Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty Across Europe “As the wealth gap increases to grotesque proportions and more and more people plunge into economic desperation around the world, this timely collection rightly returns the spotlight to class relations in Europe three decades after the end of socialism had dimmed it. It offers an eye-opening tour of how shame has been mobilized in a range of European media to stigmatize the poor and legitimize the very world order that runs on creating poverty.” —Aniko Imre, Professor of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, USA “Poverty is frst and foremost about being deprived of essential material resources. But it is also cultural: about being excluded from many of society’s demands and being blamed for your own impoverishment. The media play a major part in con- structing the demonology and in popularising the imagery of blaming the victim that exacerbate poverty, and this book gathers chilling evidence of the various forms this takes in differing European countries. An essential and troubling read.” —Peter Golding, Northumbria University, UK Irena Reifová • Martin Hájek Editors Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty Across Europe Editors Irena Reifová Martin Hájek Faculty of Social Sciences Faculty of Social Sciences Department of Media Studies Department of Sociology Institute of Communication Studies Institute of Sociological Studies and Journalism Charles University Charles University Prague, Czech Republic Prague, Czech Republic ISBN 978-3-030-73542-5 ISBN 978-3-030-73543-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73543-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations. Cover illustration: Richard Sheppard / Stockimo / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This edited volume could not materialise without energy, helpfulness and brainpower of many colleagues and friends. Editors wish to thank all their colleagues in the project ‘Poverty as Media Spectacle: Shaming Low-Income People on Reality Television and Internet’ (GACŘ 17-02521S) for their indefatigable engagement. Thanks go to Markéta Broumová, Jakub Machek and Radim Hladík, as well as to the inter- national collaborators Sabina Mihelj, Anja Hirdman and Alexander Dhoest. Editors are further grateful to the colleagues Karel Čada, Ondřej Špaček, Jiří Šafr and Dan Prokop for helping to refine the arguments in fruitful discussions. Students in Media Studies and Sociology at Faculty of Social Sciences—Veronika Šlejharová, Zuzana Karasčáková, Kristýna Jiroutová, Dan Frantál and Kateřina Simbartlová—were of great help in collecting the research data and Aidan Akira Moos pro- vided invaluable help with the language and style. They all deserve our thanks. We are thankful to the Czech Science Foundation GAČR without whose support this project would not be possible. In Palgrave we would like to thank Malla Sanghera-Warren for her encouragement at the MeCCSA conference in Sterling, Milly Davies for guiding us through the next steps and Liam McLean and Jack Heeney for their technical support. v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Irena wishes to thank her best friend Alena for being the best best friend ever, always and under any circumstances. She is also thankful to her friends Markéta, Tereza, Veronika, Tereza, Lenka, Zuzana and Kamila for their warmth and support, and to her cat Molly Hooper for being a jolly, fuffy companion. Prague, 16 November 2020 ABOUT THE BOOK The key concepts of the book are media, class, poverty and shaming. The contributors to this book examine how certain social relations and their cultural meanings in the media, namely class and poverty, are transformed into factual or moral attributes of people and situations. Class and poverty are not understood as certain things and actions, or concepts and num- bers; both class and poverty are assumed to be, above all, particular social relationships or a set of relations between people, things and symbols. Without denying that contempt for the destitute Other is an affect found throughout history and in various socioeconomic contexts, the chapters in this book—through their concern with the mediated gaze on class—narrate predominantly the challenges brought about by the media’s spectacular take on poverty and low status as they (at least) coincide with the neoliberal era. This volume will be of essential reading for the scholars specialising in the study of media and social inequalities from the vantage points of Media Studies, Sociology, Anthropology or European Studies. vii CONTENTS 1 Perspectives on Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty in European Contexts 1 Irena Reifová and Martin Hájek 2 ‘Benefts Scroungers’ and Stigma: Exploring the Abject-Grotesque in British Poverty Porn Programming 19 Louise Cope 3 Neural Attunement to Others: Shame, Social Status, and Rewarded Viewing in Reality Television in Sweden 41 Anja Hirdman 4 Shame, (Dis)empowerment and Resistance in Diasporic Media: Romanian Transnational Migrants’ Reclassifcation Struggles 61 Irina Diana Madroane 5 Mediating Class in a Classless Society? Media and Social Inequalities in Socialist Eastern Europe 85 Sabina Mihelj 6 Invisibility or Inevitability: Performing Poverty in Czech Reality Television 105 Martin Hájek and Daniel Frantál ix x Contents 7 Shaming Working-Class People on Reality Television: Perspectives from Swedish Television Production 125 Peter Jakobsson and Fredrik Stiernstedt 8 Disparaging ‘the Assisted’: Shaming and Blaming Social Welfare Recipients in Romania and Hungary 143 Hanna Orsolya Vincze, Andreea Alina Mogos, and Radu Mihai Meza 9 Othering Without Blaming: Representing Poverty in Flemish Factual Entertainment 163 Alexander Dhoest, Marleen te Walvaart, and Koen Panis 10 Inter- and Intranational Mediated Shaming to Justify Austerity Measures: The Case of the ‘Greek Crisis’ 183 Yiannis Mylonas 11 Social Distances Through Scopic Practices: How Czech Reality Television Audiences Negotiate Social Inequalities 201 Irena Reifová 12 Everybody Is a Fool: Rural Life, Social Order and Carnivalesque Marginalisation in a Hungarian Television Series 223 Balázs Varga Index 243 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Louise Cope is a post-doctoral researcher and associate lecturer at Sheffeld Hallam University. Her primary research interest is investigating how performances and portrayals of social class are symbolically linked to expressions of disgust and stigma, and the implications of this on social inequalities. In particular, there is a focus on how social class and gender are enacted in reality television, documentary and social media, as well as a consideration of how neoliberal ideology is reinforced in these textual spheres. Her doctoral research employs an original abject-grotesque framework to analyse contemporary confgurations of the British under- class—‘benefts scroungers’—in poverty porn programming. Other recent work includes a chapter exploring performance and authenticity of the self within a crossover of reality television environments, published in the edited collection Exploring Television Acting (2018). Alexander Dhoest is Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) and Chair of the Media, Policy and Culture research group. His research focuses on the multiple connections between media, in particular television, and issues of social identity, includ- ing national, sexual and ethnic identity, combining research on media pro- duction, representation and reception. He has published widely on these issues in edited books and journals such as European Journal of Cultural Studies and Critical Studies in Television. Daniel Frantál is a Master’s student of Sociology at the Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University, Prague. He is doing research on freetekno practices of authenticity. xi xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Martin Hájek is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University, Prague. His main research inter- ests are normative orders of society, symbolic interactionism, discourse and narrative analysis. He is the author of a monograph on various types of textual