Paper | "Othering for a better consuming"
International Conference „Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism in European Media and Film: Rights, Responsibilities, Representations“ (University of Manchester, 23-25 May 2013)
Cornelia Grobner | PhD Candidate | University of Salzburg, Austria | [email protected]
OTHERING FOR A BETTER CONSUMING – HOW ENTERTAINMENT TELEVISION MAKES ETHNICITY CONSUMABLE
I want to illuminate the central role assigned to entertainment television when it comes to the representational process of different ethnicities – I lay the focus on the positive staging of the strangeness in order to make it more easily consumable. I trace my basic idea to research on tourism and transcultural communication as I appeal to the similarity between tourism and racism. This similarity derives from their revolving around culture and difference. And while media research on the effects of positive representation in combination with accentuation of the cultural strangeness of minorities is a blank spot within research, research on tourism gives a hint regarding the coherences and consequences of good signed othering.
First some words on my dissertation project: I want to answer how the strange – as representation of the cultural other – is presented or staged in entertaining media products. And I want to know, how these media contents are processed by the audiences. I have created a qualitative study design with an elaborated interdisciplinary theroetical part and an involved empirical part consisting of analysis of film and interrogations after screenings – and if necessary of following group discussions.
Today I want to focus on one important answer to the first question and show how it could be given by rearticulating and relating theories from different disciplines. I am going to concentrate on the different parameters that produce the othering of ethnicity in entertainment television. And I will give some examples from German and Austrian television to show how the knowledge could be adapted to analyse television.
So the question raised today is: Which share contributes entertainment media to the othering of ethnicity?
AREA OF TENSION: MEDIA, POWER AND LIFEWORLD
Entertainment plays an important role in television. For example, one of Austria’s main public service broadcasters ORF 1 broadcasts 74 percent fictional and 7 percent nonfictional entertainment. I focus on entertainment as a cultural relevance of entertainment exists that is still underestimated as related to its effects on our everyday world – maybe no longer by scientists, but by subsidies granting politicians. Beyond I want to emphasise the other side of the coin – because entertainment is of course not only a category in television production but also a characteristic of the spectatorships’ media use. Essential is what Roland Barthes has called “le plaisir du texte” – the pleasure of the text.
Habermas’ theory of communicative action (if you think of reproduction and the distinction between lifeworld and systems) provides the theoretical basis to take into account the presence of a public sphere function in untraditionally informative realms. Entertainment television plays an important role in everyday conversation. Audiences don’t only use traditional informational or educational media but also unconventional media representations like soap operas or reality shows in discussions of social issues. (cf. Schorb et al. 2003, Paus-Hasebrink 2006, Klein 2013)
Media provide orientation and help with the search for identity – but mainstream media in Austria show (cf. Hausjell 2011): This help is not shaped by diversity. This insight is embedded in my understanding of media that are part of everyday culture (cf. Paus-Hasebrink 2010), which follows Ludwig Wittgenstein’s pragmatic approach. That means culture is the same as media are life praxis. Media connect cognitive and social frameworks about imaginations, images and symbols and contribute to convey cultural identity – just as to distinguish it from the others. (cf. Luger 1998)
Globalisation walks hand in hand with a new form of global mass culture which is determined by the fact that visual arts encroach directly on the transfiguration of daily life, entertainment and recreation. This mainstream culture is ruled by television, film, images, metaphors and styles and its centre lies in the West. It’s a never ending pleasure – or more precisely, it’s made to be one.
The dilemma of the West is a desire for lust and passion (Michel Foucault). Therefore ethnicity is used to spice up the white mainstream. The difference seduces because mainstream produces homogenity (Jean Baudrillard). The playground, or rather the battle ground are bodies and cultures. The desire for the supposed other is a desire for pleasure – and not a political act. (cf. Hooks 1994)
Seven percent of all Austrian films of the last ten years cover the topic of migration as their main issue. Most of those 22 out of 320 films concentrate on the differences between migrants and the majority society.
Before I plunge deeper into the subject matter I want to get more specific. I will give you some examples of Austrian and German television formats where the cultural strange fulfils a special entertainment oriented function. For categorisation I use the terms “we/us” and “the strange” – those already refer to the concept of othering ethnicity that will be explained later. In this sense “we” is more a fictional and social construct than an actual group of people. “The strange” is created as a counterpart.
• Reality shows I | category: “We in the middle of the strange”: Germany’s Next Topmodel (2006-2013): The show frequently uses faraway settings: for example a photoshooting in Thailand includes a traditional cultural dance and uses natives as props (series 2012).
