “Racism and Reality TV: The Case of MTV’s Road Rules,”
in How Real is Reality TV? Essays on Representation and Truth, ed. David S. Escoffery
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006), 195–211.
Dubrofsky, “Whiteness in the Harem,” 41.
John Reed, Southern Folk, Plain and Fancy: Native White Social Types (Athens: University of
Georgia Press, 1988).
See Laura Grindstaff, The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002); Diana Kendall, Framing Class: Media
Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,
2005); Gael Sweeney, “The Trashing of White Trash: Natural Born Killers and the
Appropriation of the White Trash Aesthetic,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 18, issue
2 (2001): 143–55.
See Angela Cooke-Jackson and Elizabeth K. Hansen, “Appalachian Culture and Reality TV:
The Ethical Dilemma of Stereotyping Others”, Journal of Mass Media Ethics 23 (2008): 183–
200; Julie Haynes, “Gators, Beavers, and Roaches: Whiteness and Regional Identity in Reality
Television,” in Images of Whiteness, ed. Clarissa Behar and Anastasia Chung (Oxford: InterDisciplinary Press, 2013), 79–88.
Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn, Reality TV: Realism and Television (London: Wallflower
Press, 2005).
Julie Haynes, ‘“I See Swamp People’: Swamp People, Southern Horrors, and Reality
Television,” in Reality Television: Oddities of Culture, ed. Allison F. Slade and Burton P.
Buchanan (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 249–62.
David Harvey, “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction,” The Annals of the American
Academic of Political and Social Science 610, issue 1 (2007): 21–44.
Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose, eds., Foucault and Political Reason:
Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Rationalities of Government (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1996).
Laurie Ouellette, “‘Take Responsibility for Yourself.’ Judge Judy and the Neoliberal Citizen,”
in Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, ed. Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette (New
286
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]
[23]
[24]
[25]
[26]
[27]
[28]
[29]
T. R. Rennels
York: New York University Press, 2004), 231–50; Helen Wood and Beverley Skeggs, “Notes
on Ethical Scenarios of Self on British Reality TV,” Feminist Media Studies 4 (2004): 205–8.
Nick Couldry, “Reality TV, Or The Secret Theater of Neoliberalism”, Review of Education,
Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 30, issue 1 (2008): 3–13; Amy Adele Hasinoff, “Fashioning
Race for the Free Market on America’s Next Top Model,” Critical Studies in Media
Communication 25, issue 3 (2008): 324–43; John McMurria, “Desperate Citizens and Good
Samaritans: Neoliberalism and Makeover Reality TV,” Television & New Media 9, issue 4
(2008): 305–32; Laurie Ouellette and James Hay, Better Living Through Reality TV (Malden,
MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008); Katherine Sender, “Queens for a Day: Queer Eye for the
Straight Guy and the Neoliberal Project,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 23, issue
2 (2006): 131–51.
See Pepi Leistyna, “Social Class and Entertainment Television: What’s So Real and New
About Reality TV?” in Media/Cultural Studies: Critical Approaches, ed. Rhonda Hammer
and Douglas Kellner (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 339–59.
Rachel E. Dubrofsky, The Surveillance of Women on Reality Television: Watching The
Bachelor and The Bachelorette (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011).
Suzanna Danuta Walters, Material Girls: Making Sense of Feminist Cultural Theory
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
Christine Brennan, “Tonya, Nancy Reflect on The Whack Heard ‘Round the World,”
USA TODAY, January 3, 2014, http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2014/01/02/
christine-brennan-tonya-harding-nancy-kerrigan/4294753/ (accessed August 18, 2013).
Bonnie J. Dow, Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s
Movement Since 1970 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), xix.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan
(London: Penguin, 1977).
Jeffrey A. Brown, “Class and Feminine Excess: The Strange Case of Anna Nicole Smith,”
Feminist Review 81 (2005): 74–94; John S. Turner, “Collapsing the Interior/Exterior
Distinction: Surveillance, Spectacle, and Suspense in Popular Cinema,” Wide Angle 20
(1998): 93–123.
Harvey, “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction.”
Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
Mark Andrejevic, Reality TV; Nick Couldry, “Playing for Celebrity: Big Brother as Ritual
Event”, Television & New Media 3, issue 3 (2002) 284–91; Rachel E. Dubrofsky and Emily D.
Ryalls, “The Hunger Games: Performing Not-performing to Authenticate Femininity and
Whiteness,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 31, issue 5 (2014): 395–409.
Hereafter, I will not put “inappropriate whiteness” or “ideal whiteness” in quotation marks,
but they should be understood as such, since they are not “real” concepts; they are
constructed and made to seem authentic in the context of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. My
use of the term “inappropriate whiteness” is inspired by Robyn Wiegman’s conceptualization
of “counterwhiteness,” which is defined by its disaffiliation from white supremacist practices
[see Robyn Wiegman, “Whiteness Studies and the Paradox of Particularity,” Boundary 2 26,
issue 3 (1999): 115–50]. I favor the term “inappropriate whiteness,” since “counterwhiteness”
suggests that someone who can easily claim a white physical identity can choose to
disconnect themselves from the privilege whiteness affords—a choice that white workingclass people may never have because their socioeconomic status automatically disconnects
them from such privilege.
Richard Dyer, White: Essays on Race and Culture (London: Routledge, 1997); Thomas K.
Nakayama and Robert L. Krizek, “Whiteness: A Strategic Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of
Speech 81, issue 3 (1995): 291–309; Matt Wray, White Trash and the Boundaries of
Whiteness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
287
[30] Thomas K. Nakayama and Judith N. Martin, Whiteness: The Communication of Social
Identity (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999).
[31] Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz, White Trash: Race and Class in America (New York:
Routledge, 1997), 3.
[32] George Yancy, Look, a White!: Philosophical Essays on Whiteness (Philadelphia: Temple
[33] Brent M. Heavner, “Liminality and Normative Whiteness: A Critical Reading of Poor White
Trash”, Ohio Communication Journal 45 (2007): 65–80.
[34] Robins DiAngelo, “My Class Didn’t Trump My Race: Using Oppression to Face Privilege”,
Multicultural Perspectives 8, issue 1 (2006): 52–56.
[35] Grindstaff, The Money Shot; Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray, “What is ‘White Trash’?
Stereotypes and Economic Conditions of Poor Whites in the United States,” in Whiteness: A
Critical Reader, ed. Mike Hill (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 168–94; Wray,
White Trash and Boundaries of Whiteness.
[36] Sarah Banet-Weiser, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National
Identity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999); Beverley Skeggs, Formations of
Class and Gender (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997); Valerie Walkerdine, Daddy’s Girl:
Young Girls and Popular Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
[37] Stephanie Lawler, “Disgusted Subjects: the Making of Middle-Class Identities”, The
Sociological Review 53, issue 3 (2005): 435–36.
[38] Ouellette and Hay, Better Living; Wood and Skeggs, “Notes on Ethical Scenarios.”
[39] Wood and Skeggs, “Notes on Ethical Scenarios.”
[40] Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (London:
Methuen, 1986), 12.
[41] Mary Russo, The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess, and Modernity (New York: Routledge, 1995).
[42] Mariana Valverde, “Governing Out of Habit,” Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 18 (1998):
217–42.
[43] Nakayama and Krizek, “Whiteness: A Strategic Rhetoric.”
[44] Sarah Banet-Weiser and Laura Portwood-Stacer, “‘I just want to be me again!’ Beauty
Pageants, Reality Television, and Post-Feminism,” Feminist Theory 7, issue 2 (2006): 255–72.
[45] Dyer, White, 87.
[46] Russo, The Female Grotesque.
[47] Laura Grindstaff and Emily West, “‘Hands on Hips, Smiles on Lips!’ Gender, Race, and the
Performance of Spirit in Cheerleading,” Text and Performance Quarterly 30, issue 2 (2010):
143–62; Jennifer Fisher, “Ballet and Whiteness: Will Ballet Forever Be the Kingdom of the
Pale?” in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity, ed. Anthony Shay (Oxford: Oxford
[48] Joanna Bosse, “Whiteness and the Performance of Race in American Ballroom Dance,”
Journal of American Folklore 120, issue 475 (2007): 19–37.
[49] Colleen Mack-Canty and Sue Wright, “Family Values as Practiced by Feminist Parents
Bridging Third-Wave Feminism and Family Pluralism,” Journal of Family Issues 25, issue 7
(2004): 851–80.
[50] Rachel E. Dubrofsky, “‘Therapeutics of the Self’: Surveillance in the Service of the
Therapeutic,” Television and New Media 8, issue 4 (2007): 130.
[51] Ibid., 131.
[52] Gina Salamone, “‘Honey Boo Boo Family’ Gets at Least $10,000 Salary Bump Per Episode
from TLC,” New York Daily News, October 1, 2012, http://www.nydailynews.com/
entertainment/tv-movies/honey-boo-boo-big-raise-tlc-article-1.1172115 (accessed December
15, 2013). Salamone reports that the family made $5,000 to $7,000 per episode when the
288
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[54]
[55]
[56]
[57]
[58]
T. R. Rennels
show first aired. Once ratings proved the show was a hit, the family’s earnings increased to
between $15,000 and $20,000 per episode.
John Hartigan, “Who Are These White People? ‘Rednecks,’ ‘Hillbillies,’ and ‘White Trash’ as
Marked Racial Subjects,” in White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism, ed. Ashley W.
Doane and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (New York: Routledge, 2013), 95–112.
Wray, White Trash and Boundaries of Whiteness.
Janet Megan Jones, “Show Your Real Face,” New Media and Society 5, issue 3 (2003):
400–21.
Sari Thomas and Brian P. Callahan, “Allocating Happiness: TV Families and Social Class,”
Journal of Communication 32, issue 3 (1982): 184.
Lawler, “Getting Out and Getting Away,” 19.
Biressi and Nunn, Reality TV.
A Pressure Chamber of Innovation: Google Fiber
and Flexible Capital
Robert Mejia
To cite this article: Robert Mejia (2015) A Pressure Chamber of Innovation: Google Fiber
and Flexible Capital, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 12:3, 289-308, DOI:
10.1080/14791420.2015.1027240
Published online: 15 Apr 2015.
Article views: 333
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A Pressure Chamber of Innovation:
Google Fiber and Flexible Capital
Downloaded by [46.36.115.253] at 00:55 10 October 2015
Robert Mejia
On March 17, 2010, the United States Federal Communications Commission identified
broadband as “the great infrastructure challenge of the early twenty-first century.” One
month earlier, on February 10, 2010, in anticipation of the FCC’s announcement, Google
announced its intent to build ultra-high-speed broadband networks across the United
States to serve as a model for overcoming this challenge. Since then, Google Fiber, as it is
called, has succeeded in being recognized as a model for other communities interested in
establishing ultra-high-speed broadband infrastructure. This article serves as an analysis
of the political economic consequences of this particular configuration of broadband
infrastructure, and argues that Google Fiber operates as a mechanism of flexible
capital whereby the emphases on short- over long-term relationships, meritocracy over
craftsmanship, and the devaluation of past experience in favor of potential outcomes are
embedded in the institutional and technical infrastructure of ultra-high-speed Internet.
Keywords: Digital Divide; Entrepreneurialism; Flexible Capital; Internet; Uneven
Development
Google Fiber and Flexible Capitalism
Like so many others, I have been interested in understanding what the rollout of
Google’s ultra-high-speed Internet infrastructure, known as Google Fiber, means for
the Kansas City region. Popular press coverage of this infrastructure read like press
releases, replicating many of the talking points included in Google’s original
announcement of its planned fiber-optic network.1 Elise Ackerman of Forbes and
Jeff Bertolucci of PCWorld expressed the widely shared sentiment that Kansas had
“won the Google Fiber jackpot” and that “if you’re not a resident of Kansas City, be
Robert Mejia is at the Department of Communication, SUNY Brockport. Correspondence to: Robert Mejia,
Department of Communication, 226 Holmes Hall, SUNY Brockport, Brockport, NY 14420, USA. Email: rmejia@
brockport.edu.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2015.1027240
290
R. Mejia
jealous. Be very jealous.”2 This warm reception of Google Fiber was the result of
three intersecting processes: (1) a general dissatisfaction with major Internet service
providers and the comparatively favorable public opinion of Google; (2) the United
States Federal Government had just brought the need for a national Internet
infrastructure upgrade into popular consciousness with the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Federal Communications Commission’s 2010
National Broadband Plan; and (3) the Google Fiber project announcement was a
magnificent public relations campaign, with Google treating the rollout like a
nationwide lottery. The result of this convergence of interest was such that
applications representing nearly 1,100 cities were submitted hoping to be the first
city to receive Google Fiber, with one city going so far as to unofficially change its
name to “Google.”3
Though public sentiment remains favorable, some have begun to express concern
regarding the process and consequences of this infrastructure rollout. Commentators
noted that the planned Google Fiber rollout threatened to further entrench Kansas
City’s race and class divide, as early rollout plans generally did not include the
historically impoverished Kansas City east side.4 Others began to question the
legitimacy of the political and economic concessions made to attract Google to
the region.5 And still others became disillusioned as Google made a series of public
relations missteps over the course of the rollout.6 I sympathize with these concerns,
but it seems that commentary surrounding Google Fiber tends to gravitate toward
two poles: those who celebrated the promises of Google Fiber (as a startup incubator)
and those who critiqued Google Fiber for failing to live up to its promises (due to
further entrenchment of the digital divide). Though these perspectives are valid, my
interest in Google Fiber is somewhat different; I am interested in understanding what
Google Fiber means in and of itself.
My interest in Google Fiber and the Kansas City region stems from two reasons:
First, Google Fiber’s mode of privatization has been hailed as a model for future
Internet infrastructure advancement7; second, the Kansas City region is representative of many other mid-sized metropolitan areas in the United States. Like many
other mid-sized metropolitan areas across the United States, Kansas City is under
substantial political economic pressure to reconfigure itself in line with the economic
rationality of the global city.8 Though this is true of all cities, major metropolitan
regions, such as New York and London, already possess much of the urban
infrastructure required of being a global city, and thus there is substantially more
political economic upheaval experienced by mid-sized metropolitan regions in
contrast to already established global cities.9 As it pertains to Google Fiber, for
instance, Kansas City needed Google more than the Los Angeles and San Francisco
metropolitan regions did, respectively, and hence Kansas City was willing to sacrifice
the political and economic concessions that these other regions were not. This is why
Kansas City was ultimately selected by Google to serve as the initial site for Google
Fiber.10 These developments suggest that the promise of Google Fiber is that it will
work to reconfigure the political economic infrastructure of Kansas City in terms
Feeling for the State
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amicable to what Richard Sennett has called “flexible capitalism,” no matter what the
cost.11
The concept of flexible capitalism offers a powerful heuristic for thinking through
the relationship between Google Fiber and the Kansas City region. Though the term
shares much in common with the framework of neoliberalism, I believe that flexible
capitalism offers a more grounded heuristic than that of the more popular political
economic concept. Theorists of neoliberalism often speak of it as a totalizing political
economic regime that has come to be entrenched at every level of politics: national,
international, and even local.12 Flexible capitalism, however, emphasizes the
mechanics of late capitalism vis-à-vis the ideology of late capitalism, as opposed to
the other way around.13 This has the effect of reminding us that, though neoliberalism
may exert hegemonic influence, this new economic rationality “is still only a small
part of the whole economy.”14 Hence, flexible capital operates as a powerful analytic
for thinking through late capitalism precisely because the concept orients our
attention to the political economic rationalities mobilized by the policies of late
capitalism: the privileging of short- over long-term relationships; the emphasis on
meritocracy over craftsmanship; and the devaluation of past experience in favor of
potential outcomes. These three processes operate as axiological challenges to the
subjects of late capitalism, as they dictate which subjectivities are to be valued and
how we are to relate to one another. This article, as such, is an exploration of how the
infrastructure and political economy of Google Fiber is working to reconfigure the
Kansas City region’s economic value system in terms amenable to flexible capitalism.
Though flexible capital precedes the advent of Google Fiber, my argument is
that this infrastructure contributes to a system of uneven development whereby
populations are being segregated as candidates for entrepreneurial innovation, replete
with all the risk—or political economic trash—and the absolute precarity that being
classified as such entails. To make this argument, this paper is structured as follows:
(1) I illustrate how the implementation of Google Fiber operates as a form of uneven
technological development along race, gender, and class lines; (2) I discuss how
Google Fiber operates as a pressure chamber of innovation, whereby the risk and
reward of entrepreneurialism is intensified; and (3) I document how this precarious
valuation of the entrepreneur as the model citizen of flexible capital treats “nonentrepreneurial” populations as political economic trash.
Race, Gender, Class, and Uneven Technological Development
The myth of the entrepreneur is that we live in an economy of scope rather than
scale, wherein small, flexible firms are leading the way toward niche marketing and
decentralization. The reality, as Doreen Massey reminds us, is that “within the
economic system power is related to size.”15 Indeed, we live in a moment when
multinational corporations have consolidated their influence at multiple economic
layers: global, national, regional, and local.16 The consequence of this consolidation is
that there is ever greater pressure for “flexibility” exerted on the worker, as the locus
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R. Mejia
of economic control has—in contrast to the rhetoric of entrepreneurialism—shifted
from local and regional markets to national and international markets.17 This is
owing to a number of reasons. First, the concentration of wealth has resulted in a shift
from managerial to shareholder power. Second, the rise in finance capital has placed
greater emphasis on short- rather than long-term wealth generation. Third, new
communication technologies have resulted in more powerful forms of surveillance
and control at distance. Combined, these three developments mean that workers must
continually respond to the pressures of a perpetual present, whereby the ability to
plan for the future in terms of long-term employment, income stability, and technical
employability is hindered.18 That said, the burdens (and rewards) of flexible capital
operate unevenly across the parameters of race, gender, class, and other markers of
identity.19 It is this unevenness that requires further introspection as we reflect upon
those bodies who, however tentatively, take up the title of entrepreneur.
In contrast to the common refrain that the entrepreneurial subject is a self-made
individual, labor historians and sociologists note that the bourgeois class sustains
itself through a system of uneven development, whereby certain entrepreneurial
subjects are enabled and others are disabled.20 Moreover, as Doreen Massey notes, it
is not enough to speak of the uneven support for some entrepreneurial subjects over
others in terms of that there is better support “in some places than others,” but rather
that “uneven development must be conceptualized in terms of the basic [relations]
society”:
The term “relations” is important, and is actually much more appropriate than
“building-blocks.” For the classes are not structured as blocks which exist as
discrete entities in society, but are precisely constituted in relation to each other.21
Hence, if entrepreneurs are not self-made populations but instead come into
existence in relation to other populations, then it seems necessary to understand
the uneven relations that are being produced in order to give form to the high-tech
entrepreneurs of the Kansas City region.
Contrary to journalistic accounts and press releases, the Kansas City startup
community did not emerge ex nihilo. Rather, Google, Kansas City, and finance
capital worked together to position the startup community as a centerpiece of the
Google Fiber experiment. When it was announced that Google Fiber would be
coming to Kansas City, the promise was that this infrastructure would position
Kansas City to become a leader in education, health, and economic development.22
Yet, as residents began to pre-register for Google Fiber (which was necessary for the
service), it quickly became clear that some communities were at a structural
disadvantage for receiving the service; to register, residents needed a credit or debit
card, a Google Wallet account, a Gmail account, and to pay a $300 startup fee, all
economic barriers to residents in many neighborhoods that “don’t even have bank
accounts.”23 Equally disabling, for those renting a house or apartment, Google
required landlords to pay the $300 startup fee for each rental unit. This would cost a
mid-sized apartment complex of 50 units $15,000 to install Google Fiber for its
tenants; for landlords with multiple properties or a large complex, the cost can
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24
quickly rise to over $100,000. As a result, it is not surprising that as of December
2014, only a handful of Google Fiber-ready apartments exist on the east side of
Troost Avenue, the city’s historical racial and class divide, in contrast to the
abundance of fiber-ready apartments on the much wealthier and racially white west
side (see Figure 1).
