”That’s when we uncover” is an ethnolocical study of the discourse on gender equality surrounding commercial pop stars, based on the debate evolving the Swedish singer Zara Larsson. In the summer of 2015, the seventeen year old singer criticized a major festival in Sweden, Bråvalla, for their lack of women represented among their headlines. She also questioned why she was to perform at 1.15 pm, since she was the artist who was the most popular at Spotify of all playing at the festival. In addition to that, she criticized Bråvalla for not putting her name at their posters. Zara Larssons critique generated harsh words from another, male artist, wich lead to a debate in Swedish media all through the summer. Zara Larsson was defended by both other musicians, and by politicians, but she also got thousands of offensive comments at social medias, and received threats from men who claimed they wanted to see her raped, or dead. Zara Larsson has since then continued to provoke, through feminist statements, combined with exposing pictures of herself. The study is based on articles found in the media online, and on the debate in social medias. Three pictures posted by Zara Larsson at Instagram was chosen to represent what makes her so provocative, and the following comments was analyzed through a discoursive perspective. The study showed that the discourse can be divided in two: The discourse on gender equality in the statistics among artists at festivals, and the discourse on norms surrounding female artists. Those two are connected, and represents the two dimensions quantity and quality when it comes to gender equality. The study also showed that the strong reactions to Zara Larssons opinions was related to her subject position as a young, female singer within the commercial pop music business, and that there is a hegemony saying that male artist are the norm at festivals. The discourse also says that the over-representation of men performing at festivals are fair, and that young, female artists should have a limited space when it comes to actions and expressing opinions, compared to their male peers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-116185 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Swanström, Emma |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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