Cultural citizenship and the negotiation of diversity and multiculturalism in the Dutch reality show WestSide

Transcription

1 Cultural citizenship and the negotiation of diversity and multiculturalism in the Dutch reality show WestSide Paper to be presented at the Etmaal of Communicatie Wetenschap, Floris Müller (Universiteit van Amsterdam) and Joke Hermes (Hogeschool INHOLLAND) 1

2 Abstract The growing presence of cultural 'others' in Western Europe has put the question of cultural citizenship on the forefront of debates about integration, cultural identity and belonging. While this normative statement is easily made, in many situations it remains fundamentally unclear how cultural citizenship may emerge in certain contexts and what kinds of resources are used in its performance. According to some authors, one crucial resource in this respect may be the media texts produced in the domain of popular culture (Hermes, 2005). In this paper, we assess this alleged potential of popular culture by posing and answering the following question: how can popular television genres be used to build connections and strengthen civic culture? We do so by presenting an analysis of audience reactions to the Dutch reality show WestSide (AT5, 2006-), a show which was explicitly designed to foster intercultural understandings and tolerance. Personal narratives, discussions and debates amongst fan communities as well as other discursive practices were analyzed to determine whether processes associated with cultural citizenship occurred. For this to be the case, normative theory on cultural citizenship suggests that the popular text needs to function as a site of negotiation. Discourse about it will, for example, need to show evidence of the negotiation of ideological dilemmas in the lives of audience members or an effort to generate a critical vocabulary to challenge certain problematic aspects of community identities and - boundaries. Our analysis shows that although the programme elicits conversation and debate about the topics of media and multiculturalism amongst all kinds of viewers, the debates within the internet fan community differed from that of the casual viewers. Internet fan community discussions showed more reflexive and emotional engagement with the media text. Rather than discuss multiculturalism per se, they engaged in a number of discursive practices related to the production, maintenance and challenge of their shared (or opposed) cultural (group) identities. In contrast, when casual viewers discussed the same text, their responses generally reproduced hegemonic and common sense discourse about cultural identity and belonging. Our results suggest that popular television genres may be used as a resource for building connections and strengthening civic culture when viewers become emotionally involved and reflexive about the media text and feel that their own group identities and concerns are at stake. 2

3 Introduction The growing presence of cultural 'others' in Western Europe has made the question of cultural citizenship an important one in debates about integration, cultural identity and belonging. As cultural difference continues to function as a cause for social exclusion it effectively cross cuts traditional citizenship regimes and relegates ethnic minority groups to a second-class citizenship status (Baban, 2006, Gilroy, 2000, Yuval-Davis, 2002). Cultural citizenship, which can be defined as the responsibilities, rights and social practices related to the democratic negotiation of the role of cultural difference in public and private life, therefore needs to be secured and stimulated urgently (cf. Kymlicka, 2003, Turner, 1994, Stevenson, 2003, Miller, 2006, and also Gunsteren, van, 1998). Unfortunately, very little empirical data is available about the kinds of conditions that enable, enhance or prohibit the performance of cultural citizenship. Very little is known about the ways it emerges in particular social contexts, what kinds of behaviours it consists of and the (discursive) resources that it requires. According to some authors, media texts produced in the domain of popular culture constitute a widely available resource for the emergence and performance of cultural citizenship (Hermes, 2005). It has been shown popular texts offer the means to reflect on unresolved ideological questions, such as the construction of non-threatening, respectful multiculturalism, or strong and attractive post-feminist masculinity. Such texts may thus contribute to the voicing and subsequent negotiation of those dilemmas amongst viewers. However, the link between cultural citizenship and popular culture is supported mostly by empirical evidence about those audience members who had already developed a strong affective bond with a particular genre or show and its narratives or its characters (idem, and Grossberg, 1993). Although research examples were not entirely restricted to fan communities, this means that care must be taken not to idealize or reify the dynamic connections between popular media texts, fandom and cultural citizenship. In this paper, we would like to try and refine the concept of cultural citizenship and its relation to popular culture, by starting from audience reactions to a particular media text. Not only are we interested in whether and how popular television is part of practices of cultural citizenship, but we also want to try and find out how audience reactions that qualify as the performance of cultural citizenship can be separated from those that do not. As such, this paper is intended to contribute to the development of a more critical, but hopefully also more constructive, stance towards the (potential) role of popular culture in the emergence and performance of cultural citizenship. 3

