The Late-Night Infomercial as an Electronic Site of Ritual Self-Transformation
The Case of “Personal Power
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7512950 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Douglas J Glick (Binghamton University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 109-134 |
| Publication date | 2016-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Signs and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2326-4489 • E-ISSN: 2326-4497 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1086/685504 |
| OpenAlex | W2403210636 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 16 |
This article argues that a late-night television infomercial displays the structure of a ritual rite of passage. It tracks how the infomercial creates a state of ideological liminality that is redressed by a series of poetic (linguistic) parallelisms. This culminates in a trope of incorporation that transforms the social identity of the viewer from “unsuccessful” to “successful.” Ritual in form yet electronic in medium, the conclusion relates the ritual merging of consumer and new product type in processes of commodification to the ways in which cultural analogy, ideological and otherwise, moves certain kinds of social meanings into new arenas of practice
Aesthetics · Analogy · Art · Commodification · Epistemology · Identity (music · Ideology · Liminality · Literature · Media studies · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Trope (literature · Asian Culture and Media Studies · History · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Media, Gender, and Advertising · Philosophy
Signs in Society
Multiplicity and contention among ideologies
Language and Social Relations
Speech Genres and Other Late Essays
Large and small scale forms of personhood
Excellence, leadership, skills, diversity
Meet mediatization
The Anthropology of Performance
Culture and Practical Reason
The Ritual Process
Commodity Registers
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2022 (6) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |