Media, culture & diversity 2020-2021
Media, culture & diversity
Seminar 1: Introduction
1. Introduction
This course is about how identity and diversity are dealt with, produced, represented, regulated,
consumed and constructed in and through popular media culture. Discussing identity is personal.
2. Examples
2.1 Election of Miss Belgium 2018
It was the same as any other pageantry, women participating to become miss Belgium. But it was not
the same in the way that Angeline Flor Pua won this election and there was a lot of fuzz about it,
because of her Chinese-Filipino diasporic background (it made the news). Backlash on Twitter: how is
this possible? She does not even look Belgian? They implied that this miss was not “white”. They were
assigning this issue by othering and degrading her. They were making really problematic jokes;
homophobic, transphobic and racist.
Racism isn’t new and is still clear. But the speed (digital media) is much higher (half an hour later it
was international news). Not only in the small neighborhood, but also global → It goes into the
international debate! Blunt racism, sexism and homophobia is no longer publicly condoned, but we
should be worried. But what about structural sexism? And is this election considered an example of
structural sexism? You can ‘book’ a miss to host your event.
Her agency was strong! Post-feminist empowerment. She emphasized all her ambitions in the media
and defended herself.
2.2 City of Ghent Promotion Campaign (launched November 2017, image: Jeroen Van Zwol)
• There was an increase in homophobic and sexual
violence and at the same time structural racism didn’t
disappear. They had to challenge structural racism.
• The image: are these stereotypes of identities?
Exaggerations of certain aspects? Discussion of what is
being represented. What would be a conclusion? It
wants to convey similarity. Nobody is being singled out.
Everyone in the city is part of Ghent.
• Inclusivity without forcing assimilation, to one identity
• Use of exaggerations = problematic?
• Where are the Romani population? It’s impossible to
represent everyone, so they took some to represent a
bigger group (ex. blind person = group of people with
disabilities)
• Effectivity of such campaigns? Importance of representation. This image in the street in Ghent
gives a sign to people embodying non-normative identity. Everyone is welcome here. Efforts
to creating more inclusivity and challenging structural issues.
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2.3 See You in the Next Live – AB Concerts promotional campaign
• The Ancienne Belgique – concert hall (Brussels) is currently closed due to Covid-19
• In the video you see Benoît Do Quang (videographer and artist), Ayco Duyster (radio host),
Grâce Kamashi (bar manager), DVTCH NORRIS (rap), Blu Samu (hip hop/rap). You hear them
talking about how they miss live music and how it is on the stage and in the public. The main
theme is looking forward to live music. The “Next “Live” will be diverse and inclusive. They
looked after different people in the scene like on age, women hip hop artist etc.
• AB is a Flemish art institution, but they embrace the diversity of Brussels. A place where we
see Dutch, French, English. It’s all represented in the video. Is this an act of window-dressing?
Being more inclusive?
Window dressing: somebody says that they are doing something diverse (Nike, Coca-Cola), but if
you go to a store, you see that it is only the front that shows it and not the whole company.
2.4 A closer look… at BOEF
• Sofiane Boussaadia (Dutch rapper (°1993), Algerian parents) (popular artist)
• Musical bio: Debut performance in 2015; 2016: EP ‘Gewoon Boef’ (Zonamo Underground);
2017: Slaaptekort (BoefMusic); 2019: EP ’93’(Trifecta); 2020: Allemaal een Droom (Boef)
A reconstruction of what happened:
Boef and some friends had car trouble on NYE 2017. They asked a female friend for help who was also
still out with her friends. Boef used Snapchat to address the situation. Snapchat: “Picked up by three
kechs. My life is a movie. Happy New Year. I’m buying a boat this year, just you wait”. Not all of his fans
and audiences liked that snapchat.
First ‘wave’ of criticism: use of word ‘kech’ → it’s an Arabic word that refuses to sexworker
BOEF uploads another video: “I succeeded in upsetting a few people because I said ‘kech’, but what are
you doing in a club with alcohol, with short skirts at eight o’clock in the morning, with boys? What are
you doing? You’re just a kech”. This is underscoring the image of ‘superior’ masculinity. He positioned
himself higher than these women; he is saying like you shouldn’t complain that is just what you are.
The whole image that he created started already with what he did when he said himself as boef. Even
though it’s just part of an image one cannot dismiss the sociocultural role of the artist. They have a
responsibility that they maybe not have asked for, but it is there.
