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Mediated Shame
of Class and Poverty
Across Europe
Edited by
Irena Reifová · Martin Hájek
Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty
Across Europe
“As the wealth gap increases to grotesque proportions and more and more people
plunge into economic desperation around the world, this timely collection rightly
returns the spotlight to class relations in Europe three decades after the end of
socialism had dimmed it. It offers an eye-opening tour of how shame has been
mobilized in a range of European media to stigmatize the poor and legitimize the
very world order that runs on creating poverty.”
—Aniko Imre, Professor of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern
California, USA
“Poverty is first and foremost about being deprived of essential material resources.
But it is also cultural: about being excluded from many of society’s demands and
being blamed for your own impoverishment. The media play a major part in con-
structing the demonology and in popularising the imagery of blaming the victim
that exacerbate poverty, and this book gathers chilling evidence of the various
forms this takes in differing European countries. An essential and troubling read.”
—Peter Golding, Northumbria University, UK
Irena Reifová • Martin Hájek
Editors
Mediated Shame
of Class and Poverty
Across Europe
Editors
Irena Reifová Martin Hájek
Faculty of Social Sciences Faculty of Social Sciences
Department of Media Studies Department of Sociology
Institute of Communication Studies Institute of Sociological Studies
and Journalism Charles University
Charles University Prague, Czech Republic
Prague, Czech Republic
ISBN 978-3-030-73542-5 ISBN 978-3-030-73543-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73543-2
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Acknowledgements
This edited volume could not materialise without energy, helpfulness and
brainpower of many colleagues and friends.
Editors wish to thank all their colleagues in the project ‘Poverty as Media
Spectacle: Shaming Low-Income People on Reality Television and Internet’
(GACR ̌ 17-02521S) for their indefatigable engagement. Thanks go to
Markéta Broumová, Jakub Machek and Radim Hladík, as well as to the inter-
national collaborators Sabina Mihelj, Anja Hirdman and Alexander Dhoest.
Editors are further grateful to the colleagues Karel C ̌ ada, Ondř e j
Špač e k, Jiř í Šafr and Dan Prokop for helping to refine the arguments
in fruitful discussions. Students in Media Studies and Sociology at
Faculty of Social Sciences—Veronika Šlejharová, Zuzana Karasč á ková,
Kristýna Jiroutová, Dan Frantál and Kateř i na Simbartlová—were of
great help in collecting the research data and Aidan Akira Moos pro-
vided invaluable help with the language and style. They all deserve
our thanks.
We are thankful to the Czech Science Foundation GAČR without
whose support this project would not be possible. In Palgrave we
would like to thank Malla Sanghera-Warren for her encouragement at
the MeCCSA conference in Sterling, Milly Davies for guiding us
through the next steps and Liam McLean and Jack Heeney for their
technical support.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Irena wishes to thank her best friend Alena for being the best best
friend ever, always and under any circumstances. She is also thankful to her
friends Markéta, Tereza, Veronika, Tereza, Lenka, Zuzana and Kamila for
their warmth and support, and to her cat Molly Hooper for being a jolly,
fluffy companion.
Prague, 16 November 2020

About the Book
The key concepts of the book are media, class, poverty and shaming. The
contributors to this book examine how certain social relations and their
cultural meanings in the media, namely class and poverty, are transformed
into factual or moral attributes of people and situations. Class and poverty
are not understood as certain things and actions, or concepts and num-
bers; both class and poverty are assumed to be, above all, particular social
relationships or a set of relations between people, things and symbols.
Without denying that contempt for the destitute Other is an affect
found throughout history and in various socioeconomic contexts, the
chapters in this book—through their concern with the mediated gaze on
class—narrate predominantly the challenges brought about by the media’s
spectacular take on poverty and low status as they (at least) coincide with
the neoliberal era.
This volume will be of essential reading for the scholars specialising in
the study of media and social inequalities from the vantage points of Media
Studies, Sociology, Anthropology or European Studies.
vii
Contents
1 Perspectives on Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty in

European Contexts 1
Irena Reifová and Martin Hájek
2 ‘Benefits Scroungers’ and Stigma: Exploring the

Abject-Grotesque in British Poverty Porn Programming 19
Louise Cope
3 Neural Attunement to Others: Shame, Social Status, and

Rewarded Viewing in Reality Television in Sweden 41
Anja Hirdman
4 Shame, (Dis)empowerment and Resistance in Diasporic

Media: Romanian Transnational Migrants’
Reclassification Struggles 61
Irina Diana Mădroane
5 Mediating Class in a Classless Society? Media and Social

Inequalities in Socialist Eastern Europe 85
Sabina Mihelj
6 Invisibility or Inevitability: Performing Poverty in Czech

Reality Television105
Martin Hájek and Daniel Frantál
ix
x Contents
7 Shaming Working-Class People on Reality Television:

Perspectives from Swedish Television Production125
Peter Jakobsson and Fredrik Stiernstedt
8 Disparaging ‘the Assisted’: Shaming and Blaming Social

Welfare Recipients in Romania and Hungary143
Hanna Orsolya Vincze, Andreea Alina Mogoș, and
Radu Mihai Meza
9 Othering Without Blaming: Representing Poverty in

Flemish Factual Entertainment163
Alexander Dhoest, Marleen te Walvaart, and Koen Panis
10 Inter- and Intranational Mediated Shaming to Justify

Austerity Measures: The Case of the ‘Greek Crisis’183
Yiannis Mylonas
11 Social Distances Through Scopic Practices: How Czech

Reality Television Audiences Negotiate Social Inequalities201
Irena Reifová
12 Everybody Is a Fool: Rural Life, Social Order and

Carnivalesque Marginalisation in a Hungarian Television
Series223
Balázs Varga
Index243
Notes on Contributors
Louise Cope is a post-doctoral researcher and associate lecturer at

Sheffield Hallam University. Her primary research interest is investigating
how performances and portrayals of social class are symbolically linked to
expressions of disgust and stigma, and the implications of this on social
inequalities. In particular, there is a focus on how social class and gender
are enacted in reality television, documentary and social media, as well as
a consideration of how neoliberal ideology is reinforced in these textual
spheres. Her doctoral research employs an original abject-grotesque
framework to analyse contemporary configurations of the British under-
class—‘benefits scroungers’—in poverty porn programming. Other recent
work includes a chapter exploring performance and authenticity of the self
within a crossover of reality television environments, published in the
edited collection Exploring Television Acting (2018).
Alexander Dhoest is Professor of Communication Studies at the
University of Antwerp (Belgium) and Chair of the Media, Policy and
Culture research group. His research focuses on the multiple connections
between media, in particular television, and issues of social identity, includ-
ing national, sexual and ethnic identity, combining research on media pro-
duction, representation and reception. He has published widely on these
issues in edited books and journals such as European Journal of Cultural
Studies and Critical Studies in Television.
Daniel Frantál is a Master’s student of Sociology at the Institute of
Sociological Studies, Charles University, Prague. He is doing research on
freetekno practices of authenticity.
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Martin Hájek is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Institute of

Sociological Studies, Charles University, Prague. His main research inter-
ests are normative orders of society, symbolic interactionism, discourse
and narrative analysis. He is the author of a monograph on various types
of textual analysis in social sciences and his works have been published
widely in peer-reviewed journals. (orcid.org/0000-0001-9213-6404)
Anja Hirdman is Professor of Media and Communication at the
Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University. Her research inter-
est addresses the relationship between mind, body and media engagement
in screen and digital cultures as well as questions of representation, affect
and visuality. She has published in a variety of journals such as European
Journal of Cultural Studies, MediaKultur, Journal of Media and
Communication and Celebrity Studies. Her latest book is Emotional
Spaces (2018). Her most recent work concerns digital sociality, group
dynamics and affective contagion on social media sites.
Peter Jakobsson is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication
Studies at Uppsala University. His recent publications include a study of
the Swedish field of television production, published in the journal Poetics,
and a study of the formation of the Swedish field of Media and communi-
cations research, published in the Nordic Journal of Media Studies. He
is also the co-editor of a special issue on Class and/in the Media, in
Nordicom Review.
Irina Diana Mădroane is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and
Cultural Studies and a member of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender
Studies at the West University of Timișoara (Romania). She holds a PhD
in Philology (West University of Timișoara) and a MA in Sociology
(Lancaster University). Her main specialisations are critical discourse anal-
ysis and the study of media discourse, and she has done extensive research
on the construction of migrant identities and migration as a public prob-
lem. She is the author of Romanians in the Right-Wing British Press: A
Critical Discourse Analysis Approach (2014) and of numerous studies pub-
lished in peer-reviewed, national and international journals and volumes.
She has co-edited a special issue on ‘Discourse in Transnational Social
Fields’ in Critical Discourse Studies (2017) and a volume, Debating
Migration as a Public Problem: National Publics and Transnational Fields
(2018), together with C. Beciu, M. Ciocea and A.I. Cârlan.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii
Radu Mihai Meza is Associate Professor of Digital Media and Journalism

at Babeș–Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. With a background in both
journalism and computer science, he holds a PhD in Sociology from
Babeș-Bolyai University with a thesis on the structure and dynamics of
popular social networking systems. His research focuses on digital media
and online popular culture, media and information literacy, computational
methods, digital social science and machine learning applications in the
study of computer mediated communication. In 2018–2020, he was grant
director of a national research project ‘Analyzing Dangerous Speech, Hate
Speech and Offensive Speech in Romanian and Hungarian Public
Facebook Contexts Using Computational Sociology Approaches’ and
senior researcher in another national research project ‘The Domestication
of Foreign News in East-Central Europe’.
Sabina Mihelj is Professor of Media and Cultural Analysis at Loughborough
University. She is the author of Media Nations: Communicating Belonging
and Exclusion in the Modern World (2011), Central and Eastern European
Media in Comparative Perspective: Politics, Economy, Culture (2012, with
J. Downey) and From Media Systems to Media Cultures: Understanding State
Socialist Television (2018, with S. Huxtable). She published widely on mass
communication and cultural identity, comparative media research and Cold
War media and culture. Her most recent project, conducted with Václav
Štětka, examines the role of the media in the rise of illiberalism in Central and
Eastern Europe (ESRC, 2019–2021).
Andreea Alina Mogoş is Associate Professor of Journalism and Digital
Media at Babeș–Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. She holds a PhD in
Sociology from Babeș-Bolyai University and a PhD in Information and
Communication Sciences from Université Paris 8—Vincennes Saint-Denis
with a thesis on the media representations of the Romanians in the French
daily newspapers. She obtained her Habilitation in 2016, with the thesis
“Traditional and new media representations”. Her research focuses on
media representations and frames, visual analysis methodologies, media
genres and their transformation.
Yiannis Mylonas is Associate Professor of Media Sociology and Cultural
Studies at the School of Media of the National Research University Higher
School of Economics in Moscow. He has published peer-reviewed articles
and book chapters on issues related to discourse and frame analysis of news
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
media representations of war and economic crisis, emphasising media con-

structions of ‘otherness’. He has also published studies on historical mem-
ory and social media, the political economy of copyrights, civic cultures
and political subjectivity, among others. He is the author of The ‘Greek
Crisis’ in Europe: Race, Class and Politics (2019).
Koen Panis is Guest Professor of Communication Studies at the
University of Antwerp and Lecturer in Media and Communication at the
Thomas More University of Applied Sciences (Belgium). His research
focuses on media and popular culture, with particular interest in celebrity
studies and television studies, focusing on representation as well as audi-
ence reception.
Irena Reifová is an assistant professor at the Department of Media
Studies, Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, Faculty of
Social Sciences, Charles University.
Her research and teaching interests are in cultural studies, theory of
popular culture, television studies and post-socialist mediated memory.
She has previously published in the European Journal of Communication
and other international peer-reviewed journals as well in books by
Routledge, Manchester University Press, I.B. Tauris and others. Since
2016 she has been working as ECREA General Secretary.
Fredrik Stiernstedt is Associate Professor of Media and Communication
Studies at Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. His areas of research
concern media and social class, media work and labour, the political econ-
omy of the media and questions of media trust. His recent publications are
in journals such as New Media & Society, Media, Culture and Society,
European Journal of Communication and Poetics.
Marleen te Walvaart holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the University
of Antwerp. This research focuses on television production processes and
the engagement of audiences in a digitising media context from the
perspectives of producers. She now works as a policy and strategic advisor
at the Dutch public service media organisation NPO.
Balázs Varga is Associate Professor of Film Studies at ELTE, Eötvös
Loránd University, Budapest. He writes and lectures on modern and con-
temporary Hungarian cinema, contemporary European cinema, produc-
tion studies, popular cinemas and documentaries. He is the founding
editor of Metropolis, a scholarly journal on film theory and history based in
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv
Budapest. His recent research project examined the post-communist tran-

sition of the Hungarian film industry. His current project focuses on pop-
ular Hungarian screen cultures during and after the decades of socialism.
He has published several articles and essays in English, Italian, Polish,
Czech and Hungarian books and journals. His recent book in Hungarian
Filmrendszerváltások. A magyar játékfilm intézményeinek átalakulása
1990–2010 [Film Regime Changes. Transformations in Hungarian Film
Industry 1990–2010] is brought out by L’Harmattan Publishers,
Budapest.
Hanna Orsolya Vincze is Associate Professor of Communications at
Babeș–Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. She holds a PhD in History from
Central European University, Budapest, and was a recipient of the
Chevening scholarship at the University of Oxford. Her research interests
focus on the uses of sociopolitical concepts and languages, and she has
pursued these interests on both historic and contemporary discourses,
including news media and social media. In 2018–2020 she was the princi-
pal investigator of a research project ‘The Domestication of Foreign News
in East-Central Europe’ and senior researcher in a national research proj-
ect ‘Analyzing Dangerous Speech, Hate Speech and Offensive Speech in
Romanian and Hungarian Public Facebook Contexts Using Computational
Sociology Approaches’.
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Julie undergoes biliary drainage procedure 33

