International Journal of Cultural Studies

This article brings together the literatures on shame and mediation in order to consider whether shame is generated, or amplified, in situations of mediation such as those when people find themselves exposed in the news media. Acknowledging the social nature of shame that presupposes the other’s regard for oneself, and drawing on a revision of Cooley’s concept of the ‘looking-glass self’ to describe the monitoring of the self from the point of view of the others in the context of mediation, the article argues that news can be a looking-glass through which viewers mirror themselves. Apart from heightening the awareness of the other’s gaze and expectations, news becomes a looking-glass in a more literal way. This occurs in the instances of mediated exposure when people find themselves unwillingly in the news. After an initial theoretical discussion of the emotion of shame and how such theories need to be revised in order to capture the structural transformations pertaining to mediated interaction, the article concentrates on a personal narrative of unwanted mediated exposure and observes how shame can be generated and amplified in the context of mediation, thus revealing the symbolic power of the media with potential consequences for social monitoring and conformity.

This article seeks to explore and uncover the ideological and stylistic elements that typify the ways in which contemporary male and female lifestyle magazines present the world to the reader. Focusing on two of the most popular British examples – FHM and Red – it analyses the language used, the images portrayed, as well as the structures of the two texts. Throughout it engages with the burgeoning literature on utopianism, and in particular with the ‘utopic’ approaches advocated by theorists such as Louis Marin and Frederic Jameson, in order to trace the common tropes and rules that run throughout both male and female lifestyle magazines. Finally, in light of these findings, it asks what role these texts play in contemporary culture and society.

Stephanie Meyer’s enormously popular Twilight saga of teen vampire romance novels is commonly referred to as the young adult fiction equivalent of what the Harry Potter series was for children. Central to the series, which sells in the tens of millions globally, is an adolescent romantic relationship that, as I will show, is in many ways masochistic. Interrogating gendered subjectivity within the series, particularly in regard to its teenage narrator, Bella Swan, and her relationship with the hyper-idealized vampire hero, Edward Cullen, this article analyses the way the four narratives figure adolescent feminine desire as well as how they link eroticism and death. It also positions the series within broader feminist debates about postfeminism within popular culture, and explores how (and, with more difficulty, why) a masochistic relationship and an undead subjectivity for a teenage girl are seen as utopic sites of possibility in these narratives. If, as Nina Auerbach argues, each age produces the vampire it requires, then might Edward Cullen and his teen vampire bride suggest about the current, purportedly ‘postfeminist’, context and young women in particular?

This article explores the appropriation of an everyday domestic space by a group of young Sudanese men living in Western Sydney, Australia. The participants’ construction of a do-it-yourself (DIY) wardrobe-recording studio acts as a starting point from which to investigate the transnational reproduction of spatial and material practices of resourcefulness in the context of resettlement. Concepts of space, appropriation and emplacement are employed to critically examine the pragmatic, inventive and resourceful use of an ordinary bedroom space. I ague that the ongoing project has solidified a common purpose among the participants, providing them with a material and symbolic platform from which to engage Sudanese and other migrant youth, as well as a creative means of avoiding the potentially negative effects of idle time. The article concludes that longer-term settlement strategies need to be put in place, which address the secondary settlement challenges of monitoring and needs assessment, and customized support for self-funded, youth-based projects.

This article seeks to critically debate the subpolitical potential of the Transition Movement. As a relatively new social movement the Transition Movement seeks to promote a genuinely engaged form of citizenship from below. This is a radical social movement that is at odds with the current neoliberal consensus. Here I look at the key aims and intellectuals associated with the movement and seek to review the idea of localization in the context of the critical literature on globalization. However by engaging in ideas of cultural citizenship and, most crucially, critical pedagogy I seek to draw attention to both the positive and negative features of the movement. In particular I review the effectiveness of the Transition Movement through notions of cultural democracy and consider the extent to which it is able to promote critical border crossing.

The global television landscape in the first decade of the 21st century is a complex terrain of contradictory developments and trends. Since the early years of television the United States has been the most important exporter of TV series, TV serials and game shows. But nowadays times have changed. Admittedly the USA is still the leading nation in selling TV fiction all over the world, but since the deregulation of the TV market in Western Europe in the 1990s Great Britain and the Netherlands are the leading exporters of non-fiction formats like reality shows, Australia sells its soap operas all over the world and Latin American countries are important exporters of telenovelas. At the beginning of the 21st century the Colombian telenovela Yo soy Betty, la fea made its way around the world. Several countries bought the rights to produce a local adaptation of the format. For example ABC produced Ugly Betty in the United States, the German channel Sat.1 produced Verliebt in Berlin, and there is a Russian adaptation Ne Rodis’ Krasivoy. This article compares several local adaptations of the telenovela: the Colombian original and the adaptations in Germany, Russia, Spain and the USA. It looks at the dramaturgical and narrative proximities and differences of the adaptations and focuses on the textual conditions of international success.