This absence is particularly damning as Kansas City is a hypersegregated
metropolitan area, with a white racial isolation index of 90.52 percent in 2000 and
a racial index of dissimilarity of 61.2 percent (vis-à-vis blacks) in 2010, meaning that
over 60 percent of the white population would need to relocate to black
neighborhoods for racial integration to exist.25 This hypersegregation is compounded
by the fact that black “residents are more likely than poor whites to live in
neighborhoods plagued by extreme and concentrated poverty, economic and physical
deterioration, and poor schools,” and thus “black residents are likely to be separated,
both socially and spatially, from the areas of expanding job growth and economic
development.”26 Considering that only 41.1 percent of blacks are homeowners in the
Kansas City region, this means that the vast majority of the Kansas City black
population is heavily restricted in their access to an infrastructure that was courted
by the city on the basis of its transformation of Kansas City into an economic
Figure 1. Map of apartments connected with Google Fiber in the Kansas City
metropolitan area (courtesy of Google, “Apartments Connected with Fiber in Kansas
City,” Google, https://ﬁber.google.com/propertymanager/kansascity/apartments/). I have
highlighted the path of Troost Avenue as it cuts across Kansas City, Missouri so as to help
illustrate the disparity of Fiber-ready apartments on the Kansas City eastside.
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R. Mejia
powerhouse.27 In contrast, since “poor whites are much more dispersed throughout
the metropolitan area and more likely to live in economically viable neighborhoods,”
the 26.9 percent of whites who are not homeowners in Kansas City are much more
likely to have both private and public access to Google Fiber infrastructure.28 And,
again, this is all evidenced by the significant imbalance between fiber-ready rental units
available on the historically white west side vis-à-vis the historically black east side.
If African Americans and people of color are at a structural disadvantage when it
comes to access to Google Fiber, however, an abundance of resources have been
made available to facilitate access for white populations, particularly white, middle
class men. The much touted Kansas City Startup Village, for instance, is located
within the neighborhoods of Hanover Heights/Spring Valley, Frank Rushton, West
Plaza North, and West Plaza South. Though whites only represent 51.4 percent of the
Kansas City region, whites constitute roughly 70.9 percent of the neighborhoods
surrounding the Startup Village.29 Considering that the majority of the Startup
Village is located near State Line Road, which is adjacent to the West Plaza North
neighborhood (86.1 percent white), the white isolation index of this community is
likely higher.30 Likewise, the Kauffman Foundation (one of the largest private
foundations in the United States) regularly hosts entrepreneurial workshops in the
Southmoreland neighborhood, which with its white isolation index of 83.9 percent is
another hypersegregated part of the Kansas City region.31 Indeed, a Kauffman
Foundation survey found that whites constituted 96 percent of its entrepreneurial
community (with only 16 percent being female).32 Evidence of this uneven racial and
gendered support extends to the free housing and office space programs offered for
entrepreneurs. For instance, The Homes for Hackers Program offers entrepreneurs
three months of free rent at a house in the Kansas City Startup Village. As of this
writing, the home has officially hosted twenty-two entrepreneurs: sixteen whites (72.7
percent) and five Asians (22.6 percent [three were international residents]); of these,
twenty were male (90.9 percent), and only one was female (4.5 percent); notably no
official residents were of African or Latino descent.33 This ratio holds true for
another free housing program, Brad Feld’s Fiberhouse (which offers one year of free
residence), with three white male and one Asian female residents, and hence may
hold true for other hosting programs as well.34
So, although Kansas City is home to a vibrant community of activists and civil
servants dedicated to public service, the political economic resources available to
marginalized communities pales in comparison with those made available to white
populations.35 For instance, the Plaza Branch Library and Central Library, two of
Kansas City’s largest public libraries (and both recently renovated), are located within
or immediately adjacent to business districts hostile to black populations.36 In
contrast, the Lucile H. Bluford and Southeast Branch, which are located in heavily
segregated and impoverished black communities, with 44.1 percent and 41.9 percent
of their residents living below poverty respectively, were constructed in 1988 and
1995, and combined possess less than half as many computers for their adult patrons
as the Plaza Branch Library and Central Library, even though computer/Internet use
at these two libraries are amongst the highest of all Kansas City branches.37
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This conversation regarding the political economic and racial segregation of the
Kansas City region vis-à-vis Google Fiber is not intended to merely suggest that some
communities in Kansas City are better prepared for Google Fiber than others, but
rather to emphasize the relational nature of the uneven development that undergirds
this level or lack of preparedness. The combination of Google’s registration policies,
the hostility to black populations, and the allocation of investment toward white
communities and business districts relative to others constitute political and
economic choices that grant white populations access to certain opportunities while
denying those same opportunities to black populations. Likewise, we must remain
sensitive to the fact that entrepreneurial spaces are almost always structured for a
particular configuration of masculinity absent of familial and community obligations.38 So, although it is admirable that the Kansas City public library system was
able to raise one thousand dollars to help the Lucile H. Bluford and Southeast Branch
communities meet their Google Fiber registration requirements, it is important to
keep this struggle for one thousand dollars in mind as we continue to think through
the problem of predominantly white, middle class men receiving free rent and other
forms of institutional support to establish high-tech startups in Kansas City.
A Pressure Chamber of Innovation
Joseph Schumpeter, the great theorist of entrepreneurialism, recognized that the
entrepreneur did not exist for herself but rather lived for the “entire bourgeois
stratum.”39 The entrepreneur did not constitute a social class but rather, in cases of
entrepreneurial success, “the bourgeois class absorbs them and their families and
connections, thereby recruiting and revitalizing itself.”40 To this end, capitalism not
only establishes a series of institutions designed to condition the performance of “the
individuals and families that at any given time form the bourgeois class, [but also]
ipso facto […] selects the individuals and families that are to rise into that class or to
drop out of it.”41 Though material wealth would seem to be a marker of existing in
the bourgeois stratum, class constitutes not just an economic threshold but a whole
way of life. Indeed, we live in both a material and affect economy, with our affect
economy outpacing our material economy.42 In fact, since the emergence of
neoliberalism as a political economic policy in the 1980s, the value of financial
assets increased from 120 percent worldwide GDP in 1980 to 355 percent of in
2007.43 In this faith-based economy, confidence in one’s ability to “dwell in disorder”
has emerged as a requisite of the bourgeois lifestyle.44
The fabrication of confidence that is so necessary for our contemporary economic
system, however, introduces a contradiction. First, Schumpeter believed confidence
to be a good thing in and of itself, as this attribute enables the entrepreneurial subject
to operate “beyond the range of familiar beacons and to overcome that resistance
[through] aptitudes that are present in only a small fraction of the population” and
thus “revolutionize the economic organism.”45 Yet, if confidence is a requisite of
healthy capitalist functioning and, over time, the production of confidence is
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increasingly needed for a healthy political economic system, then confidence is
untethered from the very material conditions needed to warrant confidence. To
illustrate this contradiction, entrepreneurialism is increasingly valorized as the future
of the global economy even though the failure rate ranges from 30 to 80 percent
depending upon how failure is defined (with complete liquidation resulting 30–40
percent of the time and failure to see a return on investment resulting 70–80 percent
of the time).46 Second, the consequence of this contradiction is that the confidence
fabricated is not just unwarranted but results in a negative cumulative effect:
entrepreneurs who failed in the past are as likely, if not more likely, to fail in
subsequent projects than first-time entrepreneurs47; likewise, though serial entrepreneurs are more likely to succeed in future endeavors than first-time entrepreneurs,
the success rate between first- and second-projects diminishes from 37 percent to 29
percent respectively.48 This means that there exists substantial pressure to get it right
the first time as past success does not necessarily beget future success and first-time
failure jeopardizes one’s ability to procure future venture capital funding. Nevertheless, echoing the earlier work of Schumpeter, many continue to discount this rate of
failure as a necessary consequence of healthy capitalist development.49
The valorization of entrepreneurial precarity is well in line with the logic of
bourgeois ideology outlined by Joseph Schumpeter, and which has been further
refined by neoliberalism and the processes of flexible capitalism. Schumpeter feared
that since “capitalist enterprise, by its very achievements, tends to automatize
progress,” it would oust the entrepreneur and expropriate from “the bourgeoisie as a
class […] not only its income but also what is infinitely more important, its
function.”50 This anxiety was echoed by the influential economist, W.W. Rostow, who
worried that the fruits of late capitalism would breed economic apathy: “what to do
when the increase in real income itself loses its charm? Babies, boredom, three-day
weekends, the moon, or the creation of new inner, human frontiers in substitution for
the imperatives of scarcity”?51 If Schumpeter and Rostow feared that capitalism would
buckle under the weight of its own success, but struggled in conceiving of a possible
solution to this presumed calamity, the proponents of neoliberalism and flexible
capitalism have offered precarity itself as the new economic frontier; as Harvard
Business Professor Shikhar Ghosh approvingly notes, “in Silicon Valley, the fact that
your enterprise has failed can actually be a badge of honor.”52
The campaign surrounding Google Fiber is a part of this positive repositioning of
precarity, as a series of public and private institutions have coalesced to establish the
infrastructure as an entrepreneurial incubator. Google, Kansas City, and the
Kauffman Foundation have invested a substantial amount of resources so as to
attract venture capital and entrepreneurial labor to the Kansas City region.53 These
resources, however, operate as incentives meant to procure the energy of entrepreneurial labor but do not address the consequence of this entrepreneurial activity—
which is massive failure rates and elevated precarity. To do so, in fact, would be
counterproductive from the perspective of flexible capital, for as Kauffman
Foundation senior fellow Paul Kedrosky argues, “Kansas City is on the verge of an
opportunity for unprecedented waste. And that […] could be a wonderful thing.”54
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Like Schumpeter before, Kedrosky believes that capitalism must resist the public
pressure to minimize the production of waste, for to do so would be to undermine
the engine of capitalism. Flexible capital conceives of waste as the excess of
experimentation required of economic growth. The implication, of course, is that
waste operates as a euphemism for the 30–80 percent of entrepreneurial activities
that result in complete liquidation or failure to see a return on investment: Waste is
the term used to refer to those populations whose usefulness has run its course.
This is all consistent with the tenants of flexible capital, in that contrary to the
concept of the incubator, the infrastructure in Kansas City operates more as a
pressure chamber. As Richard Sennett has noted, flexible capitalism is impatient and
as such values short- over long-term relationships, meritocracy over craftsmanship,
and potential outcomes over past experience.55 The Kansas City region has worked to
normalize these practices by acquiescing to many of the political economic demands
of private capital relative to public interests. For instance, Milo Medin, Vice President
of Access Services at Google, notes that the Kansas City region was selected because
the city streamlined its rights-of-way oversight for the company.56 Rights-of-way
oversight matters for, as Medin continues:
laws like the California Environmental Quality Act can make it prohibitively
expensive for companies to invest in new projects […]. Many fine California city
proposals for the Google Fiber project were ultimately passed over in part because
of the regulatory complexity here brought about by CEQA and other rules.57
It is imperative that we understand this positioning of economic vis-à-vis
environmental interests as a form of privileging short- over long-term relationships,
for as Sennett argues, “if institutions no longer provide a long-term frame, the
individual may have to improvise his or her life-narrative, or even do without any
sustained sense of self.”58 Though Sennett is focusing on the social relationships in
the context of global warming, water scarcity, and other environmental crises,
ecological ethics is an essential part of one’s life-narrative.59 The decline in rights-ofway oversight, of which the Kansas City region serves as a model, contributes to this
destabilization of life-narratives by flexible capital in that waste is reconceived as a
positive euphemism encompassing all aspects of worthlessness.60 Though political
economic elites might proudly state, “we waste as much as possible. We waste more
than anybody else in the country, and we’re proud of it,” the interpretation of failure
as a “badge of honor” offers little solace to those whose life-narrative now operates
under the rubric of waste.61
If the consequence of precarity and the emphasis on short- over long-term
relationships is that some populations will be euphemistically conceived as waste, the
byproducts of capitalist progress, the concept of meritocracy disavows the responsibility of institutions toward their respective publics. This principle of meritocracy is
being embedded in the institutional infrastructure of the Kansas City region. First, the
local governments of the Kansas City region acquiesced to Google’s build-to-demand
marketplace approach as opposed to the traditional universal service/public good
approach.62 This demand-based approach, which requires a particular percentage of
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one’s community to register for service in order to obtain individual eligibility, places
the onus of the digital divide on those who suffer from the divide as opposed to those
institutions who establish the divide. Second, though concern about the digital divide
matters, the conversation is often dominated by a sense of techno-utopianism: The
argument that the digital divide is bad often leaves uninterrogated the question of
what is it that we are hoping to close. To be clear, the digital divide is a problem. But
it is a problem precisely because in a society dominated by short- over long-term
relationships, meritocracy over craftsmanship, and potential outcomes versus past
experience, lacking access to the Internet categorically denies impoverished populations the possibility of accessing even these limited pleasures. And yet, instead of
rushing to bring these populations into the fold, and purposefully or inadvertently
transforming them into the standing reserve of flexible capital, as candidates for class
promotion (highly unlikely) or productive waste (highly likely), we ought to
incorporate an analysis of how digital environments operate into our critique of
the digital divide.
As it stands, the environment being established in the Kansas City region is one
whereby the production of entrepreneurial waste is being accelerated. This pressure
chamber of innovation has been institutionalized through a series of interlocking
private mechanisms. First, the Kauffman Foundation established the 1 Million Cups
speaker series (in 2012), where each week two local entrepreneurs give six-minute
presentations (with twenty minutes for questions) about their startups to an audience
of other aspiring entrepreneurs, potential investors, and others. Though the event is
not meant to solicit financial support from investors, entrepreneurs are often under
pressure “to find solutions for their problems with limited time and knowledge,” and
thus it is highly likely that presenters are using this venue to promote their
business.63 Second, the startup community, with support from venture capitalists and
the Kauffman Foundation, has established a handful of short-term, rent free homes
to attract entrepreneurs to the region. Though this opportunity would appear to be of
benefit to would-be entrepreneurs, these opportunities are positioned in relation to
conventional mechanisms of social mobility. For instance, the Kansas City startup
community is heavily influenced by Brad Feld, co-founder of the Foundry Group
venture capital firm, who has argued that “government officials, university
professors, and people at support organizations are ‘feeders,’ not leaders, of the
entrepreneurial community.”64 This antagonistic relationship with conventional
public interests encourages would-be entrepreneurs to let go of conventional support
structures and instead embrace precarity.
The consequence of this precarity, as Sennett argues, is that of living in a constant
state of relative anxiety and uncertainty regarding the present and near-future.65 For
those who are fortunate enough to win short-term, rent free housing in the Kansas
City region, the timeline of progress is measured in terms of three to twelve months.
This is in contrast to conventional institutions of social advancement, such as public
universities, which typically privilege craftsmanship over meritocracy, and thus often
grant four to five years for intellectual and technical maturation. Hence, we must
understand the public and private support for Google Fiber and high-tech
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entrepreneurialism to operate as part of a larger shift in political support for the
mechanisms of flexible capital. This means that conversations about the digital divide
must move beyond questions of mere access and instead consider what it is that we
are accessing: an incubator, or a pressure chamber of innovation? To the extent that
it is the latter, conversations about the digital divide ought to be concerned about the
consequence of conceiving of progress as the production of waste. For if flexible
capital operates as the second coming of social Darwinism, then what does it have to
say about those populations who have little hope of even aspiring to be conceived as
waste?
High-Tech Waste/Low-Tech Trash
In her analysis of the concept of pollution, the anthropologist Mary Douglas denied
dirt the status of being an ontological absolute and instead reconfigured the label as
an axiological judgment by one population toward another group or thing.66 Waste
occupies a specialized form of dirt in that even the most well-functioning of systems
is unable to account for all that it produces. Economic systems, like all systems, are
not immune and hence different economic systems account for and process matter
more or less ethically than others. Flexible capital and neoliberal economic policies
are particularly notorious for simultaneously valorizing the production of excess
waste (in terms of both economic disparity and environmental degradation) and
condemning the consequence of this excess waste (in terms of a failure of personal
responsibility and the justification for the deconstruction and reconstruction of social
institutions along race, gender, and class lines).67 Kauffman Foundation senior fellow
Paul Kedrosky illustrates this stance when he valorizes the advent of Google Fiber as
an “opportunity for unprecedented waste.”68 The question remains, however, as to
how flexible capital responds to and operates upon those populations who have
already been defined as waste in advance; that is, if high-tech “waste” is valorized as a
necessary byproduct of capitalist progress, then what of that low-tech “trash” that is
of little entrepreneurial value in the first place?
Though the precarity experienced by the candidates for high-tech entrepreneurialism is substantial, it matters whether one is considered a candidate for high-tech
waste rather than treated as a form of low-tech trash. The first means that though
one’s individual welfare may be disregarded, as a whole this population is valued as
an essential part of the political economic system, and hence worthy of some
collective investment. The second means that both one’s individual and collective
welfare is disregarded as an unessential part of the political economic system, and
hence unworthy of any substantial form of collective investment. That is, the first
population is afforded the opportunity, however marginal, to reap the rewards of
flexible capital, whereas the second population is confined to maintaining the
inflexible substructure of flexible capital as the low-paid and disrespected service
workers and manual labors with minimal prospects for financial security nor upward
mobility. Though this fate of financial insecurity and economic immobility may await
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those in the first category, for those in the second, this fate is all but guaranteed. As
Dean Starkman notes:
Due to historic factors, black workers predominate in fields less likely to offer
employer-based health insurance, sick leave, child care, retirement plans, and other
benefits. So black resources are much more often needed to cover emergencies and
day-to-day expenses, while whites are able to put more of their earnings aside. As a
result […] every extra dollar of income earned by whites generates $5.19 in new
wealth over 25 years, while another dollar of income for a black family adds a mere
69 cents to its bottom line. A penny saved is a nickel earned for whites—but less
than 1 cent for blacks.69
The net effect of this disparity in precarity is that even though a substantial amount
of whites may be processed as the waste byproducts of flexible capital, as a collective
the wealth generated from this economic system disproportionately benefits white
populations. This is in contrast to black and Latino populations, who have seen their
collective wealth remain relatively stagnant.70
Google Fiber is a part of this history of uneven development that ought to be
understood as more than merely uneven support, but rather, categorical effacement.
The digital divide is not about a gap in accessing new opportunities—such as reading
and writing code, as important as that may be—but rather the implementation of
artificial and often unnecessary political economic barriers to conventional means of
accessing and participating in the public sphere and civil society. In terms of civil
society, the promise of Google Fiber is that business, education, entertainment, and
medicine will all benefit from the advent of ultra-high-speed Internet.71 Though this
is perhaps true as a professional communications network—enabling professionals
and intellectuals to exchange certain data intensive documents—the idea of
conducting a medical exam or parent-teacher conference online (two specific
examples mentioned by Google) represents an evacuation of the public from issues
of public health and education72; the immediacy and speed offered by the
hypermediation of ultra-high-speed Internet treats communication as pure information and effaces the fundamental significance of contextual factors, such as culture
and environment. Conceived as such, the conception of civil society offered by
Google Fiber is the lie that one could believe himself connected because he is
surrounded by glass and plastic.73
The advent of Google Fiber represents an infrastructural extension of the trend
toward enclosure that we have been witnessing on the Internet. Indeed, though the
Internet can be many things, the configuration desired by big data, big business, and
big government is that physical place and all the messiness it entails might be
replaced by a virtual space purified of those undesirable elements.74 Google Fiber
complements this trend toward enclosure in that its uneven implementation creates a
de facto infrastructural enclosure that serves as an alibi for existing trends toward
political economic enclosure. For example, though members of the community have
noted that communicating with the city is difficult, and that many prefer receiving
information from the city through print, mail, and public broadcast channels—
especially women, the elderly, low income earners, and those in the racially and
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economically segregated Third and Fifth Council Districts—Kansas City, Missouri
has been promoting its online communication channels (favored by younger,
wealthier, and white populations), in spite of a recent city report that found that
“the new website makes it harder to find services.”75 Combined with Kansas City’s
promotion of the social media platform, Nextdoor, which restricts communication to
those living within specific neighborhoods and requires members to offer proof of
residence, Google Fiber contributes to the fragmentation and uneven support of
Kansas City’s public sphere.76
This might not be a problem if online platforms were merely one channel amongst
others for communicating with the public, but increasingly offline channels are being
closed in the name of government austerity, thereby offloading the infrastructural
responsibilities of governance from the state to the citizen. As a result, citizenship is
reconfigured in terms of meritocracy, with those who can afford the infrastructure
being deemed as deserving of citizenship relative to others. Indeed, the adoption of
the Nextdoor platform by “more than 100 neighborhoods, representing nearly 40
percent of the Kansas City metro,” in conjunction with the uneven implementation
of Google Fiber along racial and economic lines, suggests a de facto return to Kansas
City’s past, when neighborhood and homeowner associations actively worked to
discriminate against and undermine the political economic wellbeing of populations
of color.77 Yet, whereas in the past these associations operated with legal and cultural
legitimacy, today these discriminatory practices are being embedded in the
communications infrastructure of the public sphere, and thus bypass the need for
legal and cultural approval. This is what it means to suggest that infrastructure
operates as a form of “politics by other means”78: The digital divide is not about a
gap in accessing new opportunities but rather an often unnecessary political
economic barrier constructed to prohibit those conceived as trash from accessing
and participating in the public sphere and civil society.
