Ridiculing the working-class body in post-socialist sitcom

ABSTRACT

Television comedy has rarely been studied from the perspective of class in a post-socialist context. This paper analyses representations of class, body, gender and nationality in the three most popular sitcoms of the last two decades in Slovenia, focusing especially on their role in working-class discourse and its transformation. Ambivalent representations of working-class characters are highlighted and put in the context of the egalitarian ideology which prevails in Slovenian popular culture. Drawing on the difference between workplace and domestic sitcoms, the paper concludes that the appearance and performance of working-class characters may be interpreted as a reworking of class boundaries in the post-socialist context. Sitcoms are thus considered as contributing to a process of re-demarcating class boundaries, yet with a subtle mockery at the level of their bodies rather than by explicit vilification of the lower classes in general.

KEYWORDS:

• Social class
• television comedy
• representation
• body
• working class

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For example, two years ago the final episode of the most popular talent show in the country still reached a 75% share of audience watching television at the time, which is unimaginable for more competitive TV environments. All of the sitcoms analysed here were most popular and most watched shows at the time of their first broadcast and had between 37 % (INN) and 57 % (GMT) average audience shares.

2. That the salience of moral boundaries over cultural and socio-economic ones in everyday boundary work is fuelled by egalitarian sentiments is also noted by Jarness (2017) in his study on symbolic boundaries (everyday conceptual distinctions made by social actors in categorising people, practices, tastes and manners) in Stavanger, Norway.

3. According to macroeconomic indicators Slovenia is one of the European societies with the lowest social inequality. However, this is not reflected in the dominant public perceptions in which the extent of social inequality is systematically overestimated and where a larger proportion of respondents still believe that the differences in society should be reduced. According to Malnar (2011, 954), tolerance to income inequalities is traditionally low in Slovenia, as individuals constantly evaluate differences in income as too large, regardless of what the actual statistics show.

4. For research on performances of virtuous commonness in post-socialist celebrity discourse, see Luthar and Trdina (2015).

5. ‘The language of sexuality is also a language of class’ claims Ortner (1998, 9) while arguing that at the level of discourse gender, sexuality and class are so deeply mutually implicated. Or, to put it on other words, class is being always mediated by, or inextricably intertwined with other categories of difference.

6. For extended discussion of Roseanne as ‘unruly woman’, see Rowe (1995, 50).

7. See Aronowitz (1992, 199) for a discussion about connectedness of working-class identity and football.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dejan Jontes

DejanJontes is an assistant professor in the Department of Media and Communication Studies, University of Ljubljana. His research focuses on popular television forms and cultural approaches to journalism. His papers and book chapters have been published by the journal Cultural Studies, Anthropological Notebooks, Two Homelands, Cambridge Scholars Publishing and I. B. Tauris press. He co-edited a reader on media and audiences in Slovene and has published a book, Journalism as Culture: Myths and Values.

Andreja Trdina

AndrejaTrdina is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Tourism, University of Maribor and a researcher at the Institute for Developmental and Strategic Analysis (IRSA), Ljubljana. She has a PhD in Media Studies and in her research focuses on popular culture and media, sociology of taste, class and distinction with special regard to contemporary material/consumer culture. She is currently dealing mainly with research on mediatization of tourism, travel as social and cultural practice, and politics of mobility. She has participated in various research projects and recently published an article ‘Nation, Gender, Class: Celebrity Culture and the Performance of Identity in the Balkans’ (with B. Luthar, Slavic Review 2015).