Provocative Screens: Offended Audiences in Britain and Germany

141 Pages·2017·2.013 MB·English

by  Ranjana Das, Anne Graefer

SCREENS
Offended Audiences
in Britain and
Germany
Ranjana Das
Anne Graefer
Provocative Screens
Ranjana Das · Anne Graefer
Provocative Screens
Offended Audiences in Britain and Germany
Ranjana Das Anne Graefer
University of Surrey Birmingham City University
Guildford, UK Birmingham, UK
ISBN 978-3-319-67906-8 ISBN 978-3-319-67907-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67907-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952835
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
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Ranjana dedicates this work to Reeta Das, her dear aunt.
Anne dedicates this work to all those who, with much emotion,
refuse to simply go along.
A
cknowledgements
This book was the outcome of two academics meeting on a train from
Leicester to London, one afternoon. We arrived at this work from
different points of entry into media and communication studies, com-
ing together on a point of mutual interest. It involved a marriage of
approaches across cultural studies and the social sciences, a conver-
gence of diverse interests from feminism to media regulation and from
texts to audiences, amongst others. It could well have gone in different
directions, but did not because the diversity of approaches and back-
grounds created a productive intellectual space. Intellectual productivity
was punctuated, but not interrupted, for each author by the arrival of a
baby and this book was drafted over the course of our two consecutive
maternity leaves.
On this interesting and engaging ride, Ranjana thanks Anne for care-
ful attention to argumentation and detail and for critical work in pushing
her to really tease out analytical details behind the messiness of empirical
data. Ranjana thanks the University of Leicester for funding this study
and for a research sabbatical in 2017 to complete the manuscript. She
thanks Sonia Livingstone, in conversation with whom, while produc-
ing the Public Attitudes, Tastes and Standards report for the BBC in
2009, she first started engaging with this subject matter. She also thanks
Jonathan Ong for conversations at an early stage on offence and provoca-
tion, Peter Lunt for sharing insights from his work on public attitudes to
risk and regulation in the financial sector, colleagues at the Universities of
Bergen, Lincoln and Virginia at Charlottesville, and at the International
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Communication Association conference in 2014, amongst others, in
conversation with whom she developed various aspects of the project.
Ranjana also thanks Adam for being the perfect partner of an academic
spouse working at odd hours of the day (and night) and Arjo, of course,
for delaying the manuscript simply by arriving in her life.
Anne thanks Ranjana for her laser-like focus: both knew that a jour-
ney of a thousand miles starts with the first step, but Ranjana taught
how quickly and efficiently steps two and three can follow. In the pro-
cess of writing this book, she became not only a teacher and mentor,
but also a friend. Anne also thanks the University of Leicester for fund-
ing the study and Birmingham City University for awarding her research
funding via the Faculty Research Investment Scheme—the teaching and
administrative relief thus afforded made this book possible. She thanks
her colleagues, students and friends in the School of Media and the
Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, especially John
Mercer, who recognized early on the potential of this book for a new
field of ‘offence studies’, Inger-Lise Boreand Hazel Collie for feedback
on earlier drafts on chapters. She thanks Sara Ahmed, Carolyn Pedwell,
and Imogen Tyler for inspirational scholarship central to developing the
ideas for this project. Thanks also to Katariina Kyrölä for her insights on
the moral and ‘positive’ dimensions of offence. Anne is grateful to all the
research participants in Germany who generously invited her into their
living rooms or offices to share their experiences and from whom she
learned a great deal. The biggest thank you goes, as always, to Jonathan
and Finn, who patiently left the house on Sundays for extensive coun-
try walks, until the pushchair buckled and the book was finally finished.
Both Ranjana and Anne thank Jean Morris for her copyediting of this
book and Mark Wells for the indexing.
c
ontents
1 The Slippery Terrain of Offensive Television 1
Rethinking Offence 6
Affect-Laden Publicness in the Reception of Offensive Television 8
Fieldwork 13
Self-Reflexivity and Limitations 17
Chapter Outline 19
References 21
2 Producing the Imagined Audience of Offensive Screens 25
Offence and the Subject of Value 27
The Porous Border Between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ 33
Offence and Consumer Choice 37
Conclusions 41
References 42
3 Just Kidding! Negotiating the Line Between Humour
and Offence 45
Taking Humour Seriously 47
The Link Between ‘Humour Regimes’ and Offence 50
Offensive Humour as a Tool of Social Distinction 56
No Offence Taken: How Audiences Work to Avoid Offence 60
Conclusion 67
References 67
ix
x CONTENTS
4 Audiences Speak Back: Re-Working Offensive Television 71
This Public is Not Condemned to Silence 73
It’s Easy to Punch Down Somebody Worse off Than You’: Critical
Investments in Reading Offensive Television 76
Conclusions 85
References 86
5 Audiences’ Expectations of Regulators and Producers 89
The Implied Audience and the Citizen-Consumer in German
and British Television Regulation 90
Who Is Responsible? Two Contrasting Views of Regulation 96
The (Seemingly) Consumer Audience of Provocative Screens 97
The Citizen-Audience of Provocative Screens 101
Going Beyond Red Flags and Red Herrings 107
References 110
6 Provocative Screens 113
Key Findings 115
Notes on Policy 121
Areas for Further Research 124
References 126
Bibliography 127
Index 129
CHAPTER 1
The Slippery Terrain of Offensive Television
Abstract This chapter complicates offence as a term and presents
conceptual and methodological approaches for this project on the
reception of ‘offensive’ content. It sets the scene of the work in
the UK and Germany, drawing instances from contemporary pub-
lic discourse around offence and considers some of the key ques-
tions that underpin this book: what constitutes offensive media
material? Why is offence felt so differently? To what ends is offence
used or concerns about offensive material mobilised? How do peo-
ple act both as individuals and as publics in their very affective
responses to offensive content? Why do we assume offensive mate-
rial can be categorised solely into tick-boxes for profanity, swear
words, racism, overt discrimination or flash lighting? And how do
audiences understand the role and responsibilities of producers and
broadcasters?
Keywords Offence · Affect · Television · Publics · Controversy
Feelings
In popular discussions, offensive media content is often described as
going ‘beyond the limits’ of what is deemed appropriate and acceptable
within a specific sociocultural context and as having negative effects on
audiences who consume it (Attwood et al. 2012). And yet some people
pride themselves in the media with their capacity to offend others:
© The Author(s) 2017 1
R. Das and A. Graefer, Provocative Screens,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67907-5_1