scholarly journals The Whistle Stop Café and Luke’s Diner

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-81
Author(s):  
Julia Neugarten

This paper compares the Whistle Stop Café in Fanny Flagg’s 1987 novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café to Luke’s Diner in the pilot episode of the TV show Gilmore Girls (2000). I argue that the two cafes are similar in that both offer up a utopian space where women can be themselves, enact their desires and speak their minds without fear of judgement or violence. Through a comparison of the two, I also show the ways in which gendered power dynamics have changed over time: while the Whistle Stop Café provides a refuge from male violence, Luke's Diner functions as a space in which women can exert their own agency through speech, thus keeping the threat of male violence at bay. My analysis shows that the culinary space of the café or diner contains traditionally feminine elements through its association with food and cooking as well as traditionally masculine elements through its presence in the public sphere.

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 587-603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuomas Ylä-Anttila ◽  
Juho Vesa ◽  
Veikko Eranti ◽  
Anna Kukkonen ◽  
Tomi Lehtimäki ◽  
...  

Building on theories of valuation and evaluation, we develop an analytical framework that outlines six elements of the process of consolidation of an idea in the public sphere. We then use the framework to analyse the process of consolidation of the idea of climate change mitigation between 1997 and 2013, focusing on the interplay between ecological and economic evaluations. Our content analysis of 1274 articles in leading newspapers in five countries around the globe shows that (1) ecological arguments increase over time, (2) economic arguments decrease over time, (3) the visibility of environmental nongovernmental organizations as carriers of ecological ideas increases over time, (4) the visibility of business actors correspondingly decreases, (5) ecological ideas are increasingly adopted by political and business elites and (6) a compromise emerges between ecological and economic evaluations, in the form of the argument that climate change mitigation boosts, rather than hinders economic growth.


2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 1545-1563
Author(s):  
Philip Schlesinger

The idea of a public sphere has long been central to discussion of political communication. Its present condition is the topic of this essay. Debate about the public sphere has been shaped by the boundary-policing of competing political systems and ideologies. Current discussion reflects the accelerating transition from the mass media era to the ramifying entrenchment of the Internet age. It has also been influenced by the vogue for analysing populism. The present transitional phase, whose outcome remains unclear, is best described as an unstable ‘post-public sphere’. This instability is not unusual as, over time, conceptions of the public sphere’s underpinnings and scope have continually shifted. Latterly, states’ responses to the development of the Internet have given rise to a new shift of focus, a ‘regulatory turn’. This is likely to influence the future shape of the public sphere.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Astrid Krabbe Trolle

During the last decade, local celebrations of winter solstice on the 21st of December have increased all over Denmark. These events refer to the Old Norse ritual of celebrating the return of the light, and their appeal is very broad on a local community level. By presenting two cases of Danish winter solstice celebrations, I aim to unfold how we can understand these new ritualisations as non-religious rituals simultaneously contesting and supplementing the overarching seasonal celebration of Christmas. My material for this study is local newspaper sources that convey the public sphere on a municipality level. I analyse the development in solstice ritualisations over time from 1990 to 2020. Although different in location and content, similarities unite the new solstice celebrations: they emphasise the local community and the natural surroundings. My argument is that the winter solstice celebrations have grown out of a religiously diversified public sphere and should be understood as non-religious rituals in a secular context.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (79) ◽  
pp. 112-134
Author(s):  
Jens E. Kjeldsen

The rhetoric of shame has become predominant in the public sphere. This is especially the case in immigration debates. Here citizens express shame over the way their nation treats immigrants and refugees, or argue that others ought to be ashamed of themselves because of their treatment of foreigners. This article study the rhetorical use of shame and the reactions and counter argumentation to such appeals. I examine one month’s press coverage of the immigration debate in Denmark. Based on this I establish four forms of rhetorical shame and three forms of rhetorical reactions to the demand for shame. The four forms are: felt individual shame, ascribed individual shame, felt collective shame, and ascribed collective shame. The three forms of rhetorical reactions are: referring to established facts, counter attack on opponents tone and style, and populist accusation of elitism. My analysis suggests that the rhetorical use of shame in public debate is neither effective nor a beneficial to a good deliberative debate. My study also suggests that the use of shame as a rhetorical performative language game, may – over time – contribute to a rhetorical working through that influences our attitudes and acts in a beneficial way


Tanaka Kinuyo ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 104-125
Author(s):  
Irene González-López ◽  
Ashida Mayu

The chapter focuses on the production and reception of Love Letter (Koibumi, 1953) and The Moon Has Risen (Tsuki wa noborinu, 1955) –the first two films directed by Tanaka—to call into question the meaning and construction of the category of ‘woman director’. The chapter is divided in three parts. The first contextualises Tanaka’s decision to become a director within the post-war legal and social changes affecting women, illuminating how she positioned herself within trending discourses. The second offers a textual analysis of the representation of gender roles and power dynamics in both films to question whether Tanaka was offering new perspectives on the subject. The last part illuminates how the figure of ‘woman director’ was being defined, contextualised and negotiated in the public sphere by a detailed analysis of promotional material and reviews from the contemporaneous Japanese press.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar

This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relevance of his theory of the public sphere to the politics and poetics of the Arab oral tradition and its pedagogical practices. In what ways and forms does Arab heritage inform a public sphere of resistance or dissent? How does Habermas’s notion of the public space help or hinder a better understanding of the Arab oral tradition within the sociopolitical and educational landscape of the Arabic-speaking world? This study also explores the pedagogical implications of teaching Arab orality within the context of the public sphere as a contested site that informs a mode of resistance against social inequality and sociopolitical exclusions.


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