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- Volume 3, Issue 2, 2015
Journal of Popular Television, The - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2015
Volume 3, Issue 2, 2015
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Something special: Care, pre-school television and the dis/abled child
More LessAbstractThrough a close reading of the series Something Special (2003–), this article explores the implicit and explicit rhetorics of ‘care’ within the remit and content of the UK pre-school children’s channel CBeebies. With its address to an audience that includes disabled children and children with special educational needs, CBeebies is celebrated as an inclusive site of play and learning for its diverse audience of 0–6 year-olds. In Something Special (2003–), for example, Mr Tumble’s playful encounters with the world around him are supported through the use of Makaton, a sign language designed to help both children in the early stages of language development and those with communication disorders.
With the channel’s emphasis on learning, development and ‘care’, this article questions the ways in which the disabled child both challenges and reinforces understandings of childhood and development. By exploring the manifestations of touch, texture, performance, play and repetition within this programme, it considers this inclusive mode of address for what it reveals about forms of intersubjectivity and non-verbal modes of communication.
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‘It’s really scared of disability’: Disabled comedians’ perspectives of the British television comedy industry
More LessAbstractFor over twenty years British television broadcasters, regulators and critics have been, and continue to be, united in their desire to increase the number of disabled staff working across the television industry and to improve the representation of disabled people in television programmes. However, little research focuses on the lived experiences of disabled television writers and performers working within the television industry. Via thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with disabled comedy writers and performers, this article specifically focuses on the everyday working experiences of disabled comedy professionals in the contemporary television comedy industry. Two main interconnected themes are highlighted and explored: (1) institutional dynamics of the television comedy industry; and (2) limits of current portrayals of disability in television comedy. These themes reveal the disabling institutional norms experienced by disabled comedy professionals and their critical perceptions of the representations of disability in recent television comedy programmes, including I’m Spazticus (2012–2013) and The Last Leg (2012–).
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From awww to awe factor: UK audience meaning-making of the 2012 Paralympics as mediated spectacle
Authors: Caroline E. M. Hodges, Richard Scullion and Daniel JacksonAbstractThis article considers UK audiences’ meaning-making of television coverage of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. As an elite sporting event, the Paralympics has been categorized alongside other high-profile media spectacles. Yet, an analysis of the ‘spectacle’ has further significance here in relation to what Mitchell and Snyder conceptualize as ‘fascination with spectacles of difference’, which encourages audiences to view the disabled person through their impairment, rather than as a human being. Inspirational ‘supercrip’ stories that glorify ‘special achievement’ fuel perceptions that disabled athletes have extraordinary, heroic qualities, and coverage of the 2012 Paralympics was no different. The spectacle is created through everyday talk. Therefore, we utilize in-depth interviews supported by netnography-inspired methods to consider to what extent media representations appropriated disability into ‘spectacle’, consequently perpetuating ablest discourses, whilst also addressing the intended social agenda by facilitating greater understanding. Our findings suggest an unexpected emotional engagement with the (mostly) sporting spectacle, with audience narratives moving from ‘awww’ to ‘awe’ as sporting achievement was celebrated. The disabled sporting ‘hero’ as ‘superhero’ is, we argue, further evidence of the influence of discourses that attempt to transform a stigmatized identity, i.e. disability, into a revered one – athleticism, thus reinforcing existing hierarchies of ability/disability.
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Supersize vs. Superskinny: (Re)framing the freak show in contemporary popular culture
More LessAbstractWhile the freak show once dominated western stages and was, as scholar Robert Bogdan notes, one of the most popular forms of entertainment for nearly a century, the increasing concern surrounding the political, ethical and moral implications of gazing openly upon abnormal bodies cemented the eventual decline of its popularity in the early- to mid-twentieth century. However, as scholars have noted, the eventual decline of the freak show did not necessarily signal the end to the public’s fascination with looking at anomalous or extraordinary bodies. Instead, this fascination was reconfigured within contemporary culture to sites such as reality television, tabloid publications and medical documentaries. Within this article, I focus on the popular Channel 4 reality documentary series: Supersize vs. Superskinny (2008– 2014). The programme, which spans seven series, follows two pairs of participants with disparate body sizes and ‘extreme’ diets as they swap their usual meals with one another for one full week in an attempt to challenge their current relationship to food and diet. Like the freak show – a complex performance practice that extends beyond the sideshow or carnival stages to include modes of looking at bodies that included medical theatres and lectures, ethnographic displays, and museums – Supersize vs. Superskinny is a hybrid of spectacle, entertainment and medical clinic, and thus, has emerged as a prime case study of these aforementioned contemporary socially sanctioned sites of gazing upon Othered bodies. In this article, I intend to conduct a close reading of two episodes from within the series as a means of not only exploring the aesthetic and narrative similarities between the programme and the historic freak show, but to explore how the programme, in its framing and presentation of exceptional bodies, implicitly reinforces the moral, political and cultural superiority of the so-called ‘normate’.
