The weight of images: Affect, body image and fat in the media

The Weight of Images explores the ways in which media images can train their viewers’ bodies. Proposing a shift away from an understanding of spectatorship as being constituted by acts of the mind, this book favours a theorization of relations between bodies and images as visceral, affective engagements that shape our body image - with close attention to one particularly charged bodily characteristic in contemporary western culture: fat. The first mapping of the ways in which fat, gendered bodies are represented across a variety of media forms and genres, from reality television to Hollywood movies, from TV sitcoms to documentaries, from print magazine and news media to online pornography, The Weight of Images contends that media images of fat bodies are never only about fat; rather, they are about our relation to corporeal vulnerability overall. A ground-breaking volume, engaging with a rich variety of media and cultural texts, whilst examining the possibilities of critical auto-ethnography to unravel how body images take shape affectively between bodies and images, this book will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, media, cultural and gender studies, with interests in embodiment and affect

Toward a Contextual Pedagogy of Pain. Trigger Warnings and the Value of Sometimes Feeling Really, Really Bad

The debate about trigger warnings has spread all over the Internet and in academic contexts, especially in the United States during the last few years. In short, trigger warnings try to give a heads-up to viewers and readers about media content depicting e.g., violence, self-harming behavior or other potentially disturbing content so that they know to either avoid it or knowingly take the risk of getting ”triggered” into posttraumatic stress, anxiety or not feeling safe. Typically, before an online clip or an article, one might include a text such as: ”Trigger warning for sexual violence/suicide/racist hate speech/transphobia/eating disorders/ fat shaming,” or anything else that can cause distress to someone with traumatic experiences. On one hand, trigger warnings have been seen as protection for vulnerable groups, a needed attempt to try to provide a safe space for those living with trauma or societal stigma (e.g., Dalton 2014; Johnston 2014; ”Make Me a Sammich” 2014; Häggdahl and Eriksson 2015)

Feeling bad and Precious (2009): black suffering, white guilt, and intercorporeal subjectivity

The article draws on 24 essays where university students in Sweden reflect on their affective reactions to the American film Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009). The essays pay particular attention to how scenes of Black suffering and the body of the character Precious called forth feelings immediately as well as more enduringly, and how participants’ cultural situatedness directed the reactions and reflections. The article asks how seemingly unintentional, affective reactions intertwine with reflexive practices in film viewing and analysis, when both are understood as intercorporeal processes of subject formation. Especially intense moments of ‘feeling bad’ spurred the writers to dissect and question the need for ‘sameness’ or ‘difference’ between themselves and the bodies on-screen as incentives for engagement. Drawing on Black feminist thought and theorizations of affect, the article examines how ‘feeling bad’ can mobilize ethical subjectivities in encounters with racialized suffering and injustices.</p