Conclusion
In 2010, the United States Federal Communications Commission identified broadband as “the great infrastructure challenge of the early 21st century.”79 Because
broadband “is transforming the landscape of America more rapidly and more
pervasively than earlier infrastructure networks,” the FCC argued, it was imperative
“to develop a National Broadband Plan ensuring that every American has ‘access to
broadband capability.’”80 Though such connectivity surely matters, lost in the
national conversation is the question of what such connectivity means in and of
itself. Though the origin stories of the Internet are well known, it is common practice
to treat the infrastructure as though it emerged ex nihilo as an ahistorical and
agnostic medium: the Internet enables communication. Though it is true that the
Internet enables communication, Paul Starr’s compelling The Creation of the Media
reminds us that “a new technology may have particular consequences because of its
architecture, not because that is the only way it could be. Architectural choices are
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often politics by other means, under the cover of technical necessity.”81 Indeed, forty
years ago, James Carey lamented that “because we have seen our cities as the domain
of politics and economics, they have become the residence of technology and
bureaucracy. Our streets are designed to accommodate the automobile, our sidewalks
to facilitate trade, our land and houses to satisfy the economy and the real estate
speculator.”82 This article, then, has been an analysis of a particular configuration of
broadband infrastructure that has been advanced as a model for communities across
the United States.83 Three observations from this analysis warrant reemphasis in this
conclusion.
First, I have argued that the construct of flexible capitalism may operate as a more
sensitive analytic for understanding the mechanics of late capitalism vis-à-vis the
ideology of late capitalism. Though sharing much in common with neoliberalism,
flexible capitalism orients our attention to the mechanisms by which late capitalism
privileges short- over long-term relationships, positions meritocracy over craftsmanship, and devalues past experience in favor of potential outcomes. The point of this
preference is not to privilege one analytic over the other, but rather to suggest that
neoliberalism and flexible capital operate hand in hand. If neoliberalism orients our
gaze toward the realm of policy and political processes, flexible capitalism orients our
attention toward the material processes by which neoliberalism is embedded into
civic infrastructure. As it pertains to Google Fiber, I argue that this infrastructure and
other configurations like it operate as part of the growing infrastructure of flexible
capital.
Second, I have argued that the digital divide operates through a system of uneven
development whereby certain populations are not innocently left behind but rather
actively segregated. Moreover, universal service does not mean merely offering ultrahigh-speed Internet connections to every housing unit but rather offering the same
form of infrastructure for all members of the public. The digital divide in Kansas City
is not just the lack of Internet access; it includes the entrepreneurial support offered
to predominantly white men in absence of other populations. Likewise, as Doreen
Massey reminds us, it is not merely that white men are better supported than other
populations but rather that, consistent with Kansas City’s history of hypersegregation, populations are constructed in relation to each other so that “the different
functions in an economy are held together by mutual definition and mutual
necessity.”84 The digital divide will never be closed until this point is acknowledged.
And again, I have argued that a series of political economic policies and practices
have emerged regarding Google Fiber that work to keep the function of the digital
divide intact.
Third, the prior point is perhaps made most explicit by the conception of ultrahigh-speed Internet infrastructure as a pressure chamber of innovation. Advocates of
entrepreneurialism see innovation as a form of creative destruction whereby existing
socioeconomic structures are made obsolete in favor of those capable of operating in
a state of perpetual precarity. Innovation creates waste in that: (1) those populations
incapable of capitalizing on this form of precarity are denigrated as trash; and (2)
entrepreneurial innovation conceives of work in terms of meritocracy in contrast to
303
craftsmanship, whereby the obsolete innovation and innovator are confined to the
dustbin of capitalist progress. In other words, the emphasis on short- over long-term
relationships, meritocracy over craftsmanship, and devaluation of past experience in
favor of potential outcomes means that investment is directed toward those
populations capable of operating in such an environment, whereby those unable to
do so (or continue doing so) are relegated to those spaces whereby capitalist “waste”
and “trash” can continue to serve capitalist development: as the low-paid and
disrespected service workers and manual laborers.
In conclusion, I wish to reiterate that I do not mean to argue against the Internet.
The point I wish to make is that, as others have argued, we must conceive of the
Internet as a network of networks, and as such, an assemblage of overlapping and
sometimes divergent architectural choices.85 Like other communication platforms,
the relationship of this network of networks is constantly evolving and as
communications researchers we have an obligation to discern and intervene upon
the politics of those relationships as they are articulated in policy, production, and
practice. As it regards broadband infrastructure, this moment is of particular
importance, for as Bob McChesney has argued, communication policy, production,
and practices have a history of crystallizing within the span of a decade or two, after
which it becomes difficult to intervene upon the system due to the inertia of politics,
economics, infrastructure, and culture.86 This may prove to be particularly true in the
case of Google Fiber and other systems like it, as its build-to-demand marketplace
approach as opposed to the model of universal service minimizes the production of
“dark fiber” and means that this particular configuration of the Internet and digital
divide may outlast the service providers who implement the system.87 As it stands,
since the FCC’s 2010 National Broadband Plan, net neutrality has been struck down
by US Federal Courts, reinstated by the FCC, and now remains in legal limbo
(policy), major content providers have signed interconnection agreements with major
Internet providers (economics), and Google Fiber has emerged as a model for ultrahigh-speed Internet (infrastructure). If culture is the last bastion of this communications juncture, then it seems imperative that communications researchers not
squander this fading opportunity to discern and intervene upon the policies,
economics, infrastructure, and practices of this network of networks. Five years
have passed; we might not have five more.
Funding
This work was supported by funding from the Waterhouse Family Institute and SUNY Brockport’s
Pre-Tenure Grant Development Award.
Notes
[1]
Susan Crawford, “America Doesn’t Need Google Fiber Everywhere—but We Do Need
Its Buzz,” Wired, http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/04/why-we-need-google-fiber-but-itsnot-for-the-reasons-you-think/; Cyrus Farivar, “The Rest of the Internet Is Too Slow for
304
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
R. Mejia
Google Fiber,” Ars Technica, http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/11/the-rest-of-the-internet-is-too-slow-for-google-fiber/; Cecilia Kang, “Google Fiber Provides Faster Internet and,
Cities Hope, Business Growth,” The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/
business/technology/google-fiber-provides-faster-internet-and-cities-hope-business-growth/
2013/01/25/08b466fc-6028-11e2-b05a-605528f6b712_story.html; Lucie Robequain, “Welcome to ‘Silicon Prairie’—Google Ultra High-Speed Broadband Shakes up Kansas City,”
World Crunch, http://worldcrunch.com/tech-science/welcome-to-quot-silicon-prairie-quotgoogle-ultra-high-speed-broadband-shakes-up-kansas-city/google-internet-fiber-ultrafastkansas/c4s10584/#.UXQvhays1R0; Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly, “Think Big with a
Gig: Our Experimental Fiber Network,” Google, http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/
think-big-with-gig-our-experimental.html.
Elise Ackerman, “How Kansas Won the Google Fiber Jackpot and Why California Never
Will,” Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseackerman/2012/08/04/how-kansas-won-thegoogle-fiber-jackpot-and-why-california-never-will/; Jeff Bertolucci, “Gigabit Paradise? Google Ready to Lay Fiber in Kansas City,” PC World, http://www.pcworld.com/article/249491/
gigabit_paradise_google_ready_to_lay_fiber_in_kansas_city.html.
Tim Hrenchir, “‘Topeka to Be Google, Kansas’,” The Topeka Capital Journal, http://cjonline.
com/news/local/2010-03-01/topeka_to_be_google_kansas; Milo Medin, “Ultra High-Speed
Broadband Is Coming to Kansas City, Kansas,” Google, http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
2011/03/ultra-high-speed-broadband-is-coming-to.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_med
ium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FMKuf+%28Official+Google+Blog%29&
utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher.
Alec Dubro, “Low-Income Areas Skipped by Google Fiber System,” Speedmatters.org, http://
www.speedmatters.org/blog/archive/low-income-areas-skipped-by-google-fiber-system/#.UX
RaZays1R1; John Eligon, “In One City, Signing up for Internet Becomes a Civic Cause,” The
New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/us/in-one-city-signing-up-for-internet-becomes-a-civic-cause.html?hp&pagewanted=all&_r=0; Marcus Wholsen, “Google Fiber
Splits Along Kansas City’s Digital Divide,” Wired, http://www.wired.com/business/2012/09/
google-fiber-digital-divide/.
Timothy B. Lee, “How Kansas City Taxpayers Support Google Fiber,” Ars Technica,
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-kansas-city-taxpayers-support-google-fiber/;
Whitney Terrell and Shannon Jackson, “Only Connect,” Harper, 2013.
Karl Bode, “Google Fiber Puts the Kibosh on Startups in Kansas City,” DSLReports.com,
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Google-Fiber-Puts-the-Kibosh-on-Startups-in-KansasCity-126153; Laura McCallister and Amy Anderson, “Neighborhood Angry with Tree
Destruction to Make Way for Google Fiber,” KCTV5, http://www.kctv5.com/story/22441264/
neighborhood-angry-with-tree-destruction-to-make-way-for-google-fiber.
Scott Canon, “Google Fiber Construction Disrupts as It Modernizes Kansas City,”
Government Technology, http://www.govtech.com/network/Google-Fiber-Construction-Disrupts-as-it-Modernizes-Kansas-City.html; Crawford, “American.” I appreciate the anonymous
reviewers for pushing me further on this point. Google Fiber’s public–private partnership
represents a further entrenchment of a larger system of privatization, whereby not only is
public infrastructure being configured in terms amicable to private capital but also this
configuration is made possible by the transference of public resources to private enterprise.
Throughout this paper I use “Kansas City” in reference to the Kansas City metropolitan
region, which encompasses both Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri, as well as
nearby suburbs. Though differences exist between state and local governments, there is much
overlap and shared governance.
Saskia Sassen, Cities in a World Economy (Los Angeles: Sage, 2006/2011); Saskia Sassen, Cities in
Today’s Global Age (Metropolis Congress, 2008); Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character:
The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (New York: Norton, 1998).
305
[10] Ackerman, “How Kansas”; Milo Medin, Testimony of Milo Medin, Vice President of Access
Services, Google Inc., Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Field Hearing on
Innovation and Regulation (April 18, 2011).
[11] Ackerman, “How Kansas”; Canon, “Google Fiber.”
[12] David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007).
[13] Sennett, The Corrosion.
[14] Richard Sennett, The Culture of the New Capitalism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2006), 10.
[15] Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1994), 158.
[16] Massey, Space; Dan Schiller, How to Think About Information (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2007).
[17] Sennett, The Culture.
[18] Ibid.
[20] Paul Gompers et al., “Skill Vs. Luck in Entrepreneuriship and Venture Capital: Evidence
from Serial Entrepreneurs,” in NBER Working Paper Series, 42 (National Bureau of
Economic Research, 2006); Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, & Democracy
(New York: Routledge, 1943/2003); Massey, Space; Sennett, The Corrosion; Sennett, The
Culture.
[21] Massey, Space, 86 (emphasis in original).
[22] Medin, “Ultra High-Speed.”
[23] Michael Liimatta cited in Wholsen, “Google Fiber.”
[24] Alicia Stice, “For Apartment Building Owners, Google Fiber Can Be a Tough Sell,” The
Kansas City Star, http://phys.org/news/2013-07-apartment-owners-google-fiber-tough.html.
[25] Kevin Fox Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development: The Kansas City Experience,
1900–2000 (New York: State University of New York Press, 2002); The Heller School for
Social Policy and Management, “Kansas City, Mo-Ks: Profile Summary,” http://www.
diversitydata.org/Data/Profiles/Show.aspx?loc=728.
[26] Gotham, Race, 19.
[27] See The Heller School, “Kansas City.”
[28] See: Gotham, Race, 19; The Heller School, “Kansas City.”
[29] These demographics were compiled by combining the census tract data for Missouri tracts
71, 72, and 73 with those of Kansas tracts 451 and 452, as the Kansas City Startup Village
cuts across these five census tracts. See: Kansas City Startup Village, “Map,” http://www.
kcstartupvillage.org/map/; United States Census Bureau, “Wyandotte County, KS,” 2010;
United States Census Bureau, “KCMO Census Tract Data,” 2010.
[30] Ibid.
[31] United States Census Bureau, “KCMO.”
[32] Jared Konczal and Yasuyuki Motoyama, Energizing an Ecosystem: Brewing 1 Million Cups
(Kauffman Foundation, 2013).
[33] The Home for Hackers program does not keep demographic records. This information was
extrapolated from the Kansas City Startup Village Timeline with the assistance of social
networking sites such as Linkedin and Twitter. Though the Startup Village records twentytwo official residents, the reason my extrapolation only accounts for twenty-one residents is
because one guest stayed under the alias of “Flash,” and hence his identity could not be
confirmed.
[34] Fred Bauters, “How Handprint Landed in Kc and Won Free Rent in Feld’s Fiberhouse,”
http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2013/05/how-handprint-landed-in-kc-and-won-free-rentin-feld-s-fiberhouse; Sarah Gish, “Kansas City Fetches Fitbark, a Fitness Tracker for Fido,”
http://www.kansascity.com/living/article1338317.html.
306
R. Mejia
[35] See: Connecting For Good, “Connecting for Good.,” http://www.connectingforgood.org/;
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, “Who We Are,” http://www.kauffman.org/who-weare/fact-sheet; Mid-America Regional Council, “Green Impact Zone of Missouri,” http://
www.greenimpactzone.org/.
[36] Yael T. Abouhalkah, “Unruly Black Youths + the Plaza = More Trouble,” The Kansas City
Star, http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/yael-t-abouhalkah/article3394
26/Unruly-black-youths–The-Plaza–more-trouble.html#/tabPane=tabs-603c299d-1; Brian J.
Houston, Hyunjin Seo, Leigh Anne Taylor Knight, Emily J. Kennedy, Joshua Hawthorne,
and Sara L. Trask, “Urban Youth’s Perspectives on Flash Mobs,” Journal of Applied
Communication Research 41, issue 3 (2013): 236–252; Steve Rose, “To Protect the Plaza,
Tighten Teen Curfews All Year,” The Kansas City Star, http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/steve-rose/article340646/To-protect-the-Plaza-tighten-teen-curfews-all-year.html; DeAnn Smith, “New Kansas City Curfew Law in Effect,” KCTV5,
http://www.kctv5.com/story/15298987/new-kansas-city-curfew-law-in-effect.
[37] Jason Harper, “How the Kc Library Got Google Fiber,” Kansas City Library, http://www.
kclibrary.org/blog/kc-unbound/how-kc-library-got-google-fiber; United States Census Bureau, “KCMO.”
[38] Conor Dougherty, “Two Cities with Blazing Internet Speed Search for a Killer App,” The
New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/technology/two-cities-with-blazinginternet-speed-search-for-a-killer-app.html?_r=0; Konczal and Motoyama, Energizing; Julianne
Pepitone, “Black, Female, and a Silicon Valley ‘Trade Secret,’’’ CNN, http://money.cnn.com/2013/
03/17/technology/diversity-silicon-valley/index.html.
[39] Schumpeter, Capitalism, 134.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Ibid., 76.
[42] Antonio Negri, “Value and Affect,” Boundary 2 26, issue 2 (1999): 77–88.
[43] Susan Lund, Toos Daruvala, Richard Dobbs, Philipp Härle, Ju-Hon Kwek, and Ricardo
Falcón, Financial Globalization: Retreat or Reset (McKinsey Global Institute, 2013).
[44] Sennett, The Corrosion, 62.
[46] Deborah Gage, “The Venture Capital Secret: 3 out of 4 Start-Ups Fail,” The Wall Street
Journal, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390443720204578004980476429
190; Gompers et al., “Skill”; Carmen Nobel, “Why Companies Fail—and How Their Founders
Can Bounce Back,” Harvard Business School, http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6591.html.
[47] James Surowiecki, “Epic Fails of the Startup World,” The New Yorker, http://www.
newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/19/epic-fails-of-the-startup-world.
[48] Gompers et al., “Skill.”
[49] Nobel, “Why Companies”; Surowiecki, “Epic.”
[51] Walt Whitman Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, 3rd
ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1960/1990), 16.
[52] Shikhar Ghosh cited in Nobel, “Why Companies.”
[53] Wendy Guillies, “Entrepreneurial Expert Brad Feld Buys House in Kansas City Startup
Village, Launches Competition to Live in It,” Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, http://
www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2013/03/entrepreneurial-expert-brad-feld-buys-house-in-kan
sas-city-startup-village-launches-competition-to-live-in-it; Motoyama et al., Think Locally,
Act Locally: Building a Robust Entrepreneurial Ecosystem (Kauffman Foundation, 2014);
Michael Stacy, “Kauffman Fellow Wilbanks Explores KC’s Fiber Opportunity,” Silicon
Prairie News, http://siliconprairienews.com/2012/03/kauffman-fellow-wilbanks-exploreskc-s-fiber-opportunity-video/; Terrell and Jackson, “Only Connect.”
307
[54] Paul Kedrosky cited in Michael Stacy, “Paul Kedrosky Touts Merits of ‘Waste’ in Latest
Google Fiber Talk,” Silicon Prairie News, http://siliconprairienews.com/2012/04/paulkedrosky-touts-merits-of-waste-in-latest-google-fiber-talk-video/.
[55] Sennett, The Culture.
[56] Medin, Testimony.
[57] Medin, Testimony.
[58] Sennett, The Culture, 4.
[59] Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller, “Ecological Ethics and Media Technology,” International
Journal of Communication 2 (2008): 331–353.
[60] See Stacy, “Paul.”
[61] Paul Kedrosky cited in Stacy, “Paul”; see also Gage, “The Venture.”
[62] Alistair Barr, “Google Fiber Is Fast, but Is It Fair?” The Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.
com/articles/google-fuels-internet-access-plus-debate-1408731700.
[63] Konczal and Motoyama, Energizing; Motoyama et al., Think Locally.
[64] Konczal and Motoyama, Energizing, 13; see also Motoyama et al., Think Locally.
[66] Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concept of Pollution and Taboo
(New York: Routledge, 1966/2002).
[67] Cameron McCarthy, Heather Greenhalgh-Spencer, and Robert Mejia, “Introduction:
Mapping the New Terrain,” in New Times: Making Sense of Critical/Cultural Theory in a
Digital Age, ed. Cameron McCarthy, Heather Greenhalgh-Spencer, and Robert Mejia (New
York: Peter Lang, 2011); Harvey, A Brief.
[68] Stacy, “Paul.”
[69] Dean Starkman, “The $236,500 Hole in the American Dream,” New Republic, http://www.
newrepublic.com/article/118425/closing-racial-wealth-gap
[70] Thomas Shapiro, Tatjana Meschede, and Sam Osoro, “The Roots of the Widening Racial
Wealth Gap: Explaining the Black–white Economic Divide,” 8: Institute on Assets and Social
Policy, 2013.
[71] Medin, Ultra High-Speed.
[72] Ibid.
[73] This sentence is an update of Michel de Certeau’s concluding remarks on the cultural
consequences of railway transportation: “there comes to an end the Robinson Crusoe
adventure of the travelling noble soul that could believe itself intact because it was
surrounded by glass and iron.” Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1980/1988), 115.