4 We will do so by taking as our starting point the audience reactions to a local Dutch drama TV show called Westside that was explicitly designed to foster intercultural understandings and tolerance (AT5, 2006). WestSide, follows a familiar soap format in which the storylines of four different families intertwine as they go through the usual interpersonal ups and downs of a soap existence. In order to engage viewers with issues of cultural identity and difference, each family was made to represent one of the largest four ethnic groups in the Netherlands (i.e. white Dutch, Surinamese, Turkish and Moroccan) and part of the problems they face deal explicitly with their cultural backgrounds and their integration into Dutch society. Westside was commissioned in 2005 by the Amsterdam Municipality in the context of a wider campaign called We Amsterdammers that was set up to pacify the intercultural tensions in the city following the murder of filmmaker and Islam critic Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist in 2004 (for background information see Buruma, 2006). Given its associations with the government and its social policy, Westside can be considered part of a global trend towards the convergence of media, governance and education through specially designed popular TV shows (Hartley, 1999). Around the globe, similar television and radio shows have been set up to harness the reach and impact of popular media for the re-negotiation of the role of cultural difference in society. For example, in the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda, a Dutch development NGO produced a national radio soap that used a fictional storyline of friendships between residents of two warring villages in order to challenge ongoing processes of social stigmatization in Rwandan society (Fisher, 2004). Other examples are shows produced to re-integrate Serbs and Bosnians in former Yugoslavia and a South African show (xxxx). As these shows are often made with public money and are closely related to certain goals of local governments, it is not sufficient to simply describe the impact of the series using standard measures such as viewing figures. An analysis will also have to account for to the ways in which discourse, ideology and power produce and constrain such the connections between popular culture and cultural citizenship. Three questions were most important in the empirical investigation of audience reactions to Westside. First, which distinct kinds of reactions do audiences exhibit when they watch WestSide? Second, can any of these reactions be considered performances of cultural citizenship and if so, in what ways? Third, how does the performance of cultural citizenship come about and what role does the actual content of WestSide play in these processes? In the following, we will first briefly sketch the contents and production context of Westside and then present the method used to analyse the audience reactions to the show. We then discuss the ways in which the connections between popular culture and cultural 4

5 citzenship is made in the literature in the light of our findings. We then propose to take serious a number of implications of post-structuralist thought in the theorisation of cultural citizenship and its relation to popular media texts. Westside The first season of the reality soap WestSide, aired in 2006 and 2007 on local and national television, was taken as the topic of the audience research conducted for this paper. The show s storyline deals with the ups and downs in the lives of four families of different cultural backgrounds and is set in western part of the city of Amsterdam, which is known for its high concentration of Muslim immigrants and repeatedly makes the news for problems of social unrest. One of the families is white Dutch, one is Turkish, one is Surinam and one is Moroccan. Some of the vagaries of their lives are the same as can be found in other television drama- such as love interests, infertility and unresolved grief over a deceased child and the threat of terminal cancer. However, the writers of the show also intentionally inserted storylines that concern the difficulties of multicultural cohabitation and integration. For instance, the Moroccan father is presented as rather traditionalist Muslim in the show who, at first, refuses his daughter to join a dancing school. His daughter struggles with her loyalty to him and her own desires and ends up lying to her father and the dancing school in order to be able to participate. Other themes in the show concern issues of male honour in the Turkish community, prejudice about adolescent males of ethnic backgrounds that hang around in the streets and white Dutch racism. The show was supplemented by an internet site where people could find background information about the show, watch previous episodes and leave comments on over 20 forums. Forums were available to talk about each of the characters as well as about each of the 13 episodes of the series. The show was produced by the local Amsterdam television station AT5 and was directed by a professional director who had previously made a number of successful entertainment programmes for other broadcasters. Most of the actors were professional actors, although a couple were still enrolled in drama classes and another few had no previous acting experiences at all. The show was filmed mostly using hand- or shoulder held cameras which gave it a realistic documentary feel. The perceived realism of the show was also stimulated through the heavy reliance on improvised dialogue in the show. Although the general storylines had been worked out, the actors did not know until each day of shooting what scenes they would be playing and were left to improvise their own lines. Through the combination of the idiom of the traditional soap, reality formats and multicultural issues and 5

6 dilemma s, the show was set up to play out the strength of a reality soap and give people the feeling that they were actually given a look inside the lives of people from other cultural backgrounds. Methodologically Our analysis of WestSide is based on material gathered by an ethnically diverse group of students in a university for professional training (InHolland, Amsterdam/Diemen). They worked with the InHolland research group on Public Opinion Formation (lectorate), which was one of the partners in a project for the Amsterdam municipality contracted by the Amsterdam Centre for Conflict Studies. The InHolland students organised focus group interviews (group size on average 5, 103 informants) and held street interviews in the part of Amsterdam where WestSide was shot and its narrative is located (184 street interviews). A second group of students from the University of Amsterdam organised in-depth interviews with mostly casual viewers of the show as part of their course requirements (18 interviews). Additionally all traffic on the WestSide discussion group on its website was analysed (877 postings retrieved on March 7 th 2007). All in all we therefore have access to audience reactions from the very first period WestSide was televised and from a later period (2006 and 2007). This material was collected in a variety of contexts and formats. All the interview data were fully transcribed and analysed by hand, and by using software for qualitative data analysis, by more than one researcher, and by the authors. Both the research process and the analysis of the interview material followed the logic of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1974; Strauss and Corbin, 1980). While the InHolland focus group interviews were organised in two rounds and focused more strongly on social cohesion in the second round; the UvA interviews followed up on those respondents who offered strong reflection on their own identity and ethnic identity in general. Analysis of the material followed a standard coding procedure. First the interviews were coded generally for all relevant key words to do with WestSide, the media, multiculturalism, ethnic identity and so on found by different coders. The key words were thematically clustered. The clusters were confronted with existing literature and research in the field to yield theoretical insight. By using such procedures as the strategic use of outliers (extreme statements in interview material) and looking for maximum contrast between sets of statements, the widest possible variety of feelings and feelings about WestSide and multiculturalism was recorded (Miles and Huberman, 1984). 6

