International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics - Volume 15, Issue 2, 2019

The Chilean dictatorship is the subject of a number of recent non-fiction films in which the construction of Chile’s collective memory also focuses on those who supported, collaborated or participated in the perpetration of the abuses and atrocities committed by the regime. In recent years, a new generation of Chilean filmmakers has emerged; among these are Andrés Lübbert and Lissette Orozco, whose documentary films about the dictatorship, El color del camaleón (‘The color of the chameleon’) and El pacto de Adriana (‘Adriana’s pact’), respectively, were both released in 2017. In both films, the memorialization of Chile’s past is associated with the exploration of family memories as the filmmakers engage with Chile’s collective memory through family relationships. In this way, family becomes central to a parallel process in which the filmmakers engage in an ethical and emotional questioning of their relationships with their relatives and the family legacy, thereby triggering conflict within the family. This family conflict may be resolved in one of two possible ways: breakdown or reconciliation. The two documentary films studied here offer examples of each possibility, facilitating an exploration of this process and the potential impact of this approach to documenting family relationships.

Podcasts can perform transdisciplinary cultural work in sonic form. Often, they are specific ‘soundworks’ which, though still emphasizing speech and words over sound and noise, still challenge the predominance of text and image by necessitating the ‘social act’ of listening. Not by Accident, ‘a documentary series about choosing to become a single mother and coping with being one’ (Harper), presents an example of how private and intimate stories, told to an (anonymous) audience can function as both scriptotherapy, and oral/aural (auto)biographical texts (here of mother and daughter), but also as self-help and awareness raising narratives for a community of listeners, a sound-based social network. By illustrating the private impact of public family policies and social discourses, Harper’s podcast speaks against discrimination and denigration of single mothers, lesbian mothers and single mothers by choice, against patriarchal motherhood and the heteronormative model of the ‘nuclear family’ and for reproductive justice in families of choice.

Representations of the nuclear family have undergone significant redefinitions on American television over the last fifteen years: recent 40-something heroines are examining the slow decline of the nuclear family, aided by the return of radical feminism. This article analyses this critical New Wave, which appeared on television with Desperate Housewives (2004–2012) and continues in dramas such as The Good Wife (2009–2016) and dramedies such as The Big C (2010–2013), Nurse Jackie (2009–2015) and Weeds (2005–2012). The complexity of television’s treatment of the explosion of the nuclear family is due to the fact that TV series marry a broken – shattered, even – dream with its residual forms: families are falling apart and yet the heroines are confronted with the pressing need to continue upholding its social representation. To escape traditional roles, women are according emotions a new place and witnessing a redistribution of skills in various forms. In place of the predetermined structure of the nuclear family, intimate public spheres are emerging, where women are establishing themselves as long-oppressed individuals on the road to an emancipation that can occur only in the context of a fundamental rethinking of the organization of the private sphere.

Forming a family and having children constitutes an adulthood rite of passage, one of the tacitly assumed requirements of a fulfilled life. What happens, then, when the ‘family dream’ does not materialize? This article addresses the dark sides of the ‘family imperative’ by focusing on representations of involuntary childlessness (i.e. childlessness not by choice) in film. It advances the argument that popular culture, far from being ‘mere entertainment’, plays an important role in wider processes of stigmatization, silencing and, as a result, exclusion of those who do not have a family. The analysis, which is informed by a broader study into the structure of silence surrounding childlessness, presents the findings of a comparative qualitative content analysis that examined the (troubling) representations of involuntary childless individuals in 50 films from Italy, Norway and the United States. It discusses their far-reaching cultural and political implications, making practical suggestions to counter their stigmatizing effects.

