Anne Graefer

White stars and orange celebrities: the affective production of whiteness in humorous celebrity-gossip blogs

Bringing deconstructivist approaches of critical whiteness studies into dialogue with feminist writings on affect theory, this article asks how ideas about whiteness become produced and circulated through celebrity representations in humorous celebrity-gossip blogs. Through an affective reading of blog posts and user comments on the websites dlisted.com and perezhilton.com, I illustrate the ways in which celebrity online representations can be understood as affective interfaces through which ideas concerning idealised and ‘improper’ whiteness are negotiated. This article underscores the importance of understanding celebrity representations not only through the lens of ideology and discourse, but also through feelings, emotions and affect. Affects, together with the interactive, dynamic nature of blogs, encourage us to rethink these celebrity representations not as fixed images that mediate one dominant meaning – and in this sense which simply reiterate or challenge dominant ideas about whiteness – but rather as relational becomings that have the power to move us in sometimes contradictory and surprising ways.

This Pussy Grabs back: Humour, Digital Affects and Women’s Protest

Abstract The “affective” turn has enabled many scholars to theorise media representations not only as texts that can be distantly decoded but also as a matter of emotional attachments, intensities of feelings, synesthetic sensations, and embodied experiences. Yet, what has been less often theorized is how this affective meaningmaking is (re)shaped by the dynamic and interactive nature of social networking systems such as Facebook or Twitter. How do images and the affective qualities that “stick” to them, travel and transform through user engagement where “users grab images and technologies by which they are grabbed in return” (Paasonen, Carnal Resonance 178; Senft 2008). We aim to explore this question further through examples of humorous images from the January 2017 Women’s March, considered within the digital contexts of Facebook and Twitter. Social movement scholars argue that emotional engagement can be a powerful and positive motivating factor in getting people involved in political life, and we here suggest that these humorous images can move the reader in new critical directions, encouraging them to challenge systems of inequality and oppression in contemporary society.

Unruly Women and Carnivalesque Countercontrol: Offensive Humor in Mediated Social Protest

At the Women’s March in January 2018, many protest posters featured offensive jokes at the expense of Trump’s body and behavior. Such posters were shared widely online, much to the amusement of the movement’s supporters. Through a close analysis of posts on Instagram and Twitter, we explore the role of “vulgar” and “offensive” humor in mediated social protest. By highlighting its radical and conservative tendencies, we demonstrate how we can understand these practices of offensive humor as a contemporary expression of “the carnivalesque” that is complexly intertwined with social change.

No place like home: Patriotism and femininity in German reality television

In the current recession, German television has developed a particular proclivity for ‘emigration shows’. In this article, I explore the most prominent of these, Goodbye Deutschland – Die Auswanderer (Goodbye Germany – The Emigrants, since 2006). Through a figurative analysis, I investigate how Goodbye Germany produces its female protagonists as failed national subjects worthy of social derision and contempt. By highlighting how the programme equates the departure from Germany with a departure from coherent feminine respectability, I show how we can understand this programme as a cultural expression of ‘commercial nationalism’ that produces Germany as a ‘safe haven’ within an economically unstable Europe.

Just Kidding! Negotiating the Line Between Humour and Offence

This chapter investigates how people experience and negotiate the fine line between humour and offence in the context of television. Since humour exists not only in comedy programmes, but can also be found in advertising, reality television or even factual television programmes such as political discussions, we were attentive to any moments at which our participants detected ill-fitting humour when watching television. We explore what exactly people do with humorous content they find offensive, not what this kind of humorous content does ‘in general’. Such a contextualised approach illustrates the ethical and transformative potential of so-called ‘negative’ affect. Thus, rather than perceiving offence as an ‘ugly’ feeling with merely negative consequences for society, this chapter demonstrates that the avoidance of offence can also operate as a strategy for evading responsibility and action and thereby hindering social change.

Audiences’ Expectations of Regulators and Producers

This chapter explores the expectations audiences articulate about regulatory processes behind television content they find offensive. First, mapping people’s responses on to the conceptual pairing of citizens and consumers, we find audiences aligning themselves with citizen interests, even when, often on the surface, they respond to media regulation and institutions with suspicion. Second, we find that complaints that make it to media regulators are just the tip of iceberg. Third, in investigating people’s expectations of actors and institutions in their responses to television content that startles, upsets, or simply offends them, we note that it is crucial to treat a conversation on free speech and censorship with caution.

Producing the Imagined Audience of Offensive Screens

This chapter explores how audience members tend to distance themselves from television programmes they find ‘offensive’. People we spoke to often experienced this kind of content as ‘disgusting’, thereby affectively producing a distinction between the self, and those tasteless, ill-informed others for whom the programme is supposedly intended. And yet, as we will discuss in this chapter, this border is far more porous than assumed. By drawing on Julia Kristeva’s notion of abjection, we illustrate the ambiguous nature of offensive television content and how people shift in and out of the category of the imagined audience of offensive screens. We also discuss how strategies of displacement feed into the myth of the omnipotent, sovereign audience/consumer, and consider how the link between offence and consumer choice becomes relevant for commercial and public broadcasters.

The Slippery Terrain of Offensive Television

This chapter complicates offence as a term and presents conceptual and methodological approaches for this project on the reception of ‘offensive’ content. It sets the scene of the work in the UK and Germany, drawing instances from contemporary public discourse around offence and considers some of the key questions that underpin this book: what constitutes offensive media material? Why is offence felt so differently? To what ends is offence used or concerns about offensive material mobilised? How do people act both as individuals and as publics in their very affective responses to offensive content? Why do we assume offensive material can be categorised solely into tick-boxes for profanity, swear words, racism, overt discrimination or flash lighting? And how do audiences understand the role and responsibilities of producers and broadcasters?

Audiences Speak Back: Re-Working Offensive Television

This chapter addresses audiences’ questioning of what they perceive to be ‘offensive’ material on television, not only with regard to its ‘realness’ but also in terms of its social functions and role in society. Through the development of critical responses to the text depicted, for some audience members, overtly offensive material that aims to marginalise particular groups enabled strong forms of emotional responses, through deeply affective engagement with texts. Offensive, provocative television, we suggest, is more than a negative disposable—television content that openly provokes or offends might become an important site where citizen-audiences perform a kind of audiencing, which moves individual disgust or upset into a contribution to publicness.

Towards a contextual approach: Audiences, television and ‘offensive’ humour

The fine line between humour and offence has long been of interest for scholars and media outlets alike. While some argue for an avoidance of offence at all costs, others defend the ‘right to offend’ as an essential part of humour. By bringing critical sociological studies in humour into dialogue with feminist writings on affect and the politics of emotion, this article argues for a more nuanced and contextualised understanding of offensive humour. Based on empirical data from an audience study about offensive television content in Britain and Germany, we consider what exactly people do with humorous content they find offensive, not what it does ‘in general’. Such a contextualised approach illustrates the ethical and transformative potential of so-called negative affect. Thus, rather than perceiving offence as an ‘ugly’ feeling with merely negative consequences for society, this article contends that the avoidance of offence can also operate as a strategy for evading responsibility and action, thereby hindering social change.