Tears are flowing. Whether Yvonne Catterfeld, Kazim as-Sahir, Unati Msenga-na, Liu Huan, Simon Cowell or Lira – they are all part of a jury of global music casting show formats such as The Voice, Idol or Got Talent and show their tears in front of the camera, seemingly ashamed and yet completely uninhibited. Their tears flow in reaction to ‘particularly soulful’ music titles or to the candidates’ tragic personal stories, paired with the ‘right’ song selection. The display of great emotions is an essential element of reality TV formats. With Sara Ahmed, they can be understood in the sense of an ‘affective economy’ as an effect of their circulation, their staging as a specific ‘emotional style’ of dealing with emotions (Eva Illouz). The circulation of affects in casting shows is a global one, since the formats, developed in Europe, have produced local versions in over 60 countries worldwide. Emotions play an important role in the successful localization of the formats and define a complex area of conflict between a sensitization to socio-cultural characteristics and the ‘reproduction of culturalistic concepts’ (Laura Sūna) or clichés. In European cultural history, tears have developed a special significance as guarantors of the authenticity of empathy (Sigrid Weigel), and are generally associated with femininity, however at the same time have been film-historically recoded as ‘gender-neutral’ (Renate Möhrmann). Keeping in mind that all these casting show formats have been exported from Europe, these observations are of special interest, especially since one can see men and women crying equally in the Arabic, German or South African versions of e. g. The Voice. This article questions the concurrence of musical performance, display of tears, gender performance and the translocal dramaturgy of music casting shows.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:72575 |
| Date | 29 October 2020 |
| Creators | Kohl, Marie-Anne |
| Contributors | Musikwissenschaftliches Seminar der Universität Paderborn und der Hochschule für Musik Detmold |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | German |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | doc-type:conferenceObject, info:eu-repo/semantics/conferenceObject, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | 10.25366/2020.42, urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa2-725481, qucosa:72548 |
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