Invited Speakers:
Frances Bonner, University of Queensland
Frances Bonner is Reader in Television and Popular Culture in the English, Media Studies and Art History School at the University of Queensland. Her research focuses on non-fiction television, celebrity, magazines and most recently, adaptation. In addition to many articles and chapters on these topics, she is the author of Personality Presenters (Ashgate, 2011), Ordinary Television (Sage 2003), and co-author, with Graeme Turner and David Marshall, of Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia (Cambridge UP, 2000).
Presentation:
"Gendered Display: How Strictly come Dancing/Dancing with the Stars presents a Gendered World."
Presentation:
"Gendered Display: How Strictly come Dancing/Dancing with the Stars presents a Gendered World."
Tania Lewis, RMIT
Tania Lewis is a Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow in the School of Media & Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne. She is the author of Smart Living: Lifestyle Media and Popular Expertise (Peter Lang, New York: 2008), editor of TV Transformations: Revealing the Makeover Show (Routledge, London: 2009), co-editor of Ethical Consumption: A Critical Introduction (Routledge, 2011) and has also published numerous journal articles and book chapters on reality and lifestyle TV. Her current research is on lifestyle and consumption with a particular focus on sustainability and green citizenship. She is currently a chief investigator on a four year (2010-2013) comparative study of reality formats and lifestyle advice television in Asia funded by the Australian Research Council.
Presentation:
"Super Girls and Style Queens: gender, modernity and aspirational identities on Asian reality TV"
Across the globe, the past decade of television has seen the rise and rise of format TV, with reality television in particular representing one of the most ubiquitous media formats of our time. In Asia, reality shows have proliferated across a range of diverse markets from India (MasterChef) and China (Super Girl) to Malaysia (So You Think You Can Dance) and Indonesia (Fate Swap). While the rise of these formats is partly a product of the economics of television, their popularity also speaks to broader cultural and social shifts around the nature of social identity and citizenship. Reality TV—through its focus on transforming and optimising the self—provides an apposite lens through which to analyse contemporary negotiations of identity in Asia, particularly in relation to processes of individualization and gendered selfhood. On the one hand, traditionally ‘feminine’ modes of everyday domestic expertise like cookery are effectively being re-gendered on reality shows such as MasterChef as universal life skills pertinent to any cosmopolitan modern individual. On the other hand, reality formats such as dating and bridal shows appear to reinscribe traditional feminine roles albeit reframed in terms of consumer-based individualism and self-branding. In this talk I argue that reality shows offer rich insights into the ways in which contemporary Asian media cultures are negotiating and promoting models of individualized femininity and ‘enterprising’ modes of selfhood. Drawing upon data from a study funded by the Australian Research Council on lifestyle and reality TV in Asia, the talk discusses a number of reality shows from across the region. Here, my analysis focuses on the complex relationship between the ideals of aspirational modernity and individualism and choice-based selfhood promoted by these shows, and the structural constraints on emergent feminine subjects in the context of ongoing gendered social and economic inequities and the continued cultural potency of traditional formations of feminine subjecthood.
Presentation:
"Super Girls and Style Queens: gender, modernity and aspirational identities on Asian reality TV"
Across the globe, the past decade of television has seen the rise and rise of format TV, with reality television in particular representing one of the most ubiquitous media formats of our time. In Asia, reality shows have proliferated across a range of diverse markets from India (MasterChef) and China (Super Girl) to Malaysia (So You Think You Can Dance) and Indonesia (Fate Swap). While the rise of these formats is partly a product of the economics of television, their popularity also speaks to broader cultural and social shifts around the nature of social identity and citizenship. Reality TV—through its focus on transforming and optimising the self—provides an apposite lens through which to analyse contemporary negotiations of identity in Asia, particularly in relation to processes of individualization and gendered selfhood. On the one hand, traditionally ‘feminine’ modes of everyday domestic expertise like cookery are effectively being re-gendered on reality shows such as MasterChef as universal life skills pertinent to any cosmopolitan modern individual. On the other hand, reality formats such as dating and bridal shows appear to reinscribe traditional feminine roles albeit reframed in terms of consumer-based individualism and self-branding. In this talk I argue that reality shows offer rich insights into the ways in which contemporary Asian media cultures are negotiating and promoting models of individualized femininity and ‘enterprising’ modes of selfhood. Drawing upon data from a study funded by the Australian Research Council on lifestyle and reality TV in Asia, the talk discusses a number of reality shows from across the region. Here, my analysis focuses on the complex relationship between the ideals of aspirational modernity and individualism and choice-based selfhood promoted by these shows, and the structural constraints on emergent feminine subjects in the context of ongoing gendered social and economic inequities and the continued cultural potency of traditional formations of feminine subjecthood.
Karen Tice, University of Kentucky
Karen W. Tice is an associate professor of gender and women's studies and education at the University of Kentucky. Her most recent publication is her forthcoming book "Queens of Academe: Beauty, Bodies, and Campus Life, 1920-Present" (Oxford, 2012).
Presentation:
"Upgrading College Men and Women: Reality TV and Enhancement on Campus"
New demands for self-transformation and the mastery of middle-class aesthetics and competencies have propelled many college campuses to offer charm schools, etiquette training, style shows, and enhancement programs focusing on social savvy and fashion/grooming. Both predominantly white and historically black colleges in the U.S. have offered workshops such as “Goofs, Goblets, and Getting the Edge,” and “Put Your Best Fork Forward.” Even fraternities have established makeover programs for their members including the “Balanced Man Program” and “True Gentlemen” which include enhancement training that includes a blend of ornamental, social, and entrepreneurial skills. Some universities have also used both the curricula developed by RTV makeover shows, as well as their celebrity hosts such as Fonzworth Bentley (author of Advance Your Swagger: How to Use Manners, Confidence, and Style to Get Ahead) to launch their programs.