7 The analysis thus follows the poststructural insight that individual respondents are of less interest in understanding the relation between popular culture and cultural citizenship, than the availability of cultural resources. These resources, or cultural knowledge in general, can be understood to be organised as separate discourses. Potter and Whetherel (1988) have shown convincingly that language is used functionally and that individual speakers will use the interterpretative repertoires at their disposal in open, uncoerced interview situations. Because theoretical saturation in the interviews was achieved (each phase of interviewing stopped yielding new information long before completion of the interview set), we are confident that we can chart the whole range of the socially available means to make sense of popular culture in relation to multiculturalism perceived as a problematic issue. As the interviews were not directed at charting the meanings of multiculturalism, we do not claim to fully represent meanings of multiculturalism generally. Notably, positive meanings and associations were not often voiced, while, in other contexts, they may be relevant to informants. The analysis below is geared towards understanding the underlying structure of meaning that is used to understand what the series is about. Although we start from the text, it is important to underscore that we are aware that single texts hardly have the power to dictate how they are made meaningful by audience members. We expected to find both dedicated interpretations and a reflection of more general discourses and (viewer) identities that have been long in place and that are called upon by audience members. It is in the interplay between dedicated and generally used discursive means that we hope to locate what a series such as WestSide achieves in terms of cultural citizenship. Not only is the distinction between dedicated and general discursive means important, it also needs to be noted that the audience members who were interviewed therefore had a choice of taking up either of two subject positions. Barker (2006) terms these routine audiences and fan communities. Routine media use, or casual viewing, was a position most often taken up in the focus groups, the long interviews and the street interviews. The position of fan was more common in the website discussion of the series. The fan and the casual viewer position can both be expressed either more mildly or more critically. Neither position or way of expressing it can be conflated with individual viewers or with groups of viewers. Although it will become clear that, not surprisingly, a fan position was more often taken up among those discussing WestSide on the internet website, this position was also available to other informants who, occasionally, did also use it. 7

8 From all material taken together for analysis (manually and via maxqda software) emerged a double-layered structure of meaning. Non-involved, casual viewing strongly correlated with repertoires to do with media and multiculturalism, centering around a politically correct framework (for or against media). Engaged viewing relates to these repertoires too but mostly as a defensive tool, while it distinguishes itself by finding means to take up issues of involvement and reflexivity to do with cultural identity in which the media were no more than a forum offering material rather than a social force onto itself. Again: while in everyday talk, it is easier to speak of two groups of viewers, this cannot be justified either methodologically or theoretically. What we found are styles of viewing and talking about the series. We will use these to organise our results. Results After analysis, it became apparent that the chosen dual focus on casual and engaged viewing captured a wide range of interpretations of the show. Focusing solely on either the internet (fan) community or to exclude this small group of viewers from the larger audience study would have meant the loss of a strong and informative contrast. Although there is quite a difference in volume of the material used to analyse and understand both positions, we will present the analysis of the relation of viewing and discussing WestSide and the emergence and performance of cultural citizenship thematized under the headings casual viewing and engaged viewing. 1 We feel it will enhance theoretical clarity to do so. Position of the casual viewer Those viewers who had casually watched the show once or twice because they had either come across it when flicking through the channels or had been invited by the researchers to watch an episode, generally argued that the show had little relevance for them personally. Through a number of different discursive moves, they often immediately distanced themselves from the content of the programme. Moreover, many people also appeared to distance themselves actively from any suggestions that they might be part of the community of committed viewers of WestSide. For instance, one young white woman argued that she had experienced the show as stupid, poorly acted and annoying and thought it was probably most suited for people of lower educational background: 1 Note that differences within the fan community and more casual viewers were quite large as well and that each should be seen as a subject position rather than a property or essential quality of either the group of casual viewers and the more engaged viewing community of the fans. We will return to this point in the conclusion 8