• Reality Shows II | category: “The strange among us”: The results of a study show that in German (partly scripted) talkshows one character could be often found: the Turkish macho. Also all other migrants act like incarnated clichés. In the scripted court shows migrants are more often in the position of the culprit. In the soaps migrants only appear as exotic birds. (cf. Schorb et al. 2003)
• Serial I | category: “We in the middle of the strange”: Traumschiff (Dream Ship; 1981-now)/Klinik unter Palmen (clinic under palms; 1996-2003): The two series use far away places as their settings, therefore the differences of place and people there and place and people in the protagonists’ homeland Germany are highlighted by filmic means. The people of the faraway place do not play leading or very active roles e. g. (cf. Schnake 2000)
• Serial II | catgeory: “The strange among us”: “Cop Stories” (A 2013) : It tells different stories of a Viennese police station. The two officers with supposed migrant background are often reduced to “translaters” of situations in a staged milieu of migrants that abounds in stereotypes.
• Films I | category: “We in the middle of the strange”: The white Masai (Germany 2005): The difference is constructed by the presentation of the clash of two inherent cultures and worldviews. The basic statement is that white people belong to Europe and the Masai to Africa. My further research topic will concentrate on this category concerning European TV productions with an African setting.
• Films II | category: “The strange among us” – “Kebab mit alles” (“Kebab with everything”; Austria 2011): The focus lies on cultural differences in everyday life. The film mocks the unability of its protagonists to realize their similarities. There are other examples of films of this category too where the hybrid identity of migrants is talked up as exotic life style; e.g. “Kebab Connection” (Germany 2005).
• There are films too that cannot be easily categorised in the proposed manner. For example the film “Türkisch für Anfänger” (Turkish for beginners; film: Germany, 2012 | series: 2006-2009): It deals with the clash of culture in an exceptional situation. It is about a German and a Turkish familiy that need to stand each other after a plane crash in Thailand.
For further categorisation of these television formats, I use two different comprehensions of culture being the two opposed poles of one continuum: the traditional concept of single cultures represented by Johann Gottfried Herder (a philosopher of Weimar classicism) and an advanced and contemporary concept of transculturality by the postmodern philosopher Wolfgang Welsch. For me one possibility to analyse entertainment media in terms of othering and ethnicity is to work out the inherent comprehension of culture. My presumption is the more similarities with Herder’s conception of culture could be found the more breeding grounds for othering exist. In a next step the different ways of televisual othering need to be rendered visibly.
FROM THE STRANGE TO THE OTHER
It is evident: These days it is impossible to draw boundaries between one culture and the other, between the self and the other. Telecommunication, mobility and migration overcome at least the spatial dimension of strangeness. Furthermore cultures are interconnected because of global tourism and culture and in dependence of politics and economy. The heterogeneity within a traditional homogenous culture is big. There are almost as many strangnesses inside as there are outside.
Nowadays it is especially modern tourism as well as mass media which care about the peoples’ desire for the Edenic strange – or, from a perspective of criticism of capitalism and consumption, they create the desire and feed it. And, as a consequence, they keep the meaning of cultural differences alive. This gets dangerous if homeland charmers deny that culture is a permanent interplay between the own and the strange (cf. Luger 1998); and if culture is kept defined by its seclusiveness.
Freud and Lacan offer clarifications for the intrinsic motivation of individuals concerning identity issues. The cultural other, the strange in its strangeness, that is different to oneself, has always attracted people. Psychoanalysis explains too why the strange fascinates but frightens at the same time. And media entertainment theories explain why being simultaneously frightened and fascinated is entertaining. A highly elaborated theory of media entertainment is the approach of Werner Früh, who uses mood management and emotion as a basis.
Communication studies prove that media provide spaces for experiments with the own identity (cf. Adolf 2006). Consumption and entertainment offer a special access to reality. Media present culture, they are culture and they produce culture themselves – and everybody can consume culture like many other accessoires of identity. But if you want to consume something it has to be something you don’t already own. That’s when capitalism actuates the machine. In this regard, migrant researcher Mark Terkessidis coins the phrase of the machine of the difference consumption. (cf. Terkessidis 2001; in German: “Differenzkonsummaschine”)
What does that mean for scientific practice? It is necessary to get familiar with the different modes of the strange, respectively with the different formations of its perception and its origins in relation to ethnicity. Only a broad knowledge of the strange can ensure to recognize all its characteristics and pave the way for a nuanced analysis of televisual othering.
There are societal solidified patterns of the strange, which are shaped by culture, politics and science. These patterns are mediated by media but produced simultaneously. Strangeness in mass media is also established by mise-en-scène with all its formal, narrative, dramatic and aesthetics compositions.
Alimentary habits, music, clothes, television … the elements of the supposed cultural strange can be found in every part of everyday life. According to Kien Nghi Ha (2000) the celebration of multiculturalism is more a product of economy than of politics anyway. However, mass culture controls the differences. But before “the West” can consume “the rest” (cf. Stuart Hall 1994), its strangeness needs to be cleared from its social and historical connections. With reference to Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the “habitus” this means: Consumption classifies the strange that – as a product – can be used for classification itself (cf. Bourdieu 19832). Therefore the consumption of culture contributes to the distinction of other people. In this process, the cultural strange is reduced to its entertaining role in consumption.