For the last decade, South Korea – a nation that has called itself danil minjok, a phrase that means ethnically homogenous and racially distinctive – has been transitioning from a homogenous country to a multicultural one. This article focuses on the depiction of ‘the ethnic female other’ in Korean media, more specifically on that of marriage migrants from Southeast Asia. It analyses two Korean media texts, the film Punch (Lee, 2011) and the television programme Love in Asia (2005–15), specifically around scenes depicting food: marriage migrants preparing food, cooking food, eating food, sharing food, etc. How does food function as sociocultural practices in the exploration of migration and the formation of identities for female marriage migrants? This article argues that Korean film and television articulates a rather limited multicultural discourse as part of its national identity, most notably in the depiction of marriage migrants as mothers who are required to actively produce and consume Korean food. In doing so, the article demonstrates that while media depictions of marriage migrants provide a window onto the transitional process of questioning what a ‘Korean’ family is, it currently remains very limited and ambivalent.

This article examines the Planned Parenthood film La Sortija de Compromiso (1965) as advertisement for family planning among Puerto Rican migrants in New York. The film presents a normative narrative of reproductive decision-making and shows how family planning became an integral part of the 1960s US-American symbolic order. It was produced within the context of debates about overpopulation, poverty and family planning initiatives in Puerto Rico as well as scares about global overpopulation and an increasing Latino immigration in the United States. First, the article discusses how the film presents family planning as a path to affluence for migrant families. Then, it analyses the concepts of masculinity that are presented in the film and that associate Puerto Rico with a pre-modern rural setting and US-American family norms with modernity. Third, it examines how the film addresses the transcultural setting of Puerto Rican migrant families by negotiating different attitudes to women’s work, decision-making within marriage and networks to obtain reproductive knowledge. The article concludes that the film advertises family planning as a universal concept and a path towards affluence. Thus, it presents poverty as a result of individual choice and obscures the debates about overpopulation and eugenics in which it was conceived.

Between 1987 and 1998, the Malay-language press experienced what appears to be a golden age for media freedom in Malaysia, despite authoritarian legislation. Secure in its support, bolstered by unprecedented economic growth, the government allowed limited criticism and debate. The Malay-Muslim family, however, was seen as increasingly under threat from rapid modernization and the (perceived) influx of women into the workforce. In this milieu, women were expected to shoulder multiple burdens in the home and the workforce. In this context, the women’s pages of the Malay-language daily newspaper Utusan Malaysia policed the makeup of the family, helping women, in particular, make sense of their role as pious wives and mothers and as businesswomen and entrepreneurs. Employing critical discourse analysis of articles published during this period, this article illuminates the workings of power, paying attention to the language used in the articles and the context within which they were written. This article summarizes how the Malay-Muslim family evolved, the shifting role of religion as a marker of the Malay-Muslim family and the strains that domestic policies placed on the Malay-Muslim family. I argue that increasing bureaucratization of Islam increased the burden of responsibilities borne by women, while providing limited redress.

Leaving Home (2017), a Chinese reality television show focusing on narrating Chinese family stories with an emphasis on Chinese family cultures, became popular among audiences in 2017. Simultaneously, the show triggered large-scale public attention and heated debate on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media site. This commentary analyses how Chinese family cultures have been represented and framed in Leaving Home, and how the show has influenced and shaped public discourse on social media platforms such as Weibo. A content analysis is used to interpret stories in Leaving Home while textual analysis is deployed to analyse the discussion microblogs on the Weibo topic page of Leaving Home. Three types of Chinese family cultures have been foregrounded through examining the narratives of Leaving Home. The analyses of microblogs have demonstrated that Leaving Home’s constructions of narratives and emphases on certain topics can affect public discourse on Weibo and shape them in specific directions. Leaving Home has inspired people to interpret its stories and embedded Chinese family cultures and values in their own ways by expressing their opinions on Weibo.

Random Families: Genetic Strangers, Sperm Donor Siblings, and the Creation of New Kin, Rosanna Hertz and Margaret K. Nelson (2019) 1st ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 296 pp., ISBN 978-0-19088-827-5, h/bk, $27.95; ISBN 978-0-19088-829-9, e/bk, $17.00

Connecting Families? Information & Communication Technologies, Generations, and the Life Course, Barbara Barbosa Neves and Cláudia Casimiro (eds) (2018) Bristol: Policy Press, 324 pp., ISBN 978-1-44733-994-6, h/bk, £60