Fig. 3.1 The emotional climax in Lyxfällan48
Fig. 6.1 Zlatá mládež members (the left half) participate in the ghetto’s
work activities, carrying metal waste to sell at a waste collection
point. They all have fun but in different contexts: The poor
youth have fun seeing white, rich fellows enjoying their work;
the rich youth enjoy it because they can perform low-status
work even with humour. (ČT)112
Fig. 6.2 Participants of Mise nový domov in their newly reconstructed
living room. The woman is the host of the show. The expected
interpretation of the scene from a dominant hegemonic
position is a dream come true—with such a home they are not
poor anymore. (TV Nova) 116
Fig. 8.1 Co-occurrence network for the comments in Hungarian
(Nhu2 = 3050)148
Fig. 8.2 Co-occurrence network for the comments in Romanian
(Nro2 = 2253)149
Fig. 8.3 PSD voters on their way to the support rally. (Recorder.ro) 152
Fig. 9.1 A respectful portrayal of Leona in Een kwestie van geluk.
(VRT/Panenka)171
Fig. 11.1 The family with two kids living in a residential hotel in S7E10
of Výměna manželek. (TV Nova) 209
xvii
List of Tables
Table 6.1 The sample of Reality Television programmes analysed in this

study110
Table 7.1 The relations between the three main concepts: habitus,
mental schemas and genre interpretations 130
Table 9.1 Underlying explanatory models of poverty (Vranken, 2009) 165
Table 11.1 Overview of respondents and their sociodemographic
characteristics208
xix
CHAPTER 1
Perspectives on Mediated Shame of Class

and Poverty in European Contexts
Irena Reifová and Martin Hájek
Intersections of the Study of Class and Media

The constitution of the communication media industry, as one of the
quintessential projects of modernity, was driven by class rationality since
its beginning in the eighteenth century. As with the entire modernisation
process, the rise of modern media was both powered by and empowering
of the new bourgeois class. The periodical presses, novel channels of
communication spreading since the early eighteenth century, were
I. Reifová
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Media Studies,
Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, Charles University,
e-mail: irena.reifova@fsv.cuni.cz
M. Hájek
Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology,
Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University,
e-mail: martin.hajek@fsv.cuni.cz
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
I. Reifová, M. Hájek (eds.), Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty
Across Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73543-2_1
2 I. REIFOVÁ AND M. HÁJEK
originally linked by their ownership to the rising bourgeoisie. Gradually,

these commercial capitalist enterprises were transformed into political tri-
bunes, resulting in the constitution of a bourgeois public sphere
(Habermas, 1989 [1964]). Modern media and the new capitalist class
were thus interlocked in economic as well as ideological terms, the peri-
odical press being the means of production as well as an arena for the
political emancipation of the bourgeoisie.
The economic and ideological articulation of the modern media with
the bourgeoisie inspired the critical theory of media to conceive of the capi-
talist ruling class as an invisible force controlling media while remaining
hidden in the background to the media spectacle. It is due to this assump-
tion of invisibility, opacity and concealment that the critical theory of media
has set out to unmask or demystify the commercial and/or ideological
interests of those who have the media on their puppet strings (Kellner,
1995). Throughout the twentieth century, the critical tradition in the study
of media has been capturing class as a robust, but nevertheless unseen
Leviathan shaping media operations and representations from behind—but
little attention has been paid to its own representation of the classes. Class
has been positioned predominantly as something beyond the media, rather
than explicitly as its content, and the object of mediated representations.
Two archetypal forms of critical theory—classical Marxism and the
Frankfurt School—were followed by two successive modes of the critical
theory of media—the political economy of communication and cultural
studies—in the second half of the twentieth century. Both paradigms
foregrounded the dominant class as a key agent determining media, by
holding power and performing it: the political economy of communication
has been addressing control over communication resources such as media
ownership; while cultural studies has been illuminating the dissemination
of classed hegemonical meanings via symbolic representations.
Whereas the political economy of communication has avoided signifi-
cant dislocations during its history, cultural studies has been tormented by
its internal struggles (McGuigan, 1992) as well as ‘the war of the roses’
between cultural studies and political economy (Grossberg, 1995). Class
was understood to be the main structuring notion in cultural studies in the
period of Stuart Hall’s directorship of the Birmingham Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in the 1970s. In his early writings
before entering the CCCS, Hall had already brought class to the fore as
the principal category of social analysis, such as in the 1967 essay Class and
Media where he contended that in media, ‘class is a language and tactic’
1 PERSPECTIVES ON MEDIATED SHAME OF CLASS AND POVERTY… 3
(Hall, in Davis, 2004). The class-sensitive line of thought at the

Birmingham School culminated with David Morley’s The Nationwide
Audience in 1980. The following decades brought about a re-calibration
of focus in cultural studies, in which class was eclipsed in favour of the
study of identities such as gender, race or ethnicity. The expansion of audi-
ence analysis drawing on the ‘active audience thesis’ and the associated
emphasis on the empowering potential of popular culture consumption
further contributed to the diminishing radicalism of cultural studies and
opened the door to criticism from the positions of political economy
(Garnham, 1995).
Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth (2003) proposed the position of ‘per-
spectival dualism’ to reconcile the two feuding analytical traditions.
According to Fraser, the perspective of economism puts forward
redistribution and sees the lack of recognition as its repercussion, whereas
the cultural approach focusing on identities finds denial of recognition to
be the cause and unfair economic redistribution its consequence. She sees
them as ‘co-original’ rationalities behind the emergence of categorial
inequalities. Nevertheless, the complementarity of redistribution and
recognition approaches becomes apparent only from the holistic
perspective. Class analysis as such was practically phased out of cultural
studies.
The loss of the class perspective in cultural studies was followed (albeit
for different reasons) by a more general retreat from class analysis across
the entire field of Western social sciences since the 1990s. The growth and
global diffusion of the consumer society, advancing mantras of choice and
customisation motivated social sciences to turn to theories of individuation
elaborated, for example, by Anthony Giddens or Ulrich Beck (Deery &
Press, 2017). The power of structures, such as class, to impose limits on
autonomous individuals who were considered to manage their lives
through sets of choices in the free market, seemed to have waned.
In the early 2000s, class made a comeback in cultural and media stud-
ies. However, class is captured differently: deciphering the tacit, ultimately
determining power of the ruling class behind economic and symbolic
operations is not the ultimate research objective. Rather, numerous
scholars discerned media as a source of naturalistic depictions and vivid
visualisations of classed lifestyles and delved into mapping them (Deery &
Press, 2017). Scholarly interest in representations of the working class,
now understood to be strikingly visible and depicted with pornographic,
voyeuristic particulars, was triggered by various genres of factual television,
predominantly Reality Television programmes. This line of analysis

pointed out the conjunction between the growing popularity of Reality
Television and the upswing of the neoliberal era between the 1970s and
1990s (Andrejevic, 2004). Reality Television was assessed as a genre
putting forward values such as permanent self-actualisation, personal
growth and individual responsibility for one’s well-being (with shaming
and stigmatisation of those who do not stand up to these requirements
included). In this line of thought, Reality Television participants are being
invited to become entrepreneurs of the Self and self-managers investing in
their own improvement (McCarthy, 2007; Lyle, 2008; Ouellette & Hay,
2008). In this analytical approach, Reality Television establishes a nexus
between the working-class position of its participants and their visually
manufactured repulsiveness—a package which is consequently served to
television audiences to become an object of their predatory gaze,
denigration and scorn. Disdain for putatively revolting working-class
subjects is deemed to be powered by the neoliberal ideology of individual
efficiency, self-reliance and glossy style.
Though Reality Television caught the most attention, other platforms
where class is demonstrated with emphasis on its outward presentation
came into academic focus too, for example, documentary movies (Corner,
2017), sitcoms (Butsch, 2017; Jontes & Trdina, 2018), newspapers
(Madianou, 2011) or online content (Hess & Waller, 2014).
Once the milestones of how class resonated in media and cultural stud-
ies (and its precursory traditions) in the last century and after 2000 are
traced, we can see the shift from voice to gaze as one of the patterns bor-
dering this path. In the heyday of critical theory and its latter applications,
class was scrutinised as the mighty structure, endowed with the potential
to determine media (or at least exert limits), but staying undercover. In
this perspective, class is present as symptoms or signs of its dominance/
subordination. Societies’ class structure is manifested in media through
the phenomenon of voice—it is reflected in who gets a voice, who gets
control over the narrative and the opportunity to speak out. Recent devel-
opments in class-sensitive media scholarship contributed to the repertoire
of critical theory with an emphasis on class as an object of gaze. The shift
from ‘class-as-voice’ to ‘class-as-gaze’ simultaneously contributes to
depoliticisation of class. Whereas ‘class-as-voice’ was entrenched in the
concept of representation and political struggle, ‘class-as-gaze’ translates
class into the lifestyle surface which can be arbitrarily amended by proper
consumer choices. Such take on class also leads to individualisation of class

status as it overlooks rigid structural conditions whose mitigation is
beyond any individual agency and conceives one’s class as subject to indi-
vidual management.
This edited collection is therefore inspired by the academic interest in
class, and namely working-class signifiers as played out in media and
cultural studies and sociology in the most recent two decades. Without
denying that contempt for the destitute Other is an affect found throughout
history and in various socioeconomic contexts, the chapters in this book—
through their concern with the mediated gaze on class—narrate
predominantly how the challenges brought about by the media’s
spectacular take on poverty and low status as they (at least) coincide with
the neoliberal era.
A Socio-Cultural Approach to Class and Poverty

In the media—and in political discourse and elsewhere too—class and
poverty are often represented as things or behavioural patterns: as
particular bodies and habits of working; middle, or upper-class people; as
ghettoes of indigent poverty; little joys and miseries of daily routine; or
the astonishing luxury lifestyles of celebrities. Thus, media consumers can
see class and poverty as entities, made of and with people, things and
deeds. Policy makers have developed a different perspective, in which they
identify poverty and class rather with concepts and numbers, for example
with a certain level of family income or a professional position. In this
book, however, we do not understand class and poverty as certain things
and actions, or concepts and numbers; we assume that both class and
poverty are above all particular social relationships or a set of relations
between people, things and symbols. Concerning social class, the idea that
it is a form of social relationship is widely accepted; what is controversial is
the question of whether this relationship is antagonistic (K. Marx) or has
the form of a status hierarchy (M. Weber) or is a result of functional
differentiation (E. Durkheim) (Wright, 2005). Most probably, the correct
answer depends on concrete socioeconomic and political conditions.
Considering poverty, however, it is not common to understand it as being
a social relation between people (cf. Putnam, 2020). In the book, we
adhere to such a relationist approach, as we embrace the fundamental
thesis about the social nature of poverty by Marshall Sahlins:
The world’s most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not
poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation
between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty
is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilisation. (Sahlins, 1972,
p. 37; emphasis in original)
In European history, poverty was invented several times, always when a

necessity to cope with unequal distribution of surplus emerged, when not
all members of society could equally benefit from economic growth: in
antiquity (Atkins & Osborne, 2006), in the middle ages (Farmer, 2015)
and particularly, in modern times (De Swaan, 1988; Geremek, 1994). In
modernity, poverty as a social relationship is enacted through the regulation
of social participation, often, but not only, as exclusion. It does not mean
that a lack of material resources has nothing to do with poverty, but it is
not what constitutes poverty. Consider the common opinion that some
‘poor people’ receive too much financial help from the state; that they, in
fact, are richer than people who are not ‘poor’; or the argument that some
elderly people have pensions that are too low to sustain their nonpoor
status. Therefore, poverty is grounded in the position that people labelled
as ‘poor people’ occupy in society. Such a position may prevent them from
participating in social life and in making decisions about it (Sen, 1999).
Poverty conceived as a relationship reflects the boundaries of groups and
countries: ‘Being relatively poor in a rich country can be a great capability
handicap, even when one’s absolute income is high in terms of world
standards’ (Sen, 1999, p. 89). Approaching poverty in this way enables us
to understand why people with low resources are labelled either as people
in need or as dangerous people, or even as not poor at all, depending on
the circumstances. They are needy or ‘deserving’ if they accept poverty as
their social status and display the corresponding attributes; they are
dangerous or ‘undeserving’ when they contest their social status or violate
expectations about their behaviour; they are not poor when they are not
recognised as such in society.
But poverty, like wealth, does not manifest itself only as a social rela-
tionship; it is also a cultural symbol that is communicatively exchanged
and used as a means of cultural appropriation, distinction or abjection.
Signs of poverty, meaning signs connoting social exclusion, are a subject
of cultural exchange in the reality of everyday life, and also in the political
field. Since poverty carries social stigma, the purposeful association or
dissociation of ethnicity, physical proportions, religious practices or

professions with poverty in the public discourse leads to social exclusion of
the bearers of these attributes. Therefore, someone’s poverty may well be
a result of strategic communication stigmatising, for example, rural
communities, people who are overweight or an ethnic minority practising
a non-conformist lifestyle (typically immigrants). And, conversely, a denial
to publicly recognise signs of poverty can lead to the invisibility of material,
social and psychological suffering of affected individuals or groups. Last,
but not least, to maintain their social status and corresponding relationships,
most people who are afraid of being labelled ‘poor’ and then stigmatised
do their best to not communicate any signs of poverty. All these cultural
tactics of dealing with poverty provide the media with an opportunity to
be involved in the game, and selectively discover and display, dissimulate
or improve the poverty status of certain people or social groups.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, not only poverty but
also class status became a cultural symbol, meaning a subject of various
interpretations, and these interpretations were used to justify policies of
social solidarity or othering. Arguably, cultural meanings were most
strongly associated—and still are associated—with the working class and
the middle class. The working class was considered a privileged bearer of
progress among left-wing intellectuals and in state socialist countries,
where this interpretation was directly inscribed into constitutional law. In
the liberal democracies, on the other hand, the middle class was cherished
as both the socially stabilising element and an engine of economic
development. At the same time, the working class in capitalist societies was
often hegemonically coded as a cultural other, abject, absent from culture;
the middle class, in turn, was heterodoxically interpreted as a false culture,
an art of hypocrisy and the opposite of authenticity (Bourdieu, 1979).
Some interpretations of class and poverty as cultural exclusion were
eventually adopted by institutions and fixed as valid representations of
reality (Boltanski, 2009).
The contributors to this book examine how certain social relations and
their cultural meanings in the media, namely class and poverty, are
transformed into factual or moral attributes of people and situations. They
attempt to determine how class relations and poverty in the media are
interpreted and normatively reified, as signifiers and as commodities (cf.
Westerman, 2019, p. 294). Generally, three strategies of reification have
been identified in this book:
1. through repeated, emotionally intense performances of shaming

and humiliation of individuals for their ‘problematic’ behaviour; this
strategy may result in a neurologically fixed, stereotyped perception
of certain social groups;
2. by systematic othering of certain groups or categories of people in
factual entertainment programmes; and
3. by caricaturing certain social types as socio-cultural abjects.
Besides these ways of transforming social relationships into factual attri-

butes of people, purposeful distancing or resistance against them was also
identified in the media. Firstly, some media professionals are aware of the
reification process and seek ways to justify their role in the production of
such cultural meanings. Secondly, stigmatised groups attempt to subvert
or resist dominant interpretations via alternative media. Thirdly, even in
the mainstream media, the skilful cultural play of meanings attached to the
working and the middle classes can effectively circumvent the dominant
ideological hierarchy of class.
Shame and Shaming