Based on interviews and participant observation, I will analyze recent programming initiatives for African American college women and men based on two Reality TV makeover shows, From G’s To Gents and Flavor of Love: Charm School. I also will analyze an etiquette boot camp for black campus queens and kings that included celebrity experts from Reality TV shows as “The Apprentice.” I argue that this diffusion of RTV onto college campuses helps to consolidate normative mechanisms for assigning distinction, belonging, and social trespass, representing a potent factor in managing student bodies, conduct, and social relations in the new millennium.
Presentation:
"Upgrading College Men and Women: Reality TV and Enhancement on Campus"
New demands for self-transformation and the mastery of middle-class aesthetics and competencies have propelled many college campuses to offer charm schools, etiquette training, style shows, and enhancement programs focusing on social savvy and fashion/grooming. Both predominantly white and historically black colleges in the U.S. have offered workshops such as “Goofs, Goblets, and Getting the Edge,” and “Put Your Best Fork Forward.” Even fraternities have established makeover programs for their members including the “Balanced Man Program” and “True Gentlemen” which include enhancement training that includes a blend of ornamental, social, and entrepreneurial skills. Some universities have also used both the curricula developed by RTV makeover shows, as well as their celebrity hosts such as Fonzworth Bentley (author of Advance Your Swagger: How to Use Manners, Confidence, and Style to Get Ahead) to launch their programs.
Based on interviews and participant observation, I will analyze recent programming initiatives for African American college women and men based on two Reality TV makeover shows, From G’s To Gents and Flavor of Love: Charm School. I also will analyze an etiquette boot camp for black campus queens and kings that included celebrity experts from Reality TV shows as “The Apprentice.” I argue that this diffusion of RTV onto college campuses helps to consolidate normative mechanisms for assigning distinction, belonging, and social trespass, representing a potent factor in managing student bodies, conduct, and social relations in the new millennium.
Zala Volcic, University of Queensland
Zala Volcic is a senior lecturer in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Queensland. She is the author of Crossing Cultural Boundaries: An Introduction to Intercultural Communication (Shuang Liu, Zala Volcic, Cindy Gallois,
Sage, 2010) and Mediji in Identiteta [Media and Identity] (Maribor U. Press, 2008), aand has published extensively in the research fields of media, development, social change, dependency, nationalism, and identity. She is interested in the cultural consequences of nationalism, capitalism, and globalization, with a particular emphasis on international communication and media identities. .
Presentation:
"Commercial and Sexualized Nationalism on Serbian Reality TV"
Abstract: This article explores the way in which the portrayal of gender becomes linked to that of ethno-nationalism on the popular Serbian reality show The Palace. On the basis of a textual analysis of the public reactions to the reality show and its interpretations by the local audiences in Slovenia and Serbia, we claim that the show promotes specifically gendered and sexualized ethno-national identities, and that the interpretation of the show continues to be aligned with discourses of ethno-nationalist belonging. We argue that commercial, ethno-national femininity is currently employed to re-legitimate patriarchal nationalism in the name of freedom and empowerment via self-promotion.
Brenda Weber, Indiana University
Brenda R. Weber is an associate professor in Gender Studies at Indiana University, with adjunct appointments in American Studies, Cultural Studies, Communication and Culture, and English. She teaches courses in reality television, gender and popular culture, masculinity theory, the politics of representation, celebrity studies, and theories of embodiment. Her books include Makeover TV: Selfhood, Citizenship, and Celebrity (Duke 2009) and Women and Literary Celebrity in the Nineteenth Century: The Transatlantic Production of Fame and Gender (Ashgate 2012). She is presently editing an anthology called Reality Gendervision: Decoding Gender and Sexuality on Transatlantic Reality TV (under contract with Duke University Press).
Presentation:
"Transatlantic Tensions: Tall Poppies in the American Field of Dreams and the Gender Politics of Reality Television"
Reality television is a global phenomenon dominated by transatlantic production companies that are located primarily in both Britain and the United States. And with product comes ideology. In this case, however, it is generic type rather than national identity that best sets the tenor of ideology. Regardless of their place of production, reality programs largely carry distinctively American ideological mandates of meritocratic upward mobility, positing celebrity as the “natural” epitome of success and achievement. This presentation seeks to explore the gendered tensions at stake when the American celebration of achievement, visibility, and singularity conflicts with the “tall poppy syndrome” that can often permeate the Anglophone world.
Presentation:
"Transatlantic Tensions: Tall Poppies in the American Field of Dreams and the Gender Politics of Reality Television"
Reality television is a global phenomenon dominated by transatlantic production companies that are located primarily in both Britain and the United States. And with product comes ideology. In this case, however, it is generic type rather than national identity that best sets the tenor of ideology. Regardless of their place of production, reality programs largely carry distinctively American ideological mandates of meritocratic upward mobility, positing celebrity as the “natural” epitome of success and achievement. This presentation seeks to explore the gendered tensions at stake when the American celebration of achievement, visibility, and singularity conflicts with the “tall poppy syndrome” that can often permeate the Anglophone world.
