Queen-Personality-Talk

Chapter 3 explores shifting processes of enregisterment through analysis of onē-kyara-kotoba (queen-personality-talk) as written into impact-captions in lifestyle television during the queen-personality boom (middle of the first decade of the 2000s). In makeover media of this period, queen-personalities were proof that readers and viewers alike could remake themselves into a newer and better “me” by applying hard work and dedication to fashion, cosmetics, culinary skills, and interpersonal relationships. Manipulation of language resources and metapragmatic stereotypes of femininity and masculinity are fundamental to processes through which the desire to transform is created. Taking the lifestyle variety television show onēMANS (NTV) as the main focus, the chapter analyzes how the look and the sound of the queerqueen is recontextualized into a heteronormative framework through manipulation of font, animation, color, and orthographic stylization in impact-captions. Editorial interventions inscribe the sonic qualities of queen-personality talk in ways that simultaneously celebrate their transformational power and threaten to expose their (in)authenticity.

queerqueen

Queerqueen examines the editing and writing of queer excess into Japanese popular culture through mediatization of queerqueen styles. The book illustrates how a diversity of gender identifications, sexual orientations, and discursive styles are packaged together as if to form a homogenous character—the queerqueen. In a range of genres from conversational dialogue books to lifestyle television and animations, queerqueen styles are configured as crossing into popular media via the body of the authentically “queer male,” whose “authentic” speech is produced spontaneously without scripting. Editorial interventions enacted through the collaborative language labor of stenographers and record makers, graphic designers and illustrators, and editorial teams (re)trace the sonic qualities of the queerqueen. Through visual mimesis, contemporaneous citational practices, and the mobilization of nostalgia, queerqueen styles are enregistered as talk that is inherently excessive and in need of containment. Editorial acts of containment such as self-censorship simultaneously expose the sexualized nature of gendered norms of talk in Japanese. It is also here that possible spaces for dissent open up through contestation of the limits to excess. The visual and sonic crossings of gender norms unsettle heteronormative mapping of speech styles onto statically gendered bodies. Strategic use of a variety of linguistic resources such as hyper-masculine forms and hyper-politeness exposes the veneers of technologies that seek to regiment excess. Analysis of the inscription of queerqueen styles reveals metapragmatic stereotypes of gender, sexuality, and desire that are essential to the business of mainstream entertainment.

Aspirational paternity and the female gaze on Korean reality–variety TV

Korean public broadcasters are reconstructing local fatherhood through two popular reality–variety shows Dad! Where Are We Going? (MBC, 2013–2015) and The Return of Superman (KBS, 2013–) wherein celebrity dads look after their children for 2 days without the help of their wives. The shows exemplify Korean ‘telemodernity’, which describes Asia’s aspirational modernity channeled through lifestyle television programs. These examples of Korean telemodernity strive toward a Western exemplary of fatherhood by breaking from the earlier generation’s paternity, described through an internalized orientalist self-perception as emotionally unavailable. The paternal masculinity that these shows idealize is visible through the mise-en-scene that frames scenarios around the female (mother’s) gaze of approval or disapproval. In a nation panicked by low childbirths, these shows are biopolitical in their design to encourage heteronormative coupling and reproduction among women more so than promote household egalitarianism.

Shaping Strömsö: Examining Elements in a Creative Process for the Design of New Television Content

This paper explores elements in the creative process of the development of a new television format from both practice and research-based perspectives. We compare and integrate findings from an unpublished case study of the popular Finnish lifestyle television program, Strömsö, with the broad research literature on creativity. Through this lens, fourteen elements, which were identified through this case study to be present in the creation of Strömsö, are explored and contextualized with examples from the show’s creation. These elements were: 1) idea, 2) analyze, 3) brainstorm, 4) research, 5) benchmark, 6) toss ideas, 7) temporary input, 8) inspiration from an unexpected source, 9) rest, 10) formulate, 11) concretize, 12) pilot, 13) make mistakes, and 14) chaos. Research on multiple subtopics related to creativity is utilized to illustrate how knowledge gained through the academic literature can be integrated with these findings to provide possible guidance for practice. In doing so, we show how diverse epistemological and methodological approaches to examining the same phenomena can bolster insight and understanding for researchers and practitioners alike. Researchers will be able to note how topics that they are familiar with manifested in a practical setting, and non-academic professionals involved in creating content for television and new media will be introduced to theory and research that may aid in their creative endeavors. We intend this manuscript to provide useful information to such professionals and inspire additional research in the academic community.

Animality, domesticity and masculinity in My Cat From Hell

This article analyses a US reality TV series for the way it reflects two coinciding phenomena: the elevation of animals to a new domestic status in which their needs and interests demand significant time, care and money and the rise of male-fronted instructional lifestyle television. The commercial dimensions of what has been characterised as ‘America’s hyper-profitable obsession with its dogs and cats’ are apparent in dramatic sales rises of premium pet food, the dramatic growth of pet care and grooming industries and the expansion of care animals in the public sphere. Considering the ways in which we are now called upon to cultivate and monitor the emotional well-being of our pets and to take part in an animal-centred economy on their behalf, I turn to the example of Animal Planet’s My Cat From Hell. This series emphatically repositions cat care and empathy as congruent with masculinity while demonstrating, as I will argue, the relevance of hipster entrepreneurialism to the vastly expanded pet economy.

Mediating home in an age of austerity: The values of British property television

Lifestyle television provides a dramatic space in popular culture where the values of neoliberalism are articulated, enacted and sometimes contested. The ideological reliance of this consumer-driven form of television on financial markets and economic growth has posed a significant challenge for programme-makers in the post-crisis recessionary era. This article explores the myriad ways in which British property television has responded to the global financial crisis, particularly as it has been framed discursively as a new age of austerity. Austerity is understood here as an ideological formation that mobilises a selective version of 20th-century British history in order to establish continuity of national values of thrift, poverty and collective stoicism that are seen to characterise a cohesive, British response to a crisis that emerges from external forces. The article charts the contradictions that become evident when the financial and ideological system upon which the property TV genre is reliant are being undermined. Although UK consumers’ access to mortgages has been a casualty of the crisis, the aspiration to home-ownership in Britain has survived relatively unscathed. This article illustrates how these contradictions are played out on-screen in diverse iterations of the property TV genre transmitted by British public service broadcasters, including new domestic craft series presented by property gurus. It argues that the genre, as a cultural and industrial artefact, is remarkably adaptable to new economic and ideological circumstances.