The Role of Music in Ridiculing the Working Classes in Reality Television

• In this chapter we are interested in the ideological use of music in a Swedish television reality show called Böda Camping – how it is deployed to communicate a very specifi c discourse linked to wider socio- political shift s in Sweden. Critical scholars have revealed how such programmes tend to morally evaluate and ridicule working- class people (Skeggs and Wood, 2012). It has been argued that this has been one part of a legitimation of the discourse of a moral underclass, who are undeserving in a neoliberal society where there is a shift away from an emphasis on welfare, investment in education and healthcare and abandonment of collective responsibility for disenfranchised sections of society (Eriksson, 2015). Critical work so far has shown clearly how such discourses are communicated through spoken language and how visually, for example, the participants are placed in situations which point to their lack of education, restricted cultural experience or their lack of taste (Lyle, 2008). Here we show how music plays an important role in realizing these discourses.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Media and Communication Studies

Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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