There is a long tradition of alienation of ethnicity in human history – mirrored by media: The aesthetisizing of the exotic subject competes in literature and film from the beginning of the 20th century. Strangeness works as a poetical alienation. Film perfects that. (cf. Honold 1997)
In view of media products we always have to consider that the reality is not only fractured and (re)constructed once. There is always a technical and a personal act. And there is always a commercial and an artistic level. The artistic level referrs to the so called V-Effekt (Verfremdungseffekt) in accord with Bertold Brecht, a trope.
Shohat and Stam (1994) point out the tropes of difference, which can be tracked back to the first contact between Europe and America. Since then the differences between Europe and the rest are viewed via the perception of the West reinforced by stereotypes. These sterotypes act as binarism between the West and the rest and construct Eurocentric hierarchies. Today these tropes still follow the perception of different cultures in former days – when the traditional comprehension of culture as self-contained entity was suitable. They manifest themselves as exotism, naturalism, purity, spirituality, simplicity and infantility – always in contrast to rationality and intellectuality.
OTHERING IN MEDIA ENTERTAINMENT
Generally I want to highlight that entertainment television has been blamed for a whole string of problems that oscillate between manipulation and mental enfeeblement of its viewership. I really don’t want to take the same line, but following an understanding of media as everyday practice I think it’s extremely necessary to peruse the identity-establishing parts. And as identity is always about the own and the other it is even more necessary to take a close look at the mediated and staged other, especially if the other is constructed as a cultural issue.
Although current identities are considered to be rather multiple than simple and highly oscillating there is a desire to fixate them – either from the governments’ sides or from the individuals’ sides. (cf. Zoonen 2013; Wöhler 2010) This can be seen to the return to the discourse of normalized dichotomous identities: male or female, able or disabled, or – in this particular case – we or they. 9/11 or rather the proceedings after 9/11 can be seen as the key element of this notion. As the examples of entertainment television has shown media support that dichotomy.
The idea of the other was made popular by Edward Said in his book “Orientalism”. Originally it was a philosophically concept, but it has political, social, psychological and economic implications. Othering as a sociological term is characterized by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (cf. Spivak 2008) related to the imperial discours that creates the others as the ones who are excluded from the discours of power. Othering aims at improving the own image by classifying people with different characteristics as “strange”. Strange is not the difference but the difference, which is perceived as relevant. These emphasised differences concern gender, religion, class, ideology, or ethnicity. Othering can lead to xenophobia and/or racism. (cf. Reuter 2002)
Othering is one way to position oneself on one pole of the we-they-dichotomy and entrust the antipol to somebody else, or rather to knock the other one down a peg. Othering can only be done by persons who possess power. It’s a hegemonic action. In literature othering is mostly described as a pejorative act. Some could debate that highlighting positive aspects of someone’s cultural identity is contradicting the definition of othering. But I argue that reducing somebody to his or her cultural identity is a pejorative gesture too.
In the tradition of Foucault othering has always to do with knowledge and power.
A parallel can easily been drawn between that insight and the processes of media production and representation.
Finally, I want to recapitulate the presented trains of thoughts:
The experiences that are encouraged by entertainment formats seem to give pleasure (cf. Mikos 2010). I argue that the reason for othering lies in the pleasure and the want for pleasure. Following my reasoning broadcasters want to entertain because of better ratings. And present societies offer lots of reasons for ethnicity to become an entertainment factor. Why? As mass and long-haul tourism show: the strange is still something desirable – under certain conditions. Especially as – psychoanalytically spoken – the fear of the strange has grown according to a globalised, homogenised and simoultanously fragmented society. A society, where the strange has left its faraway place and provokes nations and conservative forces with new challenges for maintaining the national identity. People want to make assure of themselves, there is lots of identity negotiation to be done. In short: an ideal fertile soil for ethnicity related entertainment. Thus ethnicity needs to be made consumable: and, voilà, the machine of difference consumption is born.
The consequences are dangerous, because this course gives meaning to differences. It makes people become people with strange characteristics and in further consequences plainly to strangers within the meaning of othering. That reproduces racist logics and solutions too, that suggest tolerance towards the so called strangers could solve existing problems.
With this proviso I will continue my research on media and migration with a focus on the recipients. Because I am not only interested in the representation of the supposed cultural other in entertainment television but also in the question of how these media contents are processed by the viewers.
Entertainment television that presents ethnicity as part of their entertainment value is one example for the maintaining the cultural difference between people – with the consequence of dividing the audiences into the ones who are reassured that they belong to the majority and powerful authority and into the ones who are confronted by their own alienation. (cf. Fanon 1980) This process creates a dichotomous atmosphere in a world that is no longer dichotomous. In fact, it never has been.
Bibliography: http://corneliagrobner.tumblr.com/post/50897562362/bibliography-othering-for-a-better-consuming