9 That was a stupid show (laughs). I thought the acting was bad and that annoyed me, basically, and... I can imagine why people, I mean I think it s good that this show exists, because I think it might help like less educated people, I mean it s acceptable for all kinds of people, maybe young people really like that, so (girl, 20 something, interview Anna Glasmacher) Disengagement from the series was generally connected with two different moralizing discursive repertoires to give meaning to the experiences of the show. We will label these mulicultural moralizing and media-savvy moralizing. When viewers took to Multicultural moralizing, they took multicultural content of the show was taken as a starting point to express their own views on the state of multicultural Dutch society. For example, one viewer ended up expressing his own views about the reality of multicultural reality after having criticized the show for not being realistic enough: In deze serie heb ik het idee dat ze iets willen projecteren van hoe mensen zijn in de samenleving bij elkaar. Maar het is niet altijd zo. Niet iedereen niet elke Surinamer of Marokkaan of Nederlander, denkt er zo over zeg maar. Meestal is het meer echt de oudere mensen denken er zo over maar ik denk dat de jeugd van tegenwoordig of kinderen van nu niet. Ik denk dat iedereen gewoon met elkaar om gaat en elkaar gewoon accepteert, maar wat ze nu willen projecteren is iets wat in het verleden plaats vindt, en dat is nu denk ik echt niet zo. BOB- Having taken up this speaking position, viewers could go on for long periods of time expressing their own, detached and impersonal views of multicultural society. Importantly, the content of WestSide was increasingly absent in these accounts and appeared irrelevant to the opinions that people were expressing as multicultural moralizer. I think you can speak your own tongue in different ways. And, you can do it to provoke, to show people "I'm doing what I want, and I am my own person, I am my own culture, no matter what you think". But you can also speak it because it is convenient or whatever, and... But it's usually very clear whether people speak it to provoke or just speak because they are either unable to speak another language or just, you know, there is nothing bad behind it. Simon Veel mensen zitten met hele foute gedachtes over elkaar en da moet je dus wegnemen, weet je mensen schreeuwen zomaar dingen en zeggen elkaar na zonder dat ze zelf even bij stil staan en zich verdiepen in een cultuur of een geloof van een anders dus. Ik roep haar na (wijst naar rechts), zij roept mij na (wijst 9

10 naar links) en die doet die weer na dus op gegeven moment heb je dus echt mensen die allerlei dingen roepen dus en niets ervan is waar dus ik denk dat je, net zoals Farahnaz zei, informatief moet zijn en met feiten komen SHIRINA(turks, leeftijd begin 20): Media savvy moralizing was slightly different. In this case, the show functions as a trigger for people to express their pre-formed ideas about the role of the mass media in society and its powers to distort reality and common sense. In many cases, informants stressed their own insight in how the mass media function as a form of inoculation. They criticised WestSide for representing multicultural reality in the city very poorly and lamented the dire consequences of such representation for those who were less well guarded against insidious media representation. The programme might have dangerous consequences for people who already have the wrong image of ethnic groups in the city. Soap of geen soap, dit slaat nergens op naar mijn idee. Waarom zou je mensen zo willen afspiegelen zoals je doet in deze aflevering? Mensen die al een verkeerd beeld hebben, en naïef en onwetend zijn zoals zovelen, zullen dit nog gaan geloven. rotzooi. Yyyy, website Others used the same position less negatively and stressed that the series might help educate those less informed than they themselves about how the media tend to stress prejudice rather than foster understanding and respect. er komen zoveel vooroordelen in de media langs en die moeten ook echt weg (..) En dan denk ja dat moet weer echt weg uit je systeem, en met zo'n serie zoals dit kan dat, die angsten wegnemen. Jamilla In most cases, taking up the position of the media-savvy moralizer served as introductory remarks that were followed by more general comments and discussions in which speakers stressed their own media savvy-ness and worried about the effects of the media on lessknowledgeable viewers. The content of WestSide was again less relevant than the expression of personal expertise about the media in general. Sinnicia: Het slechtste aan de media vind ik zelf dat ze 90 tot 95% van alle berichten zijn slecht nieuws. ( ) Slechte berichtgeving schetst gewoon het denken. 10

11 Ivana: (..) Aan de ene kant begrijp ik de media want negatief nieuws verkoopt gewoon veel beter, maar aan de ander kant creëer je gewoon een sfeer in de samenleving. Want als je continu negativiteit gaat verspreiden dan slaat de sfeer gewoon ook om in negativiteit. Dus als je niet wilt dat de samenleving niet polariseert moet je ook niet zulke berichten plaatsen. Ze hebben wel een plicht om te informeren, maar informeer dan gewoon van beide kanten, positief en negatief. Focusgroup Inholland, xx Casual viewing, then, was by no means a disengaged position. However, the engagement was not with the show but with producing an account of oneself as either critical or knowledgeable about how the media work. The general argument was that the show could only be meaningful for people other than themselves: either it would have a positive impact as it would make others more tolerant or it would have a negative effect as it would reinforce stereotypes and negativity. WestSide therefore served as a trigger to express views on multicultural social relations and the power of the media. The resulting discourse shows little resemblance to the definition of cultural citizenship stated in the introduction. First, because of their highly generalized and moralizing nature, the accounts produced from these positions cannot be taken to constitute the negotiation of ideological dilemmas facing the speakers themselves. Instead, their accounts together form a paternalistic discussion of what would be good or harmful for other people. Secondly, what we found are clearly routine responses to the social role of the media. There is no attempt to generate a more critical vocabulary that might challenge problematic aspects of particular community identities or cultural boundaries in society, by for instance contrasting different types of representation or personal investment in concrete examples. Position of the fan Another position was also available, taken up by viewers who engaged more strongly and emotionally with the content of WestSide. This position was especially, if not exclusively, found in the accounts and discussions posted on the forums of the WestSide website. In contrast to detached and moralising casual viewing, engaged viewers tend to make themselves present in relation to the show. On the website, for instance, they generally introduce themselves via their sentiments about the show, which they expect to be read by other fans of the programme. Echt een tegekke soap. Ik kom uit Amsterdam, en woonde 3 jaar in Rio de Janeiro en nu in London. Maar er gaat echt niks boven Amsterdam. Dat blijft mijn stad. Waar ik ook ben. Top soap. Mazzels. 11

