PRESENTATION
The media are inextricable from controversy yet ‘controversy’ is an under-theorized term in studies of the media, even though controversies over specific images, from ‘video nasties’ to snapshots from Abu Ghraib, have structured our understanding of the media’s power, seductiveness and dangers. This collection offers a series of case studies of recent media controversies and draws on new perspectives in cultural studies to consider a wide variety of types of image, including newspaper cartoons, advertising and fashion photography, music videos, photojournalism, news media, art works, hardcore porn film, anime, horror and exploitation movies, video games, and YouTube reaction videos. In the current climate when images appear to be increasingly controversial, it is important that media controversies are not made the excuse for greater censorship and the demonization of ‘dangerous’ images and the audiences that consume them. The case studies in this book suggest how we might achieve a more subtle understanding of controversial images and negotiate the difficult terrain of the new media landscape.
CONTENT
Introduction: Controversy and the Crisis of the Image; Feona Attwood, Vincent Campbell, I.Q.Hunter & Sharon Lockyer
– PART I: CONTROVERSY AND REPRESENTATION
- Media-Bodies and Photoshop; Meredith Jones
- Representation and Resemblance in The Case of the Danish Cartoons; Catherine Ann Collins & David Douglass
- Imitation and Controversy: Performing (Trans)Sexuality in Post-communist Bulgaria; Plamena Kourtova
- X-Ray Visions: Photography, Propaganda and Guantánamo Bay; Bruce Bennett
– PART II: CONSTRUCTING CONTROVERSIES
- ‘The Terrorists with Highlights’: Kurdish Female Suicide Bombers in Mainstream Turkish Media; Ertug Altinay
- Constructing Effects: Disturbing Images and the News Construction of ‘media influence’ in the Virginia Tech Shootings; Jeremy Collins
- Border Patrol: Trevor Brown, Aesthetics and the Protection of Fictitious Children; Adam Stapleton
- ‘The Following Content Is Not Acceptable’; Julian Petley
– PART III: ETHICS AND AESTHETICS IN CONTROVERSIAL MEDIA
- Cutting Edge: Violence and Body Horror in Anime; Caroline Ruddell
- ‘It’s Gonna Hurt a Little Bit. But That’s Okay – It Makes My Cock Feel Good’: Max Hardcore and the Myth of Pleasure; Stephen Maddison
- The Lexicon of Offense: The Meanings of Torture, Porn, and ‘Torture Porn’; Steve Jones
- The Beast Within: Materiality, Ethics and Animal Porn; Susanna Paasonen
– PART IV: ENGAGING WITH CONTROVERSIAL IMAGES
- Embracing Rape: Understanding the Attractions of Exploitation Movies; Martin Barker
- His Soul Shatters at About 0:23: Spankwire, Self-Scaring and Hyberbolic Shock; Julia Kennedy & Clarissa Smith
- Playing with Controversial Images in Videogames: The Terrorist Mission Controversy in ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’; Vincent Campbell
- ‘A Bad Taste Business’: TV Journalists Reflect on the Limits of News Images; Paul Brighton
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