The social relations within the social hierarchy are interwoven with emo-
tional investments. As corroborated by Sara Ahmed (2004), emotions
have substantial bearings on social configuration—and vice versa, social
relations have their emotional echo. Social differences and moral
evaluations of those considered to be lower than us often implicate multi-
faceted and intricate emotions of shame.
Shame appears to be fuzzy and intangible as it may be hosted by differ-
ent subjects and acquire different orientations. On one hand, shame is our
inward emotional state—it is a deeply private emotional reaction to the
experience of our own inadequacy and lack of self-recognition (Lynd,
1958). When we are caught improperly dressed during a videoconference
or tell the same joke twice, we experience a kind of internal shame—
embarrassment. Our individual predisposition to feel shame is an intriguing
question for psychoanalytical theory too. It connects shame with formative
experiences of an infant’s powerlessness and incapacity to attend to her
own needs in early childhood (Nussbaum, 2009). On the other hand,
shame is predicated on our awareness of, and respect for the society in
which we live. We assess something as inadequate if it deviates from the
norms, requirements or ideals cherished by the society surrounding us. In
some cases, the condemning gaze of the others is something we only

surmise, without really being shamed by actual persons external to us. The
silent shame inside of us reflects our internal notion of what people would
say if they only knew. On other occasions, we do not have to use our
imagination, as the others externalise shame and target it at us explicitly,
loudly or even publicly. To put it briefly, shame may be what we feel about
ourselves, as well as what the others do to us.
In both instances the dynamics of shame involve the eye of the other,
whether that other is imaginary or real. Shame, being entrenched in
elementary concern for people surrounding us, is therefore intrinsically a
social emotion; Thomas Scheff even coins it the ‘premier social emotion’
(2000, p. 84). The social nature of shame is embedded in its interconnection
with visibility—visibility being a quality determined by sociality too, as the
state of being visible is validated only by the presence of those who have
the capacity to see. Scholars (Erikson, 1950; Loader, 1998) have pointed
out that shame occurs in the moments of undesired exposure, when
something, that was meant to stay under cover, is revealed. This line of
thought originates in Norbert Elias’s (1978) interpretation of the civilising
process as an accretion of etiquette and manners (learned codes of
behaviour blocking the visibility of undesired properties), which has gone
hand in hand with the growth of shame since the eighteenth century.
Etiquette—together with shame as its main engine—has replaced physical
punishment and become the pivotal means of socialisation and power.
The research on mediated shame draws predominantly on two major
traditions, which correspond to the two facets of shame, as described
above. Psychologically grounded affect theory is beneficial if shame is
conceived as an inward emotional state resulting from specific structures
in our brains, while the sociological paradigm of symbolic interactionism
is instrumental in understanding how shame is constituted in communicative
social relations. To affect theory (Probyn, 2005; Tomkins, 1962), shame
(as one of the nine affects) is produced by the neurological cerebral
infrastructure; it is inseparably tied to the body, which is wired to generate
shame. The theoretical toolkit of symbolic interactionism contributes to
the analysis of shame with the notion of reciprocity of perspectives (Mead,
2009 [1934]), when our selves are shaped by looking at oneself from the
perspective of the others. Therefore, affect theory puts emphasis on our
innate capacity to be shamed, as shame is part of human biology underlying
all affects in general; while the sociological perspective draws attention to
social interactions in which shame is instigated by the perspective of

the other.
Both theoretical traditions are represented in the chapters collected in
this volume. All of them are, however, concerned with the specific form of
shame that society addresses to its socioeconomically weak members.
Fierce disregard for, or even loathing of, the poor has thousands of years
of history, with instances such as the contempt for beggars in ancient
Rome or attributing poverty to the incompetence of individuals in
Confucian China (Walker & Bantebya-Kyomuhendo, 2014). This edited
book strives to unpack the most recent articulations between the
stigmatisation of poverty and the current form of capitalism, neoliberal
capitalism. Without claiming that neoliberal disdain for economically
lagging populations is something unique or unseen, the chapters in this
book map out various cultural embodiments of neoliberalism across
Europe, and diversity in the forms of class-based shaming related to them.
The European Perspective of Class and Poverty

as Objects of Shame
The chapters of the book follow the imaginary geographical diagonal of

Europe, from its northwestern part to the southeastern edge. From a
global perspective, Europe is often seen as one whole; not only because of
the existence of the European Union but also because of its common
historical and cultural heritage, built on long religious and secular-
humanistic traditions. In this sense, the attitudes and practices analysed in
this book are based on shared—often silent—assumptions about what
poverty and class, shame and humiliation are. Besides learning European
history, geography, literature and arts in school, one of the strongest pillars
of common intersubjectivity is the media. When the Greek welfare system
is mockingly criticised in the Danish and German press, this criticism is
understandable across all Europe, although obviously, not everyone would
agree or find it funny. This is not to say that the rest of the world’s societies
are incomprehensible to the people of Europe in terms of social classes and
poverty, or vice versa. Certainly not, but we assume the validity of similar
basic patterns of understanding social boundaries and distances
within Europe.
The fact that we assume an elementary consensus in the social under-
standing of social class, poverty and shame in Europe does not mean that
it expresses itself identically everywhere. Like two people speaking the

same language—they may not always understand each other. In the book,
we wanted to show that within Europe, shaming based on class and
poverty is very diverse and often linked to the local institutional, political
and cultural context. While the level of poverty and social inequality differs
significantly between the countries analysed in the book,1 as their class
structure does too, these differences do not appear to be the most
important. What seems to make a crucial difference is the embeddedness
of shame related to class and poverty in the social, cultural and political
contexts. In other words, for what purpose are poor and working-class
people observed, mocked, shamed or humiliated in the media? It can be a
part of a transnational political and economic struggle, political struggle
within a country, justification of a particular state-driven social policy, the
reproduction of social stratification or ethnic composition, or commercial
profit-making for popular entertainment. We did not find any linear
geographical gradient or differences across Europe. The often-cited axes
of East and West, or North and South, are not traceable in the studies
contained in the volume. The differences are rather idiosyncratic,
dependent on the particular configuration of the institutional settings,
collective representations and the actual social and political agenda.
In the last few decades, most scholars have approached poverty in
Europe in terms of the ‘relative poverty paradigm’ (Gaisbauer & Schweiger,
2019, p. 3), principally as an issue of social inequality. Absolute poverty
was considered to be rare in Europe and usually understood as symptomatic
for other, more severe pathologies, for example, drug addiction, mental
health issues or ethnic discrimination. On the other hand, the retreat of
the welfare state, the rise of third-country workforce exploitation and
rising housing prices are leading to an expansion of the circle of people
who are physically suffering from a lack of resources; and the vast majority
of this expanding group are members of the lower classes.
At the same time, ‘the decline of industry and the growth of the service
and retail sectors, the continuing rise in jobs in management and
intermediate occupations, as well as mass unemployment, have substantially
blurred the boundaries between social classes’ (Hugrée et al., 2020, p. 3).
If there is any articulation of antagonistic social differences, then it is the
dichotomy of people and elites (oligarchs, super-rich, global corporations).
The fact that many social inequalities are considered temporary, linked to
a specific biographical situation, also contributes to the silencing of social
conflict. For example, evident social inequality between a baby-sitter
working without a contract in a higher-class family and the members of

that family may not always be clear-cut. The European baby-sitter can be
a university student who aspires to become a member of the social elite
after finishing their studies, or it can be an immigrant, who is starting out
in a new country and wants to earn money to start their own business, or
it can be a middle-aged, middle-class woman who took the job while
recovering from a serious illness and lives in the neighbourhood. In all
cases, the baby-sitter takes this work to be temporary and does not derive
from it the social status that such a position implies, but rather the social
status with which they would identify. A bricklayer or nurse who identifies
themselves with their profession, often proudly, is in a different situation.
They take their job as a matter of prestige, and they go unemployed rather
than accepting an unfavourable employment contract. Temporary jobs
like baby-sitting or copy-editing in the media are numerous and create a
precariat that is not traditionally understood as a fully fledged social class
(Standing, 2011).
In Europe, poverty and class as a social status and as cultural symbols
do not follow any simple logic. As Hugrée et al. (2020) argue, they have
got substantially blurred contours. But the purpose of this book is not to
make the issue clearer after examining disrespectable representations of
poverty and class in various European media. We are not aiming for an
exploration of authenticity or the reality of class and poverty in media (cf.
Wood & Skeggs, 2011). Our intention is to examine how and in what
contexts in Europe, poverty and class are symbolically created and used in
the media to shame, humiliate or stigmatise particular groups of people.
We do not understand the media as a mirror in which society is more or
less distorted, but as a social actor with particular interests and intentions.
The media can (co-)create a social imaginary of poverty and class to
entertain or at least attract their consumers by making them—that is,
poverty and social class—an object of humiliation, shame, laughter or, at
least, staring.
Chapter Overview
Poverty and class deprivation are not outlying problems haunting under-
developed populations, geographically remote from Euro-Atlantic civilisa-
tion. In 2019, living at risk of poverty or social exclusion was daily bread
for 21.7 per cent of the EU population, that is some 92 million people
(EUROSTAT, 2020).2 Across Europe, national language communities
have developed verbal labels which are widely used to stigmatise people
who are not capable of adapting to a ‘normal’ and ‘decent’ lifestyle deriv-
ing from the generalised middle-class values and aesthetics. In English,
they are dubbed ‘white trash’ or ‘chavs’; the Czechs call them ‘socky’; the
Dutch language has the word ‘tokkies’, the Greek has ‘pleba’, the
Hungarian ‘proli’, the Swedish ‘slödder’, the Romanian ‘cocalari’. The
native languages of almost all countries which are represented in this
edited collection have a specific vocabulary used to sully fellow citizens
living on the social and economic periphery.
The chapters in this book are the exact opposite to these humiliating
and sweeping verbal labels. They carefully narrate social, political and
cultural contexts in which Europe’s poor are being degraded and dismantle
how they are being negatively labelled through shaming practices.
Louise Cope in ‘“Benefits Scroungers” and Stigma: Exploring the
Abject-Grotesque in British Poverty Porn Programming’ provides an
insight into class-based shaming in the UK, where Reality Television’s
consternation for the televisual signifiers of poverty gave birth to a new
type of programming, ‘poverty porn’. An analysis of Benefits and Bypasses:
Billion Pound Patients (Channel 5, 2014) and Benefits Britain: Life on the
Dole (Channel 5, 2014–2016) explores how the abject and the grotesque
are cross-fertilised in naturalistic depictions of the Britons participating in
the shows.
The chapter ‘Neural Attunement to Others: Shame, Social Status, and
Rewarded Viewing in Reality Television in Sweden’ by Anja Hirdman
delves deeply into the theoretical framework of affect studies and social
neuroscience to analyse potential affective consequences of watching the
Swedish Reality Television programme Lyxfällan (The Luxury Trap, TV3,
2006–until present). The study argues that the programme sets specific
non-emphatic dispositions, which are built into its structure, and conducive
to the viewing positions containing devaluation, (dis)identification and
feeling good about oneself.
Irina Diana Mădroane, who authored the chapter ‘Shame, (Dis)
empowerment and Resistance in Diasporic Media: Romanian Transnational
Migrants’ Reclassification Struggles’, looks at the humiliating discourses
which position the Romanian migrant workers doing low-skilled jobs in
Italy and elsewhere as of low value. By analysing the texts written by the
migrants for the diasporic publication Emigrantul, the research shows that
the disparaged migrant subjects face their deprecation with resistance and
get involved in reclassification struggles.
Sabina Mihelj in her chapter ‘Mediating Class in a Classless Society?

Media and Social Inequalities in Socialist Eastern Europe’ highlights the
whole region of Central and Eastern Europe and demonstrates that the
working class, venerated as the leading force of socialism by official
propaganda before 1989, was an object of ridicule and downgrading even
in the television dramas produced by state socialist television of the period.
The chapter shows that the distaste for people with low status was not
entirely imported with neoliberalism to Central and Eastern Europe, but
it has its own cultural history dating back to the socialist era.
‘Invisibility or Inevitability: Performing Poverty in Czech Reality
Television’ by Martin Hájek and Daniel Frantál examines the contribution
of Reality Television programmes to the social imagination of poverty in
the Czech Republic. The main concern of the study is to understand how
poverty is made publicly distinct and recognisable in the Reality Television
programmes in the country where the words ‘poverty’ and ‘poor people’
were taboo during the forty years of the state socialist regime. The study
looks at the selected episodes of eleven different shows and scrutinises
how the changes in the capitals and risks that the participants underwent
during the programme resulted in representing poverty as either inevitable
or non-existing.
Peter Jakobsson and Fredrik Stiernstedt cast light on despising images
of the working-class participants in Swedish Reality Television programmes
by turning to media production and drawing on its definition as
interpretative labour. The chapter ‘Shaming Working-Class People on
Reality Television: Perspectives from Swedish Television Production’
employs a socio-cognitive approach to explain how evaluations of the
Reality Television genre and the social background of the television
professionals working in diverse positions within the Reality Television
production translate into the representations of the working-class people.
Hanna Orsolya Vincze, Andreea Alina Mogoș and Radu Mihai Meza
provide a multimodal account of how shaming is carried out on social
networks in their chapter ‘Disparaging “the Assisted”: Shaming and
Blaming Social Welfare Recipients in Romania and Hungary’. A
quantitative digital humanities approach is used to pinpoint the network
of co-occurrences of key expressions in the shaming posts. It is followed
by qualitative analysis of the videos which provoked heated discussions on
the welfare benefits and their recipients, namely the Roma population in
Hungary and ‘the assisted’ in Romania.
Alexander Dhoest, Marleen te Walvaart and Koen Panis in their chapter