12 Patrick franken Ik ben het eens met Atif ik wil ook dat de serie doorgaat. want het is zo leuk. Atif ik ben je mati van school. Erdal Noh Dit is echt te leuk (...) En lachen zeg! En alles is vet herkenbaar. Ik hou niet van soaps maar dit is toch wel echt mn soapie Lau As the quotes above illustrate, many of the visitors on the website forums profess engagement with the show. In presenting themselves to other participants on the forum, they also express interest in recognition by other fans and users of the forum. Compared to those that were speaking from the position of a causal viewer, these initial communications demonstrate a different kind of engagement that can be described as engaged, personally involved viewing. The extent of this personal engagement is, for instance, evident in how some of the posts use the forums to engage in parasocial interactions with the characters of the soap and express their emotional investments in them. For example, a fan addressing the character Rachida: selaam aylikom, rachida en iedereen daar, ik vind u 1 van de allerleukste vrouwen van nederland en ik vind het heel leuk. u maakt mij blij, u bent mijn idool. lay hounik Inch Allah. hartelijk bedankt. Mariam In the quote above, Mariam is hailing the soap character Rachida and visitors to the website using the Arabic greeting selaam alyikom. After this personalized opening, she expresses her own feelings and attachment to the character to her self-inferred audience ( you make me happy, you are my idol ). In another one of the website s forums, a Turkish man addresses his favorite (Turkish) character in the show similarly: Hoi, Eerste,moet ik zeggen dat vind ik die soap heel mooi. En dank u wel Halid.U reflecteert echte Turkse man met uw rustig, gelijkmoedige karakter. Ik vind u heel talentvol en succesvol. Ik wacht ongeduldig de volgende aflevering Banu Yalcin 12

13 As he expresses his admiration for the show and the quality of the acting, Banu Yalcin thus appears to make parasocial contact with his favorite character. More importantly, perhaps, he simultaneously reaffirms his own personal ideal of Turkish temperament to the wider community of visitors of the website. The show thus serves as a resource for the performance of personal identity in the (semi)public space of the website. The performance of identity and simultaneous engagement with the show enabled posters (and a small number of informants in the focus group and street interviews), to relate the show and its content back to their own lives and identities in ways that were unavailable to the more detached, casual viewers. These personalized yet public negotiations of the content of the show in some cases lead to the performance of cultural citizenship. The emergence of ideological dilemmas in talk about Westside As casual viewing correlated more strongly with distancing and moralizing comments, there was little indication of the emergence of cultural citizenship. This was different for the more engaged viewers who used the content of WestSide as a resource for public performances of their own (cultural) identities. At times, ideological dilemmas were thus brought into the public space of the forum. For example, one girl recognized herself in the storyline of the Moroccan girl who was forbidden to take dancing lessons by her father. On the website, she reflects on this in a parasocial communication to the character that, of course, can also be read by the other visitors to the website: hey jamila mag ik wat zeggen ik weet hoe het voeld om zo een vader te hebben want ik heb er ook zo 1 ik mag ook niet naar dans les ik ben ook marokkaans hoor ik ben marokaans half surienaams hoor liefs casey CASEY Through this comment, Casey explicates an issue of cultural traditionalism and power relations within her Moroccan family. Crucially, however, she expresses her views and experiences using the content of the show as a resource and speaks from a position of personal experience and commitment. In her account, she therefore does not engage in distancing moralization but instead presented her position and experiences, admittedly in rudimentary form, to the other visitors of the website. For other viewers, the same content of the show served as a resource to express their own, different experiences and feelings surrounding parental authority and traditionalism in Moroccan families. 13

