Casting for Change: Tracing Gender in Discussions of Casting through Feminist Media Ethnography

Media and Communication

article

Joke Hermes¹  Linda Kopitz² 

[1] Research Group Creative Business, Inholland University;Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam

关键词: audience research;    casting;    ethnography;    feminist media studies;    feminist method;    gender;    humour;   

DOI  :  10.17645/mac.v9i2.3878

学科分类：医学（综合）

来源: Cogitatio Press

【 摘 要 】

The moment of casting is a crucial one in any media production. Casting the ‘right’ person shapes the narrative as muchas the way in which the final product might be received by critics and audiences. For this article, casting—as the momentin which gender is hypervisible in its complex intersectional entanglement with class, race and sexuality—will be our gateway to exploring the dynamics of discussion of gender conventions and how we, as feminist scholars, might manoeuvre.To do so, we will test and triangulate three different forms of ethnographically inspired inquiry: 1) ‘collaborative autoethnography,’ to discuss male-to-female gender-bending comedies from the 1980s and 1990s, 2) ‘netnography’ of onlinediscussions about the (potential) recasting of gendered legacy roles from Doctor Who to Mary Poppins, and 3) textualmedia analysis of content focusing on the casting of cisgender actors for transgender roles. Exploring the affordances andchallenges of these three methods underlines the duty of care that is essential to feminist audience research. Movingacross personal and anonymous, ‘real’ and ‘virtual,’ popular and professional discussion highlights how gender has beenused and continues to be instrumentalised in lived audience experience and in audience research.

【 授权许可】

CC BY