‘Othering Without Blaming: Representing Poverty in Flemish Factual
Entertainment’ look at seven Flemish factual television programmes and
analyse interviews with the producers—to find out that Flemish television
is devoid of direct shaming of the working class. On Flemish television, it
is replaced with ‘soft’ forms of othering such as exoticisation and seeing
the poor as pitiable subjects. The study explains the relatively respectful
capturing of the lower classes by reference to the still prevailing social
democratic nature of the Belgian state and its strong social welfare system.
The chapter ‘Inter- and Intranational Mediated Shaming to Justify
Austerity Measures: The Case of the “Greek Crisis”’, written by Yiannis
Mylonas, examines layers of cultural meanings which have surrounded the
economic processes of the Greek crisis in 2009–2015. It demonstrates
that derogatory and disciplining discourses positioning Greece as profligate
and irresponsible have developed both transnationally as well as in some
mainstream Greek media. Analysis of articles published in German and
Danish print media uncovered the framing of Greece through a fusion of
middle-class morality and neoliberal ideology as an exemplary loser or
failed peer, which is a subject of condemnation rather than solidarity; on
the other hand, in the domestic media, Greeks were systematically self-
exoticised as European Others.
The chapter ‘Social Distances Through Scopic Practices: How Czech
Reality Television Audiences Negotiate Social Inequalities’ by Irena
Reifová maps out how the viewers of the Czech Reality Television pro-
gramme Výmě na manželek (Wife Swap, TV Nova, 2005–until present)
control and regulate the social distances between themselves and low-
status participants on the show. Departing from the cultural approach to
class, the chapter proposes that the viewers do not experience the
misfortune of the others as pleasure, but they rather react to images of the
wretched underclass with relief. The audiences use the programme for
extensive downward comparisons, which eases their anxiety about their
self-worth driven by neoliberal claims to impeccable self-management.
The chapter ‘Everybody Is a Fool: Rural Life, Social Order and
Carnivalesque Marginalisation in a Hungarian Television Series’, a
contribution by Balázs Varga, brings readers to the fictional Hungarian
village of Pilisszentlélek, where the characters of the Hungarian rural
sitcom A mi kis falunk (Our Little Village, RTL Klub, 2017–until present)
live their rather redneck and isolationist lives in the backwoods. Drawing
on the theories of urban/rural dichotomy and articulations of rurality as
deferred modernisation, the chapter notices the thin line between

humorous representations and shaming ridicule of the ordinary
countrymen.
In conclusion, it is our hope that the diagnosed variety of cultural
expressions of distaste for the poor in various types of media across Europe
will galvanise further research on media’s role in representation of the
social structure, as far as mediated othering and stigmatisation significantly
exacerbate current processes of social polarisation.
Acknowledgement This project was supported by the grant provided by The

Czech Science Foundation GAČR 17- 02521S.
Notes
1. According to EUROSTAT data, in 2018, the proportion of people at risk
of poverty or social exclusion was in Romania 32.5 per cent, Greece 31.8
per cent, the UK 23.1 per cent, Belgium 20 per cent, Hungary 19.6 per
cent, Sweden 18 per cent and the Czech Republic 12.5 per cent.
EUROSTAT. People at risk of poverty or social exclusion: https://ec.
europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/bookmark/d157345b-8c78-4dd4-87
3b-06ae29ec56eb?lang=en (Accessed 2 November 2020).
2. EUROSTAT. People at risk of poverty or social exclusion: https://ec.
europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Living_conditions_in_
Europe_-_ poverty_and_social_exclusion#:~:text=In%202018%2C%20
21.7%20%25%20of%20the,with%2019.9%20%25%20in%202018 (Accessed
2 November 2020).
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CHAPTER 2
‘Benefits Scroungers’ and Stigma: Exploring

the Abject-Grotesque in British Poverty Porn
Programming
Louise Cope
Broadcasting Benefits: An Explosion

of ‘Poverty Porn’
In January 2014, a new cultural mode of expressing class disgust was

thrust into the public and political consciousness, following the broadcast-
ing of the provocatively named Benefits Street (Channel 4, 2014–2015).
This televisual trajectory seems rather ironic, given Channel 4’s historical
inclusion of radical, anti-establishment content and its contemporary
commitment to ‘stand up for diversity’ and ‘champion unheard voices’.1
Nevertheless, under the guise of ‘portraying community’, Benefits Street
(henceforth BS) locked into the now-familiar political, and right-wing
journalistic, objective of the time: justifying severe welfare reform and aus-
terity measures by raising public anxiety over ‘skivers’ and ‘scroungers’. BS
L. Cope (*)
Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK
e-mail: L.Cope@shu.ac.uk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 19

Switzerland AG 2021
I. Reifová, M. Hájek (eds.), Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty
Across Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73543-2_2
20 L. COPE
became a visual manifestation of these ideologies, a hyperbolic portrayal of

people ‘abusing’ the welfare system to the detriment of the hard-working
taxpayer, relying upon a historical dichotomy between the deserving and
undeserving poor. The success of the programme is evident in the viewer
ratings, with the first episode gaining 4.3 million viewers, a figure that
overshadowed any Channel 4 programme broadcast in 2013. As such, it
soon paved the way for a veritable explosion of similar programmes, which
all relied on the same themes, ideologies and visual motifs. After the rat-
ings success of BS, Channel 5 followed suit with hundreds of documenta-
ries focusing on the lives of benefits claimants. This is no exaggeration, in
2017 a search for ‘benefits’ on Channel 5’s website produced the follow-
ing programme results:2 Benefits and Bypasses: Billion Pound Patients
(2014), Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole (2014–2016), Benefits By The Sea:
Jaywick (2015–2016), 12 Years Old & On Benefits (2015), Gypsies On
Benefits & Proud (2014), On Benefits (2014–2017), On Benefits & Proud
(2013–2014), The Benefits Estate (2015), The Big Benefits Row: Live
(2014), The Great British Benefits Handout (2016–2017) and The Great
British Benefits Handout Changed My Life (2017).
It is important to note that both Channel 4 and Channel 5 are Public
Service Broadcasters (henceforth PSB): a long-standing tradition in British
television which is ‘a cornerstone of the UK’s cultural landscape’ (Ofcom,
2019: 1); with a remit to produce trustworthy programming in the inter-
est of, and which reflects, the British public. PSB channels are, or at least
should be, reliant and robust sources of socio-cultural information. All
broadcast television providers that operate in the UK make PSB available,
which is evidenced in PSB still accounting ‘for around half of all TV view-
ing on the TV set, and their on-demand services are used at least once a
month by 55 per cent of UK adults’ (Ofcom, 2019: 1). Thus, this type of
programming which started on Channel 4 and was replicated (and more
importantly developed into a sub-genre in its own right) by Channel 5,
has the scope to reach large segments of the British public. For instance,
in some periods between 2014 and 2017,3 Channel 5 amassed a daily
reach of between 13 and 14 per cent and a weekly reach of 40–45 per cent
of the British viewing public (BARB, 2020a).
The term that has been most commonly applied to this type of
programming, both in public and in academic debate, is ‘poverty porn’,4
understood as porn in the sense that ‘it aims to arouse and stimulate the
viewer to provoke an emotional sensation through a repetitive and affec-
tive encounter with the television screen’ (Jensen, 2014: 3). This distinct
2 ‘BENEFITS SCROUNGERS’ AND STIGMA: EXPLORING… 21
sub-genre fuses the ‘trash TV’ aspect of Reality Television with documen-
tary techniques in order to ‘justify exploitation (of unpaid participants)
and voyeurism through an implied association with “documentary real-
ism”’ (Allen et al., 2014: 2). Jensen suggests that such programming does
the ideological work of neoliberalism by individualising poverty in order
to justify welfare reform and a strict austerity regime, arguing that ‘life on
the breadline’ is ‘transformed from a profound social injustice to an oppor-
tunity to scrutinise the habits of the poor and assess how deserving they
are’ (Jensen, 2014: 1). It is via the association with the British welfare
system that poverty is reconfigured into something to be ashamed of,
especially in the construction of the ‘benefits scrounger’ and the stigma
attached to that label. Rather than offering a sympathetic portrayal of low-
income, or no-income families, poverty porn programmes ‘repeat imag-
ined connections between welfare recipients and moral laxity, greed, and
even criminality’ (Jensen, 2014: 1). These connections manifest in imag-
ery that is ‘designed to invoke disgust reactions’ (Allen, Tyler and De
Benedictis 2014: 2). The centrality of disgust within poverty porn is key
to this chapter, which analyses how the process of abjection is manifest in
grotesque imagery that aims to evoke feelings of disgust whilst construct-
ing the figure of the ‘benefits scrounger’. The following analysis reveals
the complexities of representing poverty-related shame within poverty
porn, which is depicted in different modes: the individualised nature of
poverty through the choice to claim benefits portrayed as something to be
ashamed of; participants represented as not feeling the shame that they
apparently should in regards to claiming benefits; and, participants
attempting to shift stigma (and the label of ‘benefits scrounger’) onto an
other but paradoxically reinforcing such stigma.
Beyond the Borders: The Abject and the Grotesque

In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva (1982) maps out a theory for abjection,
the process in which subjectivity is formed through the psychic (and physi-
ological) responses to stimuli that threaten the borders between subject/
object distinctions.5 As Robin May Schott argues, abjection ‘is one expres-
sion of the precariousness of embodied subjectivity’ and subjectivity is
‘dependent on systems of distinctions that create borders between inside
and outside, health and disease, nourishment and waste, cleanliness and
filth, life and death’ (2011: 22). Thus, the abject is that which ‘disturbs
identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules…’
22 L. COPE
(Kristeva, 1982: 4). Due to this emphasis on boundary distinctions,

Kristeva’s theory of abjection offers a solid foundation for understanding
why the subject feels disgust and subsequently how disgust might be man-
ufactured. Subjectivity is dependent on ‘protecting’ the self from that
which it deems harmful or repulsive, and disgust is the affective response
to that. Correspondingly, it might also explain why stigma, a socially con-
structed mark that sullies the character of the subject, as theorised by
Erving Goffman (1963), ‘sticks’.
Kristeva argues that ‘wastes drop so that I might live, until from loss to
loss, nothing remains in me and my entire body falls beyond the limit—
cadere, cadaver’ (1982: 3). Here, waste is a permanent reminder of our
own materiality: it ‘signifies the other side of the border, the place where
I am not and which permits me to be’ (1982: 3). This notion might be
abstracted to explain the ways in which the subject might abject other
people, in a process of not only recalling where they are not, but who they
are not, too. As Allison Kimmich suggests, the process of abjection, or the
‘designation of some bodies or groups of bodies as contaminated, irratio-
nal or disorderly allows those who count themselves among the dominant
group—the subjects—to think with relief, “That is not me”’ (1998: 224;
see also Cohen, 2005). Corresponding with this, Imogen Tyler (2013)
borrows the notion of ‘wasted humans’ from Zygmunt Bauman (2004),
to examine how within neoliberal Britain, groups of ‘national abjects’6 are
cast aside to the borders of society. This chapter follows Tyler’s framework
by analysing how poverty porn programmes have contributed to the con-
struction of the ‘benefits scrounger’ as an abject-grotesque figure, the
depiction of which is based on an aesthetics of disgust.
Similar to the abject that is cast beyond the borders of subjectivity, the
grotesque operates on the ‘binary logic’ between the borders of
ab/normality (Edwards & Graulund, 2013). As such, the grotesque calls
into question the ways in which we construct the self in relation to the
other. Mary Russo confirms that the grotesque, ‘particularly as a bodily
category, emerges as a deviation from the norm’ (1994: 11). The gro-
tesque, in its embodied form, is most recognisable in Mikhail Bakhtin’s
(1984) analysis of the work of Francois Rabelais, in which he defines gro-
tesque realism as a literary mode that conveys civic collectivity in times of
social and political upheaval. However, in a neoliberal setting, depictions
of the ‘grotesque body’ (Bakhtin, 1984), are employed to evoke disgust
reactions, especially in the framing of poor, fat, female bodies (Braziel &
LeBesco, 2001; Brown, 2005; Hirdman, 2017; Owen, 2015). To Bakhtin,
the grotesque body is mostly identified with the ‘bodily lower stratum’:
the ‘genital organs, the belly, and the buttocks’; ‘acts of defecation and
copulation, pregnancy, and birth’ (Bakhtin, 1984: 19–21). The bodily
lower stratum is associated with acts of degradation and, like the abject,
has clear connotations of filth and waste. The grotesque body ‘is not a
closed, completed unit; it is unfinished, outgrows itself, transgresses its
own limits’ (Bakhtin, 1984: 26). In transgressing its own boundaries, the
grotesque is abject; it defies the limits of the normative physical body.
Hence, I refer to the ‘abject-grotesque’ as a mutually constitutive cate-
gorisation of these notions, which might be used to analyse the represen-
tation and social construction of the ‘benefits scrounger’.
Methodology: Abject-Grotesque Frame Analysis

Employing the abject-grotesque as a representational framework, the
analysis examines the ‘abject frame’ and the ‘grotesque frame’, interpreting
imagery that reflects the theories of Kristeva (1982) and Bakhtin (1984).
These frames form the basis of two overarching representational catego-
ries present in the televisual texts: the Abject Maternal and Grotesque
Embodiment. The chapter touches on how these categories compound
into the depiction of stigma (Goffman, 1963), poverty-based shame
(Chase & Walker, 2012; Jo, 2012) and body shame (Hirdman, 2017), via
the relationship between claiming benefits, motherhood and obesity.
Adapting Lulu Rodriguez and Daniela V. Dimitrova’s (2011) four-tiered
framework for frame analysis, as well as being informed by a critical her-
meneutic approach (Fornäs, 2012; Kinsella, 2006), this research interprets
how symbolism, narrative and ideology are bound together in the discur-
sive and visual elements of the poverty porn texts. This frame analysis is
interested in the visual in its pure denotative form onscreen, and how
these images can be interpreted connotatively as a manifestation of abject-
grotesque aesthetics.
The textual sample is eight poverty porn documentaries,7 all broadcast
by Channel 5 between 2014 and 2017: six episodes of Benefits Britain:
Life on the Dole (Channel 5, 2014) (henceforth BB:LOTD); Benefits and
Bypasses: Billion Pound Patients (Channel 5, 2015) (henceforth BB:BPP)
and On Benefits: 100 Stone and on the Dole (Channel 5, 2017) (henceforth
OB:100S). The sample was chosen using thematic selection, leading to an
intentional sample that was initially selected based on buzzwords in the
programmes’ titles such as ‘dole’ and ‘benefits’. Individual episodes were
24 L. COPE
selected for in-depth textual analysis based on their inclusion of the themes
of motherhood, disability, obesity and deviant behaviour, which were
determined from the online synopses or a preliminary analysis. Although
this sample has been selected because of its representation of these key
themes, all of these texts offer what have now come to be typical depic-
tions of British benefits claimants. One would argue that the vast majority
of poverty porn programmes broadcast in this period are reliant upon
these themes, as well as reliant upon abject-grotesque imagery and evoca-
tions of disgust. Thus, the ideology, imagery and narratives available in
these texts not only reinforce—and are reinforced by—political and tab-
loid discourse but become the most readily available, and mostly irrefut-
able, portrayal of benefits claimants. Whilst the focus on benefits claimants
in British television seems like a novel perspective, after the ratings success
of Benefits Street as outlined above, this became a popular mode of ‘docu-
mentary’ making; insofar as poverty porn might be considered a hybrid
form of documentary and reality television. Furthermore, the majority of
poverty porn programming produced within this time period was broad-
cast on Channel 5, hence choosing a sample of texts that reflects this pro-
duction context. This sample reflects a period of hyper-neoliberal ideology
and severe austerity measures: the consequences of which are justified by
manufacturing disgust for the poor and individualising poverty. The fol-
lowing discussion focuses on the most relevant visual examples that reflect
the abject-grotesque framework, and the representation of ‘scrounger’
stigma (Baumberg, 2016; Patrick, 2016).
Animating the ‘Benefits Mum’

