One Can Veil and Be a Singer!”

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12796339
AutoresFarzaneh Hemmasi (autor de correspondencia)
Año2017
Volumen13
Número3
Páginas416-437
Fecha de publicación2017-10-31
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Middle East Women s Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1552-5864 • E-ISSN: 1558-9579
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/15525864-4179034
OpenAlexW2766365754
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas47

This article explores the media controversy surrounding the victory of Ermia, a veiled female vocalist, on the 2013 expatriate Iranian talent competition Googoosh Music Academy (GMA). A historically and ethnographically informed “ethnotextual” analysis of a selection of Persian-language television programs, articles and news reports, weblogs, and Facebook posts responding to Ermia reveals how a reality television contestant came to disturb simplistic but powerful binaries of modest/immodest, religious/secular, Iranian/Western, and national/diasporic as she combined signifying elements of these positions into one unsettling figure. The article shows how Ermia’s case gathered political valence through the contentious transnational Iranian mediascape and the televised talent genre’s premise—representing “real,” “ordinary” contestants and fostering audience participation. I argue that GMA became a space for publicly playing with cultural norms, political participation, and the politics of piety at some distance from the pressures that make publicly living difference so challenging

Expatriate · Linguistics · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Premise · Singing · Sociology · Terrorism · Victory · Violent extremism · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Turkey's Politics and Society