14 Als dit soap echt is dan ben jij verkeerd bezig, je had naar je vader moeten luisteren. Ik ga dood voor me ouders ik doe alles voor ze. ik zal nooit verkeerde dingen doen nooit ik zal ze nooit verschud zetten. Tegenwoordige jeugd denkt alleen maar aan zich zelf. maar als het klopt zoals het afspeelt op AT5. En dat je vader trots op je is dat je ging dansen op de podium. nou als ik hem was schaam je. Ibrahim Note how Ibrahim here also reflects on the show from a personal, engaged position as he criticizes the behavior of the characters by explicitly referring to his own relation to his parents ( I will die for my parents and I do everything for them ( ) I would never embarrass them ). Through such personal exchanges based on the content of the show, implicit group norms come to the surface in a public debate. Moreover, the participants in this discussion were not positioned as detached, moralizing subjects seeking only to reaffirm the proper and true norms of parental authority. Instead, they exchanged their own personal experiences and emotional investments with perceived group norms and expressed the ideological dilemma constituted by having to be loyal to traditionalist parents in a modern Dutch multicultural context. A discursive context emerged through which this ideological dilemma could be negotiated from the position of a personally involved community member. The performance of cultural citizenship Personalized and moralizing comments on the show enable and constrain the performance of cultural citizenship in relation to WestSide. The dynamic between these two modes of discussing the show is perhaps best illustrated through a more lengthy exchange between viewers that reflect on a particular scene in which a young Turkish couple in the show are drinking alcohol during a dinner with white Dutch friends. When the couple is asked by their table guests why they drink alcohol and whether this isn t prohibited in their culture, they reply that it is allowed. On the website, a viewer called Cher comments on this by attacking the Turkish couple as follows: ik vind jou ronduit walgelijk. je doet je voor als moslim in de serie maar drinkt wel vrij en blij wijn. als moslim zeg je dan dat wij moslims alcohol wel mogen drinken weet je dan niet dat moslims geen alcohol mogen drinken? een schande ben je voor de moslims. een regelrechte ramp ben je. en dat geldt ook voor je soapvrouw/vriendinnetje!! Cher 14

15 In this excerpt, Cher strongly expresses her disgust with a specific part of the content of WestSide. She thereby foregrounds the rules around drinking alcohol in the Muslim community. Through her parasocial interaction with the characters, she simultaneously presents her views on Muslims who drink alcohol to the rest of the participants of the forum. Although Cher s account is clearly moralizing and has some resemblance to the accounts of the casual viewers discussed earlier, her emotional engagement with the content of the show ( you are disgusting/ you are a downright disaster ) foregrounds her subjective and emotional investment in the representations of Muslims. In response to Cher s comments, another Muslim viewer produces an alternative account of the ideological dilemma that many Dutch Muslims, according to her, experience daily: Aan Cher Sorry hoor.. Ik ben zelf moslim en ik drink niet, maar ik ken genoeg moslims die drinken.. zowel turken als marokkanen.. kijk maar eens om je heen in discotheken en in cafe s zelfs op bruiloften. Deze serie laat de realiteit zien en niet de steriotypes. Het mag officieel niet in het geloof maar er zijn genoeg mensen die ondanks hun geloof wel drinken.. dus laat ieder in zijn waarde.. want jij zult ook wel niet heilig zijn en dat maakt niet uit want niemand is perfect!btw Sinan trek het je niet aan je doet het geweldig en je bent een voorbeeld voor iedereen Supplexx As supplexx confronts Cher with her moralization of the issue of Muslims and the consumption of alcohol, she firstly makes sure that her own identity as Muslim is established and that she herself does not drink alcohol. Consequently however, she publicly presents her own experiences with other Muslims who do drink alcohol and argues that this reality should not be dismissed from a supremacist moralism. She then confronts Cher with the improbability of her own moral high ground and, through parasocially addressing him, declares that the Turkish man in the series in fact can be considered a role model for everyone. In her subsequent response to Suplexx, Cher acknowledges the fact that many Muslims do in fact drink alcohol and then adjusts her position to Suplexx s criticism. Natuurlijk weet ik dat vele moslims wel drinken, ondanks het niet mag. Maar dan moet men niet open en blij op TV nog wel, gaan vertellen dat moslims WEL mogen drinken. Het is een reality soap, maar wat voor een soap wil zo n beeld naar voren brengen, excuses, welke moslim wil zo n beeld naar voren brengen over de moslims. Moslims mogen NIET drinken. Het is VERBODEN! Dan moet je niet zeggen, omdat je toevallig in een serie op TV speelt, komen zeggen dat moslims mogen drinken en op tv daarvoor een soort goedkeuring geven. ( ) 15

16 Cher In the above, Cher explains that she is concerned more about the consequences of showing such behavior on television for wider society to see. In so doing, she explicates another group norm to keep up appearances and to make sure that immoral behavior is not condoned either within the insider community or to the outside world. Consequently, others join in the discussion and this ideological dilemma is negotiated among people who themselves are drawing on their own personal experiences and identities: laat mensen in hun waarde, het is maar een soap, In de Koran staat nergens dat je niet mag drinken alleen de een legt het zo uit en de andere zo dat is nu eenmaal zo dat is met een heleboel dingen zo ook het dragen van hoofddoeken staat nergens vermeld maar toch zijn er moslima die dat niet en wel doen. Sfinx Niet iedereen draagt ook een hoofddoek is die dan gelijk een slechte moslim ( ) ik heb ook met een moslim maar het is al moeilijk genoeg om er bij tehoren waarom draait alles altijd om geloof we zijn hier alemaal om een reden en dat is een leuk leven te leiden waarom kan dat niet met alle culturen door elkaar heen Samantha je zegt wel tegen cher of ze zich wel aan regel houd blabla!!! iedereeeen probeeeeeert het ;) die moslim is niemand is heilig! maare iedereen doet zijn best en de meeeste dingen houden we der ons aan.. dus ik weet niet wat jij met je tatta hoofd komt lullen!!!!!!! Gurl Each individual posting from this discussion does not in itself constitute a negotiation of the ideological dilemma s surrounding the lives of modern Muslims in the Netherlands. Taken together, however, they form an exploration of certain implicit group norms in a (semi) public sphere that may be said to constitute the performance of cultural citizenship. As people reflect on the ways their identities are represented in the soap and the ways in which Cher initially responded to them, the fact becomes publicly asserted and accepted that there is a discrepancy between the orthodox Muslim norms on drinking alcohol and lived practices. Moreover, in the various contributions to the discussion, new resources are generated for a critical vocabulary to deal with these dilemma s in people s private lives. For example, one participant produces an argument that wearing a headscarf is also not worn by all Muslims and another one argues that a good Muslim can also be defined as one who tries to live as well as they can rather than one who perfectly follows all the rules. 16

17 The dynamics of cultural citizenship performances The emergence of performances of cultural citizenship like these did not occur in a vacuum. It remained possible to hold on to more traditional norms in the face of the calls from others to challenge them. As such, the more personal and engaged negotiations of ideological dilemmas were poised precariously against the moralizing tendencies of many other viewers that were present at the forum who actively sought to close down such discussions through various discursive means. The most common strategy in this respect sought to re-position those participating in more critical discussions as less engaged by drawing on a discourse that constructs popular culture as meaningless inconsequential ways to pass the time. As the following viewer argued, why make such a fuss when it is just a soap? ik WEET NIET WRM mensen zo parra doen maar het is maar een Serieee!! Dus allemaal nepp duss!! dus je hoeft niet te zeggen jamila dit of dat..gwn ff je mond Dicht houden en kijken!! tis toch maar een Serieeeeeeee. LATERZZZZZZZZZZ je weet zelfffffffffffff.west sideee TOt de Doood!! xxxxx Sammmm For other people, these argumentations served as a way to distance themselves from a critical evaluation of WestSide even though they appeared to have engaged with its content on a more emotional level. According to one person, reflecting on the discussions on the website forums, his shame for the white Dutch woman in the show who represented him was less acute because he knew the series was fake. dit moet zogenaamd een voorbeeld geven van hoe mensen met een verschillende afkomst met elkaar omgaan in Amsterdam, maar het is hellemaal verkeerd, ik zie sommige mensen die zeggen dit is een schande voor de marokanen, maar ik vind het meer een schande voor alle bewoners van amsterdam, ik ben nl en ik schaam me echt voor die nl vrouw, maar gelukkig weet ik dat het gespeeld is KEES Cultural citizenship The first two empirical questions that guided the analysis of the audience reactions concerned the different kinds of reactions audiences could express about the show and the extent to which any of these could be regarded as related to the performance of cultural citizenship. Our analysis suggests that it indeed is possible to make a distinction between those kinds of 17

18 audience reactions that can be considered performances of cultural citizenship and those that can not. The reactions articulated from the position of the casual viewer resulted mostly in moralizing discourses about the effects of the media on other people and a lament about the state of multicultural relations in society. As such, they served to distance the speaker from the content and the audience of the programme and obscured the connections between the show and their own personal experiences and identities. In contrast, those reactions articulated from the position of the fan viewer were more personal and seemed to engage more with the narratives and characters from the text. Within the context of the series website forum, such a positioning led to the (semi)public exchange of personal accounts related to cultural identities and group norms. Even though these processes occurred in a very small number of cases, they distinguished from other reactions as performances of cultural citizenship through the fact that they led to the explication of implicit ideological dilemma s facing Muslims in modern Dutch society. The description of these processes simultaneously answer the third question posed in the introduction, which asked how cultural citizenship emerges in talk about popular culture. The role of the popular media text in these processes was not only to focus attention on multicultural issues but also to spurn awareness of people s personal positioning in ideological dilemma s. At the same time, however, alternative moralizing discourses about the inferiority of popular culture seemed to work to silence certain participants and, eventually, to lead to a submergence of the ideological dilemma s and their negotiations. These results clearly suggest the necessity a post-structuralist perspective in order to conceptualise the dynamic emergence and performance of cultural citizenship. Such a perspective emphasises the primacy of discourse, practice, knowledge and power in the construction of social reality and the production, dissemination and reception of (media) texts (Foucault, 1978, Hartley, 1999). Our results show that cultural citizenship in this context should can not be defined in individualistic terms as the identity or sets of attitudes of an individual or their proclivity to engage in activities that benefit the greater good of society. Instead, we see that the singular active citizen is decentred as he or she participates in exchanges that together constitute cultural citizenship. For example, cultural citizenship only emerges when several people are positioned and articulated in a particular discursive context and when their discussions turn personal and at the same time critically concerned with shared norms and identities. The audience reactions to Westside thus suggest the viability of conceptualising cultural citizenship as a social process, as Isin and Turner have suggested in their work (Isin & Turner, xxxx). 18

