Staging the Zimbabwean ‘revolution’: ‘Carnivalising’ the November 2017 demonstration

Sibanda, Nkululeko

doi:10.1080/21681392.2021.1894956

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Many scholars draw attention to the process of carnivalization of performative social protest (Buyskykh, 2016; Sibanda, 2021; St John, 2008). It is related to the increasing role of the media and the belief that only well-publicized protests can be effective.…”

Section: The Performativity Of Protestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Poland as Gilead. Pop culture fiction and performative protests in the era of the pandemic

Żukiewicz,

Gerlich

2023

Media, Culture & Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The use of iconic popular culture symbols is an increasingly common strategy applied by social protest organizers. The Guy Fawkes mask from the ‘V for Vendetta’ comic book became a symbol of the Anonymous group, and later of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Salvador Dalí mask, popularized in the ‘La casa de papel’ Netflix series, was used in street protests in Spain and Italy. Motifs taken from the HBO adaptation of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ novel gained high visibility in thousands of women’s protests against the introduction of the de facto abortion ban in Poland. Basing on images documenting the Polish protests published in social media, we demonstrate how popular culture symbols are transformed into cultural codes which bridge on-street and online protest actions. This connection has become crucial in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using qualitative visual content analysis, we prepared a classification of the symbols employed. Our contribution to the theory of performative protests is to reveal the importance of analogies with the political series that Polish protesters have used by means of the general connotation: Poland is Gilead.

show abstract

Section: The Performativity Of Protestsmentioning

confidence: 99%