"I'll Be There for You": Affective Production of a "Hyper-Real" Cultural-Consumption Space

Autor/in	Song, Yang
Titel	"I'll Be There for You": Affective Production of a "Hyper-Real" Cultural-Consumption Space
Quelle	In: Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 42 (2023) 5, S.765-796 (32 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0167-8507
DOI	10.1515/multi-2022-0080
Schlagwörter	Cultural Influences; Television; Popular Culture; Sense of Community; Psychological Patterns; Space Utilization; Building Design; Foreign Countries; China (Shanghai) + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Cultural influence; Kultureinfluss; Fernsehen; Fernsehtechnik; Popkultur; Raumnutzung; Baugestaltung; Ausland
Abstract	The refashioning of popular cultural resources has become a salient strategy for the construction of "hyper-real" spaces of cultural consumption worldwide. Taking Lefebvre's triadic model of space as the anchorage, this study proposes an analytical framework to examine the affective production of space. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in the Central Perk café in Shanghai as replicated from the American sitcom "Friends." The analysis reveals that resemiotization, recontextualization, and the spatial arrangements of the interior café enabled fan-customers to orchestrate individual-specific affective assemblages based on their varied familiarity with the sitcom and alignment with its affective values and characterization. It is found that these affective assemblages afforded fan-customers socio-atmospherics featuring a cozy, relaxed state of being and a home-like sense of belonging. The affective practices of the human-nonhuman participants turned this themed café into a lived space of affinities that helped the café owner and fan-customers cope with atomization and precarity in cosmopolitan life. It is argued that the proposed analytical framework can reveal the role of affect as a critical social force that enables individuals to fulfill their sociocultural needs and desires by appropriating transnational popular cultural resources and co-producing a cultural consumption space. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01