Contempt for the poor and fears of a growing social ‘underclass’ (Murray,
1990; Murray, 2001) are often bound in gendered representations: under-
class women’s reproductive power evokes much fear and disgust. This is
especially evident in poverty porn programmes that centre on the matri-
archs of families that claim benefits, who are animated as an abject figure
(Tyler, 2013) under the continuous reinstating of the crude label ‘benefits
mum’. The mothers featured in the texts are primarily introduced by the
narrator stating the number of children they have. This is immediately
paralleled with their status as a benefits claimant, the amount of benefits
they receive or the number of years they have been claiming:
She’s a single mum of two claiming £330 a week in benefits, that’s way more
than she’d get on the minimum wage. (Narrator, BB:LOTD, S01E03)
This is 37-year-old Heather Frost, a mum who gets around 900 quid a week
in benefits for her and her kids. There are eleven of them in all—two boys
and nine girls. (Narrator, BB:LOTD, S01E06)
Mandy is 49 and a single mum from Hastings who has been on benefits for
more than 30 years. (Narrator, BB:LOTD, S02E10)
But daughter Crystal and the others are always dropping in. She’s 24 and
already has four kids of her own, and really knows how to max out her ben-
efits. (Narrator, BB:LOTD, S02E10)
Here, the notion of motherhood coincides with ‘benefits culture’.

These women represent the constitutive limit to normative middle-class
motherhood and as such are reconfigured as ‘benefits mums’: ‘benefits
mum Steph Cocker’ (BB:LOTD, S01E03); ‘benefits foster mum’
(BB:LOTD, S01E04); ‘Becca has put college behind her. Now it’s all
about her new life as a benefits mum’ (BB:LOTD, S01E04); ‘until then,
Stephanie will just have to put up with being a benefits mum on the equiv-
alent of a 20-grand-a-year salary’ (BB:LOTD, S02E06). The narrator
continually reduces the women to this pejorative label; their emotional
and physical labour as mothers, comes second to their status as benefits
claimants. The figure of the benefits mum is the symbolic other to another
configuration of motherhood: the ‘yummy mummy’ (Allen & Osgood,
2009; Orgad & Benedictis, 2015). Lacking the right capital and not par-
ticipating in the labour market, the benefits mum falls outside of the ‘right
moral and material terrain’ (Allen & Taylor, 2012), marking her as abject.
In the depiction of Mandy Cowie (BB:LOTD, S02E10), these
configurations of motherhood visually and symbolically collide. At the
beginning of the episode, the narrator explains that in ‘Benefits Britain,
one and a half million kids live in households where nobody works…’ An
establishing shot of unkept beige terraced houses narrows to a close-up of
one house front, whilst off-screen shouting can be heard: ‘Hit my dog
again and I’ll slap you!’ The use of a sound bridge implies a connection
between the two scenes: the decaying house is paralleled with chaotic
family life and unorthodox methods of discipline. The narrator continues
‘…and ten of them having been brought up by Mandy Cowie’, positioning
26 L. COPE
Mandy as ‘part of the problem’ of worklessness. It is implied that Mandy

cannot raise her children in the correct manner, nor instil a proper work
ethic. Shots of ‘normal’ family life, such as Mandy folding clean washing,
are interspersed with her shouting profanities at her children. Mandy also
directs verbal abuse at the camera-person, using them as a conduit to
express her opinions to the viewer: ‘Ten kids, full of tattoos mate, yeah? So
what I’m on the fucking dole, mate? Don’t like it, fuck off. Do you know
what I mean?’ This seemingly aggressive dialogue not only helps to con-
struct an image of Mandy as rude, loud and vulgar, but also reveals her
awareness of how people perceive her. This suggests that Mandy is aware
of the stigma attached to being a benefits claimant and a ‘benefits mum’,
and her outburst ironically reaffirms this stigma. In becoming visibly and
verbally angry, Mandy attempts to hide the shame felt over claiming ben-
efits (Scheff, 2003: 248).
The following shot is a close-up of a black framed printed image with a
white and pink checked border, showing the words ‘Yummy Mummy’ in
bright fuchsia pink with a pink kiss mark. This shot, overlaid with Mandy
shouting at the camera, implies Mandy is absolutely not a yummy mummy:
she could never appropriate the middle-class femininity that defines the
term. By attempting to appropriate middle-class motherhood, Mandy is
classified by her lack of taste. As Bourdieu (1984) suggests, she is distin-
guished by the distinctions she makes: her taste, or lack of, betrays her
class position as a ‘benefits mum’. The grotesque irony in this scene is
palpable: Mandy is overweight, middle-aged and, as she exclaims, ‘full of
tattoos’. The overlaying of the dialogue alters the semiotics of the shot:
the symbolic meaning of the term ‘yummy mummy’ inhabits an entirely
different space, paradoxically representing everything it opposes.
Internalising ‘Scrounger’ Stigma

I’ve been judged mate. They expect me to have a dirty house and everything,
do you know what I mean? I’m sick of people, you know, judging the
book—don’t they—by its cover. (Mandy, BB:LOTD, S02E10)
Despite initially appearing to be nonchalant, this later excerpt reveals

that Mandy is self-conscious and anxious about other people’s perceptions
of her, and she wants to be socially accepted. Mandy’s plea for people to
stop ‘judging the book by its cover’ suggests she has internalised some of
the stigma associated with claiming benefits, such as being ‘dirty’. Mandy’s
felt stigma might be based on social interactions, or engagement with

popular culture formats and/or political rhetoric that have contributed to
the construction of the ‘benefits scrounger’ figure (Fohrbeck et al., 2014;
Patrick, 2016).
Elsewhere, Rose Higginbotham and her father Gordon (BB:LOTD,
S01E04) discuss their anxieties over how her motivations for having a
child8 might be perceived:
Gordon: ‘Tell ya summat. Do you know what people will think? They’ll
think you’re just doing it to get extra bloody child benefit, more money ya
know, more money off the dole, that sort of thing.’
Rose: ‘What if people are nasty to us and say “oh you’re scroungers”
and that?’
Gordon: ‘If people think you’re having a bairn to get more benefits, then
fuck ’em.’
Narrator: ‘With a baby they will get an extra 73 quid a week in benefits.’
Aware of the stigma attached to claiming benefits, Rose and Gordon

are conscious of how ‘they are seen by others’ (Patrick, 2016). Indeed,
feelings of shame manifest due to the recognition of how others perceive
the self (Scheff, 2003; Shott, 1979). Whilst attempting to reject the domi-
nant scrounger narrative, Gordon and Rose illustrate their internalisation
of this ideology and the subsequent shame that they feel: Gordon assumes
what ‘people will think’, perhaps because of personal experience of raising
a family on benefits and/or an awareness of the dominant media and polit-
ical rhetoric. Similar to Mandy Cowie, Gordon doesn’t have the means to
articulate a response to this stigmatisation other than the use of a profan-
ity. Indeed, neither Gordon nor Rose can offer a counter argument to the
stigmatisation. Unsurprisingly, Gordon and Rose’s attempts at managing
stigmatisation are rebuffed by the narrator who legitimises the stigma by
implying that Rose is having a child to secure more benefits.
Embodying Abjection
For the maternal subjects in the texts, their biological right/gift/ability to
bear children is coded as wrong. The ‘bad choices’ these women make are
usually reflective of their supposedly excessive or addictive nature. Within
the texts, the process of reproduction and the subsequent bearing of life is
framed as another of these excesses. The dichotomy between pregnancy
28 L. COPE
and excess is most obviously portrayed in the representation of Marie

Buchan (BB:LOTD).
People know me by the number of children and my tattoos. A lot of people

spot that tattoo and wonder what it means, what is the reason for all the
numbers? And I just let them know it’s the dates of births of all my children.
(Marie, BB:LOTD, S01E02)
This dialogue is followed by a jump cut to a close-up of a faded tattoo

of the children’s birth dates on the back of Marie’s neck. Another faded
tattoo of a rose sits above it, and Marie’s back is sunburnt and peeling.
Marie is defined by the embodiment of abject maternity within her tat-
toos, as she explains above, this is how people know her. Marie continues
to show off her tattoos; each contains the name of one of her children, and
each is framed in a close-up as Marie points at them with a pink, chipped
nail-varnished finger. Mary Condren suggests that because women are
always ‘in touch with the cycles of life’, they are always abject (1999: 15).
The ‘social codes of abjection’ are ‘dialectically related to power’; abjec-
tion ‘leads to shame, shame to powerlessness’ (Condren, 1999: 15). As
Marie’s tattoos are the birth dates of her children, her status as the abject
maternal ‘benefits mum’ is permanently inscribed on her body. She is dou-
bly connected to the ‘cycles of life’. On the other hand, the permanent
representation of her children on her skin is evidence that Marie’s primary
feeling towards being a mother is pride, rather than shame.
Nevertheless, the show frames this as something to be ashamed of. The
narrator quips ‘but eight might not be enough…Marie wouldn’t mind
having yet another tattoo’, flippantly equating the prospect of conceiving
another child with getting a tattoo (BB:LOTD, S01E02). Here, preg-
nancy and the embodiment of motherhood are not considered positive
but simply another excuse for a tattoo: having another child is equated
with this ‘bad choice’, both of which are classified as excesses and some-
thing to be ashamed of as they are paralleled with claiming benefits. Marie
explains that ‘I am addicted to pregnancy. I’m addicted to birth. And feed-
ing, I’m addicted to that’ (BB:LOTD, S01E02). Thus, the grotesque
nature of excess (Edwards & Graulund, 2013) takes on a more sinister
form: addiction. Through the notion of addiction, pregnancy and moth-
erhood become moralised and pathologised. Here, Marie’s status as abject
maternal is considered through the paradoxical lens of addiction and
excessive sexuality: pregnancy is something she cannot help yet something
she chooses. Further, grotesque excess and abjection coexist here. By con-
ceiving and giving birth to eight children in a short amount of time,9
Marie’s body, especially her ‘bodily lower stratum’, is in a continuous state
of growth and expansion as it bears life. Furthermore, Marie claims she is
addicted to the state of being the ‘ultimate abject’ (Magennis, 2010), her
body containing an other; her body giving birth to an other; and her body
feeding an other. Marie is presented as an embodiment of the abject-
grotesque nature of the benefits scrounger.
Us and Them, Self and Other: Maintaining