[74] Robert Mejia, “‘Walking in the City’ in an Age of Mobile Technologies,” in Race/Gender/
Class/Media 3.0: Considering Diversity across Audiences, Content, and Producers, ed. Rebecca
Ann Lind (Boston: Pearson, 2012), 113-118.
[75] KCStat, “Customer Service and Communication—June 3, 2014,” 77, 2014; City of Kansas
City, Missouri, “Citizens Work Sessions: Non-Traditional Forums on the Budget,” 19, 2014.
[76] Syed Shabbir, “City of Kansas City Joins Nextdoor to Improve Communication with
Public,” http://www.kshb.com/alarm-clock-showcase/city-of-kansas-city-joins-nextdoor-toimprove-communication-with-public; Crystal Thomas, “Localized Online Networks Are a
New Way for Neighbors to Connect,” http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/technology/
article1243314.html.
[77] Thomas, “Localized”; see Gotham, Race.
[78] Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications
(New York: Basic Books, 2004), 6.
[79] FCC, Connecting America: The National Broadband Plan. 2010: xi.
[80] FCC, Connecting America, 3.
[81] Starr, The Creation, 6.
308
R. Mejia
[82] James W. Carey, “A Cultural Approach to Communication,” in Communication as Culture,
ed. G. Stuart Adam (New York: Routledge, 1975/2009), 27.
[83] Brier Dudley, “Portland’s Being a Pushover to Snag Google Fiber,” The Seattle Times, http://
seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2023420101_briercolumn21xml.html; Conner
Forrest, “Google’s Fiber Lottery: Predicting Who’s Next and How Google Picks Winners,”
Tech Republic, http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-google-fiber-lottery/. As Google
has announced plans to introduce Google Fiber to other communities throughout the
United States, interested cities have adopted approaches similar to those advanced by
Kansas City: specifically the fast-tracking of rights-of-way oversight and the exemption of
universal service requirements.
[84] Massey, Space, 87.
[85] Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and
Freedom (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006); Matthew Crain, “The Cultural Logic
of Search and the Myth of Disintermediation,” in New Times: Making Sense of Critical/
Cultural Theory in a Digital Age, ed Cameron McCarthy, Heather Greenhalgh-Spencer, and
Robert Mejia (New York: Peter Lang, 2011).
[86] Robert W. McChesney, Communication Revolution: Critical Junctures and the Future of
Media (New York: The New Press, 2007).
[87] Herman Wagter, “How Amsterdam Was Wired for Open Access Fiber,” Ars Technica,
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-open-access-fiber/.
Dark fiber refers to the excess capacity of a broadband network. Internet service providers
will often establish inactive nodes and fiber lines in anticipation of future network expansion.
This practice is not a natural byproduct of the principle of economies of scale, whereby it is
more cost efficient to lay multiple fiber lines at the same time (one estimate is that 80 percent
of broadband infrastructure costs are labor related in contrast to 10 percent for fiber), but
rather is also an outcome of policy: universal service requirements. Google’s build-todemand approach minimizes the production of dark fiber as the network is only being
established for those who have pre-registered for the service. For those housing units and
neighborhoods that fail to pre-register, Google Fiber will bypass those communities
completely until Google decides when and if it will reopen pre-registration.
Undoing a First World Gaze: Agency and Context in
Iron Ladies of Liberia
Belinda A. Stillion Southard
To cite this article: Belinda A. Stillion Southard (2015) Undoing a First World Gaze: Agency and
Context in Iron Ladies of Liberia , Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 12:3, 309-327,
DOI: 10.1080/14791420.2015.1044254
Published online: 08 Jun 2015.
Article views: 54
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Undoing a First World Gaze: Agency and
Context in Iron Ladies of Liberia
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Belinda A. Stillion Southard
Currently, scholars grapple with media that depict Third World women as either
victims of unchanging contexts or agents of liberation. To explore how a widely
distributed and popular documentary film can destabilize a First World gaze, this
essay examines Iron Ladies of Liberia (ILL), which traced Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s first
year as president of Liberia. ILL foregrounded women’s rhetorical and political
agencies to alter a postwar context, while it also situated their agencies within an
enabling and constraining constellation of power relationships. Through its unique
relationships between filmmaker and subject, ILL suggested a transnational feminist
perspective on women in media.
Keywords: First World Gaze; Third World Women; Documentary; Iron Ladies of
Liberia; Agency
For decades, scholars have lamented First World cultural and economic forces that
shape media by and about women worldwide. Such media often construct women of
developing nations as victims, which in turn enables a First World feminist identity
bound up in protecting or saving these women.1 As Raka Shome put it, “the media
constitutes a central site upon and through which global inequities are being staged
today.”2 Challenging a First World gaze, Third World women directors and
producers have “taken control over their own images, spoken in their own voices,”
and “refused a Eurocentric universalizing of ‘womanhood,’ and even of ‘feminism.’”3
However, the potential for such media to decolonize a First World gaze is often
constrained by limited funding streams and thus, limited circulation. That said, when
more mainstream media outlets highlight stories of how Third World women have
negotiated their social, political, and cultural contexts, the complexities of their
Belinda A. Stillion Southard is Assistant Professor at Department of Communication Studies, University of
Georgia. Correspondence to: Belinda A. Stillion Southard, Department of Communication Studies, University of
Georgia, Athens, GA 30606, USA. Email: bss@uga.edu.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2015.1044254
310
B. A. Stillion Southard
narratives are typically “subsumed by the global progress narrative of victim–
survivor–activist.”4 As such, a First World gaze views Third World women as either
victims of always-oppressive contexts or self-sacrificing heroes capable of reversing
top-down vectors of oppression to liberate themselves and the women of their
communities.
These cultural and political economies likewise shape the direction, production,
content, and circulation of documentaries by and about African women. Scholars
have long noted that documentary films and filmmaking are often unkind to women
and feminist goals and they agree that films by and about African women face
particularly acute constraints.5 The development of digital- and web-based video has
made these films more affordable to produce, however directors and producers often
struggle to find broad avenues of distribution.6 Recently, for example, Rwandan
filmmaker Jacqueline Kalimunda launched a crowdfunding campaign through
Facebook and indiegogo.com to complete production of her film, Single Rwandan.
At best, the film may air on local TV stations and at a few film festivals.7 In recent
years, more successful documentaries by and about African women, such as Africa is
a Woman’s Name and Africa, Africas, have reached most audiences through the film
festival circuit.8
Meanwhile, documentaries about African women produced and directed by
American and Western European filmmakers do well to circulate at festivals, on
national public television, on cable television (e.g., on HBO), receive Emmy and
Peabody Awards, and receive funding from First World production companies.
According to Womenmakemovies.com, a comprehensive website dedicated to
cataloguing films by and about women, only eight of the twenty-six films in its
Africa Studies Collection were directed or codirected by an African woman, while all
others were directed by American or European filmmakers.9 Likewise, Pray the Devil
Back to Hell, a popular documentary about Liberian women, was produced and
funded by Abigail Disney, granddaughter of Roy Disney. The film won several
festival awards and aired on national public television in the United States. Such
films may elicit greater attention to African women, but they also risk fortifying what
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster considered “white hegemonic Hollywood constructions of
spectatorship, ownership, and the creative and distribution aspects of filmmaking.”10
To trouble these cultural and political dynamics, several media scholars have called
for more transnationally nuanced media texts that better situate women’s political
agency in a complex of power relationships, such as local culture and politics, the
apparatus of the nation-state, global economic forces, and regional networks of
women’s organizations.11 Nancy Naples, for example, argues for a perspective “that
foregrounds women’s agency in the context of oppressive conditions.”12 Scholars
argue that more widely circulated films that pay greater attention to the situatedness
of women’s agency may stem the force of a First World feminist gaze—a gaze that
views Third World women as either victims of deterministic contexts or selfsacrificing heroes whose contexts necessitate heroic acts. Yet many questions remain:
If such a nuanced documentary film achieved broad circulation, how would it
challenge a First World feminist gaze? What would that challenge look like, and how
Undoing a First World Gaze
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might we assess its effects? Additionally, how might scholars read these texts in a way
that appreciates the play between agency and context without assuming that one
dominates the other?
To provoke answers to these questions, this essay analyzes the 2007 documentary
film, Iron Ladies of Liberia (ILL). The film spotlighted the first woman president of
an African nation, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, as well as a number of Liberian women and
the ways they negotiated the empowering and disempowering dynamics of a postcivil
war context.13 ILL deserves critical attention because it enjoyed widespread
circulation and praise among First World audiences and it resisted constructing
Liberian women as either victims or heroes. Rather, ILL foregrounded women’s
rhetorical and political agencies while it also situated them within a constellation of
local, national, and global power relationships. I argue that ILL’s combination of
foregrounding and situating agency opened up a dialogue about African women in a
way that offered multiple alternatives to essentialized constructions of African
women. Specifically, ILL foregrounded women’s agencies when it placed their
rhetorical and political acts front and center, and attributed these acts with the
potential to alter a postconflict context. To foreground an act, it must take place
against a backdrop that gives shape and force to the act. Bringing the backdrop into
focus, ILL also situated women’s agencies when it emphasized the power of social,
political, and economic contexts that enabled or constrained women’s rhetorical and
political agencies.14 Foregrounding and situating agency reminded audiences that
rhetorical and political power is always negotiated within and against a constellation
of forces that provide both resistance to and opportunity for change.
ILL foregrounded and situated agency in two ways, the combination of which
makes ILL a unique case. First, ILL’s codirector, Siatta Scott Johnson, a Liberian
woman with a vested interest in Sirleaf’s leadership, often shared the screen with
Sirleaf as she engaged in directorial work. When documentaries “acknowledge the
encounter between filmmaker and subject,” audiences are invited to view the subject,
Sirleaf, from the perspective of the filmmaker, Johnson, which, in this case, was
shaped by a postwar context.15 Second, ILL featured Johnson as a subject of the film.
When the filmmaker is the subject, agency and context are enmeshed. The
filmmaker’s perspective constructs a context in which the filmmaker’s agency is
enabled and constrained by that context. When documentaries make this reflexive
move, they “foreground the [ethical] relationship between the filmmaker and
audience” in which the audience is asked to gauge the credibility of the filmmaker’s
construction of self, who acts in a world also constructed by the filmmaker.16 If this
move is successful, it has the potential to reshape an audience’s perspective on the
filmmaker’s agency and context.17 Through these two relationships between filmmaker and subject, ILL portrayed complex interactions between agency and context,
ones with the potential to unsettle First World assumptions about women in
developing nations.
In what follows, I offer a brief discussion of how ILL’s production, direction, and
circulation challenged the politics and practices of documentary filmmaking by and
about women in developing nations. Next, I offer a reading strategy for analyzing
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ILL. Then, an analysis of the film proceeds in three parts. First, ILL foregrounded
Sirleaf’s and Johnson’s rhetorical agencies to effectively allay threats of violence. Yet,
situated within a nationalist context shaped by a crisis in masculinity, their acts
effected a local, tentative peace. Second, ILL foregrounded Sirleaf’s agency to
ameliorate Liberia’s struggling economy. Situated within the politically and economically fraught relationship between Liberia and the United States, Sirleaf is enabled as
a savior to poor Liberian women and constrained as the leader of a fledgling Third
World nation appealing to a First World nation for relief. Third, ILL foregrounded
the rhetorical and political agency of Liberian women as Iron Ladies, capable of
building a democracy out of a corrupt political system. Situated within global,
national, and local political forces, these acts challenged, reproduced, and sidestepped
a top-down political hierarchy. Finally, this essay demonstrates how ILL impacted its
viewers around the globe and helped open a complex dialogue about women from a
transnational perspective.
ILL and the Politics of Filmmaking
In terms of direction, production, and circulation, ILL challenged the political,
cultural, and economic practices of documentary filmmaking. Daniel Junge, credited
as the film’s director, and Johnson, credited as the film’s codirector, worked side-byside for a year to shoot more than 500 hours of footage.18 Junge, an American white
male, brought with him First World cultural and economic resources. An Academy
and Emmy Award-winner, Junge directed ILL for Just Media, an American
production company committed to “rais[ing] awareness of current social justice
and environmental issues”19 while taking “a collaborative and entrepreneurial
approach” to funding.20 To point, ILL was produced in collaboration with multiple
companies and received funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.21
Moreover, it was through family connections of a Just Media producer that the
company convinced Sirleaf to participate in the film.22
Johnson joined Junge in her hometown of Monrovia to codirect. Johnson’s
professional experience as a college-educated television producer and reporter and a
founding member of Omuahtee Africa Media made her an ideal codirector. To an
extent, Johnson’s role in ILL reflected the First/Third World power dynamics of
filmmaking. In a postfilm interview, she invoked a “victim” identity. She said: “It
would have been very difficult [to direct] without the help of my ‘white’ partners.
Their presence served as a kind of shield for me.”23 Also, she elicited the essentialized
notion of an “authentic insider.”24 Johnson added: “I would have to go on explaining
the Liberian context of things and how they operate. So much explaining to do!”25
Yet a closer look suggested that Johnson’s roles in ILL complicated these power
dynamics in significant ways. First, ILL featured Johnson’s work as a director, editor,
and producer as part of its story. Johnson was shown holding a boom over Sirleaf’s
head, editing footage, and conducting interviews. Notably, Junge never appeared on
screen. Second, Johnson’s voice narrated ILL, which created the perception that her
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voice—that of a Liberian woman—controlled the story. Last, Johnson appeared on
screen as a key character wherein her story of loss, trauma, and progress punctuated
ILL’s overarching narrative of Sirleaf’s first year in office. Thus, Johnson’s multiple
influences on ILL via direction, production, and content, throw into question the
power dynamics typically at play when a First World director and production
company may enable a “gaze” upon African women and likewise, when African
women are limited in means to disseminate images that challenge First World
ideologies.
ILL’s circulation also resisted the cultural and economic politics of documentary
filmmaking. ILL aired in Great Britain as part of the “Why Democracy?” series on
BBC in 2007, in the United States as part of two PBS series, “Independent Lens” in
2008 and “Global Voices” in 2011, and on more than fifty television broadcasters
worldwide.26 In addition to its limited release in theaters across the United States, ILL
appeared in at least fifty more venues, such as libraries, civic centers, churches, and
college campuses, where viewers also engaged in postscreening discussions.27
According to voluminous viewer feedback, ILL also reached audiences in Africa
(including Liberia) through international film festivals and through pirated copies.28
Thus, the foregrounding of Johnson’s directorial role as well as ILL’s broad
circulation suggested ILL’s potential to disrupt the cultural and political economies
bound up in a First World feminist gaze. Of course, the actualization of this potential
relied in great part on the images and meanings circulating in and through ILL.
Reading ILL
To appreciate how ILL simultaneously foregrounded and situated agency, I engage in
a rhetorical-critical approach that attends closely to how the film constructed its
actors and context. That is, I noted the moments in ILL that focused on women’s
rhetorical and political agency. By “agency,” I draw upon Karlyn Kohrs Campbell’s
conceptualization: “rhetorical agency refers to the capacity to act, that is, to have the
competence to speak or write in a way that will be recognized or heeded by others in
one’s community.”29 Thus, in tandem, I observed how ILL constructed the
conditions that enabled women to assert agency as well as the potential and limits
of their acts to impact local, national, or global communities.
This reading strategy is informed by a number of assumptions about media and
rhetoric. First, documentary films construct a particularly convincing version of
reality. As many scholars have argued, documentaries often render invisible the
processes of editing and framing and in turn, present footage as “truth.”30 While
questions of “realism” have driven scholarly debate for decades, I agree with
Alexandra Juhasz’s claim that a constructed reality can function as “the confirmation,
perpetuation, and reflection of bourgeois, patriarchal reality,” while it can also “testify
to alternative, marginal, subversive, or illegal realities.”31 Second, if documentaries
“help us make sense of the world,” the stories they tell must feature characters with
whom audiences identify.32 “Real” people within the stories of nonfiction
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documentaries are often portrayed as agents who can assert agency to alter their
context.33 The potential for audiences to identify with rhetorical agents relies in great
part on their perceived authenticity and the extent to which they act based on what
are perceived to be good reasons.34 Relatedly, a third assumption is that, for an
audience to evaluate what counts as good reasons to act, an audience must be able to
perceive the social, political, and economic world in which the actor lives.35 The
audience must also perceive how a rhetorical act resonates the stories of their own
lives, or as Louis Spence and Vinicius Navarro put it, the audience needs to “arrange
this material into knowable stories.”36 In addition to perceiving the believability of an
act, within and without the context of the film, an audience must be able to perceive
the act’s “conditions of possibility” and the impact it may or may not have on
immediate and enduring contexts.37 Thus, evaluating ILL’s disruptive potential calls
for a critical perspective that assumes a constructed reality in which agents cannot act
outside of a context, and in turn, context cannot be altered unless an agent’s actions
are contextually salient.
This reading strategy moves inductively, concerned with what the text “says” and
“does” before assessing its rhetorical force and theoretical contributions. Doing so
helps avoid the “tyranny of method,” taking seriously Campbell’s assertion: “[T]here
are no methods other than the recurring patterns that inhere in and constitute our
language and its use in human communities and cohere into complex symbolic works
that amaze, delight, and sometimes horrify us.”38 Thus, the following assesses the
rhetorical force of ILL as a “complex symbolic work,” building upon observations of its
“recurring patterns,” patterns formed by interactions between agency and context.
Foregrounding and Situating Agency
In brief, ILL began as Sirleaf faced a nation that endured two civil wars across
fourteen years; a nation left with a 90 percent unemployment rate, without running
water, without electricity, with a debt of $3.7 billion; and a nation that, between 1989
and 2003, saw the murder of 270,000 of its three million citizens, the displacement of
one million refugees, and the sexual assault of two-thirds of its female citizens.39
Wondering if Sirleaf’s identity as a woman president symbolized a sea change for
Liberia, director Johnson asked in the film’s first minute: “Can a woman make a
difference?” “Can a woman lead us in peace and turn the country around?” To
answer, ILL followed Sirleaf, her cabinet ministers, and Johnson as they worked to
assuage threats of violence, revive Liberia’s economy, and rehabilitate a corrupt
political system. To appreciate the nuances of this narrative, the following analysis
demonstrates how ILL foregrounded and situated Liberian women.
Asserting Agencies amidst a Tentative Peace
Postwar, the threat of returning to rebel warfare loomed large. After fourteen years
of ceasefires and broken ceasefires, Liberia’s peace was welcome but uneasy.
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ILL spotlighted the rhetorical and political agencies of Sirleaf and Johnson to manage
this threat, especially when it manifested in public displays of unrest. ILL situated
Sirleaf’s and Johnson’s efforts within a postwar crisis of masculinity, wherein Liberian
men and boys, most of whom had spent much of their lives as soldiers or rebels, were
unemployed. In this context, Sirleaf asserted her agency as “Old Ma,” a motherly figure
who strategically listened to or disciplined men. Johnson asserted her rhetorical agency
as a filmmaker, engaging in political dialogue with Liberian men in public. Both actors
engaged threatening men and were able to allay threats of violence for the moment.
Postwar nation-building projects amplify women’s roles as mothers of the nation,
positioning women as both the producers and cultural guardians of the nation.40
Women’s identities as mothers are often grounds for exploitation, abuse, and
oppression, yet in postwar Liberia, “mother” was a politically powerful symbol. Many
attributed the end of the civil wars to the protests led by Sirleaf’s collaborator,
Leymah Gbowee, and her leadership of the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace
(LMAP). Gbowee summarized LMAP’s demands:
We are tired of our children being raped. We are now taking this stand to secure
the future of our children. Because we believe, as custodians of society, tomorrow
our children will ask us, “Mama, what was your role during the crisis?”41
At the height of LMAP’s protests, Gbowee and a couple hundred women linked arms
and surrounded the meeting room where peace talks were in process. When the men
attempted to leave, the women threatened to strip their clothes, because, as Gbowee
wrote: “In Africa, it’s a terrible curse to see a married or elderly woman deliberately
bare herself.”42 Generally, in Africa, a mother’s power accumulates as she ages,
increasing her ability to exercise authority over men or to shame them.43 The threat
worked: the men reached a peace accord. Since “mother” was the most culturally and
politically powerful identity for older African women, Sirleaf exploited her “Old Ma”
nickname to position Liberian men as her children who must honor their mother.
