Sex and the city: a postfeminist point of view? Or how popular culture functions as a channel for feminist discourses

The existing literature concerning post feminism shows a diversity of ideas among scholars; a polarization between opponents and supporters becomes salient. By rearticulating post feminism as a fundament of third-wave feminism and situating it within the context of the 21st century (Genz, 333-353), we endeavor a more revisited vision on the representation of post feminism in popular culture. Post feminism is a new form of empowerment, adjusted to the contemporary societal context. It focuses on agency, freedom, sexual pleasure, consumer culture, fashion, hybridism, humor, and a renewed focus on the female body. In popular media texts, the fiction series Sex and the City is often considered a signboard of post feminist discourse. In this article, we analyze the representation of post feminism in Sex and the City. Using an in-depth thematic film analysis, we analyzed whether and how post feminist themes are presented in the series

Queer resistances in the adult animated sitcom

This article studies the representation of queer characters and themes in the contemporary adult animated sitcom. We argue that even though popular culture is often assumed to reiterate and consolidate the discourse of heteronormativity, adult animated sitcoms create space for queer resistance. Since the genre draws on postmodern strategies of representation, we argue that queer resistance is subversively articulated through instances of pastiche and parody. It is embedded in content that is both complicit with and critical of the heteronormal. Through a textual thematic analysis of Family Guy, this case study illustrates how postmodern textual strategies create deconstructionist instances that expose and subvert the hegemony of heteronormativity

Youth and intimate media cultures: gender, sexuality, relationships, and desire as storytelling practices in social networking sites

This paper investigates how young people give meaning to gender, sexuality, relationships, and desire in the popular social networking site (SNS) Netlog. In arguing how SNSs are important spaces for intimate politics, the extent to which Netlog is a space that allows contestations of intimate stories and a voicing of difference is questioned. These intimate stories should be understood as self-representational media practices; young people make sense of their intimate stories in SNSs through media cultures. Media cultures reflect how audiences and SNS institutions make sense of intimacy. This paper concludes that intimate stories as media practices in the SNS Netlog are structured around creativity, anonymity, authenticity, performativity, bricolage and intertextuality. The intimate storytelling practices focusing on creativity, anonymity, bricolage and intertextuality are particularly significant for a diversity of intimacies to proliferate

Sexual diversity on the small screen : mapping LGBT+ characters in Flemish television fiction (2001 – 2016)

Apart from figures on LGBT+ characters in television fiction produced by the American television industry, such as the ‘Where We Are On TV’ – reports by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), quantitative data on LGBT+ representation television fiction series remains scarce internationally. With this working paper, we aim to address this lack in the context of Flemish television fiction. To meet the challenges posed by a lack of centralized data on Flemish television fiction in general, and LGBT+ characters and storylines specifically, we constructed a three-tiered database. Comprising of all 156 domestic television fiction series between 2001 and 2016, the quantitative presence of LGBT+ characters in these series, and individual traits of the 117 collected LGBT+ characters respectively. In doing so, we provide an overview of Flemish television fiction in general, the distribution in these series of characters who identify as LGBT+ and the storylines that relate to sexual and gender diversity, and offer a tool to identify individual pertinent characters. Flanders presents itself as having a dynamic television fiction industry in the past fifteen years, with genre diversity and a sizeable output. In its general output, LGBT+ characters have had a significant habitual presence since 2001, with a noted correlation to specific ‘lowbrow’ genres, and a noted lack in ‘quality’ series. The collected characters display a severe lack of diversity, with most LGBT+ characters being gay male characters, a significant majority being middle class, and few non- white LGBT+ characters

Franky Reborn : discourses on the first transgender character in the Flemish soap Thuis

This paper argues through a textual and contextual analysis of the first trans character in the Flemish soap opera Thuis that in Flanders, trans identities and practices are rendered intelligible trough inherently homogenizing and normative discourses. While these identities and practices are diverse by definition, this research shows that only a very specific configuration of them is validated and privileged – such as post-op transwomen – while all others – like transmen and genderqueer identities – are symbolically annihilated. Specifically, discourses on trans identities subscribe to hegemonic conceptions of gender, prescribing a full surgical transition from one monolithic gender to the other, while denying the possibility of a radically subversive queer space in between. This gender conformity is further enforced by the construction of physical beauty as the defining feature of a successful transition, and the representation of trans identities as simply “longing to be on the other side.” Finally, the apparent positive representation of trans identities collide with articulations of homonationalism – or transnationalism – that construct Flanders as a safe space for transpeople, while relegating all internal instances of transphobic violence to ethnic-cultural minorities

Contemporary research on gender and media : it’s all political

Recent global social changes and phenomena like #MeToo and Time's Up Movement, the visibility of feminism in popular media (e.g., Beyonce or the TV series Orange is the New Black), the increase of datafication and fake news have not only put pressure on the media and entertainment industry and the content produced, but also generated critique, change and questions in the public debate on gender in general and (the backlash on) gender studies around the world. But are these phenomena also game changers for research on media and gender? In this thematic issue we want to provide insight in recent developments and trends in research on gender and media. What are the dominant ideas and debates in this research field and how do they deal with all of the changes in the media scape (e. g., platformization, the dominance of algorithms and datafication, slacktivism, and gender inequalities in media production). Moreover, how do current debates, theoretical insights and methods communicate with those in the past? The research field has changed rapidly over the last 10 years with repercussions on the conceptualisation of gender, its intersections with other identities markers (e. g., age, ethnicity, class, disabilities, sexualities, etc.), and media audiences' responses to these developments. We welcome contributions within the scope of gender and media and which are topical in the way they introduce new concepts, theoretical insights, new methods or new research subjects