Othering Without Blaming: Representing Poverty in Flemish Factual Entertainment

Dhoest, Alexander; Walvaart, Marleen te; Panis, Koen

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-73543-2_9

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Despite X-Change offering a repertoire that expresses compassion for rural suffering, this repertoire is premised on erasing or hiding the unequal social structures of urban-rural differentiation, which is achieved through subsequent interpretations of the causes of rural suffering. By referring to Dhoest et al’s (2021) explanatory models of poverty, I identified two explanatory models of rural poverty and suffering in the show: the natural accident model and the individual accident model. First, the local natural and geographical environment is held responsible for economic poverty, including steep terrain that makes the village inaccessible, or low crop yields due to extreme climate, water scarcity, and poor land quality.…”

Section: Narratives On Rural Suffering and Left-behind Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing compassion: The affective dynamics of rural representation in the Chinese reality TV show X-Change

Wei

2023

Television & New Media

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Unlike Western reality shows that are often criticized as devaluing and delegitimizing lower-class people, the Chinese reality show X-Change claims to recruit social attention, compassion, and support for rural people, especially children who have been left behind. This article examines this claim by conducting a multimodal interpretative analysis of the show, focusing on the employment of narrative, discursive and audiovisual strategies that register compassion in the representations of rural identities, bodies, and rural-urban encounters. I argue that the show offers a nuanced emotional repertoire of compassion, which simultaneously empowers and disempowers rural people by integrating a humanitarian tender-hearted sympathy with a socialist positive empathy, and a neoliberal philanthropist pity. In so doing, I reveal the ways in which reality television is embroiled in the intricate interplay between state ideology, sociocultural psychology, and neoliberal logic in post-socialist China.

show abstract

Section: Narratives On Rural Suffering and Left-behind Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing compassion: The affective dynamics of rural representation in the Chinese reality TV show X-Change

Wei

2023

Television & New Media

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show abstract

“…In general, while incredible poverty and suffering is represented, and economic and social causes could certainly be found for these phenomena, such possibilities are dismissed. Instead, the show enables two underlying explanatory models (Dhoest et al, 2021) to make attributions of rural poverty and suffering: the natural accident model and the individual accident model, thereby navigating audience judgments and emotional responses to rural people.…”

Section: Articulating Affect With the Discourse Of Positive Energymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cultural Politics of Affect and Emotion

Wang¹

2022

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Othering Without Blaming: Representing Poverty in Flemish Factual Entertainment

Cited by 2 publications

References 15 publications

Managing compassion: The affective dynamics of rural representation in the Chinese reality TV show X-Change

Managing compassion: The affective dynamics of rural representation in the Chinese reality TV show X-Change

The Cultural Politics of Affect and Emotion

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