the Boundaries
Within the poverty porn texts, disability is most likely framed through the
lens of self-infliction: a disability or impairment caused by excessive eating,
drinking or smoking, or a combination of these habits. Severe health issues
such as diabetes, sleep apnoea, hypertension and strokes, are all framed as
direct consequences of obesity. In this context, health issues are depicted
as self-inflicted which contributes to the construction of obesity and pov-
erty as individualised issues, rather than attempting to examine the struc-
tural factors that contribute to ill health. Thus, self-inflicted health issues
are used as a moralising technique which frames obesity and claiming dis-
ability benefit as being dependent on one another, both of which carry
their own stigma.
In order to separate the benefits claimant from the (presumed)
normative audience—and good citizens of neoliberalism—othering
discourse is employed in the texts. This establishes the grotesque binary of
ab/normality, demarcating that, or whom, which falls outside the bound-
aries of the norm. These distinctions centre on feelings of disgust towards
the other: disgust ‘recognizes and maintains difference’ and ‘helps to
define boundaries between us and them and me and you’ (Miller, 1997:
50). Othering discourse that establishes distinctions between us/them
and we/they is an abject mechanism that (re)creates the borders between
self and other: ‘That is not me.’ In the texts, the narrator bridges the gap
between the viewer (self) and the participant (other), and ultimately
guides the (disgusted) emotions of the viewer. For instance, in the open-
ing narration of Benefits and Bypasses: Billion Pound Patients, ‘…these are
the people whose habits are ruining their health and costing us a fortune’,
the us/them distinctions are clear. Distinctions are set up throughout
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Karla krampfte die Finger ineinander. Etwas bohrte an ihrem
Herzen. Erst leise, dann immer stärker. Die Nacht fiel ihr ein auf der
Veranda des Hotels in Brasilien, und wie sie gewartet und wie sie es
nicht für möglich gehalten hatte, was doch geschehen war ... Und
das war nur ein Kinderspiel gewesen gegen das, was jetzt geschah.
Eine Mariette hatte ihr nichts nehmen können — nichts, als
allenfalls eine Stimmung.
Luise nahm ihr alles — das Kind, den Mann ... löschte sie selbst
aus ... ganz sachte; ohne es zu wollen vielleicht, nein, gewiß; ohne
es zu wollen — aber jeden Tag mehr, immer mehr, machte sie
überflüssig — ließ sie nur gelten, weil sie die Stimme hatte, die
Mann und Kind ein leichtes, sorgenfreies Leben gewährte ... Aber
auch das mochte kaum bewußt sein ... es w a r nur so und drängte
sie, die Mutter, die Frau, sanft aus dem Bereich ihres häuslichen
Wirkens, ihrer Frauenrechte ...
Seltsam, wie diese Erkenntnis wirkte. Es war kein Schmerz und
kein lodernder Zorn, wie damals in Brasilien ... nur wie ein kalter
Hauch zog es durch ihre Seele, vereiste ihr sonst so heißes
Empfinden ...
Sie stand auf.
„Laßt euch nicht stören,“ sagte sie freundlich, „— ich bin müde
und will mich niederlegen.“
Altmann blickte auf.
„Verzeih’ .. ja .. ich hatte vergessen .. selbstverständlich ... wir
können übrigens auch morgen —“
Aber Karla wiederholte, ebenso freundlich, nur mit einer an ihr
fremden Bestimmtheit:
„Nein, bitte ... laßt euch nicht stören ... gute Nacht, Luise.“
Leise schloß sie die Tür des Schlafzimmers hinter sich zu.
Altmann strich ein paarmal nervös über die Seiten des Buches.
„Schade ...“
„Wie meinst du, Ernst ...?“
„Sie hat so gar keine geistigen Interessen ... schade!“
„Findet man das nicht häufig bei Sängerinnen?“
„Möglich ... ja ... aber Karla ist doch auch meine Frau!“
Luise strich mit ihrer hageren Hand über den Ärmel des Bruders.
„Ärgere dich nicht. Wir haben uns hier so eingesponnen, und sie
kommt von draußen — sie ist noch wie ein verspieltes Kind. Das gibt
sich. Lies weiter — es ist mir eine solche Freude ...“
„Gute Lis’!“
Er nickte ihr zu. Von der Bewunderung der Welt, die er erträumt
hatte, war ihm nur die Bewunderung der Schwester geblieben. — —
Aber auch die tat wohl!
inen Tag vor ihrem Wiederauftreten sagte Altmann:
„Du hast doch nichts dagegen, liebes Kind, ich habe
gebeten, daß man dich als Karla König-Altmann auf den
Zettel setzen möchte.“
„Als König-Altmann ...?“, wiederholte Karla. „Ja ... warum denn?“
Ihr Name war ihr lieb geworden, sie war in ihn hineingewachsen
wie in eine Haut. Der angehängte Name ihres Mannes wirkte auf sie
wie etwas Fremdes, gar nicht zu ihr Passendes. In ihren Schläfen
pochte es.
„Wenn ich nur wüßte — warum?“
Altmann reckte sich hoch, seine Mundwinkel vertieften sich.
„Liebe Karla, du tust gerade so, als wäre es eine Unehre für dich,
deinen gesetzlichen Namen zu tragen — eine Schande.“
„Warum hast du es mir nicht vorher gesagt — wir hätten es
überlegen können — —“
„Ich glaube, liebes Kind, daß es da nichts zu überlegen gibt. Du
hast ein Kind, eine Tochter. Ich meine, wenn nicht aus Rücksicht auf
mich, so doch aus Rücksicht auf dein Kind ... Die Gemeinsamkeit
des Namens ist, scheint mir, doch das allererste und wichtigste
Bindeglied zwischen Eltern und Kind ...“
Die Tür zu Altmanns Zimmer ging auf, und Schmerzchen trippelte
herein, in einem blauen Herbstmäntelchen und blauem
Matrosenhütchen.
Karla hatte Schmerzchen bisher nur in weichen Kappen oder
unter dem Gefältel weißer Stickereihüte gesehen, die Matrosenform
gab dem zarten Gesicht etwas Hartes, Strenges. Das feine
nußbraune Haar ringelte sich in Locken über den Nacken.
„Komm mal her, Isolde ...“
Gehorsam ging Schmerzchen auf den Papa zu, mit einer
gewissen Spannung im Blick. In Papas Ton lag immer etwas, worauf
sie gespannt war.
Karla fielen die Arme, die sie dem Kinde entgegengestreckt
hatte, in den Schoß zurück.
„Sag’ mal, wie heißt du?“
„Isolde Altmann“, sagte Schmerzchen sehr deutlich und
gewichtig.
„Gut. Und wie heiße ich?“
„Ernst Altmann, Landgrafenstraße siebzehn.“
„Ja, ja ...“, unterbrach er. „Und Mama? Wie heißt Mama?“
„Karla König-Altmann, Königliche Hofopernsängerin.“
„Brav.“
Er wendete sich an Karla:
„Na — klingt das gar so schlimm?“
Karla antwortete nicht. Sie hielt Schmerzchens Hände und
drückte sie an die Lippen.
Schmerzchen blickte unruhig nach der Tür.
„Ich gehe mit Tante Lis Haare abschneiden.“
„Wieso Haare abschneiden ... wessen Haare?“
„Meine Haare ... ritz—ratz, sagt Tante Lis ...“
Karla war ganz erschüttert. Das feine braune Härchen ringelte
sich so weich über ihre Hand, und nun sollte es abgeschnitten
werden, sollte ...
Luise trat, ebenfalls zum Ausgehen angekleidet, über die
Schwelle.
„Komm, Isoldchen ...“
Karla hatte Schmerzchen den Matrosenhut abgenommen,
bedeckte das braune Haar mit Küssen.
Luise lächelte nachsichtig.
„Du hast dich aber auch gleich, Karla! ... Das Kind bekommt nie
starkes, dichtes Haar, wenn es nicht geschoren wird. Jawohl,
Isoldchen, wie ein Schäfchen wirst du geschoren und wirst aussehen
wie ein kleiner Junge.“
Schmerzchen nickte. Die bevorstehende Verwandlung hatte
etwas ungemein Geheimnisvolles für sie. Das Leben war überhaupt
voller Reize und Schauer. Die Mama schien das zu verstehen — die
Mama weinte sogar! Und das wäre natürlich sehr erschreckend
gewesen, wenn Papa und Lis nicht gelacht hätten. Die wußten es
doch immer besser.
„Warte, Schmerzchen ... halt’ still ... es tut nicht weh.“
Karla ergriff die Papierschere auf Altmanns Tisch. Eine Locke
wollte sie für sich abschneiden. Wenigstens eine greifbare
Erinnerung haben an das seidenweiche, nußbraune Haar ihres
Kindes.
Schmerzchens Gesicht wurde ganz rot vor Anstrengung,
stillzuhalten. Am liebsten wäre sie ja davongelaufen, aber ihr war
noch vom Weihnachtsabend erinnerlich, daß die Mama ihr nicht weh
tat. Nur begriff sie nicht, warum die Mama weinte. Tante Lis begriff
es auch nicht. Papa aber ging ärgerlich im Zimmer auf und ab und
sagte:
„Karla ist immer noch der reine Backfisch.“
Karla fuhr in die Stadt und kaufte sich eine dünne Kette und ein
goldenes Medaillon für Schmerzchens Locke.
Der Juwelier hatte nur zweiseitige Medaillons vorrätig und fragte,
ob sie nicht ein Bild für die zweite Seite habe. Aber Schmerzchens
letztes Bild war vor mehr als einem Jahre aufgenommen, und jetzt
sah das Kind noch immer so elend aus, daß sie es nicht
photographieren lassen mochte. Später.
Als sie nach Hause kam, erschrak sie, weil sie Schmerzchen mit
dem runden Jungenskopf nicht gleich erkannte.
Schmerzchen sah dem Vater sprechend ähnlich.
Luise und Altmann sprachen an diesem Abend viel von dieser
Ähnlichkeit, so daß Karla darüber sogar ihre Namensveränderung
vergaß.
Erst am nächsten Abend wurde sie wieder daran erinnert. Gegen
seine Gewohnheit kam der Papa zu ihr in die Garderobe.
„War gespannt, liebes Kind, zu hören, wie — Frau König-Altmann
singt — erwartete eine bedeutsame Veränderung, aber ich muß
gestehen ... daß ich nur eine kleine Mattigkeit bemerkt habe ...
vielleicht von der Bürde solcher zwei Namen ... Warum läßt du
‚König‘ nicht ganz fort ... eigentlich überflüssig, wie?“
Der Papa war sehr gallig. Aber in einem hatte er recht: Karla war
an diesem Abend wirklich nicht ganz auf der Höhe.
Und auf dem Eckplatz des ersten Ranges saß ein wildfremder,
dicker Herr mit einem breiten, schwarzen Klemmer auf der
Nase. — — —
— — In der Motzstraße war die Familie um den Abendbrottisch
versammelt. Karla war in Potsdam zu einem Hofkonzert, das am
Spätnachmittag stattfand. Sie hatte versprochen, geradeswegs in die
Motzstraße zu kommen, wenn sie fertig wäre. Adele war rasend
neugierig, wie es „bei Kaisers“ zuging. Übermorgen fand ihr
Kaffeekränzchen statt — das gab dann Gesprächsstoff, und ein
bißchen von dem Glanz, der sich um Karlas Namen verdichtete, fiel
dann auch auf sie ab und ihr Haus. Sie brauchte sich dann von den
Damen auch nicht so viel über Vicki ausfragen zu lassen.
Adele hatte es schwer. Immer mußte sie entschuldigen,
bemänteln. Auch ihrem Manne gegenüber. Harte Worte lagen ihm
nicht. Aber Bitterkeit legte sich auch um seine Mundwinkel, wenn er
sich nach Vicki erkundigte. Er zählte manchmal an den Fingern die
Wochen ab, die sie sich nicht hatte sehen lassen, als wüßte sie
nicht, welche Arbeitslast der Vater auf sich genommen, um den
jungen Hausstand zu stützen. Ein Teil der Möbel hatte auf
Abzahlung genommen werden müssen, weil Bodo Völkel erklärt
hatte, daß er die Spießereinrichtung, die Luise für ihn in Aussicht
genommen, nicht über seine Schwelle ließe. Er wollte sich seine
Umgebung selbst zusammenstellen. Wenn es auch ein bißchen
teurer würde, so hätte er doch Verbindungen, die eine bequeme
Abzahlung ermöglichten.
Adele war aufs Tiefste verletzt von diesem „auf Borg“ gestellten
Haushalt; aber diesmal unterstützte Dr. Maurer seinen
Schwiegersohn und beschwichtigte seine Frau.
„Bodo ist nicht wie Karla — er läßt sich nicht in seinen
Entschlüssen vergewaltigen. Mag der Mann sich seine sieben
Sachen aussuchen, in denen Vicki mit ihm glücklich sein soll — wir
schaffen’s schon.“ Daß es ohne Karlas Hülfe doch nicht so einfach
gewesen wäre, ahnte er nicht.
Es sah immerhin recht eigenartig und hübsch aus bei Völkels,
obwohl Vicki selbst wenig hineinpaßte in den verstiegenen,
neuartigen und noch nicht geklärten Stil ihrer Wohnung. Ja, sie
gestand sogar, daß ihr die schwarzen, geraden Fenstervorhänge im
Schlafzimmer gruselig und die kaum zu bewegenden drei Sessel im
Wohnzimmer unbequem seien. Immerhin — Bodo hätte es so
ausgesucht, und was Bodo beschloß, war geheiligt.
Nur wenn er nicht zu Hause war, schleppte Vicki einen Rohrstuhl
aus der kleinen Stube neben dem Schlafzimmer überall mit sich
herum oder setzte sich in die der Sparsamkeit wegen ungeheizte
Kammer, wo sie wenigstens in aller Bequemlichkeit und ohne
befürchten zu müssen, die stilvollen Möbel zu verderben, ihre
häuslichen Angelegenheiten erledigte: das Gemüse putzte,
Kinderwäsche zuschnitt, flickte und ihre Ausgaben einschrieb.
Das Ausgabenbuch machte ihr viel Kummer. Bodo aber hörte
kaum zu, wenn sie ihm von teuren Zeiten oder gar von Marktpreisen
sprach.
„Ja ... ja ... na, das wird ja mal anders werden. Sieh doch zu, daß
die Eltern ein bißchen aushelfen ...“
Es war ihre verdammte Pflicht und Schuldigkeit, auszuhelfen. Sie
hatten den Salat angerührt — bitte! Dieses „Hundeleben“ war nur
erträglich, weil Vicki ein im Grunde liebes, vernünftiges Ding war,
das die Schwierigkeiten seiner Lage einsah und ihm kleinweise auf
ihre Art half.
Selbst dem Onkel hatte sie im Laufe der Monate an dreihundert
Mark abgeluchst, das Schlauchen, mit ihren hübschen blauen Augen
und ihrem molligen Gehabe. Wenig genug! Aber immerhin etwas.
Die Zärtlichkeiten des Onkels waren nicht immer nach Vickis
Geschmack. So bitter es ihr ankam — lieber noch holte sie Aushilfe
bei der Mutter.
Adele schlug die Hände zusammen: „Schon wieder? ... Noch? ...
Worauf geht denn das viele Geld bloß?“ ...
Sie rechnete der Tochter vor, wieviel ihr eigener junger Haushalt
gekostet hatte. Nicht die Hälfte!
„Und Vater hatte immer ein paar Silberstücke in der Tasche zum
Ausgehen!“
Das war jetzt anders. Die Silberstücke bekam Vicki. Und wenn’s
in den letzten Tagen des Monats nicht langte für Fleisch, dann aß sie
eben ein paar Eier oder einen Grießbrei, während er auswärts
speiste, bei Bekannten oder auf Borg in einem guten Gasthaus, wo
man ihn kannte! Und der Kellner rief sogar beim Weitergeben der
Bestellung zur Küche: „Für den Herrn Baumeister!“, woraufhin Bodo
Völkel das Essen besonders reichlich zugemessen wurde.
Der Bodo kannte sich eben aus. Der Bodo war nicht so wie Vater!
Der Bodo verstand es, sich in der schwierigsten Lage zu helfen! Sie
würden noch alle staunen, wie weit der Bodo es brächte! Das
stilisierte Bauernhaus hatte er dem Grafen Gaudlitz ausgeredet und
einen Plan für ein prachtvolles vierstöckiges Miethaus entworfen. Die
Zukunft Berlins läge in der Gegend! Palast an Palast würde sich da
erheben. Graf Gaudlitz sollte den Anfang machen.
„Und der Graf ist darauf eingegangen. Nur ist es mittlerweile zu
spät geworden, und so kann der Bau erst im Frühjahr beginnen.“
„Das Bauernhaus jetzt wäre mir lieber gewesen als der Palast in
der Zukunft!“
Adele seufzte schwerbedrückt auf; immerhin, sie gab die heiß
verlangten Goldstücke.
Eine stürmische, rasche Umarmung, und Vicki verschwand bis
zur nächsten Geldklemme.
Adele aber sah, wie ihr Mann immer grauer wurde in der
stickigen Luft des verqualmten Zimmers und der überfüllten
Schulstube. Ja, es kam vor, daß er mit warmen Flanelltüchern über
dem Magen zum Unterricht ging, oder daß sie ihm rasch
Pfeffermünztee mit Baldrian hereinbringen mußte, wenn er mit
einem Privatschüler an seinem Tisch saß.
Sie sagte dann: „Du mußt zum Arzt. Ich verlange es, Alwin ...“
Und er nickte: „Ich war ja bei ihm ... es ist nichts. Ein nervöses
Magenleiden ... ich sollte das Rauchen aufstecken. Aber die zwei
Zigarren täglich ... wenn man darauf auch verzichten soll ...“
Das gab ihr jedesmal einen Stich. „Darauf auch!“ Das andere war
Karla. Mit seinen regelmäßigen Besuchen in der Landgrafenstraße
war es vorbei. Die Zeit dazu brachte er nicht mehr auf. Und abends
war er wie abgeschlagen, hielt sich kaum noch beim Abendbrot
aufrecht und schlief mit der Zeitung in der Hand in der Sofaecke ein.
Dann sah sie es recht deutlich, beim weißen Schein der
Gaskrone, wie schlecht er aussah, wie tief seine Augen eingesunken
waren, wie schlaff die Haut ihm um die Wangen hing. Auch sein
Haar hatte sich bedenklich gelichtet, das wellige, blonde Haar, das
es ihr einst angetan hatte! An den Schläfen ringelten sich graue
Büschel, und auch der kurze blonde Bart war mit Silberfäden
durchsetzt.
Es kam vor, daß Adelens Augen sich feuchteten und eine bange,
stumme Frage ihr aus dem Herzen stieg: Warum war er ihnen so
schwer geworden, der Kampf mit dem Leben, warum hatte ihr armer
Mann seine Tage in Arbeit und Mittelmäßigkeit verbringen müssen,
während so manch anderer über seinen Kopf hinweg höher
gestiegen war?
Was hatte die Tatkraft ihres armen Mannes so gelähmt, daß er
nie über seine erste Stellung hinausgewachsen war?
Adele sprach darüber mit Luise, mit dem Bruder. Sie wußten
keine Antwort darauf, alle drei nicht! Adele hatte in allem ihre Pflicht
getan. Mehr als ihre Pflicht. Sie hatte keine Ansprüche gestellt, hatte
ihre Kleider länger getragen als es ihre Dienstmädchen taten, hatte
Stoffe gewendet, geflickt, die Kinder gewartet. Hatte die Schwester
zum Verlassen des Hauses gedrängt, um ihrem Manne mehr
Bewegungsfreiheit einzuräumen, hatte stundenlang darüber
nachgedacht, was sie wohl kochen könnte, und ihm dann das Beste
vorgesetzt, was ihre Kunst und ihr Wirtschaftsgeld hergaben, hatte
durch Betteleien beim Bruder, bei Karla die Sorge um die Kinder fast
zur Hälfte auf sie abgewälzt, hatte die Tochter verheiratet — in stetig
wachsender Angst um ihre Zukunft und in Sehnsucht nach einem
friedlichen Alter, hatte, ohne ihn mehr als nötig davon zu
unterrichten, gerechnet und gespart ... und dennoch — — trotz allem
und allem hatte ihr Wohlstand sich nicht vergrößert, waren seine
Kräfte verbraucht, seine Gesundheit untergraben, seine
Lebensenergie erschlafft! — —
So saß denn Dr. Alwin Maurer auch an diesem Sonntag mit
müdem, grauem Gesicht am Abendtisch und kaute an seiner
Zigarre. So recht schmecken wollte der Glimmstengel nicht mehr! An
den zwei Pfennigen, die er jetzt weniger bezahlte, konnte es doch
nicht liegen!
Wie früher so darauf lospaffen konnte er ohnedies nicht mehr,