Second wave of criticism: more heated, mediated, and polarized
Analysis of the responses/practices:
• Denouncing: women, feminist scholars, fellow rappers → exposing ‘structural sexism’
• Support: online and offline, manager → asking for nuance, importance of youth culture, ‘slang’
• Parody: ordinary citizens, satire blogs → Using humor to voice criticism (vb. De Speld: chart
about are you a woman or are you a kech)
• Boycott: spokespersons with symbolic capital → refusals by radio DJs to play songs, removal
of festival line-ups, ending professional collaborations… (= material issues, cancel culture)
• Setting up (mediated) debates → putting things into perspective
• #MeToo as context
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→ spontaneous, uncontrolled digital movement that denounces sexism in all its forms
→ singling out individuals, not always addressing structural issues
• Ethnic identity and double standards
→ Sunny Bergman and Selma Omari: fighting sexism with racism
→ everyday and structural racism, homophobia, ignoring sexism by white persons
→ racial slur, framing it as Islam-related, using BOEF to boycott R&B and hip hop…
• BOEF’s ‘final’ response:
- new song and video (‘Antwoord’, 2018) –he tries to own up to what he did
- live performance and apology: “We rappers are saying ‘bitches’ and so on, but we really
don’t think less of women” → complexity, even though the intentions are not to hurt
anyone, it’s ignoring the discursive history and how these words were mostly used in a
negative way (also: gay, n-word, …)
3. Course setup
• Course: gaining insight into how popular (media) culture deals with diversity and the role of
popular (media) culture in making sense of the world.
• Approach:
- To offer historical perspectives, contexts and milestones in the history of engaging with
sociocultural diversity in popular media culture.
- To provide key theoretical insights from media, communication, and cultural studies and
social theory to help us make sense of the various modes identities have been represented
in popular media culture.
- To offer reflections on contemporary trends, transformations and challenges that have
emerged in late modern societies.
4. Concrete objectives
(1) Describe, explain and reflect on the key concepts, important theories, and historical and
contemporary debates prevailing in the research on media, culture and diversity.
(2) Apply key concepts onto historical and contemporary phenomena that relate to media,
culture and diversity in order to make a scholarly sound and informed judgment and evaluation
of these phenomena.
(3) Argue what the relevance is of media, communication and cultural studies for the analysis of
contemporary problems and demonstrate the sociocultural role and responsibility of a media
and communication scholar.
(4) Being able to successfully conduct a small research project on diversity and popular (media)
culture in a group
(5) Being able to clearly and concisely communicate a research project on diversity and popular
(media) culture to fellow students
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Seminar 2: Identity, diversity and popular culture: key concepts
1. Introduction
Reflect on your own identity: you might think that the fact that you are a man/woman, that you identify
as heterosexual is natural and biological. Those identity labels are in a way constructions and link up
to parts of you that are in a way biological, but it doesn’t mean that when you are born with female
characteristics, that you are a female. A few months before you are born doctors can identify your sex
based on characteristics (biological). Based on this, you get assigned a sex at birth. The binary thinking
is present even before you are born. Based on that binary you get told that sex is linked to a gender
identity, you get forced in identities. But this doesn’t have to line up with each other.
On top of that you become also aware of skincolor, ‘racial’, ethnic or diasporic background. Becoming
aware that certain other embodied traits are being racialized, considered as different, ‘other’. It can
also be a positive experience when you feel that you belong in a group.
Around the age of 11-12 you become also aware of sexual desires. Even though those embodied traits
(skincolor, sexual desire) and sociocultural features (like religion) are separated elements, they
become a basis for identity. It labels people and creates in-and outgroups!
Use particular identity-related features to know the other: ex. If you will tell me that you will go out
with four straight guys, you think about wild guys who like soccer, football, … or if you say you live
together with a gay couple you would think about fashionable guys, or stereotypical Asian kid who is
good in maths
These stereotypes are disconnected from identity normally, but we start to associate certain
things with an identity…
2. Subjectivity, identity and diversity
2.1. Non-essentialism and social constructionism
• Essentialism (philosophical doctrine)
- Certain embodied identities are assumed to be natural and biological
and exist prior to the birth of a person (biological determinism) (predetermined before
you are born). So basically, the fact that you are a woman is something that is
predetermined before you are born.
- Certain embodied experiences are assumed to be ahistorical and universal → so the way
you experience power, joy, sexual desire, … is assumed that it has always been the same
across time and it doesn’t take into account context etc.
• Non-essentialism (philosophical doctrine)
- There are no prior identities as all identities are shaped and become meaningful in and
through culture. What you label as women or men is not something that existed before, it
is a result of culture. Cultural repertoires that come along with being a man, being woman
are different depending on context.
• Social constructionism (theory of knowledge) (inspired by non-essentialist thinking)
Within social constructionism we have a few scholars who have used that non-essentialist
thinking to make the argument that:
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