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

Abstract

The moment of casting is a crucial one in any media production. Casting the ‘right’ person shapes the narrative as much as the way in which the final product might be received by critics and audiences. For this article, casting—as the moment in 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 auto-ethnography,’ to discuss male-to-female gender-bending comedies from the 1980s and 1990s, 2) ‘netnography’ of online discussions about the (potential) recasting of gendered legacy roles from <em>Doctor Who</em> to <em>Mary Poppins</em>, and 3) textual media analysis of content focusing on the casting of cisgender actors for transgender roles. Exploring the affordances and challenges of these three methods underlines the duty of care that is essential to feminist audience research. Moving across personal and anonymous, ‘real’ and ‘virtual,’ popular and professional discussion highlights how gender has been used and continues to be instrumentalised in lived audience experience and in audience research.

Let’s Get Loud: Intersectionally Studying the Super Bowl’s Halftime Show

“…While we may not be able to answer all these questions, we might be able to fulfil our expectations and bridge subject positions instead of denying or rejecting them (cf. Hermes & Kopitz, 2021). Next, we will discuss the analysis of the discourses, including the representation of the show: Both the representation and the public discourses on the show are connected, and analysing them together will deepen our understanding of the gendered representation, the strategies used to discuss the performance, and how they are linked to the subject positions within the text.…”

“…However, adopting an intersectional approach is often called for but seldom carried out, and hence, the adage is often honoured in the breach, perhaps because of the contradictory, fluid meanings articulated in popular culture. As Hermes and Kopitz (2021) recently argued, as popular culture scholars, we aim to be open to new ideas and opinions but find it simultaneously challenging to be open to "definitions, intuitions and experiences that are diametrically opposed to [our] own" (p. 3).…”