Mediating Post-Socialist Femininities

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Acknowledgements

I owe special gratitude to the editors of Feminist Media Studies for supporting this project and encouraging me along the way. I am also indebted to the army of anonymous reviewers without whom this issue would have been impossible. Jessie Morgan provided invaluable research assistance at a crucial time. Steven Mayer was my greatest champion and for this I am most grateful.

Notes

^1. In 2014, the competition attracted a total of 195 million viewers across Europe and beyond (Charlotte Jensen 2014).

^2. Televotes from viewers, which account for 50 percent of the final scores, showed much less of a divide. Conchita Wurst was ranked in the top three by audiences in Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. Furthermore, “the average points she would have won had only the popular votes counted would have been 8.0 in the former Soviet Union excluding the Baltics, 7.3 in the other former communist countries, and 10.0 in the rest” (Renwick 2014). According to Renwick, this disparity in voting patterns may indicate a split between “elites” and “publics” in the former communist world.

^3. The music video is available online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = syMhJMmGEIc, last accessed on October 24, 2014.

^4. Even before “We Are Slavic” was selected by the Polish national broadcaster TVP to represent the country at Eurovision, the video had caused a sensation, generating nearly seventeen million views on Youtube (see Anne-Marie Tomchak 2013).

^5. Special thanks to Pawel Surowiec for his help with research and translation of materials from Polish sources.

^6. Indeed, some Russian politicians have sought to justify Russia's anti-gay policies by asserting that Russia is simply different from Europe (see Baker 2014a).

^7. One way in which post-socialist anxieties around recognition have manifested themselves is in the ubiquitous efforts of former Eastern Bloc countries to manage their reputations through nation branding campaigns (see Nadia Kaneva 2011).

^8. Paradoxically, the dynamics of a politics of recognition have also played a part in Russia's efforts, especially under Vladimir Putin, to restore the country's reputation as a major “world power.”

^9. For a comparative analysis of the protest groups Pussy Riot and FEMEN see Emily Channell (2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nadia Kaneva

Nadia Kaneva is Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Film, and Journalism Studies at the University of Denver. Her research draws on critical theories and explores media and cultural change in post-socialist Europe, with a particular focus on promotional cultures. She is the editor of Branding Post-Communist Nations: Marketizing National Identities in the “New” Europe (Routledge, 2011), and co-editor with Stewart Hoover of Fundamentalisms and the Media (Continuum, 2009). She is also the author of multiple scholarly articles and chapters, and is currently working on a book about the media's role in advancing consumerism in post-socialist Eastern Europe. E-mail: [email protected]