For example, Sirleaf’s “Old Ma” disciplined former soldiers protesting before City
Hall. Regarding the protestors, Sirleaf said to the camera:
I must listen to them in a way that says, “I want to hear you,” “I understand your
plight,” and that’s the Old Ma approach. And it usually brings a positive reaction
because I’m coming as a mother to listen to them.44
Sirleaf then went to the street and talked to the group’s leader:
Sirleaf: You all say you will make war.
Ex-Soldier: No.
Sirleaf: And there will be no Christmas?
Ex-Soldier: No, no, no.
Sirleaf: When you say that one there, there’s a problem.
Ex-Soldier: Nobody said that either.
Sirleaf: But that’s what the paper was saying today. As long as you are peaceful, you
have every right to present your grievance to the government and we find a
solution together. Isn’t that the right way?
Ex-Soldier: That’s the right way, Ma.
Sirleaf: We’ll do it today.
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Responding to Sirleaf as “Ma,” the leader identified as a child of the nation’s mother,
obligated to explain his transgressions. Demonstrating Old Ma’s power to discipline
men into orderly citizens, the ex-soldiers then peaceably entered City Hall, submitted
to metal detector scans, and sat down at Sirleaf’s table.
Sirleaf’s rhetorical agency as “Old Ma” also punished poor behavior. Her voice
narrated the meeting with the ex-soldiers: “On the other hand when people act out of
order, you know, I can have an effective response that will keep them in order.” For
example, she listened as the ex-soldiers raised their voices, blaming the United
Nations for putting them out of work. Sirleaf responded:
We’ve got many people out there in the villages who today are saying, “You’re
paying the same people who beat us, the same people who kicked us! The same
people who put us in jail! The same people who kill us! You’ve got us in our
villages poor today, and you’re giving them all the money because they go on the
streets!” We’ve got to deal with that, too. How do we respond to those people in
the villages? … They were the victims, they were the true victims of the war and
those are the people we are concerned about. But don’t stand up there and say you
are high and mighty. Don’t forget those poor people out there that you have
impoverished.45
An ex-soldier immediately responded: “Yeah, Ma.” Another added: “I promise you,
as of tomorrow, you won’t see tension no more.”
Dramatizing Old Ma’s power to stem the threat of violence, ILL concluded this
narrative with footage of Sirleaf, alone in her office, reading the headline of a
newspaper: “Ex-Soldiers Reject Violence.” She narrated: “We have had many
governments here in the recent past that have relied on brute force, instilling fear
into people. We say that you can still exercise leadership without repression.” Thus,
ILL suggested that Sirleaf’s rhetorical agency relieved that particular threat of male
violence in that particular moment.
ILL also spotlighted Johnson’s rhetorical agency to engage men in political
dialogue. Considering high rates of unemployment, public spaces were typically
reserved for men to socialize. While women certainly moved about these spaces, their
more “public” roles were as market women, selling and exchanging goods. ILL
spotlighted two moments in which Johnson engaged men in these public spaces.
Asserting her rhetorical authority as a director of the film, Johnson interviewed a
group of men gathered in a marketplace, asking them what they thought about
Sirleaf’s leadership. Two men proceeded to engage her in a conversational manner
and a third responded with a raised voice and forceful gestures. As he marched off,
Johnson narrated: “The men who fought for and against Charles Taylor are still very
much part of our society, they have put down their guns for now, but they certainly
could stir up trouble if they became unhappy with Ellen.” The heightened physicality
of the man’s response coupled with the thought that men “could stir up trouble”
situated Johnson’s rhetorical agency within an immediate and enduring context
marked by the threat of violence.
Likewise, ILL foregrounded Johnson’s rhetorical agency in a staged, one-on-one
interview with former rebel leader, Alhaji Kromah. This scene featured Johnson and
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Kromah sitting across from one another while Johnson posed a series of questions
about his views on Sirleaf. Kromah’s thoughtful responses constructed Johnson as
Kromah’s equal interlocutor and as a citizen with a stake in political affairs. However,
when asked if he thought Sirleaf’s government was as inclusive as he would like, his
response resituated Johnson in an unstable, temporary peace. He said that if he and
his former rebel soldiers were unhappy with Sirleaf, they would “have to take steps to
make sure she stops doing what is bad. … We will have to intervene.” This interview
thus simultaneously legitimized Johnson’s rhetorical and political agency and yet
harnessed this agency within a precarious political context. Immediately following
the interview, ILL turned to a scene in which Sirleaf said that she intended to meet
with former leaders (such as Kromah) and to “listen to their suggestions and advice
and see how we can be more inclusive.” Thus, these two scenes foregrounded
Johnson’s agency, situated this agency within a pervasive threat of violence, and then
foregrounded Sirleaf’s rhetorical efforts to curb this threat. Here, Johnson’s agency
engendered both civil and threatening behavior from men. Such behavior was
naturalized by a nationalist context in which men struggled to grasp with a new
reality that displaced their soldier identities. Shifting from context to agency,
ILL then focused on Sirleaf’s efforts to assure men that they need not return to
threatening ways.
In all, ILL resisted foregrounding Sirleaf and Johnson as agents of unmitigated
rhetorical and political agency, while it also resisted fixing them within a nationalist
state of imminent violence. Sirleaf’s motherly authority disciplined riotous men into
democratic and dialogic citizens. ILL framed her efforts as successful, yet local and
tentative. Indeed, she helped curb potential violence from former soldiers who made
a particular demand for pay on a particular day. Johnson’s directorial authority
legitimated her participation as a rhetorical agent in the public sphere while ILL
coupled this agency with indicators of immediate and future violence. As such,
Sirleaf’s and Johnson’s rhetorical agencies helped assuage threats of violence for their
particular moment, while ILL reminded viewers that these moments could be
fleeting.
Asserting Agency amidst US–Liberia Relations
ILL foregrounded Sirleaf’s rhetorical and political agency to rebuild Liberia’s
economy and yet situated her efforts within the fraught political and economic
relationship between Liberia and the United States. Specifically, one of ILL’s main
storylines focused on Sirleaf’s efforts to secure debt relief from the United States. To
begin, ILL constructed a context of Liberia’s poor economic conditions through a
montage of images. The montage opened with a shot of a young girl looking out onto
the ocean, where the USS Mt. Whitney, a US navy command ship, floated offshore;
the second and third shots each focused on a single woman standing alone in a
marketplace, staring directly into the camera and holding goods atop her head. The
location of these women in a market and the goods upon their heads helped
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construct a backdrop of a poor economy that wreaked havoc upon women and girls.
Further, the girl’s gaze onto the US ship coupled with the women’s gazes into the
camera positioned them as victims of an unchanging scene. Moreover, Johnson’s
voiceover amplified the force of this context: “[O]ur partnership with the US is most
valuable. … [W]e’ve always been very dependent on that relationship.”
While ILL seemingly stereotyped these woman as victims, it also positioned Sirleaf
as the agent of their liberation, capable of altering this otherwise fixed context.
Following the montage, for example, ILL featured scenes of Sirleaf’s meetings with
white, US statesmen, including President William Jefferson Clinton and US Senators
Russ Feingold (D-WI), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and James Inhofe (R-OK). Sirleaf
happily shook their hands and smiled for photos. The tight splicing between these
two montages suggested that Sirleaf made strong inroads with US statesmen toward
her goal of liberating Liberian women from poverty.
Building upon this narrative, ILL then featured Sirleaf’s meeting with President
Bush. At this point, ILL disrupted Sirleaf’s role as liberator of Liberian women and
rather, situated her within the complex relationship between Liberia and the United
States. Liberia depended on the United States for support toward political and
economic recovery, yet it also needed to demonstrate its potential as an independent
nation-state, capable of democratic governance. ILL thus, situated Sirleaf’s agency
within these exigencies, emphasizing that she alone could not revive Liberia’s
economy, but also that she resisted positioning Liberia as the recipient of the United
States’s benevolence. Prior to the meeting, for example, she said to a camera that the
meeting’s purpose was to “get [Bush’s] political blessings for the support on our
debt. … For us, the United States relationship is still the number one.” Aware of the
hierarchical, First/Third World relationship between the two nations, Sirleaf did not
intend to “ask” for debt relief, but to receive the symbolic force of Bush’s approval.
Amidst these power dynamics, ILL emphasized Sirleaf’s rhetorical and political
agency. First, ILL visualized Sirleaf as Bush’s equal. The meeting began with the two
presidents sitting side-by-side in identical chairs, posing for photos in a White House
sitting room. The ensuing dialogue foregrounded Sirleaf’s felicitous negotiation of the
situation:
Bush: Madame President, thanks for comin’. I’m thrilled to call you “friend.” We
wanna help you, we really do.
Sirleaf: As we told you, we just need to get this debt off our backs.
Bush: Um, you were wondering whether or not it was possible to achieve your
dream. And you asked for our help. I was impressed by your spirit and so I pledge
our ongoing help. Thank you Madame President.
Resisting Bush’s positioning of Sirleaf as a “friend” and as someone who “asked” for
“help,” Sirleaf delivered a concrete statement asserting Liberia’s need for debt relief.
In response to this concrete reminder, Bush spoke of nebulous things, such as her
“dream” and her “spirit.” Compared with Sirleaf, Bush appeared to lack the rhetorical
agency to assert the United States’s clear position on the issue of Liberia’s debt. Thus,
the conclusion of this scene foregrounded Sirleaf’s agency and yet, because she did
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not receive an explicit commitment from Bush, it resituated her within a precarious
context inflected by a colonizer–colonized relationship.
Later in the film, however, ILL framed Sirleaf as ultimately victorious, albeit with
the help of an American change agent. Speaking at a “Liberia Partners’ Forum,” US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared: “We will cancel that debt. All of it.”
Immediately following her announcement, ILL featured the audience’s joyful
applause, splicing together three successive shots of women of color clapping and
smiling. The next shot turned back to Rice and Sirleaf, who shook hands, smiled, sat
closely, and chatted. Thus, this scene emphasized Sirleaf’s ability to revive Liberia’s
economy and in turn, empower Liberian women. Simultaneously, the scene placed
Rice’s agency front and center, situating Sirleaf’s political agency as dependent on the
United States’s economic power and benevolent political policy.46
Thus, ILL foregrounded, situated, and complicated Sirleaf’s agency to “save” poor
Liberian women and girls. This narrative arc initially invoked victim–hero stereotypes of women in developing nations. Situating Sirleaf’s economic efforts within US
politics, however, mitigated Sirleaf’s rhetorical and political agency to “ask” for debt
relief while it also spotlighted her assertion of agency in the face of Bush’s vague
promises. Finally, the narrative emphasized Rice’s rhetorical and political agency to
empower Liberia, and by extension, Liberian women. On one hand, Rice’s
announcement could be seen as the successful outcome of Sirleaf’s lobbying,
emphasizing Sirleaf’s ability to alter oppressive contexts. On the other, Rice could
be viewed as the ultimate savior to Liberian women. While the latter helped mitigate
Sirleaf’s power as the Third World woman-hero, it reified Liberia’s position as an
impoverished nation, subject to the goodwill of First World actors. Moreover, while
ILL framed debt relief as a political success for Sirleaf, it offered no indication of its
material effects on Liberian women. Offering no resolution to its victim–savior
narrative, ILL reminded viewers that postwar economic recovery is not immediate.
Doing so stressed not only the limits of Sirleaf’s agency but also the limits of First
World nation-states to economically “save” developing nations. Tacking between
agency and context, ILL constructed an unsettling reality that the agencies of First
and Third World leaders alike can only effect incremental change on the material
realities of impoverished Third World women.
Asserting Agency amidst Systemic Political Corruption
ILL invoked and expanded upon the rhetorical and political agency afforded to
women via the Iron Lady (IL) title. Indeed, the film’s title, Iron Ladies of Liberia,
grounded the film’s female characters in Western nationalist ideals of gendered
leadership. Originally, journalists labeled Margaret Thatcher “The Iron Lady” to
reference her militaristic position on keeping the “Iron Curtain” between Western
European and communist nations. Eventually, Thatcher embraced the title and
strategically used media exposure to negotiate the gendered politics of nation and
war.47 “Iron” ensured she was perceived as tough, and “Lady” ensured she was
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not perceived as too masculine.48 Rhetorically, then, the IL title draws upon an either/
or, male/female binary logic typical of Western thought. Further, Thatcher’s IL
performance cemented the IL title with white, European masculinity and militarism.49
Because Sirleaf is popularly referred to as “The Iron Lady of Liberia,” the title
suggested that ILL offered a hagiographic portrait of Sirleaf amenable to Western
ideals of women’s national leadership. Yet the title also announced ILL’s disruptive
potential. Its reference to “Iron Ladies” (ILs) instead of “Iron Lady,” resisted
the label’s Western European trappings. Specifically, the pluralization destabilized the
singularities attached to the IL title, which names a woman who is the leader of one
nation. In part, “ILs” invokes the recent proliferation of woman leaders considered
ILs of their nations, including Sirleaf of Liberia, Eugenia Charles of the Caribbean,
Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, and Indira Gandhi of
India. Likewise, in the context of ILL, ILs references Sirleaf’s appointed officials, who
self-identified as ILs working to empower women in the new democratic nation.
The film’s ILs drew upon the rhetorical and political agency afforded through the
title to challenge, reify, and sidestep a political system shaped by an old boy’s
network. To begin, ILL foregrounded Sirleaf’s political agency to disseminate IL
power, appointing many women to high cabinet positions, including Minister of
Commerce, Olubanke King Akerele, Minister of Finance, Antoinette Sayeh, and
Chief of Police, Beatrice Munah Sieh. ILL featured many roundtable meetings with
Sirleaf and her cabinet members, zooming in on these women. In its coverage of one
meeting, ILL foregrounded Sayeh’s perspective on the power of women to build a
democracy. To the camera, Sayeh said of Liberian women:
They certainly were very strong voices against the atrocities in Liberia and in the
war and they fought very, very hard to make sure that the democratic process
worked this time around. And so this is our biggest opportunity to change Liberia.
Although identified as an IL, Sayeh resituated her rhetorical and political agency as
part of the collective agency asserted by Liberian women throughout the conflict. As
such, ILL destabilized the singularity of the IL title and reminded its viewers of larger
forces at work to “change Liberia.”
In part, ILL reinscribed Sirleaf and her ILs into a hierarchical model of governance
that asserted a top-down orientation of political power. To illustrate, ILL crafted a
narrative through which Sirleaf transformed Sieh into an IL. First, as though an
IL-in-training, Sieh worked alongside Sirleaf to clear vendors out of a Monrovia
street. Sieh later reported to Sirleaf that the situation was “under control” and the
vendors were “under strict orders.” As though fully transformed into an IL, Sieh then
declared: “They call me ‘Iron Lady’ because I’m very strict-tough. I want to prove a
point that women can be trusted and placed in dangerous positions and they
can even do better.” In a later scene, Sieh celebrated the arrival of firearms for the
police force. Holding a gun, she said, “It makes me feel like a real woman! I’m just
kidding. … I’ve helped to bring peace to my country.” Thus, ILL foregrounded Sieh’s
rhetorical and political agency to assert orders, wield a gun, and maintain peace.
Reminiscent of Thatcher’s IL performance, Sieh’s IL identity was situated within a
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militaristic, top-down flow of political power that demanded that women conform to
masculine modes of governance and yet, not lose their femininity.
ILL most pointedly challenged First World assumptions of the IL title through its
focus on Johnson’s postwar struggles. To begin, Johnson explained to the camera that
she unknowingly purchased a dubious land deed, one of many bought and sold to
multiple buyers throughout the war. Because of this corrupt practice, Johnson was
arrested for building on someone else’s land. ILL, however, resisted constructing
Johnson as a victim, and rather foregrounded her rhetorical and political agency to
challenge the state apparatus. In a small Lands and Mines office surrounded by men,
Johnson attempted to explain to an official that she had “all the documents” of the
deed and that she was willing “to negotiate” with the land’s seller. A heated exchange
ensued, concluding when Johnson raised her voice to the camera:
It’s not supposed to happen that way. The president is trying to put these things in
place. She’s trying her best to put everything in place, but they’re not giving her a
chance. Let me be frank, the men of this country failed us a lot.
Although Johnson espoused support for Sirleaf’s reform efforts, her exasperation and
disillusionment resituated these efforts within a context of widespread and seemingly
impenetrable corruption. Johnson’s visit to the office may very well have been
arranged with ILL’s camera crew, intent on spotlighting her political efforts, however,
its outcome appeared quite unpredictable and explosive, resituating her rhetorical
and political power within the aftermath of the “men” who “failed” Liberia.
That said, Johnson did not remain a victim to government corruption—nor did
she follow the victim–survivor–activist trajectory, capable of liberating herself and
other women. Instead, ILL foregrounded her agency to sidestep her political context
and construct a new reality for herself. Standing in her kitchen, Johnson said, “I have
bought a new place. I’m going to go forward and move on with my life.” Johnson’s
next words, the words that inspired the film’s title, helped construct a reality that
foregrounded the power of women in postwar nations to likewise build a world for
themselves:
Although they call Ellen the “Iron Lady,” there are other iron ladies out there in
their own way. In their own great way of doing things, they are iron ladies, too.
Iron Ladies of Liberia are evening their shoulders with their counterparts and we
are making things happen.
Here, ILL spotlighted Johnson’s agency to not only build but also reimagine a world
in which women were capable of “making things happen” independent of Liberian
men. That said, Johnson’s imagining of “out there” situated “other iron ladies” within
a vague, boundaryless scene. Before Johnson identified these iron ladies as Liberian
women, she first made two general references to “ladies,” creating a rhetorical space
for identification between Johnson and her viewers—whether First or Third World.
Thus, this scene simultaneously foregrounded and situated Johnson’s rhetorical and
political agency within a world in which women could sidestep and in turn, decenter
the power of the state apparatus.
322
In sum, ILL spotlighted women’s rhetorical and political agency through the IL
title. This title brought with it the potential of gendered leadership to accommodate a
Western, hierarchical model of governance or to challenge this model in empowering
ways for women. In ILL, viewers see how ILs resisted, reified, and sidestepped this
model. ILL also situated their agencies within the power of a corrupt state apparatus
that, while previously responsive to women’s activism, can be reproduced by the ILs
themselves and can stem women’s efforts to rebuild their lives. Nonetheless, ILL
advanced an alternative to challenging or reifying political corruption as it
foregrounded Johnson’s agency to sidestep the system and reimagine her reality.
Conclusion: ILL’s Reception and a Transnational Feminist Perspective
This analysis has attempted to demonstrate how a documentary film by and about
African women can achieve wide circulation and advance nuanced constructions of
women. ILL’s two-pronged strategy of foregrounding and situating agency helped
undo a First World gaze by tacking between the force of women’s abilities to act and
speak in effective ways, but also to remind viewers that these acts are necessarily
attached to multiple contexts of power. The following details ILL’s uptake by viewers
and then suggests that ILL’s impact shaped and is shaped by a transnational feminist
perspective on women and power around the world.
ILL’s impacts on its viewers evidence how it resisted constructing women as either
victims or heroes, and rather, emphasized the power and limits of their agencies. The
following provides audience feedback through reviews, blogs, academic discussion
boards, and website comment sections. First, many responses spoke to how ILL
acknowledged the relationship between filmmaker and subject, insofar as they viewed
Sirleaf and her ministers from Johnson’s perspective, one that was shaped by postwar
needs for effective leadership. A review posted to cinemapolitica.org, for example,
noted that ILL offered a “joyous, inspirational testimony” of how ILs had to “tackle
indolent bureaucracy, black markets and the omnipresent threat of violent riots”
amidst a “transition” between government.50 Likewise, lay viewer, Sany, posted on
PBS’s website:
I am an African and I have always been pretty discouraged by the many political
leaders on the continent. To see a leader who seems sincerely driven to make a
differance [sic] for the people and the political process as a whole, reawakens some
sort of hope in me.51
Notably, both viewers situated the ILs’ power within “transition” and “process,”
recognizing that Liberia’s leaders can effect slow, but positive change.
