Getting attached to a classic Mustang. Use, maintenance and the burden of authenticity

This paper investigates the relationships consumers cultivate with mass-market commodities while caring for their authenticity. Drawing on a six-year ethnography of classic Mustang owners communities in France, Switzerland and Belgium, the authors show that, far from being a symbolic value only, or a resource into which people can “invest” in a mechanism of social distinction, authenticity can also appear as a burden that weighs constantly on the relationship between people and things. Indeed, throughout their uses and maintenance, the material integrity of classic Mustangs is of great concern for their owners, who apprehend every breakdown or maintenance intervention as threats that could jeopardize their car's authenticity. For the sake of security, comfort or health, because new regulations come up, or because some original parts are not available anymore, classic Mustangs owners compose with heterogeneous elements, constantlyreshaping both their cars and their concerns for authenticity. The authors draw on Hennion's notion of “attachement” to describe the intimate relationship that grows through these arrangements. The notion particularly helps to grasp the ambivalence of the bonds between people and things: while they get more and more attached to their classic Mustang, owners are getting more and more worried. Moreover, throughout this growing relationship and the recurrent material interventions it draws on, the car does not remain passive. It progressively reveals itself, sometimes surprising its owner. Therefore, not only is authenticity “in the making” in this process, the contours of the thing itself evolve, as well as the knowledge of its owner.

The Terrorist and the Girl Next Door: Love Jihad in French Femonationalist Nonfiction

This paper explores the theme of Love Jihad in “true sex crime” novels, French mass-market paperbacks where a journalist or author recounts the temoignage of women who suffered sexual violence at the hands of Muslim men. Semiotic analysis of visual and textual representations shows a melodramatic triangle of female victims, Muslim male perpetrators, and heroic readers. These stories reflect, dramatize, and sexualize broader social constructions of the monstrous Muslim; from Far-Right conspiracies of The Great Replacement to femonationalist debates about veils and republican values. In the final section, the paper explores how visual and verbal tropes from these popular discourses reappear in political speech and media from the National Rally.

5. The plot thickens…and thins

‘The plot thickens…and thins’ describes the changing status of plot in the genre. For much of the 19th century, anecdote and incident inspired short fiction written for a mass market. The incident or anecdote-based short story made a virtue of brevity, and the economy of style and consequential arrangement of causes and effects well suited slice-of-life episodes, whodunits, and ghost stories. What these modes all share is a skill in building up suspense. Yet the genre has been enjoying a long postmodernist reincarnation in which it has adopted almost the opposite approach. Losing the plot has been a source of fictional experimentation and liberation from linearity. Repetition with subtle variation has become a key structure.

The “art and magic” of Raymond Oliver (1909-1990): inventing the modern multimedia, mass-market celebrity chef

Raymond Oliver was far more than the first French TV chef. At the peak of Oliver’s popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, his marketing ventures spanned a broad range of endorsements, promotions, and products, while his protean media innovations likewise transcended his television appearances, encompassing a great diversity of forms. Focusing on this largely unexplored realm of Oliver’s mass-market presence and multimedia experimentation, I argue for a more capacious understanding of his place in the evolution of modern French food culture, especially in the rise of the modern celebrity chef as broad-based food personality. Oliver pioneered this substantial new role for the chef as public figure, however his marketing verve and multimedia escapades prompted both adulation and admonition. Ultimately, the title of his 1984 memoir, Adieu fourneaux, probes paradoxes still relevant today, as chefs, turned famous food personalities, leaving behind the original crucible of their renown, renegotiate their connection to the kitchen, while navigating between culinary street cred and celebrity for celebrity’s sake, as between education and entertainment.

The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Mass Market Retailing of Wine in Italy

The purpose of this study was to provide a detailed framework of wine purchases in supermarkets during the COVID-19 pandemic. The unexpected diffusion of the virus and the restrictions imposed in Italy to prevent its spread have significantly affected the food purchasing habits of consumers. By analyzing the scanner data of the wine sales in the Italian mass market retail channel, this study was intended to show whether and how the dynamics triggered by the pandemic have modified the overall value and type of wine purchases, focusing on prices, formats, and promotional sales. In particular, this study explores sales in two separate periods, namely March–April (the “lockdown”, with general compulsory closing and severe restrictions) and June–July 2020 (the “post-lockdown”, in which some limitations were no longer effective). The analysis of wine sales during lockdown and post-lockdown and the study of the variations compared to the sales of the previous years showed some significant changes in purchase behavior. The results could provide managers, researchers, and policy makers with extensive insights into the purchasing patterns of consumers during this unprecedented time and reveal trends that may characterize the structure of the future wine demand.

Research on Inheritance of Intangible Cultural Heritage between Professional and Non-Professional Groups: A Case Study of China’s Kunqu Opera

Non-professional groups, consisting of members gathering together out of the same hobby, have long been deemed as auxiliary power in the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). Being widely considered as less important than professional groups, non-professional ones seem to mostly function like governments, IGOs, NGOs, among other things, to indirectly help professionals inherit ICH almost by practicing this heritage as a way of dissemination to build a better social environment friendly towards ICH to live well. However, their role in the direct and faithful inheritance of ICH can be underestimated, or even ignored. In this paper, China’s Kunqu Opera is taken as an example, one professional group (Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe) and one non-professional group (Shanghai Kunqu Study Society) are chosen to do some comparative analyses in pronunciation, melody, literary form of lyrics, and performing scenes of this art. It is concluded that even though not living off this art, non-professional groups could inherit some traditional factors of Kunqu Opera to a larger degree than professional ones, especially in pronunciation and melody. And one major reason can be summarized that non-professional groups, who cherish the art’s tradition heavily, don’t need to cater to the mass-market and most modern audience, who are highly influenced by modernization and globalization so that they can preserve these traditional factors carefully by studying, practicing as well as imparting them to other amateurs seriously. Thus, paying more attention to their role in the inheritance of ICH is not only sensible but also essential.