seit Fritz wie ein Schlot rauchte. Und unter einer
Fünfpfennigzigarette tat der’s nicht! Konnte er den Häusern, in
denen er verkehrte, gar nicht zumuten! Überhaupt, was der Junge
verbrauchte an Handschuhen, an Blumen! Er fühlte sich schon ganz
als Leutnant, machte Hausbälle mit bei den Eltern seiner
Kameraden, hielt sich für verpflichtet, Aufmerksamkeiten zu
erweisen.
„Die paar Blumen ... Bitte dich, Papa ... Ist doch
selbstverständlich!“
Es war vieles „selbstverständlich“ für Fritz, und Adele unterstützte
ihn, fand nie etwas zu viel für ihn. Es war ja auch nicht viel; aber es
mußte da sein.
Die Sorgen hatten sich jedenfalls nicht verringert durch das
Fernsein der Kinder.
Und während Dr. Alwin Maurer träge an seiner Zigarre zog,
dachte er, daß es eigentlich schon ein Alteleutetisch war, an dem er
jetzt mit Frau und Geschwistern saß. Wie schnell die jungen Jahre
doch vergangen waren! Und wie wenig Jugendlust in ihnen gewesen
war ... wie wenig Freudigkeit und Vorwärtskommen!
Draußen klingelte es, Adele ging öffnen — es war Karla.
„Endlich ... Na ...? Wie war’s? ...“
Karla brachte eine Welle frischen Duftes mit in ihrem Pelz, ihrem
Spitzentuch; sie lachte, war ganz freudige Bewegung, ihr langes
Schleppkleid rauschte über die Läufer.
„Habt ihr was zu essen für mich? Ich sterbe vor Hunger ...“
Sie hielt ihre Wangen hin, drückte die ausgestreckten Hände.
„Ja ... es war wunderschön! Eine Menge Prinzen und
Prinzessinnen waren da — ein Großherzog. Uniformen ... auch ein
paar Fracks. Der Kaiser erschien später ... aber gerade, bevor ich
drankam ... Er war so guter Laune ... hat mir die Hand gereicht: ‚Na,
Frau König ... was singen Sie uns Schönes?‘ Ich konnte meinen Knix
kaum zur Hälfte machen, da sprach er schon auf mich ein! ... Ich
weiß gar nicht, was ich geantwortet habe! ... Na ja — im ersten
Augenblick, nicht wahr? ... Und die Kaiserin — so liebenswürdig hat
sie gelächelt, und ein Kleid aus hellblauem Samt hat sie angehabt
und eine lange weiße Boa aus Straußfedern.“
Die Jettperlen ihres schwarzen Spitzenkleides glitzerten und
klirrten aneinander bei jeder ihrer Bewegungen. Ihr dunkles Haar
bauschte sich in großen Wellen um ihr froh belebtes Gesicht.
„Weißt du noch, Ernst ... mein erstes Hauskonzert bei Astrongs
... wie man da eine Schnur um uns gezogen hat? Jetzt kann ich’s
verstehen. So eine Schnur braucht wohl jeder Mensch — nur daß
sie bei dem einen zu sehen, bei dem anderen zu fühlen ist. Man
muß nur innerlich spüren, wo sie anfängt. Ein bißchen Tastsinn muß
man haben, denke ich mir, nicht wahr? Und darum bin ich so froh ...
weil ich mich heute gar nicht an ihr gestoßen habe ... keinen
Augenblick. Ich durfte singen und reden, wie mir der Schnabel
gewachsen war, mit all den großen Herrschaften, und wenn’s
wirklich einmal nicht ganz nach der Etikette ging, so habe ich doch
gleich gesehen, daß mir keiner darum böse war. Nur zum Essen bin
ich nicht gekommen — und es waren doch so herrliche Brötchen
und Kuchen und alles mögliche da. Aber ich glaube, ich habe fünf
Tassen Tee nacheinander in die Hand gekriegt und kaum einen
Schluck zu mir genommen aus jeder Tasse ...“
Altmann streckte sich und weitete die Brust. Er empfand
Genugtuung, ehrliche Befriedigung. So weit war die kleine König aus
Kiel doch gekommen! Ob auch ohne ihn ...?
Allen schwebte es in diesem Augenblick auf den Lippen, dieses
„die kleine König“. Nicht neidlos bei Adele, tief dankbar für den
Bruder bei Luise.
Nur Alwin Maurer erkannte mit leiser Freude all die Einflüsse und
Strömungen, aus denen dieser prächtige, frische Mensch, diese
wundervolle Künstlerin, ihre Lebenskraft geschöpft hatte. Altmann ...
ja gewiß. Er hatte die erste grobe Arbeit getan, das Gold von den
Schlacken gereinigt — aber war es dann nicht dieser Sonderling
Kapelle, der Karlas gefahrvolle Laufbahn in ehrenvolle Bahnen
geleitet hatte? War er selbst es nicht gewesen, der ihr inneres Leben
zu feinerem Bewußtsein geweckt hatte, und war dann nicht noch
einer gekommen, der ihrer Kunst die tiefste Innigkeit gegeben, durch
das Erwecken einer starken, keuschen Empfindung — —?
Sie alle zusammen hatten der Welt dieses köstliche Geschenk
gegeben, das den Namen Karla König führte, und sie alle mußten es
ertragen, daß sie keinem von ihnen, sondern eben der Welt
angehörte, für die sie sie geformt hatten ...
„Warum siehst du mich so an?“ fragte Karla plötzlich den
Schwager, und ihre Gabel, mit der sie ein Stück Schinken
aufspießte, blieb in der Luft stecken.
„Du bist des Ansehens und Nachdenkens wert, Karla“, sagte
Alwin Maurer, mit einem Versuch, zu scherzen.
Aber ihre Augen blieben hängen an ihm.
„Wie müde du aussiehst, Alwin .... Nicht wahr, Adele, nicht wahr,
Ernst, er sieht elend aus ... er muß etwas für sich tun.“
„Ja ... das müßte er“, sagten die Schwestern wie aus einem
Munde, mit dem gleichen, dumpfen Klang der Stimmen.
„Du hast heute Besseres zu denken, als dir über mich Sorgen zu
machen“, meinte Dr. Maurer.
„Nein, warum ...? Gerade heute ... ja, gerade heute, neben dem
Zimmer, wo sich die Majestäten befanden, habe ich über dich
gesprochen ...“
„Über Alwin? Wie das?“ Altmann trat wieder nahe an den Tisch
heran — auch die Schwestern rückten näher.
„Ja, das kam so ... Nachdem ich gesungen und die hohen
Herrschaften mir Freundlichkeiten gesagt hatten, stand ich plötzlich
— ich weiß nicht wie — im Nebenzimmer. Wie ich nun dastehe —
eine ganze Menge Herren um mich herum, und der eine sehr nett —
Orden von da bis da ... na, also dieser Herr spricht nun ganz
besonders viel mit mir. Wo ich studiert hätte und wo ich geboren
wäre, wo ich wohnte, und ob ich viel in Gesellschaften herumkäme,
ob ich eine große Familie hätte, Kinder und so weiter. Schließlich
wurde ich ärgerlich und platzte heraus: Ich habe ein kleines
Mädchen, namens Isolde, eine Schwägerin Luise, noch eine
Schwägerin Adele, einen Schwager Dr. Alwin Maurer, Oberlehrer am
... und da unterbrach er mich! ‚So ... so ... das ist ihr Schwager? Ach
was!‘ Und weil ich ihn ganz dumm ansehe, erzählt er, daß er vor
soundsoviel Jahren Dezernent im Kultusministerium gewesen wäre.
Und damals sei ihm dein Name aufgefallen. Du hättest, sagte er,
einen so famosen Aufsatz geschrieben über ... Herrgott, wie war das
doch ... über den Unterricht alter Sprachen oder so was Ähnliches ...
stimmt doch, nicht? Also diesen Aufsatz hatte er gelesen, und er
hätte damals jedes Wort unterschreiben mögen. Und es wäre sehr
mutig von dir gewesen in deiner Stellung, so etwas auszusprechen,
und er hätte gleich Erkundigungen über dich eingezogen und hatte
schon große Dinge mit dir im Sinn, aber dann hättest du alles
zurückgenommen ... sagte er ... oder ... also ich weiß nicht mehr
genau, wie das war; jedenfalls ..“
Karla fiel das Besteck aus der Hand.
„Um Gotteswillen, Alwin ... was ist dir ... was ist euch ...?“
Sie sprang vom Stuhl auf, starrte entsetzt auf den Schwager. Die
graue Farbe seines Gesichtes war bleiern geworden; aber auch ihr
Mann und die Schwägerinnen hatten sich verfärbt. Blicke, die sie
nicht begriff, flogen von einem zum andern. Adelens Lippen zitterten,
Luisens Hand krampfte sich in das Taschentuch ein.
Alwin Maurer stierte immer geradeaus.
„So sagt doch ... was ist Euch ... was ist geschehen?“
Karla war dem Weinen nahe.
„Nichts“, sagte Altmann. „Nichts jetzt ... das ist lange her ...“
Adele hatte beide Arme auf den Tisch geworfen und das Gesicht
vergraben. Ihre Schultern zuckten. Luise rieselten die Tränen, klein,
kalt und schnell der Nase entlang.
Karla lief auf den Schwager zu, schlang ihren Arm um seine
Schultern. Der frische Duft ihres jungen Körpers rüttelte alles in ihm
wach: die eigene Jugend, die frischen, starken Gedanken, das heiße
Sehnen ...
„So rede doch, Alwin ... lieber guter Alwin!“
„Da gibt’s nichts zu reden ... Karla ... Ernst kann es dir später
erzählen ... später ... jetzt nicht ... Es gibt eben Irrtümer ... mein
Leben war ein Irrtum ... für mich und ... für die da.“
Er zeigte mit dem Kopf auf Frau und Schwägerin.
„Solange man jung ist ... kann man’s gutmachen ... aber jetzt ...
da bleibt nur ein Trost: die gute Absicht. Sie meinten es ja alle gut ...“
Und er fügte hinzu:
„Dein Mann erfuhr es übrigens später. Da war es geschehen ...
da hatte ich ... da hatte ich es schon getan ...“
„Wie konnten wir ahnen, daß es so aufgefaßt werden würde ...
der Direktor selbst ...“
Adele schluchzte fassungslos vor sich hin. Alles war aufgewühlt
in ihr. Eine Welt stürzte in ihr zusammen.
Alles, was ihr eingedrillt worden war von Jugend auf: Gehorsam
gegen den Vorgesetzten, Bescheidenheit, stilles Dulden, nicht
herumdeuteln an dem, was Größere aufgebaut hatten,
stillschweigende Pflichterfüllung ...
War denn das alles nichts, großer Gott — war das so garnichts?
„Wir wußten es nicht anders ... nicht wahr, Luise ... anders
wußten wir es nicht ...“
Alwin Maurer wollte seine Hand auf Adelens Arm legen, aber er
reichte nicht bis hin; und so blieb sie liegen auf dem bläulich-weißen
Tischtuch — grau, schlaff, kraftlos und wohlgepflegt — das Sinnbild
seines Lebens.
Altmann legte beide Arme um die Schwestern.
„Alwin hat recht ... laßt das jetzt ... es ist müßige Spielerei, sich
vorzustellen, wie es hätte sein können ... Es war nicht — weil der
Geist der Auflehnung nicht in euch lag, weil ihr im Grunde
Wertvolleres könnt als Umstürzen: Ihr erhaltet! Ihr seid nicht der
Pflug, der den Boden aufreißt, ihr seid der Speicher, der unser Korn
birgt für unser tägliches Brot. Habt Dank, ihr Lieben, auch dafür!
Meinst du nicht auch, Alwin?“
Alwin Maurer nickte matt.
„Ja ... auch dafür.“
Seine Hand kroch langsam vom Tischtuch herab. Es war
vielleicht gut, daß es tönende Worte gab. Die Frauen trockneten ihre
Tränen.
Knapp vor zehn Uhr klingelte es von draußen. Es war Vicki. So
spät am Sonntag — da hatte sie es wieder einmal „dringend“!
Vicki hatte schon den schweren Tritt gesegneter Frauen. Sie
begrüßte alle flüchtig und ein bißchen verlegen. Sie begann zu
erzählen.
„Der Bau“ sollte bereits im März begonnen werden. Dann klappte
auch alles mit dem Geld — das würde Bodo schon einrichten. Nur
die paar Monate noch ... Bodo wollte sich mit einem Kapitalisten
vereinigen ... irgendeinem reichen Kerl vom Bau, der nicht viel
konnte und nach Aufträgen lechzte. Es liefen so viele in Berlin
herum. Bodo sagte, bald bräche die goldene Zeit für die Baumeister
an. Man müsse sich nur ranhalten und endlich mal den alten Kram
über den Haufen werfen. Die Leute würden wohl im Anfang
schimpfen, aber das war ja immer so! Nur nicht nachgeben, ihnen
das Verrückteste vorsetzen, alle alten Gesetze auf den Kopf stellen
— verblüfft mußten sie werden! Und pompös mußte es sein — die
Pracht müßte ihnen den Atem rauben! Dann zögen sie in die neuen
Häuser ein. Vor allem die Fassade ... die Fassaden wären die
Hauptsache!
„Und die Wohnungen?“ fragte Alwin Maurer.
„Bodo ist der Meinung, der Schwerpunkt der Pracht und
Raumverschwendung müßte jetzt nach außen verlegt werden. Das
lockt an. Die Wohnungen bedürften keiner solchen räumlichen
Ausdehnung, und in einem Zimmer dürften nie mehr als drei, vier
Sessel stehen und überhaupt sehr wenige Gegenstände. Unsere
Zimmer sollen eine Andeutung über uns geben, keinen Roman
erzählen ...“
Dr. Maurer streifte die Asche seiner Zigarre ab.
„Sehr nett — Andeutung. Nur leider stapelt sich im Laufe des
Lebens allerlei Kram an, der einem wertvoller ist, als eure
Andeutung. Das Leben, liebes Kind, weiß mit Andeutungen verflucht
wenig anzufangen. Das sind so eure jungen Hirngespinste —“
Alwin Maurer brach ab. Ihm war es, als sähen Karlas Augen
traurig zu ihm herüber.
Ja so ... nun sprach er wirklich wie ein alter Mann, wie einer, der
am Rande des Lebens stand und nur zusah, mißtrauisch und
übellaunig, wie die Jungen drüben ihre neue, junge Zeit
zurechtzimmerten ...
„Ja .. ja .. Vicki, mag schon sein ... alles Gute deinem Mann ...
alles Gute.“
Vicki küßte die Hand des Vaters, die graue, schlappe Hand. Aber
ihre Augen irrten immer wieder zur Mutter — fragend, bittend.
Und die Mutter verstand.
Sie erhob sich und machte Vicki ein Zeichen, ihr zu folgen.
Sie kam zurück mit brennend roten Flecken auf den Wangen.
Vicki folgte ihr, ein breites Lächeln um den Mund. Sie war wieder
einmal ruhig, brauchte ihrem Bodo nicht den Kopf warm zu machen
mit den teuren Marktpreisen und ihrer leeren Geldbörse. Die Mutter
zankte und maulte, aber schließlich „rückte sie doch heraus“.
Vicki machte die Runde, hielt jedem ihre frische Wange zum Kuß
hin.
„Das war nun alles?“ fragte Alwin Maurer und hielt sie am Kinn
fest.
Er griff in die Tasche und holte einen Taler heraus.
„Für die Fahrt ... kosten soll’s dich nichts.“
„Dank schön, Papa.“
Vicki nahm alles. Zwanzig Mark von der Mutter, drei vom Vater ...
es war ja für ihren Bodo, damit er einen freien Kopf hatte.
Und Karla fühlte, daß Alwin das eine wußte und das andere.
Sie saßen noch eine Weile beisammen, nachdem Vicki das Haus
verlassen hatte. Alle Frohstimmung war von Karla gewichen, aber
sie brachte es nicht über sich, Alwin jetzt schon allein zu lassen mit
Adele ... es mußte erst alles verklingen, der Schlaf sich auf seine
Augen senken, ihm Lust und Kraft nehmen, noch einmal von dem
„Irrtum“ zu sprechen.
„Ja, die Abende sind jetzt still zwischen Adele und mir“, hub Alwin
Maurer plötzlich an „und wenn erst Karla nach Wien geht, wird’s —“,
er wollte sagen: tot — „dann wird’s noch stiller werden.“
„Ist es denn nun sicher mit Wien?“ fragte Adele.
„Vorläufig habe ich nur einen Gastspielantrag auf drei Abende für
Ende Februar ...“
Karlas Augen blitzten unwillkürlich auf, aber sie wagte es jetzt
nicht zu sagen, wie sehr sie sich freute.
Der Drücker wurde draußen im Vorzimmer in das Schloß
gestoßen, einmal, zweimal ... die Kette klirrte.
„Das ist der Mieter“, sagte Adele auf Karlas fragenden Blick.
„Ach so ... ja ... ich vergaß.“
Alwin Maurers Mundwinkel zuckten nervös.
„Ein unausstehlicher Mensch ... als ob’s gerade d e r hätte sein
müssen!“
„Na, na ... er zahlt sehr anständig“, begütigte Adele.
Aber gleichzeitig horchte sie auf, und mit ihr die anderen am
Tisch.
Unsichere, schwere Schritte trappsten über den dünnen Läufer ...
es klirrte etwas, es schlug etwas gegen einen Stuhl ... die Schritte
kamen näher, die Klinke wurde von außen hart und heftig
niedergedrückt — ein Mann trat über die Schwelle. Groß, breit, mit
klobigen Zügen und trüben, hervortretenden Augen ...
„’n Abend ... was ist denn das, zum Deuwel nochmal, kost’ det
Wasser so ville Jeld ... wie? ... Verdammte Wirtschaft ...“
Er war betrunken, schwenkte immerfort die kleine Wasserflasche
vor sich her, aus der ein letzter Rest über den Estrich
herausplantschte.
Adele stürzte ihm entgegen, ehe sie jemand daran hindern
konnte.
Er torkelte bei der leisen Berührung ihrer Hand zurück. Altmann
und Alwin Maurer sprangen zu, schoben Adele zur Seite.
„Sie sind betrunken, Mann, gehen Sie in Ihr Zimmer“, befahl
Alwin Maurer.
Aber jetzt torkelte er nicht mehr, stand kerzengerade, breit und
unbeweglich wie eine Mauer da.
„Betrunken? Sie sind woll ...?“
Er tippte sich an die Stirn.
„Na, und wenn? ... Sekt haben wir jesoffen, verstehn Se ... de
Flasche zu zwölf Mark, und Rotwein und denn wieder Sekt ... tjawoll!
’n bisken anders, als Sie hier ...“
„Sie gehen jetzt auf Ihr Zimmer — hier sind Damen“, herrschte
Altmann ihn an.
„Ick jehe ... selbstverständlich ... ick jehe, aber bloß, wenn’s mir
paßt, verstehn Se ... Da haben Sie mir jar nischt zu sagen ... Wer
sind Sie denn ieberhaupt? Ick kenne Sie jar nich! Ick habe nischt mit
Ihnen zu tun, Sie ... Und wenn ick durch’s Speisezimmer jehe — det
is mein gutes Recht hier ... allemal! Wenn ick mein’ Kopp im
Badezimmer unter’n Wasserhahn stecken will, denn ... verstehn Se
... denn ...“
Altmann schob die Frauen in den ungeheizten „Salon“ hinein.
„Ihr seht doch, der Mann weiß nicht mehr, was er spricht ...
Morgen muß der Kerl raus ... aber heute — —“
Adele rang die Hände.
„Fünfzig Mark zahlt er monatlich ... denke doch, Karla, fünfzig
Mark ...!“
Karla sah durch die angelehnte Tür, wie der Mann drohend das
Eßzimmer durchquerte, sich plötzlich an einer Stuhllehne festhielt,
zusammenbrach und von einem heftigen Unwohlsein gepackt
wurde.
„Das auch noch ...!“ stöhnte Adele auf. „Das auch noch ...“
Das Mädchen war nicht da, stand wohl noch vor dem Haustor.
Adele holte selbst Eimer und Scheuertuch. Ihre guten Sachen mußte
sie retten — die vor allem.
Aber der Ekel schüttelte sie.
Als sie wieder ins Speisezimmer kam, hatten Altmann und Dr.
Maurer den Mieter in seine Stube gebracht. Er war wohl noch
leichenblaß, aber sehr nüchtern. Er stammelte etwas von „infamer
Kneiperei“ mit „Jeschäftsfreunden“, bat um „Verzeihung“, faselte
etwas von „revanchieren“.
Im Eßzimmer war das Fenster weit auf und ließ die kalte
Winterluft herein. Adele stand immer noch kurzgeschürzt in der
Stube und schrubberte und schrubberte.
Alwin Maurer nahm ihr den Schrubber aus der Hand und schloß
das Fenster.
„Erkälte dich nicht ... das ist wichtiger ... Über die fünfzig Mark
kommen wir noch hinweg ... Aber vermietet wird nicht mehr! Zwei
Stuben und Küche, meinetwegen; Fremde ... nie mehr ... hörst du,
nie — ich verbiete es!“
Und wie um die Härte seiner Worte zu mildern — dieses erste
Verbot in seiner langen, dumpfen Ehe — strich er immer wieder mit
zitternder Hand über Adelens eisig kalten Arme.
Als er den Kopf hob, sah er Karla, begegnete dem kummervollen
Blick ihrer braunen Augen. Er versuchte zu lächeln.
Karla aber wendete sich ab und schlug die Hände vors
Gesicht. — — —

Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty Across Europe Irena Reifova Full Chapter

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Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty

Across Europe Irena Reifová

ISBN 978-3-030-73542-5 ISBN 978-3-030-73543-2 (eBook)

Cover illustration: Richard Sheppard / Stockimo / Alamy Stock Photo

Prague, 16 November 2020

1 Perspectives on Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty in

2 ‘Benefits Scroungers’ and Stigma: Exploring the

3 Neural Attunement to Others: Shame, Social Status, and

4 Shame, (Dis)empowerment and Resistance in Diasporic

5 Mediating Class in a Classless Society? Media and Social

6 Invisibility or Inevitability: Performing Poverty in Czech

7 Shaming Working-Class People on Reality Television:

8 Disparaging ‘the Assisted’: Shaming and Blaming Social

9 Othering Without Blaming: Representing Poverty in

10 Inter- and Intranational Mediated Shaming to Justify

11 Social Distances Through Scopic Practices: How Czech

12 Everybody Is a Fool: Rural Life, Social Order and

Louise Cope is a post-doctoral researcher and associate lecturer at

Martin Hájek is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Institute of

Radu Mihai Meza is Associate Professor of Digital Media and Journalism

media representations of war and economic crisis, emphasising media con-

Budapest. His recent research project examined the post-communist tran-

Fig. 2.1 Julie undergoes biliary drainage procedure 33

Table 6.1 The sample of Reality Television programmes analysed in this

Perspectives on Mediated Shame of Class

Irena Reifová and Martin Hájek

Intersections of the Study of Class and Media

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

originally linked by their ownership to the rising bourgeoisie. Gradually,

(Hall, in Davis, 2004). The class-sensitive line of thought at the

predominantly Reality Television programmes. This line of analysis

consumer choices. Such take on class also leads to individualisation of class

A Socio-Cultural Approach to Class and Poverty

In European history, poverty was invented several times, always when a

dissociation of ethnicity, physical proportions, religious practices or

1. through repeated, emotionally intense performances of shaming

Besides these ways of transforming social relationships into factual attri-

Shame and Shaming

some cases, the condemning gaze of the others is something we only

social interactions in which shame is instigated by the perspective of

The European Perspective of Class and Poverty

The chapters of the book follow the imaginary geographical diagonal of

it expresses itself identically everywhere. Like two people speaking the

working without a contract in a higher-class family and the members of

Sabina Mihelj in her chapter ‘Mediating Class in a Classless Society?

Alexander Dhoest, Marleen te Walvaart and Koen Panis in their chapter

deferred modernisation, the chapter notices the thin line between

Acknowledgement This project was supported by the grant provided by The

‘Benefits Scroungers’ and Stigma: Exploring

Broadcasting Benefits: An Explosion

In January 2014, a new cultural mode of expressing class disgust was

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 19

became a visual manifestation of these ideologies, a hyperbolic portrayal of

Beyond the Borders: The Abject and the Grotesque

(Kristeva, 1982: 4). Due to this emphasis on boundary distinctions,

Methodology: Abject-Grotesque Frame Analysis

Animating the ‘Benefits Mum’

Here, the notion of motherhood coincides with ‘benefits culture’.

Mandy as ‘part of the problem’ of worklessness. It is implied that Mandy

Internalising ‘Scrounger’ Stigma

Despite initially appearing to be nonchalant, this later excerpt reveals

felt stigma might be based on social interactions, or engagement with

Aware of the stigma attached to claiming benefits, Rose and Gordon

1 Perspectives on Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty in

2 ‘Benefits Scroungers’ and Stigma: Exploring the

3 Neural Attunement to Others: Shame, Social Status, and

4 Shame, (Dis)empowerment and Resistance in Diasporic

5 Mediating Class in a Classless Society? Media and Social

6 Invisibility or Inevitability: Performing Poverty in Czech

7 Shaming Working-Class People on Reality Television:

8 Disparaging ‘the Assisted’: Shaming and Blaming Social

9 Othering Without Blaming: Representing Poverty in

10 Inter- and Intranational Mediated Shaming to Justify

11 Social Distances Through Scopic Practices: How Czech

12 Everybody Is a Fool: Rural Life, Social Order and

Fig. 2.1 Julie undergoes biliary drainage procedure 33