Viewers also situated the agencies of ILs in a global context. Speaking perhaps to
the way ILL contextualized Sirleaf’s leadership within global power relationships,
Harvard professor, Sandra J. Sucher, charged her students to study Sirleaf in ILL
because, as Sucher argued, “new models [of female national leaders]—and lots of
them—need to be documented to socialize female leadership and build robust mental
models of what it looks like.”52 Similarly, YouTube viewer, thello1, asserted that
323
Sirleaf’s leadership registered for women of many belongings: “She is speaking
directly to the women of Liberia, of Africa and of the world.”53 Lay viewer, Alexis
Lockman, viewed Sirleaf as a leader for all women of color, no matter their location.
She wrote:
It is inspiring to see a woman of color in a position of power. … [Sirleaf’s] life
experience is unique to the white-dominant patriarchy that has ruled people of
color all over the world. Changing the face of leadership means changing what
power and leadership means to a community by redefining boundaries.54
These responses recognize the enabling and constraining force of national and world
politics, pointing to ILL’s insistence on situating women’s rhetorical and political acts
within a constellation of forces.
Many viewers’ comments were shaped by Johnson’s role as the film’s subject,
suggesting its credibility as a story of a “real” woman negotiating “real” contexts.
Film critic, Astride Charles, noted that Johnson proved her “iron lady identity”
through her property struggle that engaged a greater “patriarchal landmine” typical
of politics in other African nations.55 One British critic resisted ascribing Johnson
with unmitigated political agency, noting how she “engaged you completely with her
own struggles, views and problems. You feel the urgency to improve things.”56
Similarly, blogger, Wendy Tai attended a film festival in Washington, DC, where
Johnson appeared on a panel alongside American women. Johnson provoked Tai to
question her activist commitments:
I felt really motivated hearing Siatta speak about her work, the shit she had to put
up with during the past Liberian regime[.] … [I]t’s one of those instances that
really make you think: what the hell are YOU doing to make this world a better
place?57
These viewers considered Johnson’s struggles as ongoing within an unforgiving and
yet alterable context. Underlying their responses is the assumption that her struggles
were perceived to be real.
ILL’s uptake suggests that it offered an example of how a media product can
elucidate a more transnational feminist perspective on women around the globe.
Such a perspective considers the multiple ways in which women challenge the
oppressive forces of globalization and the nation-state. Certainly, scholars and
activists conceive of “transnational feminism” in multiple and sometimes competing
ways: as a political project, as a critical lens, as a challenge to or as an alternative to
“global feminism.”58 On my view, embracing a transnational feminist perspective
encourages the consideration of all efforts to destabilize the power of boundaries,
both literal and symbolic, which work to limit the rhetorical and political power of
women. Many scholars, for example, have exposed the oppressive effects of defining
women by their national, First World or Third World, Global North or South
locations.59 Aiwha Ong, for example, noted that, while it is unlikely that national,
World, or Global boundaries will disappear anytime soon, they are becoming more
flexible and porous, offering women alternatives to how they relate or belong to the
nation-state.60
324
Thus, I argue that ILL’s rhetorical force can be attributed in part to the ways it
shaped a transnational feminist perspective for its audiences. Of course, ILL is just
one example of how a film can construct reality in which women act in ways that
support and subvert the power of national, World, and Global belongings.
Committed to rebuilding Liberia, the women of ILL asserted agency to assuage
threats of violence, to revive its economy, and to rebuild a democracy. Acting within
“a constellation of political forces,” the women of ILL negotiated with an uneasy
national peace, First World economic and political power, and globalized ideals of
white, Western governance.61 At times, these negotiations accommodated and
relented to power, and at times they challenged and sidestepped power. Altogether,
ILL exposed the limits of the victim/savior logic endemic to a First World gaze and
rather, put forward a complex, imperfect, and compelling reality of women capable of
asserting agency despite and because of their contexts.
Notes
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
Amy Farrell and Patricia McDermott, “Claiming Afghan Women: The Challenge of Human
Rights Discourse for Transnational Feminism,” in Just Advocacy?: Women’s Human Rights,
Transnational Feminisms, and the Politics of Representation, eds. Wendy S. Hesford and
Wendy Kozol (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 47; Wendy S. Hesford
and Wendy Kozol, “Introduction,” in Just Advocacy?: Women’s Human Rights, Transnational Feminisms, and the Politics of Representation, eds. Wendy S. Hesford and Wendy
Kozol (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 4–5. See also Makau W. Mutua,
“Savages, Victims, and Saviors: The Metaphor of Human Rights,” Harvard International
Law Journal 42, issue 1 (2001): 203.
Raka Shome, “Transnational Feminism and Communication Studies,” The Communication
Review 9, issue 4 (2006): 257.
Ella Shohat, “Post-Third-Worldist Culture: Gender, Nation, and the Cinema,” in Feminist
Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, eds. M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra
Mohanty (New York: Routledge, 1997), 184, 183. See also Shome, “Transnational Feminism,” 258.
Elora Halim Chowdhury, Transnationalism Reversed: Women Organizing Against Violence
in Bangladesh (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2011), xviii.
Regarding documentary film and filmmaking and women generally: Paula Rabinowitz, They
Must be Represented: The Politics of Documentary (London, UK: New Left Books, 1994);
Diane Waldman and Janet Walker, eds., Feminism and Documentary (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1999). Regarding film and filmmaking by and about African
women, see Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Women Filmmakers of the African & Asian Diaspora:
Decolonizing the Gaze, Locating Subjectivity (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
1997); Kelly Hankin, “And Introducing … The Female Director: Documentaries about
Women Filmmakers and Feminist Activism,” NWSA Journal 19, issue 1 (2007): 76–78.
Hankin, “And Introducing,” 81.
Beti Ellerson, “Jacqueline Kalimunda: ‘Single Rwandan’ and Her Crowdfunding Campaign
on Indiegogo,” African Women in Cinema Blog, November 3, 2014, http://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2014/11/jacqueline-kalimunda-single-rwandan-and.html.
“Africa is a Woman’s Name,” Women Make Movies, http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/
pages/c809.shtml (accessed December 10, 2014); “Africa, Africas,” Women Make Movies,
http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c570.shtml (accessed December 10, 2014).
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]
[23]
[24]
[25]
[26]
[27]
[28]
[29]
[30]
325
“Africa is a Woman’s Name,” Women Make Movies, http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/
collect8.shtml (accessed December 10, 2014).
Foster, Women Filmmakers, 1.
Raka Shome and Radha S. Hegde, “Culture, Communication, and the Challenge of
Globalization,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19, issue 2 (2002): 182.
Nancy A. Naples, “The Challenges and Possibilities of Transnational Feminist Praxis,” in
Women’s Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics, eds.
Nancy A. Naples and Manisha Desai (New York: Routledge, 2002), 267.
The version of ILL that played in theaters in the United States is longer (01:17:00) than the
versions that aired on BBC (00:52:30) and PBS (00:56:46). This essay draws evidence from
the longest version, because it is the only version available to purchase, and because all of the
footage of the BBC and PBS versions is represented in the longer version. Iron Ladies of
Liberia, directed by Daniel Junge and Siatta Scott Johnson (Denver, CO: Just Media, 2007).
Drawing upon James Jasinksi’s articulation of constitutive rhetoric, this essay values “the
imbrication of the performative and representational capacities of language” to exhibit
“discursive forms” that “enable and constrain” audiences to act. James Jasinksi, “A
Constitutive Framework for Rhetorical Historiography: Toward an Understanding of the
Discursive (Re)constitution of ‘Constitution’ in The Federalist Papers,” in Doing Rhetorical
History: Concepts and Cases, ed. Kathleen J. Turner (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press, 1998), 74–75.
Michelle Citron, “Fleeing from Documentary: Autobiographical Film/Video and the ‘Ethics
of Responsibility,’” in Feminism and Documentary, eds. Diane Waldman and Janet Walker
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 271.
Citron, “Fleeing from Documentary,” 271.
Citron, “Fleeing from Documentary,” 271.
“Independent Television Service,” http://itvs.org/films/iron-ladies-of-liberia/filmmaker
(accessed November 5, 2014).
“Just Media,” http://www.just-media.org (accessed June 23, 2014).
“Independent Lens,” http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/ironladies/credits/html (accessed
June 23, 2014).
“Independent Lens,” http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/ironladies/credits/html (accessed
June 23, 2014); “Just Media,” http://www.just-media.org (accessed June 23, 2014).
Joanne Ostrow, “Denver Filmmakers See Stars Rise,” Denver Post.com, March 16, 2008,
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_8564776?source=infinite (accessed November 5, 2014).
“Follow the Leader: A Film Portrait of Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf,” International
Museum of Women, http://www.imow.org/wpp/stories/viewStory?storyId=924 (accessed
November 5, 2014).
Hesford and Kozol, “Introduction,” 4–5.
“Follow the Leader.”
“Filmography,” Jungefilm, http://jungefilm.com/about/filmography/ (accessed June 23, 2014).
“Independent Television Service,” http://itvs.org/films/iron-ladies-of-liberia (accessed June
23, 2014); Film Catalog, Women Make Movies, http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/ (accessed
June 23, 2014).
Lisa Kennedy, “Liberia’s ‘Iron Ladies’ Forge Nation’s Recovery,” DenverPost.com, November
15, 2007, http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_7464170 (accessed December 10, 2014).
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “Agency: Promiscuous and Protean,” Communication and Critical/
Cultural Studies 2, issue 1 (2005): 3.
Thomas W. Benson and Brian J. Snee, eds., The Rhetoric of the New Political Documentary
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008); Shawn J. Parry-Giles and Trevor
Parry-Giles, “Meta-Imagining, The War Room, and the Hyperreality of US Politics,” Journal
of Communication 49, issue 1 (1999): 28–45.
326
[31] Alexandra Juhasz, “They Said We Were Trying to Show Reality—All I Want to Show Is My
Video: The Politics of the Realist Feminist Documentary,” in Collecting Visible Evidence, eds.
Jane M. Gaines and Michael Renov (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1999), 195.
[32] Louise Spence and Vinicius Navarro, Crafting Truth: Documentary Form and Meaning
(Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011), 2, 4.
[33] Spence and Navarro, Crafting Truth, 21–22.
[34] This perspective is grounded in classical rhetorical theory, especially in Aristotle’s
enunciations of ethos. Kenneth Burke provides a modern iteration of this concept as
identification or consubstantiation. See Aristotle, Rhetoric, Trans. W. Rhys Roberts. (Mineola:
New York: Dover, 2004), 7–8; Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1969), 23.
[35] Walter Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value,
and Action (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987), 237.
[36] Spence and Navarro, Crafting Truth, 22.
[37] In rhetorical theory, scholarly emphasis on “conditions of possibility,” a term introduced by
Immanuel Kant, provides a counterpart to emphases on agent-centered studies of rhetoric.
[38] Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “Rhetorical Criticism 2009: A Study in Method,” in The Handbook
of Rhetoric and Public Address Studies, eds. Shawn J. Parry-Giles and J. Michael Hogan
(Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 101.
[39] Rebecca Belle-Metereau, “Iron Ladies of Liberia.” Film & History 39, issue 2 (2007): 65;
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), National Human Development Report:
Liberia 2006, 42. Retrieved from http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/national/africa/liberia/
LIBERIA_2006_en.pdf.
[40] Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London, UK: Sage Publications, 1997).
[41] Leymah Gbowee and Carol Mithers, Mighty be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex
Changed a Nation at War (New York: Beast Books, 2011), 141.
[42] Gbowee and Mithers, Mighty be Our Powers, 162.
[43] Oyeronke Oyewumi, “Family Bonds/Conceptual Binds: African Notes on Feminist
Epistemologies,” Signs 25, issue 4 (2000): 1096.
[44] In this essay, all quotations of the dialogue and descriptions of film’s scenes were drawn
from Iron Ladies of Liberia, 2007.
[45] Emphases added to reflect Sirleaf’s vocal inflection.
[46] Consider, for example, that the forum was held at the World Bank Headquarters in
Washington, DC, hosted by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the UN, the
US government, and the European Commission—all governing bodies considered key agents
of economic and structural inequalities worldwide. “World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz
opens Liberia Partners Forum,” World Bank, Feb. 13, 2007, http://web.worldbank.org/
WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:21219218~pagePK:64257043~piPK:437376~the
SitePK:4607,00.html (accessed May 15, 2013).
[47] Heather Nunn, Thatcher, Politics, and Fantasy: The Political Culture of Gender and Nation
(London, UK: Lawrence and Wishart, 2003), 70–71.
[48] Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Beyond the Double Bind: Women and Leadership (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995), esp. chapter 6.
[49] Geographically, Liberia is a “Western” nation, since it is located in the Western and
Northern hemispheres. However, in terms of Liberia’s perceived status as a Third World
nation, and one that held its first democratic elections in 2005, it is typically not considered a
First World, Western nation.
[50] “Iron Ladies of Liberia,” CinemaPolitica, http://cinemapolitica.org/film/iron-ladies-liberia
[51] Sany, comment on Iron Ladies of Liberia, http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/ironladies/
talkback.html (accessed December 10, 2014).
327
[52] Sandra J. Sucher, Harvard Business Review Blog Network (blog), May 10, 2010, accessed
December 10, 2014, http://blogs.hbr.org/2010/05/ellen-johnson-sirleaf-moral-le/.
[53] thello1, comment on Iron Ladies of Liberia, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpo4oyIJQs8
[54] Alexis Lockman, comment on Iron Ladies of Liberia, International Museum of Women,
http://www.imow.org/wpp/stories/viewStory?storyId=925 (accessed November 3, 2014).
[55] Astride Charles, “Iron Ladies Who Bend,” Seeingblack.com, January 10, 2008, http://
seeingblack.com/printer_353.shtmlmovies/tv (accessed December 9, 2014).
[56] Angus Wolfe Murray, “Iron Ladies of Liberia,” Eyeforfilm.com, February 26, 2008, http://
eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/iron-ladies-of-liberia-film-review-by-angus-wolfe-murray (accessed
December 10, 2014).
[57] Wendy Tai, “iron ladies,” hypergraphia, March 8, 2009, http://www.wendytai.com/blog/
?p=401.
[58] Marcia Texler Segal and Esther Ngan-Ling Chow, “Analyzing Gender, Intersectionality, and
Inequality in Global, Transnational and Local Contexts,” in Analyzing Gender, Intersectionality, and Multiple Inequalities: Global, Transnational and Local Contexts, eds. Esther NganLing Chow, Marcia Texler Segal, and Lin Tan (Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2011), 8.
[59] Rebecca Dingo, Networking Arguments: Rhetoric, Transnational Feminism, and Public Policy
Writing (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), 8; Inderpal Grewal and Caren
Kaplan, “Introduction: Transnational Feminist Practices and Questions of Postmodernity,”
in Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices, eds. Inderpal
Grewal and Caren Kaplan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 17; Richa
Nagar and Amanda Lock Swarr, “Introduction: Theorizing Transnational Feminist Praxis,”
in Critical Transnational Feminist Praxis, eds. Amanda Lock Swarr and Richa Nagar
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 3–4.
[60] Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1999), 4.
[61] Rey Chow, “Postmodern Automatons,” in The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, 2nd
ed., ed. Donald Preziosi (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009), 373.
Red Tourism: Rethinking Propaganda as a Social
Space
Chunfeng Lin
To cite this article: Chunfeng Lin (2015) Red Tourism: Rethinking Propaganda as
a Social Space, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 12:3, 328-346, DOI:
10.1080/14791420.2015.1037777
Published online: 15 May 2015.
Article views: 159
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Red Tourism: Rethinking Propaganda as a
Social Space
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Chunfeng Lin
This article examines Red Tourism through a case study of Yan’an, China. Drawing
upon social/critical scholarship on media and space, the author argues that Red Tourism
is better conceived as a social space, both produced and productive. Specifically, from the
qualitative data derived from this study and through a spatial analysis of architecture,
urban planning, and the museum of Yan’an, the author argues that Red Tourism was
created by the state to xuanchuan/propagandize its revolutionary past and attached
politico-ideological legitimacy by catering to the postsocialist nostalgia on the one hand,
and is producing a dynamic “Red” economy through the commodification of the space
on the other. Departing from Henri Lefebvre’s powerful thinking around the production
of space, this article sheds additional light on the close ties between propaganda and
space that have been largely invisible in the field.
Keywords: Red Tourism; Propaganda; Xuanchuan; Contemporary China; Social Space;
Henri Lefebvre
Introduction
Red Tourism (hongse luyou) refers to tourism of the People’s Republic of China in
which people visit tourist spots with historical significance to either the Communist
Party of China (CPC) or the Chinese revolution. The profitability of this so-called
“Red” economy has been phenomenal: According to The People’s Daily, “last year
[2011] alone, China’s Red Tourism sites received 540 million visitors, counting for
20 percent of tourists in the country.”1 According to a governmental outline from
Chunfeng Lin is at the Institute of Communications Research at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript as well
as James Hay and Cameron McCarthy for their valuable feedback on the earlier version of the article.
Correspondence to: Chunfeng Lin, Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, 119 Gregory Hall, 810 S. Wright St., Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Email: clin59@illinois.edu.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2015.1037777
Red Tourism
329
2011, by 2015 the national Red tourist travel number would exceed 800 million with
an average annual growth of 15 percent, and increase the proportion to a quarter
share of the total number of China domestic tourism; the consolidated revenue of
Red Tourism would reach 200 billion yuan (approximately $31 billion) with an
average annual growth rate of 10 percent.2
Notwithstanding its political, economic, and cultural significances as well as its
profound implications for communication studies, Red Tourism has been treated as a
no-man’s land by scholars in the field. In China, the study of Red Tourism has been
exclusively conducted in conjunction with tourism and the political education,3 and
no serious critical/cultural studies project has ever been conducted to investigate Red
Tourism in Chinese or in English. This study is meant to fill that gap.
Drawing upon social/critical scholarship on tourism and space, the study centers
on the intersection of tourism and propaganda. Although tourism has vernacularly
been viewed as a recreation or leisure activity, contemporary critical studies of
tourism tend to problematize this approach. Within these theories—whether Dean
MacCannell,4 stressing the interplay between tourists’ behaviors and social relations
or John Urry,5 revealing the interwoven relationship of gazing and theming—tourism
has been deemed as a site of power, whether in the form of “staged authenticity”6 or
“high levels of surveillance.”7 Within this scholarship, Urry’s re-interpretation of
tourism as a “multifaceted” social and cultural carrier is particularly helpful in
understanding the nexus between tourism and propaganda,8 and therefore forms the
backbone of this study. Social theorists such as Henri Lefebvre and John Hannigan
have also complicated the common-sense notion of tourism. But their work focuses
on space. Henri Lefebvre’s powerful thinking on the production of space is especially
illuminating, for it has paved the way to help rethink Marxism’s political economy of
production from a spatial perspective.9 In his book The Production of Space, Lefebvre
articulates the polyvalence of social space: on one hand, as a product, social space is
to be used and consumed, and on the other hand, it is a means of production in
Marxist terminology, meaning that social space is also productive.10
I argue that Red Tourism is a social space that was built up by the Chinese state in
an effort to propagandize its revolutionary past and to continuously reinforce core
socialist values by catering to the postsocialist nostalgia. As a social space, Red
Tourism is also productive by means of articulation and commodification. And what
it is producing is not merely a booming economy, but, perhaps more significant to
this study, an intended image of the Party through the tourists’ imagination. To the
extent that the space is “Red-themed,” Red Tourism can be seen as an unusual
marriage, for the lack of a better term, between propaganda and mounting
commercialism under what Marx terms “commodity fetishism.” In this study, rather
than considering Red Tourism a social practice, I focus on space. I write, here, in
concert with social/critical scholars including Mattelart,11 Lefebvre,12 Eco,13 Hannigan,14 Anderson,15 and Barthes,16 who reckon that a space such as a canal, city,
architecture, theme park, nation-state, or tourist spot communicates and spreads
specific information through various human activities.
