Heather Nunn

‘A trust betrayed’: celebrity and the work of emotion

This article draws on psycho-social theories of emotional labour and the sociological concept of ‘emotion work’ in order to interrogate the affective communicative performances of celebrities, their deployment of a ready language of emotion and the broader therapeutic discourses from which this language is derived. It takes as its focus the emotional work undertaken by celebrities in order to limit or repair reputations damaged by scandal and to overcome a perceived betrayal of public trust. Starting from the premise that an ‘ideology of intimacy’ has formed the conditions in which the celebrity now labours as an emotional subject in the public arena, and that social relationships are considered to be ‘authentic’ or ‘real’ mainly through their commitment to the ‘inner psychological concerns of each person’, we explore the affective demands made upon the celebrity subject in contemporary media culture to be both intimate and ‘real’. In so doing we draw attention to the range of cultural spaces in which celebrity emotion work takes place, the conventions which enable this work and the only partially articulated contract of on-going public intimacy upon which this work is predicated. The article concludes with a consideration of how the public–celebrity contract intersects with a broader cultural imperative to perform emotion in the media, evident in the expectation that public figures should convey authentic feeling and convey it convincingly, in order to manage an on-going relationship of trust with their publics and thereby sustain a successful career in the public realm.

Video justice: crimes of violence in social/media space

This article considers the relationship between media culture, surveillance, and the law. It argues that scopic technologies such as closed circuit television (CCTV), together with nonfiction “reality” television and reportage, are helping to produce new intersections between media and social space. This article maps some of these intersections. It also unpacks some of the important ethical and political questions raised by these new formations and their inhabitation. How do these new technologies and genres inform and shape the public’s real and imaginary relationship with the law and its executives? What stories do they tell about crime, fear, and social order? How do they affect the previously established divisions between public and private space?

Silent witness : detection, femininity, and the post-mortem body

This paper considers the negotiation of femininity and new economies of the gaze within the context of British television detective drama. Since the inception of television women have been frequently and voyeuristically presented as either the sexualised victims or perpetrators of crime. Indeed, the very first episode of the innovative British police series Z Cars (BBC), broadcast in 1962, featured a constable encountering two women leaving a city nightclub. He takes the opportunity to warn the younger one, who is new to the city, away from the “influence” of her more experienced friend. Both women are clearly out of place, unaccompanied in the public sphere—depicted as either vulnerable or manipulative—caught in a male gaze. They are regarded as sexually transgressive— criminalised by their presence on the street instead of in the home. This series was “ground-breaking” for its streetwise realism, “new town” locations, and insight into the fraught domestic lives of its all-male police team. It was typical, however, in its depiction of the women encountered in the course of maintaining law and order. It clearly demarcated the world of “masculine” work and “feminine” domesticity, a division that was further underscored in later crime action series such as The Sweeney (Thames 1975–8) (Alan Clark 1986: 228–9) and The Professionals (LWT 1977–83). When women were designated as “professionals” in the discourse of early crime drama, it was as “pros” or “prostitutes” rather than as police officers or detectives, a tradition that has continued to the present day with series such as The Vice (Carlton 1999–2001). The opening credits for this series about the Metropolitan Police Vice Squad signal the programme’s emphasis on the investigation of inner London prostitution and pornography through lurid footage of working women in shabby corridors and back streets. The central protagonist, Inspector Pat Chappel (played by Ken Stott), exemplifies the world-weary detective with a cynical eye for the law, contempt for pimps and pornography traffickers, and a questionable empathy with many of the prostitutes on his patch. While the series also features female police officers, they are frequently required to cross the line and masquerade as prostitutes or escort women in the process of vice investigations—a task which it is often implied they take to readily, transforming their appearance and behaviour with relative ease. Scenes of PC Cheryl Hutchins— Chappel’s regular sidekick—or the ambitious PC Kirsty Morgan—acting out their sexualised roles are often accompanied by shots of Chappel and his Sergeant Joe Robinson listening in or watching them through police surveillance equipment, assessing whether the female officers are convincing and whether

Selfishness in austerity times

The increased circulation of questions such as these is indicative of the growing prevalence of ideas about selfishness in public discourse. Austerity measures in particular have recharged long-term public disputes about the selfishness of various social groups and social types; and these disputes are now taking place in the context of a battle for resources, and a political drive for the state to roll back (or ‘reform’) what used to be called ‘social security’ but is now frequently called ‘welfare’.

