Watching Pink Reality TV

Abstract

In the post-socialist, post-war, neo-liberal, commercial media landscape in the former Yugoslavia, ethno-national, heterosexual femininity continues to be a dominant frame of reference. This article explores how the portrayal of gender is closely connected to ethno-nationalism on one of the most popular reality TV shows, The Palace, produced by the Serbian commercial broadcaster Pink TV. We analyse how female audiences in Bosnia and Herzegovina read and interpret the show and its main celebrity, the Slovene participant Urška. We argue that the different reading positions of audience groups reinforce the hegemony of a specific type of neo-liberal femininity.

Keywords::

• gender
• reality TV
• post-socialism
• post-war
• Bosnia and Herzegovina

Notes

^1. Bosniak (Bošnjak, fem. Bošnjakinja) has replaced Muslim as the official national name for Slavic-speaking Muslims.

^2. Socialist Yugoslavia's philosophy of “brotherhood and unity” promoted the balance between ethnic nationalisms and socialist internationalism. The status of women is problematic within both of these ideological systems, as neither affords a subject position from which women could explicitly address social issues in terms of gender. As feminists have pointed out, women had been a part of a male-dominated system as socialist workers and the centre of their subordination had not changed (Renata Salecl 1994).

^3. See Volčič and Erjavec (2010) on how and why Ceca gained celebrity status in the former Yugoslavia, despite her connections to Serbian nationalism. In that essay, we argue that political and economic changes in the region, combined with the shifting values of post-socialist Yugoslavia and the ascendance of neo-liberalism, have all contributed to Ceca's rise and popularity.

Additional information

Funding

DISCLOSURE STATEMENTNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Zala Volčič

Zala Volčič is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia. She teaches courses on media, cultural studies, nationalism, violence, transitional justice, and international communication. She is the author of numerous books and articles. Currently she is working on a book Commercial Nationalism (with Mark Andrejevic, 2016). E-mail: [email protected]

Karmen Erjavec

Karmen Erjavec is a Professor of Journalism Studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Ljubljana University, Slovenia. Her research and teaching interests include media education, ethics, and international journalism. She has published widely on media, journalism, and diversity. E-mail: [email protected]