330
C. Lin
This article focuses on Yan’an city, China as a case study of Red Tourism. Based
on a field trip to Yan’an in June, 2013 that lasted two weeks, it adopts a qualitative
and interpretive approach. The qualitative data are drawn particularly from two
strands of inquiry: government official interviews (n = 4) and tourist interviews
(n = 16). The interviews with the governmental officials focused broadly on the
development of local Red Tourism, related propaganda campaigns, and urban
planning projects. In the interviews at different Yan’an tourist spots, the tourists were
asked directly: “why did you choose Yan’an as your travel destination? Do you like
the place you are visiting now? Why? Would you like to share your Yan’an
experience with your friends?” The interviews are complemented by other ethnographic data, including observation undertaken in a series of five- to eight-day visits
to Yan’an between 2008 and 2014, and a total of 853 photos taken by me. In
addition, I analyzed sixteen government documents—either obtained from government sources or culled from the Internet. Overall, my methodological point of
departure for the spatial analysis of Yan’an Red Tourism is the threefold (formal,
structural, and functional) analysis of space proposed by Henri Lefebvre.17
In what follows, I start with a brief discussion about the Chinese notion of
propaganda and how it relates to travel and space with emphasis on its implications
and connections to Red Tourism. Then, I delve into my case study. I first explore
how what Lefebvre calls the “three moments of social space”18 have turned Yan’an
into a Mecca of Red Tourism. Then I look into how the polyvalence of social space
(simultaneously produced and producing) plays out in Red Tourism. Specifically,
I examine how Yan’an Red Tourism as a social space was produced by focusing on
the postsocialist nostalgia and imagination, followed by a section about the
productivity of Red Tourism by highlighting the commodification of space.
Xuanchuan, Travel, and Red Tourism
Reading government documents or even just looking at tourist sites, it is fairly easy to
identify the propagandistic nature of Red Tourism. The rationale that travelling can
be seen as a part of propaganda practice lies in the fact that, as Chris Rojek and John
Urry put it, “cultures travel as well as people.”19 Mattelart, for example, articulates a
religious model of propaganda against the backdrop of re-Christianization in
seventeenth-century Europe, characterized by human travelling.20 Nevertheless, the
public perception of propaganda by the Chinese is radically different from the
modern Western notion of propaganda as an evil force.
Propaganda in China has different histories and traditions that do not fit into the
Western framework of propaganda, and these matter to our understanding of Red
Tourism. Xuanchuan (宣传), the Chinese term for “propaganda,” is not a pejorative
term.21 From early civilization to the present, xuanchuan can refer to any
information to be propagated, circulated, and communicated, and it does not
necessarily connote deliberate manipulation and deception. The preaching practice of
Confucius, for example, is considered a perfect epitome of xuanchuan by Chinese
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scholars, regardless of the fact that what Confucius propagandized was not
something evil and deceptive.22
Some histories in this vein trouble the mass-media-preconditioned narrative of
propaganda by pointing to the fact that xuanchuan was bounded to human travel.
Qiu notes that the first massive xuanchuan activity in China appeared in the Spring
and Autumn Period (770–476 B.C.) and that the impetus of this xuanchuan
movement was not proliferation of mass media but greater human mobility.23 Qiu
claims that the extensive transportation networks at the time facilitated mass
communication.24 As a result, travels for leisure, business, official visiting, and
lobbying became frequent, all of which helped propagate specific information
through the word-of-mouth method, another distinctive feature of xuanchuan.25
The xuanchuan tradition of travelling, or mapping space by human travel,
remained effective during the period of the early Chinese revolution, coexisting with
the modern propaganda featuring mass media. In his December 1935 lecture later
titled “On the Strategy against Japan Imperialism,” Mao Zedong defined the Long
March as “a manifesto,” “a propaganda force,” and “a planter” in a metaphorical
sense, insofar as the Long March helped propagate and spread information about the
Chinese revolution while the Chinese Red Army marched throughout the space.26
Although Mao did not use the term “space,” the three metaphors clearly denote how
the Long March, the massive flow of people over a vast space, became a propaganda
force:
The Long March was a manifesto through which we declared to the world that the
Red Army was the hero and the imperialists and their lackeys—Chiang Kai-shek
and others of that ilk—were completely powerless. The Long March was also a
propaganda force for it propagated the message to 200 million people across eleven
provinces that the only liberation road for them was the road of the Red Army …
The Long March was also a planter by which the [revolutionary] seeds scattered in
the eleven provinces, and these seeds will be germinating, growing leaves,
flowering, and we will reap the harvest in the future.27
The propaganda legacy of the Long March manifests itself in Red Tourism. The
Chinese government defines Red Tourism as a propaganda project in a similar sense.
Specifically, while the Long March helped scatter the seeds of Chinese revolution by
the marching soldiers, Red Tourism is intended to implement the socialist core value
system through the travelling tourists. In 2011 the General Office of the CPC Central
Committee and the State Council jointly announced and released “National Red
Tourism Development Outline 2011–2015.” The outline states:
As a political project and a cultural project, Red Tourism must emphasize its
important role in facilitating the construction of the socialist core value system and
imbuing the masses with the idea that it was the history and the people that chose
the CPC, the socialist system and the road to open up and reform. In doing so, Red
Tourism will help reinforce public trust in the CPC and in socialism with Chinese
characteristics and thus consolidate the common ideological foundation for both
the Party and people of all nationalities.28
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Closely related to this study in this outline is an accentuation of space. First, the
outline emphasizes the development of infrastructure bound to Red Tourism,
including railways, highways, and airways. This echoes the aforementioned archetypical xuanchuan model in early Chinese civilization, where the transportation
system was the driver of human mobility, and thus, of the flow of purposeful
information. Second, the outline valorizes the role of city planning and design in the
development of Red Tourism. It makes explicit that “bureaus of housing and urban
planning at all levels must incorporate Red Tourism planning into their general
tourism planning and urban planning work.”29 I will illustrate how these spacerelated instructions have been implemented in Yan’an Red Tourism in my
subsequent spatial analysis.
Red Tourism is not produced in a vacuum. Mainstream Chinese scholarship holds
that the rise of Red Tourism was in accordance with the revival of China’s tourism
industry, extending over three periods. The three developmental stages of Red
Tourism can be viewed as the “Red” period (pre-Cultural Revolution), the “Red and
tourism” period (during the Cultural Revolution), and, finally, the “Red Tourism”
period (post-Cultural Revolution).30 Zhou and Gao argue that some places significant
to the Chinese revolution were protected as historical sites right after 1949, but they
were only for arranged visits, not open to the general public.31 In the second stage,
labeled as the product of “feudalism, capitalism, and revisionism,” China’s fragile
tourism industry that had developed after 1949 was devastated, with many tourist
spots and historical relics being shut down and destroyed during the Cultural
Revolution. Meanwhile, another sort of tourism, what one Chinese scholar calls
“political tourism,” spread out as a result of Mao fetishism.32 That was the “Great
Marches and Rallies” movement (da chuanlian), during which the youth, mostly high
school students, were encouraged to travel all over the country to share their
experiences on overturning local governments. During the rallies, some of the “Red”
spots (e.g., the Old House of Mao) were open to the students with complimentary
lodging and food.33 Although tourism is largely a metaphor in this case, we do see
mass student travels to the “Red” destinations. The third period is characterized as
the integration between “Red” and tourism. Zhou and Gao note that it all started
with the networking of 117 so-called “Patriotism Education Bases” in the late 1990s,
a long-lasting propaganda campaign mounted by the state propaganda department.34
The bases were quickly transformed into tourist spots as the concept of “Red
Tourism” emerged and was popularized in the late 1990s, accompanied with China’s
marketization.35 Searching CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure)
databases by the keyword “hongse luyou,” the author found that the earliest use of
the term in a Chinese publication at least can be traced back to an article entitled
“Feelings Attached to the Old Regions” from 1996.36
At this point, it is worth noting that in this article, I view propaganda/xuanchuan
as a complex social space; this rejects the Western notion of propaganda as
“poison.”37 This also leads me to argue that Red Tourism and activities associated
with it cannot be simply put into a dichotomy of “propaganda” and “not
propaganda.” As a social space, Red Tourism requires a much greater precision
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and delicacy of analysis than the ideology-driven analysis of propaganda that has
been primarily concerned with media systems.38 This is to say, I am not suggesting
that a Red tourist who buys a Chairman Mao’s badge as a souvenir would become a
“victim” of such propaganda, or that the tourist would take such sort of souvenirs as
propaganda. Rather, my focus here is the social space of propaganda, not the
propaganda effect or effectiveness of propaganda.
The Spatial “Makeover” of Yan’an: From “Cradle” to “Mecca”
In this section, I argue that the “three moments of social space,” namely, “the
representational spaces,” “the representations of space,” and “spatial practice,” have
helped Yan’an transform from a small town of northwestern China to a Mecca of
Red Tourism, rendering Red Tourism even more powerful than ordinary tourism in
contemporary China. According to Lefebvre, the representational space is “space as
directly lived through its associated images and symbols,” and the representation of
space is “conceptualized space.”39 Spatial practice, the third “moment” of social
space, is defined as “the spatial practice of a society [that] secretes that society’s
space,” and the way to “reveal” the spatial practice is to “decipher” its spaces.40
In order to make my case, in what follows I first spotlight the ways that the spatial
connotation of Yan’an is shaped by representational spaces and representations of
space. I then examine how spatial practice also contributes to rebuilding the image of
“Mecca.”
Known as the “sacred place” of the Chinese revolution, Yan’an is a prefecture-level
city of Shanxi Province in northwestern China. As such, Yan’an has been heavily
invested in Chinese revolutionary heritage. It is a city that is aware of itself as in the
center of one of China’s poorest regions and yet brands itself as a haven for Red
Tourism. Located in the middle reaches of the Yellow River on the Loess Plateau,
Yan’an along with its periphery is considered the cradle of early Chinese civilization.
Once a small town, Yan’an’s representational spaces were its yellowish soil (the Loess
Plateau), the yellowish water of the river (the Yan River), and its yellowish people
(typical Han ethnic Chinese). In concert with the representational spaces, the
representations of space of Yan’an were hard work and the plain living style. Taken
all together, traditionally Yan’an as a social space was highly expressive and
communicative, signifying the greatness of Han Chinese and its civilization.
This spatial connotation of Yan’an, however, was (re)shaped by the Chinese
revolution. The replacement of “sacredness” for “greatness” reflects the new
codifications of the representations of space and the representational spaces. The
representational spaces became Pagoda Hill (baota shan), associated with Mao
Zedong’s multifarious activities, anecdotes, and iconic photos during the Chinese
revolution, and the yaodong, a unique cave-like indigenous dwelling that accommodated the Communist troops during the revolutionary period. This “Red” resignification of Yan’an became a blessing for its skyrocketing economy of Red
Tourism. Pilgrim-like tourists, young and old from every corner of the country,
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swarm into Yan’an desperate to have a picture with the Pagoda Hill, to stay a night at
a yaodong-style hotel, and, most importantly, to get a flavor of the Chinese
revolution. David is an entrepreneur from northern China.41 Yan’an has special
meaning to him. He says:
I love Yan’an. I was brought up under the Party’s red flag, always feeling attached
to Yan’an, the sacred place. This is my first visit. Lao Mao [a nickname for Mao]
always has a special place in my heart and no one can replace him … [During the
Chinese revolution] many aspiring young people from all over the country came
here to join the revolution. If I were born in that era, I probably would also do the
same. I will talk about my Yan’an experience with my friends for sure.42
This is how most of the interviewees spoke about their motivation for visiting
Yan’an, depicting themselves as some kind of pilgrims.
David was not alone on his pilgrimage to Yan’an. Red Tourism captivates millions
of the “Red” pilgrims all over the country each year. The Red economy of Yan’an has
flourished, resulting in an exponential growth of local revenue: in 2010, Yan’an
generated 11 billion yuan ($1.83 billion) from tourism, about sixty-five times more
than what it raised in 1997.43 To put it briefly, Yan’an is a unique place at the
crossroads of local contingency and rapid national commercialization, of revolutionary heritage and a desire to prove that it has moved beyond the old image of
struggling in poverty. In the transformation of the city’s image from the “cradle” of
old Yan’an to the new “Mecca” of Red Tourism, spatial practice is of paramount
importance.
Lefebvre suggests that spatial practice has three levels: “architecture,” “planning,”
and “urbanism.”44 Echoing Lefebvre, Eco also regards architecture as a mass
communication system.45 For Eco, like any other form of discourse, architectural
discourse starts with commonly accepted rationales that accordingly lead to readily
acceptable argument. The façade of the Revolutionary Museum of Yan’an (RMY) is
an example of this (see Figures 1 and 2).
The façade of RMY is both traditional and modern. On each flank of the main
entrance, there are nine statues of iconic Chinese literary characters in their
revolutionary moments. This arrangement of the numbers connotes a principle of
feng shui: “jiu jiu gui yi,” literally, “every time number 9 appears, the next number
will return to number 1.” The figurative meaning is that everything in nature is in a
circle and it has to return to its original point (“1”) after arriving at its climax (“9”).
So the key point in this architectural metaphor is the “one,” designating the original
point of the Chinese revolution. It is the Party that these eighteen sculptures point
toward and that the people represented in these sculptures champion. Prima facie,
the central sculpture in front of the main entrance is the “one,” which, not
surprisingly, is Mao Zedong, symbolizing “oneness” of this whole spatialized feng
shui mise-en-scène. The irony, however, is that once suppressed by the Party as
superstition, feng shui now seems to be celebrated, though implicitly, through “Red”
signifiers. From another angle, however, the RMY façade is embracing modernity: the
lighting of RMY alongside the European-style ornamental horticulture of shaped
trees and lawn, arched walls, and elegant layouts appears self-evident. This
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Figure 1. Outside View of RMY (Chunfeng Lin).
combination of seemingly contradictory elements from traditional Chinese culture
and the West mirrors the “desperateness” of the architecture as a mass communication apparatus to communicate or, more precisely, to advance an argument
crystalized in the Party’s long-run slogan: “Without the Communist Party, There
Would Be No New China” (meiyou gongchandang jiu meiyou xin zhongguo). Annie,
Figure 2. Visitors Walking Through the Prefatory Hall of RMY (Chunfeng Lin).
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a college student from Guangzhou, appreciates the intriguing style of RMY when
she says:
It is well worth watching. My only regret is that I would have arranged more time
for this museum. It has so many floors. I did not expect that a small town like
Yan’an could build a spectacular modern museum like this one … . I was most
impressed by the high-tech based replica of old shops and streets of Yan’an inside
the museum, very realistic, particularly with cutting-edge sound and light
technologies.46
What struck Annie most was the way that RMY as a space communicates to her: Its
magnificent appearance and the state-of-the-art exhibition break the traditional
image of the Chinese revolutionary museum characterized by the mundane.
Invading the representational space is another way that architecture wields
influence on the public. The Chinese railway station square is a notable example.
Acting as one of the country’s most crowded public places, the station square is
commonly considered a representational space of most Chinese cities. Beijing
Railway Station is representative of Beijing, for instance. This is also the case for
Yan’an. Like the city itself, architecture and the sculptures occupying Yan’an Railway
Station Square (Figure 3) are exclusively “Red-themed,” featuring the Yan’an spirit.47
Epitomizing historical moments and the mise-en-scène of the Chinese revolution, the
sculptures packed in Yan’an Station Square deliver a strong message that is
articulated explicitly by the text engraved in the relief on the right column erected
in the square: “[the Party is] The Savior of the People” (renmin jiuxing). It
harmonizes with another engraved calligraphy of Mao on the left column that reads,
Figure 3. Local Residents Doing Morning Exercise in the Yan’an Railway Square
(Chunfeng Lin).
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Figure 4. Tourists Passing By the “Old House,” a Red-theme Restaurant in Yan’an
(Chunfeng Lin).
“To Have Ample Food and Clothing through Self-reliance” (zili gengsheng fengyi
zushi).
Urban planning is also a critical component of spatial practice. Currently, the city
of Yan’an is undergoing a new gentrification project: an estimated thirty mountains
are being paved so that the government can relocate the residents from the city
center to the outskirts to save space for its Red Tourism development. The slogans
for Yan’an urban planning are “Evacuating People from the Center to Expand the
Periphery” (zhong shu wai kuo) and “Rebuilding the City on the Mountains” (shang
shan jian cheng). They appear in multiple sources including government documents
and news reports. To add space to Pagoda Hill, for example, the government
evacuated 148 families, a total population of 1100 people who previously lived in that
area.48 This ambitious makeover project was meant to sharpen a sense of sacredness
by adding vast space to the historical sites. Sara, an official of the Yan’an tourist
bureau, explains:
Adding space is a philosophy of traditional Chinese architecture. For example,
Buddhists would like to dislocate their temple from the residential area of the city
to the remote place with large space to make the temple look otherworldly. This is
the best way to rebuild the image of Yan’an’s Red Tourism.49
Significantly, Sara’s understanding of the manipulation of space implicitly suggests
that there is a similar strategy being employed between the religious practice and Red
Tourism in creating an intendedly sacred image.
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Postsocialist Nostalgia and Imagination
The prosperous Yan’an Red Tourism, however, brings up a few critical questions that
cannot be explained by spatial practice. For example, why has this re-signification of
the socialist past gained massive popularity in post-Mao China, when capitalism, not
communism, has increasingly become pervasive? Is this Red pilgrimage, as one
anonymous reviewer of this article asks, “a result of state interpellation or a reflection
of social demands unfulfilled by the postsocialist state?” There are no easy answers
since where Red Tourism goes remains to be seen. But there are clues. In this section
and the one that follows, I will attempt to answer the questions by focusing on the
polyvalence of social space: as a social space, Red Tourism is simultaneously
produced and producing. I argue that the postsocialist nostalgia for the Maoist era
contributes to the popularity of Red Tourism.
Red Tourism offers antidotes on the one hand to the feeling of loss residing in the
nostalgic memories and imaginations of the socialist past, and on the other to social
stress brought on by the postsocialist inequality. Whyte regards the feeling of
postsocialist inequality in China largely as a response to briberies, embezzlements,
and abuses of power,50 and this is the general impression that the author gained from
many interviewees as well. Susan is a local official. When asked about the meaning of
Yan’an Red Tourism, she says:
Currently, the Party calls for spreading positive energy. All stories of Yan’an are
positive energy. I won’t say too much here because you knew it. Looking at those
corrupted officials and then looking back at the old generation of the Party officials
who worked here, it is quite obvious that they are nothing like today’s officials; they
stuck to plain living. Even high-level officials at that time were quite approachable
by ordinary people. Nowadays that is impossible.51
Susan expresses her dissatisfaction with the reality in contrast with the past glory of
the Mao era. And that dissatisfaction does not come out of nowhere.
China’s economic reforms of the 1980s resulted in some eerily new “Chinese
characteristics,” as Harvey puts it, describing “a particular kind of market economy
that increasingly incorporates neoliberal elements interdigitated with authoritarian
centralized control.”52 Zhang Xudong also gets a strong “mixed-ingredients” flavor,
terming it postsocialism.53 Zhang argues that postsocialism is “a conceptual proposal
to stay and live in contradictions and chaos in a mixed economy and its overlapping
political and cultural (dis)order” and also, “a result of the historical overlap between
the socialist state-form and the era of capitalist globalization.”54 As Jameson observes,
one far-reaching consequence of neoliberal globalization is that “culture has become
decidedly economic.”55 To the extent that this shift is largely unexpected and with an
astonishing speed, it is reminiscent of what Charlie Chaplin faces in front of the
assembly line in Modern Times, except this time it was not industrial revolution but a
radical change in the culture industry. Nevertheless, the feelings of anxiety, loss, and
longing nestling in nostalgia are strikingly similar.
In reconceptualizing the term “nostalgia,” Hutcheon valorizes the emotional
impact of the pastness of the past, pointing out that the past is not something
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56
experienced but imagined. Since such imagination is an ongoing process, she
argues, “Nostalgia is less about the past than about the present,” or it “exiles us from
the present” to be more precise.57 Perhaps this can, in part, explain why Red tourists,
by simple observation, are not exclusively the elderly but people of all ages. Dai
Jinhua attributes the nostalgic sentiment of the 1990s in China to rapid urbanization,
calling it an “imagined heaven.”58 To build that heaven, the cultural industry started
with exploiting nostalgia. Dai remarks that as part of marketization of nostalgia,
revolutionary history was sexually romanticized in popular culture.59
It should be noted that the revolutionary past has been a key historical object for
nostalgic appropriation in Chinese popular culture for decades.60 Coincident with the
Party’s efforts to reinforce its socialist value system and with commodity fetishism in
cultural production in the 1990s, Chinese tourism benefited from the postsocialist
nostalgia.61 Many of the interviewees indicated that visiting Yan’an has fulfilled their
long-held dream, now a nostalgia of the Mao era. Chris, a tourist, says:
My family drove all the way to Yan’an from Wulumuqi.62 I like history. I have
been longing for Yan’an since I was a kid, because it is the sacred place. I was
particularly amazed by He Jingzhi’s Return to Yan’an when I was young …63
It [Yan’an] provides the Chinese people with great spiritual wealth. I think my
biggest gain of this trip is that our kids get to know how hard the revolutionary was
and the life of the great revolutionaries, all of which would be very valuable for
their growth.64
In his early forties, Chris did not experience any revolutionary moment associated
with Yan’an, but he has a dream about the revolution. And he wants children to be
inspired by what he believes that his dream and Yan’an represent.