“I’m passionate, Lord Sugar”: Young Entrepreneurs, Critical Judgment, and Emotional Labor in Young Apprentice

This chapter is about the performance of passion for corporate success on popular television. It draws on the politics of “emotional labor” (Hochschild 1983) and work-related processes of “self-realization” (Rose 1999 [1989]) to critically consider the competitive television show Young Apprentice (BBC1 2010–). In particular, we explore how Young Apprentice (formerly Junior Apprentice) stages a spectacle of judgment and censorious assessment of young people and their performance of leadership, zeal, and work commitment. Young people feature heavily in work-related British popular factual TV, appearing as applicants for business investment, entry-level jobbers, interns, and “unemployable” subjects in need of a life makeover. Shows such as Young Apprentice, Who Knows Best: Getting A Job (C4 2010), Up for Hire (BBC3 2011), Working Girls (BBC3 2011), and Hotel GB (C4 2012) are just a few examples of recent British programming that directs young people to perform as motivated, entrepreneurial, passionate, reliable, team-aware, and proactive workers. In this chapter we will explore how these performances meet current expectations of workplace culture and how workers are judged according to criteria that tie the individual into the agenda of the skills economy of the early 2000s.

Transforming the Politics of Gender and Voice: Strategies of Expertise and Experience

This chapter reflects on the ways in which women’s voices have been silenced in the public sphere, and explores some of the counter-tactics deployed by women in reply. It reviews the historical legacy of women’s disenfranchisement and establishes the precarious footing upon which their participation now stands. It focuses on two cases in which women have been caught up in this sexist dynamics: first, Mary Beard’s refusal to ‘shut up’ and capitulate to a normative politics of voice, attracting misogynistic abuse; secondly, Ghazala Khan’s media appearance, which was condemned, not for her speech but for her silence. It discusses how expertise (Beard), experience (Khan), and combinations of the two can be deployed strategically to reply to insult and dismissal in the public sphere.

Top of the Class: Education, Capital and Choice

This chapter focuses on the media’s presentation of education as the key driver of social mobility, responsible citizenship and equality of opportunity. Paying special attention to political debates around educational achievement in the context of meritocracy and personal responsibility, it explores the ways in which educational choice is presented, taken up or passed by and how this then reflects critically on the perceived class status of children and their families. More generally, it considers how the values which embed current discourses on education and socialmobility are reinforced, tested and sometimes challenged in lifestyle journalism, reality television and social observation documentary. In doing so it points to the pressures, conflicts and contradictions of class identity and class mobility (both up and downwards) and the ways in which these intersect with the experience of education and the individual investments which it currently demands.

The Upper Classes: Visibility, Adaptability and Change

This chapter addresses the representation of the British upper classes and the mediation of their social practices and values. In doing so it seeks to explore the ways in which the upper classes are accommodated and condoned within an unequal society despite the often-repeated conviction that success should be achieved through merit both within and also across generations. For some readers, a chapter on the upper class might seem less than pressing, as there is a perception that this social bracket is rather small (perhaps being confined to those with titles, for example) and therefore without significant economic or political power or even cultural influence.

Introduction: Beginning the Work of Class and Culture

This book is about class and contemporary British culture, so perhaps we should begin by explaining what we take social class to be, for, as David Harvey (2005:31) has observed, it is a shadowy and dubious concept at the best of times. Here we understand social class as being formed through material conditions and economic (in)securities and as being shaped by early disadvantage or natal privilege and the uneven distribution of life chances and opportunities which these conditions create. But we also choose to recognise class as an ongoing social process experienced across our lifetime trajectories. For example, throughout our lives as classed subjects many of us are buffeted by a variety of changing socio-economic circumstances, which might be precipitated by family breakdown, redundancy, financial windfalls, exceptional professional success, and so on. All of these are also experienced in the wider context of economic eddies of boom, affluence and bust which impact on how we understand our current and future social roles.

Austerity Britain: Back to the Future

It would not be controversial to observe that the global financial downturn and its immediate impact in Britain inaugurated a shift in popular perceptions of personal (in)security and financial prospects. For many Britons, the hegemonic mantle of British economic prosperity which had shielded the nation for much of the previous decade became increasingly threadbare and finally shabby. From 2008 the recession and the threat of recession were a constant in news and current affairs as politicians, economists and pundits sought to explain fresh surges in unemployment, tighter squeezes to family budgets, government spending reviews, a crisis in the Eurozone and the mill-stone of negative equity formortgage holders. Perhaps it is a truism to say that, in times of national adversity such as this, public culture turns to its own national history for guidance and for strength.