Abstract
This chapter examines media representations of intoxication in the context of neoliberal consumer capitalism. It illustrates how the media ideologically function in maintaining the capitalist status quo whilst distracting attention from the paradoxical nature and embedded systemic harms of consumerism. Looking at the media through a Žižekian lens, we identify how the intoxicated are constructed as representing a threat to our way of life through their irresponsible, flawed and uncivilised consumption practices. As such, the media partakes in objective violence through its purposeful polarisation of intoxication practices: ensuring the condemnation, alienation and criminalisation of the barbaric consumer; and the celebration and social recognition of the civilised.
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Notes
- 1.
Inspired by the works of Slavoj Žižek, this chapter applies the label of violence to a number of different social behaviours. As such, a brief definition of Žižek’s interpretation of these terms is useful as this juncture. Žižek (2008, pp. 9–11) refers to systemic violence as that arising from capitalism and its smooth functioning and alongside symbolic violence, which is embodied in language, constitutes what he refers to as objective violence. Alongside this sits subjective violence which is ‘enacted by social agents’ and is the most visible form of violence.
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Ayres, T., Taylor, S. (2020). Media and Intoxication: Media Representations of the Intoxicated. In: Hutton, F. (eds) Cultures of Intoxication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35284-4_11
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