At the heart of that dream is imagination. Benedict Anderson’s book Imagined
Communities is helpful on this topic, particularly in thinking about how Red
Tourism strives for rebuilding and branding an intended image of the socialist
country via reconfiguration of space. For Anderson, the public perception of nation is
largely based on the reconfiguration of space via imagination.65 This is also true for
the Yan’an case. The Red tourists imagine themselves as part of the nation through a
series of institutional apparatuses associated with Red Tourism. The museum, in
particular, is of vital importance among those apparatuses.
Museums are profoundly political. Museums in any form, by any theme, and
under whatever situation are not innocent and by no means neutral and purely
scientific. The museum is a space fraught with political/ideological signification. It
articulates and spreads the intended ideology through a series of even more complex and
subtle apparatuses, including spatial organization, ordering of the exhibition, proscription,
internal and external layout, decoration, inscription, selected artifacts, display, lighting,
and so forth. Like Anderson, Tony Bennett also views the museum as an institutional
apparatus, noting the co-occurrence of the reorganization of the social space of the
museum and the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere in the West.66 Bennett argues
that the museum has gradually and ultimately transformed into a governmental
instrument for educating the general public ever since its Enlightenment conception.67
This educational function of the museum is also evident in the Red Tourism case.
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The post-1949 reconsideration of museum as education resource in China entailed a
significant transformation of earlier cultural strategies. However, the rules and
admission fee of the PRC’s museum in its early stages of development did not fulfill
the propagandistic role because they served, though involuntarily, to distinguish
intelligentsia by excluding the general populace. Coincident with China gaining global
economic power in the early twenty-first century was the Party’s re-realization of the
propaganda function of the museum, which led to the free admission and renovation
movement for all public museums. During this period of time, RMY, originally erected
in 1950, was relocated to a new site, reconstructed with total expenditure amounting to
approximately 570 million yuan (approximately $95 million), and reopened to the
public with free admission in 2009. The new RMY was branded as the “Number One
Project” of the “Patriotism Education Base System” by the government.
Entering RMY, the internal layout and spatial organization of displays glorify the
Party’s past and its leadership. In the entrance hall of the exhibition, for example,
three rifles with haversacks across the weapons as the symbol of the Party’s
revolution are placed in a glass display case in the center of the room with every
other image and object enclosing it. In addition to the exhibition, the tourist’s
activities also constitute a substantial part of this space. While taking pictures is
strictly prohibited in many history museums in China for the purposes of protection,
photographing and video recording are surprisingly welcomed in RMY. Through the
use of mobile devices and social media, the tourists, previously considered audiences
of propaganda, now act as propagandists when spreading the intended information
to much wider audiences. This audience-cum-propagandist role of the audience
manifesting in the changing process between consumption and production can be
better understood by the concept of “media conduction,” because, as Peaslee points
out, “it sees that relationship as defined by processes.”68 To put it metaphorically, by
applying the original notion of conduction, the audience now becomes a “conductor”
through which “electricity,” or purposeful information, can pass along.
Commodification and the Red-themed Environment
It is important to note that we live in a period characterized as one “in which politics
has been depoliticized and commodified.”69 Fredric Jameson also argues that cultural
issues have expanded their boundaries to the economic realm with the “collapsing” of
“the cultural into the economic—and the economic into the cultural.”70 This also
applies to Red Tourism. In what follows, I look into the productivity of Red Tourism
by focusing on the commodification of political content. In doing so, I also want to
show how the cultural aspect of Red Tourism intertwines with the economic aspect
with emphasis on the “themed-environment” strategy, a hybrid economic model
through which Red Tourism is being marketized and capitalized. This hybrid model
is articulated by John Hannigan.71 The rationale of the application of Hannigan’s
model lies in the hybridity of Red Tourism.
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The hybridity of Red Tourism manifests in economic dynamics orchestrated by
capitalization. It is also embodied in the government document “Outline 2011–2015,”
though there it is termed “integration.” Integration of Red Tourism with other forms
of tourism including ordinary tourism, cultural tourism, rural tourism, and leisure
tourism became the long-term and overall strategy for the operation of Red Tourism.
By doing so, the state tended to establish a “Red”-centered dynamic tourism industry
rather than another short-lived propaganda campaign. The most interesting part of
the outline offers a practical strategy, encouraging cooperation across all dimensions
of Red Tourism and incorporating many kinds of performance. To use Hannigan’s
terms, one might call this strategy “entertainmentalization” of the “Red.” Having
witnessed the effectiveness of entertainmentalization decades ago, Hannigan
explained it within a hybrid economic framework characterized by synergies and
syntheses, coining many “tainments” such as shopertainment, eatertainment,
edutainment, and so forth.72 For Hannigan, all those “tainments” helped fantasize
the city, turning it into a hot and highly themed tourist destination. This is also true
for the Yan’an case.
Beneath Red Tourism, one can see the marriage of history and entertainment. In
the Red Tourism industry, history, or revolutionary history to be more precise, has
been exploited and commodified into consumer goods ready for the tourist to
consume via diversified performance and innovative activities. The commodification
of the revolutionary past offers the tourist what Hannigan calls a “participatory
fantasy experience.”73 As a result, the formerly sacrosanct boundaries—between dull
political persuasion and fan-chasing tourism, and between political manipulation and
market maneuver—have been blurred, collapsed, and recast into something
politically and economically new. Take, for instance, The Fantasy of the Battle of
Yan’an, an on-site reenactment of a historic battle.
Branded as “a must see for any tourist in Yan’an,” marketed with the gimmick of
“real guns and real bullets,” and innovated with tourist participation, the Fantasy
became the most popular topic for Yan’an tourism.74 According to a local news
report, the outdoor show earned more than 2 million yuan ($320,000) within a few
days during the Golden Week holiday of 2014.75 Located in the center area of the
tourist attractions, the show typically takes place three times a day. The Fantasy
captures a few key moments of the Civil War period to reflect the Yan’an spirit in an
entertaining fashion where historical fidelity completely surrenders to the vaudevilletype performance. The narrative is largely fictional, and the show incorporates many
vernacular, traditional, and representational styles of dance and music. By abandoning historical authenticity and accuracy, the show was fantasized and has morphed
into an “exoticist” show like Hula dancing at Waikiki beach. Tom, a tourist from
Beijing, is clearly aware of such a “fantastic” flavor of the Fantasy. He says:
The show was ridiculous but I had so much fun … I thought it would be really fun
to participate in the show, so I paid extra for the interactive session. My only regret
is that I got the tattered pants (props). I wish I could have played the Kuomintang.
In that case, I could at least wear a uniform. Our tour guide told us that it is a live
show with real ammunition. But I feel like I watched folk dances and listened to
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folk songs for the most of the time. The real deal of the show is the beautiful spy;
she was especially sexy when riding a horse …76
To Tom, the show is the show, nothing more special than any other kind of
commercial performance. As long as the show was entertaining, Tom did not seem to
care much about either the history or the revolution.
The Fantasy is a commercialized space. Within that space, a piece of revolutionary
history is not so much being reenacted, represented, and proliferated as being simply
exploited. This is unsurprising, considering that the show was invested in by a single
entrepreneur from Wenzhou, a southeastern city of China known as the paradise of
private enterprises. The total investment of the show reaches 10 million yuan ($1.6
million) including enlisting Chen Weiya, a famous director and choreographer who
codirected the spectacular opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.77
There is also an official website created for the show. Despite the show’s entertaining
nature, this entrepreneurial deployment of “Red” seems to be a cross-border
appropriation of the postsocialist sentiment and resignification of “Red” in
contemporary China.
Coincident with the Red Tourism trend, “Red culture” (hongse wenhua) and “Red
industry” (hongse chanye), terms loosely referring to culture and industry associated
with the Chinese Communist heritage and legacy, have recuperated and regained
their power in both popular culture and economic spheres. TV dramas featuring
either the Chinese revolution or the anti-Japanese war have flooded into Chinese
television stations in the last few years. Red Songs (hong ge), basically classic
propaganda songs, have been reinvigorated too, regaining their visibility through
well-crafted and heavily invested reality TV programs such as “Red Song Competition” (hongge hui). Many entrepreneurs took advantage of these “Red” trends,
starting new businesses and making quick and substantial profits.
The emerging “Red” businesses are part of the bigger picture of Red-themed
environments. Hannigan identifies three major ways for a city to offer fantasy
experiences to the tourist: (1) to increase dominance of rational techniques of
production, (2) to proliferate themed environments, and (3) to elevate synergies of
form, content, and structure as a key business strategy.78 In the interviews with
Yan’an tourist bureau officials, the most frequently spoken word is “monopoly.” The
word is also borne in the catchwords representing the bureau’s aim: “Monopoly,
Uniqueness, and the Sublime.” It suggests that the bureau is seeking to seize
monopolistic power in the national Red Tourism market through continuing to sell
the image of “unique” and “sublime” Yan’an to the visitor.79 Along with business
monopoly, the other two processes that Hannigan suggests, “themed environments”
and “synergization,” are also helpful to understand how Red Tourism as a hybrid
social space is commodified.
The “Red” themed environment is glaringly discernible in Yan’an. Arriving in
Yan’an by train as most visitors do, one would first notice the newly built Yaodongstyle railway station. It signifies the revolutionary history, and as an urban planning
strategy, it is clearly articulated by the local government.80 Besides representational
Red Tourism
343
architecture and more than one hundred Red tourist spots, the proliferation of Redthemed environments in Yan’an also manifests in everyday life, from shops to
restaurants (see Figure 4) and from a variety of “Red” products to many kinds of
“Red” performance. Through the proliferation of “Red” environments, the city of
Yan’an, the “Red Capital,” became symbolically communicative.
Synergization is another way to promote Yan’an Red Tourism. One successful
marketing strategy for Red Tourism is so-called “1+x” model. “1” refers to the Red
theme, and “x” is a surprising element, or a synergistic factor that contributes to the
diversity of Red Tourism. The “x” here is somewhat equal to the “x” in Hannigan’s
“x-tainment” format. That is, because of the “x” factor in Red Tourism, so-called
“Red education,” “Red restaurants,” and “Red shopping” have flourished in China,
and each business enjoys a slice of the cake of Red Tourism in an entertainmentcentered way. Dining in a Red-themed restaurant in Yan’an, for example, one always
expects some kind of “Red” performance, more likely a combination of revolutionary
song and dance. To a great extent, the Fantasy is a product of this “x” factor.
Concluding Remarks
It goes without saying that the present effort, constrained by space and scope, offers
not the definitive word on Red Tourism but a preliminary contribution. Equally
important, this study delineates how Red Tourism as a social space was produced by
the state, articulated by architectural objects, imagined through a series of
institutional apparatuses, and commodified by following a certain strategy characterized as themed environment. All of which, at the minimum, may provide a new
premise to help rethink propaganda not as an unmitigated evil but as a social space,
both produced and productive.
As such, Red Tourism is a kind of oxymoron. It is a yoking together of two
extraordinarily powerful drivers in the cultural language surrounding China. On the
one hand, “Red” is associated with ideology, discipline, and loyalty combined with a
history of authentic struggle and liberation. On the other hand, tourism designates an
ongoing process of capitalization. Eerily, this oxymoronicality of Red Tourism
epitomizes the cultural imagination of contemporary China, in which the Chinese
state seems simultaneously to be engaged in mining the past for its lucrative images
and narrative resources as well as calculating a future linked to a kind of “Red”
economy where propaganda roots, morphs, and thrives. Nevertheless, this is rarely
understood, in part because the way we see propaganda practice has been fixed;
scholars treat propaganda as a method, a technique, and/or a practice, devoting little
attention to the social space of propaganda. As long as this is the case,
communication scholars lose a golden opportunity to reinvestigate propaganda
against the backdrop of most recent discursive/nondiscursive developments and
social transformations.
344
C. Lin
Notes
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]
[23]
[24]
[25]
[26]
[27]
Zhun Jin, “What Makes Red Tourism so Popular,” The People’s Daily (oversea edition),
November 7, 2012, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90782/8009039.html (accessed January
24, 2015).
The General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, “National Red
Tourism Development Outline 2011–2015,” lotour.com, http://www.lotour.com/news/
20110630/619116.shtml (accessed January 24, 2015).
Zhou Zhenguo and Gao Haisheng, Hongse luyou jiben lilun yanjiu [A study of the general
theory of Red Tourism] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2008).
Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999).
John Urry, The Tourist Gaze (London, UK: Sage, 2002).
MacCannell, Tourist, 98.
Urry, Tourist Gaze, 134.
Ibid., 124.
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1991).
Ibid.
Armand Mattelart, The Invention of Communication, trans. Susan Emanuel (Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
Lefebvre, Production of Space.
Umberto Eco, “Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture,” in Rethinking
Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, ed. Neil Leach (London, UK: Routledge, 1997),
182–201.
John Hannigan, Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (London,
UK: Routledge, 1998).
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (London, UK: Verso, 2006).
Roland Barthes, The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies (New York: Hill & Wang, 1997).
Lefebvre, Production of Space.
Ibid., 40.
Chris Rojek and John Urry, “Transformations of Travel and Theory,” in Touring Cultures,
ed. Chris Rojek and John Urry (London, UK: Routledge, 1997), 11.
Mattelart, Invention of Communication, 179.
For an overview of xuanchuan see Liu Hailong, “The Origin and Changing Meaning of
‘xuanchuan’ in Chinese Language” [in Chinese], Guoji xinwen jie, no.11 (2011): 103–07;
Wang Fanyi, “The War Literature and the xuanchuan War in Tang Dynasty” [in Chinese],
Shandong shehui kexue, issue 5 (2011): 120–23; and Deng Zhuoming, “A Note on
xaunchuan Activities in Ancient China” [in Chinese], Shangrao shizhuan xuebao, issue 6
(1988): 41–46.
Both Qiu and Guo point out that Confucius and Mencius along with many other Pre-Chin
philosophers are great propagandists. Qiu Zhengyi, Shijie xuanchuan jianshi [A brief world
history of propaganda] (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1993); Guo Zhikun, Xianqin
zhuzi xuanchuan sixiang lungao [A note on Pre-Chin Philosophers’ propaganda] (Fuzhou:
Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1985).
Qiu, Shijie xuanchuan jianshi.
Ibid.
Chunfeng Lin, “Red Is Not an Answer: Rethinking Propaganda in the Mao Era” (paper
presented at the annual NCA conference, Washington, DC, November 21–24, 2013).
Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong xuanji [Select works of Mao Zedong], vol. 1 (Beijing: Renmin
chubanshe, 1991), 149–50.
Ibid.
Red Tourism
[28]
[29]
[30]
[31]
[32]
[33]
[34]
[35]
[36]
[37]
[38]
[39]
[40]
[41]
[42]
[43]
[44]
[45]
[46]
[47]
[48]
[49]
[50]
[51]
[52]
[53]
[54]
[55]
[56]
[57]
[58]
[59]
[60]
345
“Outline 2011–2015.”
Ibid.
Zhou and Gao, Hongse luyou jiben lilun, 2–4.
Ibid.
Yan Fan, Dachuanlian: yichang shiwuqianli de zhengzhi luyou [The Great Marches and
Rallies: an unprecedented political tourism] (Beijing: Jingguan jiaoyu chubanshe, 1993).
Ibid.
Zhou and Gao, Hongse luyou jiben lilun, 4.
Ibid.
Backed by Tsinghua University, databases of CNKI contain most Chinese academic journals,
newspapers, dissertations, proceedings, yearbooks, reference work, etc.
See Harold Lasswell, On Political Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); and
Jeffrey K. Sawyer, Printed Poison: Pamphlet Propaganda, Faction Politics, and the Public
Sphere in Early Seventeenth-century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
For example, “western liberal” versus “communist totalitarian.” See Fred S. Siebert, Theodore
Peterson, and Wilbur Lang Schramm, Four Theories of the Press: The Authoritarian,
Libertarian, Social Responsibility, and Soviet Communist Concepts of What the Press Should
Be and Do (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963).
Lefebvre, Production of Space, 38–39.
Ibid., 38.
All the interviewees’ names, whether officials or tourists, have been anonymized throughout.
Interview, June 23, 2013.
The Tourist Bureau of Yan’an, “The Development of Red Tourism Industry in Yan’an” [in
Chinese].
Lefebvre, Production of Space, 25.
Eco, “Function and Sign.”
Yan’an spirit was fashioned during the Long March and developed as a national spirit of
perseverance during the Maoist days. Characterized as self-reliance, hard work, and devotion
to the people, the Yan’an spirit continues to serve as the backbone guideline for the Party to
the present. For a brief review of the Yan’an spirit, see Mark Selden, “Yan’an Communism
Reconsidered,” Modern China 21, issue 1 (1995): 8–44.
“Development of Red Tourism.”
Martin King Whyte, “China’s Post-Socialist Inequality,” Current History 111, issue 746
(2012): 229–34.
David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
2005), 120.
Zhang Xudong, Postsocialism and Cultural Politics: China in the Last Decade of the
Twentieth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).
Ibid., 15, 16.
Fredric Jameson, “Globalization and Political Strategy,” New Left Review 4 (2000): 54.
Linda Hutcheon, “Irony, Nostalgia, and the Postmodern,” in Methods for the Study of
Literature as Cultural Memory, ed. Raymond Vervliet and Annemarie Estor (Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 2000), 195.
Ibid.
Dai Jinhua, “Imagined Nostalgia,” Boundary 2 24, issue 3 (1997): 148.
Ibid., 152.
Wu Jing, “Nostalgia as Content Creativity: Cultural Industries and Popular Sentiment,”
International Journal of Cultural Studies 9, issue 3 (2006): 359–68.
346
C. Lin
[61] Ibid.
[62] Wulumuqi is the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the northwest of China.
[63] He Jingzhi is a Chinese poet and playwright. He went to Yan’an in 1940 when he was sixteen
and joined the Party a year later. During those days, He Jingzhi wrote his masterpiece,
Return to Yan’an, a poem in which the poet affectionately calls Yan’an “mother.” The poem
was included in many primary and secondary school textbooks.
[64] Interview, June 23, 2013.
[65] Anderson, Imagined Communities.
[66] Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (London, UK: Routledge, 1995).
[67] Ibid.
[68] Robert Moses Peaslee, “Media Conduction: Festivals, Networks, and Boundaried Spaces,”
International Journal of Communication 7 (2013): 824. In this article Peaslee defines “media
conduction” as “movement of information due to a difference in level of access (from a highaccess to a lower-access region) through a transmission medium (e.g., festivals, conventions,
events) that simultaneously reifies the value of that access” (811).
[69] David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2010), 219.
[70] Jameson, “Globalization and Political Strategy,” 53.
[71] Hannigan, Fantasy City.
[72] Ibid., 76.
[73] Ibid., 26.
[74] Interview with the official, June 25, 2013.
[75] Liu Xiaoyan and Gao Le, ‘‘Battle of Yan’an Earned More than 2 Million Yuan during the
National Day Holidays ’’ [in Chinese], Yan’an Daily, October 14, 2014, http://www.yadaily.
com/News_View.asp?NewsID=26288 (accessed January 25, 2015).
[77] Yan’an Tourism Bureau, “The Battle of Yan’an,” http://www.yanantour.com.cn/detail-263245.html
[78] Hannigan, Fantasy City.
[80] The Municipal People’s Government of Yan’an, “The General Urban Planning of Yan’an”
[in Chinese], http://www.yanan.gov.cn/info/1241/60048.htm

Volume 12, Issue 3, 2015

Transcription

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