19 These findings also resonate with arguments made by Yuval-Davis that most people may participate in the performance of cultural citizenship in multiple contexts of their daily lives simultaneously (Yuval-Davis, 2002). Hence, it becomes necessary to regard cultural citizenship as a multidimensional concept, in which each performance in any given context affects the meaning of those in other contexts. Moreover, the inflated notions of agency implied in the singular of the active citizen also become untenable. From a post-structural perspective, every performance of citizenship is already constituted through discourses that are caught in the workings of power. As such, the stimulation through educational interventions of the development of active citizens can also be regarded critically as a form of discipline that produces individual dispositions that go remarkably well with neo-liberal policy making (xxxx). From our results, it seems that questions of individual agency should give precedence to inquiries into the factors that enable and constrain the emergence of temporary social spaces in which ideological dilemma s are explicated and negotiated on a personal basis. In the case of Westside, this occurred on some of the forums of the website of the show, but there are no good reasons to assume that the internet is somehow ideally conducive to cultural citizenship. Instead, it is easy to imagine how similar spaces might temporarily open up amongst friends, colleagues or family in less institutionalized, casual spheres. At the same time, our analysis shows how such temporary spaces are closed down through the dominance of the more widespread moralizing discourses pertaining, in this case, to the power of the media or multicultural society. These observations suggest that the notion of a unitary public sphere populated by rational citizens (cf. Habermas, 1990) is not an adequate conceptual tool for the theorisation of cultural citizenship in relation to popular culture. Instead, the insurgent nature of cultural citizenship should be stressed (cf. Keith, 2005) and the space of its performance correspondingly conceptualised. The public sphere may therefore best be regarded as a temporary, contingent discursive space in which people are articulated in critical ways through their personal experiences and social concerns. As such, it is multiple in the same way as the performance and identity of citizenship itself. Of crucial importance then is no longer how to make more individuals into autonomous citizens, but how to identify cultural citizenship in its insurgent forms and how to support its further development. Social actors such as civil rights NGO s and the state clearly play a role in determining the ways locally emerged cultural citizenship performances are are supported and amplified and articulated to the wider society. 19

20 Conclusion The reactions of audiences to the show Westside suggest that popular television may indeed be part of the practices of cultural citizenship, but it is clear that this is not always the case. In fact, our analysis suggest that the vast majority of viewers (positioned either as casual, distanced viewers or as emotionally invested fans) actually engaged in the reproduction of moralizing discourses that do more to impede the emergence of cultural citizenship than anything else. This is not to say, however, that these viewers passively reproduced an ideology or suffered indelibly under the yoke of multiculturalisms politically correct dominant discourse. On the contrary, many respondents enthusiastically and creatively expanded about their expert views on multicultural dilemmas and the powers of the media over the common man. It would seem that most people were quite adept at drawing on these discourses to present themselves as a knowledgeable, concerned citizen. However, our data also suggests that in so doing, they reproduced only a superficial layer of meaning about Westside and its relation to the ideological dilemmas of contemporary multicultural Holland. It is therefore important to stress the difference between the active viewer, as is commonly described in audience studies research, and the active citizen that figures centrally in contemporary citizenship literature. While it seems that all interviewees who were invited to reflect on the show in their interviews and focus groups were actively producing accounts and performing their preferred identities, these did not all amount to the performance of cultural citizenship. It is only through a constrast with the accounts and negotiations of fans of the series described above that this distinction can be appreciated fully. From these, it is clear that a second layer of meaning exists through which ideological dilemma s are addressed and negotiated on personal terms. The question that thus remains concerns the role of power in such examples of the convergence of media, government and education. According to Hartley, televisions shows like these would contribute to processes of informal learning. Readers would thus acquire new critical and transformative insights about themselves and the society around them (Hartley, 1999). For the majority of viewers, it seems that Westside at the most served as an additional discursive resource to express preformed opinions and engage in distancing moralizing discourse. The actual content of the media text, that is the narratives and characters of Westside, hardly figured in their accounts and were irrelevant to these activities. For those who participated or witnessed the emergence of the performance of cultural citizenship amongst fans of the series, it is possible indeed to argue that the show led to an expansion of their vocabulary to discuss the ideological dilemma s they were facing. 20