Description
Book SynopsisThe Culture of Mean is the first book-length feminist critical exploration of representations of youth bullying in media. Bringing into conversation scholarship on feminism, media, new communication technologies, surveillance, gender, race, sexuality, and class, Emily D. Ryalls critically examines the explosion of discourse about youth bullying that has occurred in the United States during the last two decades. Countering the monolithic and extreme cultural reaction to narratives about bullying, Ryalls argues that, while it seems common sense to view bullying as always wrong and dangerous, not all aggression is bullying and it is problematic to assume so, because it becomes very difficult to differentiate between healthy conflict and unhealthy (potentially violent) torment. Moreover, since the label bullying often does not differentiate between teasing, conflict, sexual harassment, and violence, increasingly the most common way to deal with young people accused of bullying
Trade Review
“The Culture of Mean offers a sea change, asking us to reconsider everything we think we know about bullying. Through careful analysis of both public policy and media myths about bullying—that relational bullying is carried out only by girls and that it is more damaging than physically violent bullying, that bullying and suicide are inextricable, that youth inevitably use new communication technologies to cyberbully—Emily D. Ryalls makes clear that our current cultural response to bullying not only is ineffectual but also perpetuates troubling sexism, racism, classism, and homophobia. A cutting-edge and unwavering media analysis useful for media scholars, policy makers, parents, and the countless of us who have both been bullies and bullied.”—Sarah Projansky, University of Utah
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments – Mean Girls, Cyberbullying, and Bullycide: An Introduction to Bullying Culture – Empowering Ophelia: Postfeminist Empowerment in the Mean Girl Discourse – Bullies in the News: The Tyler Clementi and Phoebe Prince Suicides – "I Can Be a Bitch When I Wanna Be": Queering "Mean Boys" Through Social Aggression – The Hierarchy of Victimhood in Bully – "Beware of Young Girls": Millennial Mean Girls in Scream Queens – Prepping the Queen Bee: Mean Girls and Bad Wannabes on Gossip Girl – Trumping the Myths of Bullying – Index.