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In their words: How television and visual media can raise awareness of dementia and other health conditions that carry stigma, including disabilities
Authors: Michelle Heward, James Palfreman-Kay and Anthea InnesAbstractThis article explores the mutual contribution television and disability studies can make to one another, focusing on the role of television and visual media in raising awareness and challenging gaps in understanding of dementia, a health condition that carries stigma and is framed as a disability. The Living Well with Dementia Dorset Video (LWDDV) project demonstrates the duality of how creating and disseminating a video featuring people with dementia and carers talking about what it means to live well with the condition, provides a way to use media to raise awareness of dementia. Portraying real-life experiences of people affected by dementia was crucial, and enabled these often marginalized voices to be heard. Participants discussed experiences of diagnosis, post-diagnostic support, adjustments to lifestyle, social activities and family relationships. The video was disseminated through YouTube, and the impact on understandings of dementia was established through a questionnaire. Findings indicate personal stories are a powerful way to raise awareness of dementia, an approach that could improve awareness of other health conditions that carry stigma, including disabilities. Video provides researchers with novel ways to disseminate findings that extend to new and wide-ranging audiences.
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Disability in television crime drama: Transgression and access
By Katie EllisAbstractCrime is one of the most persistent genres in recent television history. Disability is a narrative device often used in this genre to provide information and motivation for criminals, increase the vulnerability of victims and in some cases attribute almost superhuman powers of deduction to the lead investigators. As such, the most common analysis of these images relies on the identification and criticism of stereotypes. Yet as recent theorization in disability studies argues, focusing on negative stereotypes has seen research into disability and television stagnate. Proceeding from the argument that it is important to consider both representation and accessibility in any study of disability and television, research into Australian audiences with disabilities was held to discover what they thought about both the representation of disability on television and the potential for alternative modes of access. The crime drama emerged as a popular genre amongst people with disabilities. Responses to this question reveal impairments have a material impact on the kinds of television people with disability are able to enjoy watching. This is in contrast to prior research into disability and television, which identifies crime genres as a disabling representation of disability. These insights reveal that forms of storytelling are important and indeed acknowledged by the disability community, who seek out popular forms of television despite television’s traditional role in subordinating this group and excluding them from participating in the industry.
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Disability and television: Notes from the field
By Sarah BartonAbstractDrawing on extensive experience working in film and television production, this article reflects on the practical and cultural problems encountered by programmemakers working with participants with disabilities. This article aims to give advice to other programme-makers, and does so within practical contexts such as budgetary constraints and ‘typical’ working practices. In doing so, the intention here is to support wider diversity on-screen, and to enable television to better work with, and represent, people with disabilities.
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A ‘surprising and mature portrait’? Reflecting on representations of mental illness in Rookie Blue
By Shane BrownAbstractIn 2006, an article in the Journal of Health Communication called for a collaboration between the mental health sector in America and the media industries in order ‘to counter negative portrayals of mental illness, and to explore the potential for positive portrayals to educate and inform, as well as to entertain’. Eight years on, there has been an increase in the portrayals of mental illness in popular North American television drama series. This article focuses on the police procedural drama Rookie Blue (2010–) and the narrative arc in season four which concerns a policewoman with bipolar disorder. This is an autoethnographical article, giving a personal reaction to the portrayal of a condition I have had for twenty years, and the ways in which such portrayals can contribute to the stigmas surrounding mental illness.
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Is New Zealand ready for more diversity on-screen?
Authors: Philip Patston and Barbara PikeAbstractThe aim of the ‘More Diversity on-Screen’ campaign and survey was to raise public awareness of the under-representation of disability on-screen in New Zealand, as well as to explore New Zealanders’ views about the inclusion of disabled actors and characters in media. The study took an ‘action research’ approach, producing and broadcasting a 30-second TV commercial that encouraged viewers to participate in an online survey aiming to capture attitudes and opinions around the inclusion of more diversity on-screen. Results of the survey showed clear support for the idea of more diversity on-screen, but it also became clear that the task of getting more representation of disability in media is a complex task, requiring a much longer time frame than originally anticipated. We conclude that the onus for change may fall on the disability community, not the media industry, if disability is ever to be portrayed in a truly authentic way on-screen.
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Book Reviews
Authors: Nick Hall, Jonathan Mack, Ian Greaves and Lauhona GangulyAbstractSports on Television: The How and Why Behind What You See, DENNIS Denin ger (2012) New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 236 pp., ISBN: 0415896754, p/bk, $120; ISBN: 041589686, h/bk, $69.95
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