Table Of ContentP
SHOOTING
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THE FAMILY i
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TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA AND a
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INTERCULTURAL VALUES
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Do contemporary movements of migration and
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the ever-increasing abundance of audiovisual t
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media correspond to – or even cause – shifts in a
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the definition of both the bourgeois nuclear (
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family and the tribal extended family? In d
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Shooting the Family, twelve authors investigate .
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the transfigured role of the family in a trans-
S
national world in which intercultural values are
negotiated through mass media like film and H
television, as well as through particularistic O
media like home movies and videos. “Shooting O SHOOTING
the family” has a double meaning. On the one T
hand, this book claims that the family is under I
N
pressure from the forces of globalization and
G
migration; it is the family that risks being shot to
pieces. On the other hand, family matters of all T
THE FAMILY
kinds, including family values, are increasingly H
being constructed and refigured in a mediated E
form. The audiovisual family has become an im-
F
portant medium for intercultural affairs – this is
A
a family that is being re-established as a place
M TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA AND
of security and comfort in times of upheaval; it
is the family shot by cameras that register and I
L
INTERCULTURAL VALUES
simultaneously create new family values. Y
Patricia Pisters is Professor of Film Studies and
Edited by Patricia Pisters and Wim Staat
Wim Staat is Assistent Professor of Film Stu-
ISBN 90-5356-750-X
dies at the Media Studies Department of the
University of Amsterdam.
AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS
www.aup.nl 9 789053 567500
AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS
Shooting/family 27-01-2005 18:20 Pagina 1
Shooting the Family
Shooting/family 27-01-2005 18:20 Pagina 2
Shooting/family 27-01-2005 18:20 Pagina 3
Shooting the Family
Transnational Media
and Intercultural Values
Edited by Patricia Pisters and Wim Staat
Amsterdam University Press
Shooting/family 27-01-2005 18:20 Pagina 4
This publication is made possible by a grant from the Media Studies Department
of the University of Amsterdam.
Front cover illustration: Sitcom, François Ozon © Cinemien, Amsterdam
Cover design: Studio Jan de Boer bno, Amsterdam
Lay-out: Het Steen Typografie, Maarssen
isbn 90 5356 750 x
nur 674
© Amsterdam University Press Amsterdam 2005
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this
book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without
the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
Shooting/family 27-01-2005 18:20 Pagina 5
Contents
Introduction 7
Patricia Pisters and Wim Staat
Part 1: The Family and the Media
1. Capturing the Family: Home Video in the Age of Digital Reproduction 25
José van Dijck
2. Migrant Children Mediating Family Relations 41
Sonja de Leeuw
3. The Shooting Family: Gender and Ethnicity in the New Dutch Police
Series 57
Joke Hermes and Joost de Bruin
Part 2: Private Matters, Public Families
4. Family Portrait: Queering the Nuclear Family in François Ozon’s
Sitcom 73
Jaap Kooijman
5. Radicalism Begins at Home: Fundamentalism and the Family in
My Son the Fanatic 89
Laura Copier
6. Family Matters in Eat Drink Man Woman: Food Envy, Family Longing,
or Intercultural Knowledge through the Senses? 103
Tarja Laine
Shooting/family 27-01-2005 18:20 Pagina 6
CONTENTS
Part 3: Translating Family Values
7. Saved by Betrayal? Ang Lee’s Translations of “Chinese” Family
Ideology 117
Jeroen de Kloet
8. Eurydice’s Diasporic Voice: Marcel Camus’s Black Orpheusand
the Family in Poet’s Hell 133
Catherine M. Lord
9. Archiving the (Secret) Family in Egoyan’s Family Viewing 147
Marie-Aude Baronian
Part 4: Loving Families
10. Suspending the Body: Biopower and the Contradictions of
Family Values 165
Sudeep Dasgupta
11. Unfamiliar Film: Sisters Unsettling Family Habits 181
Wim Staat
12. Micropolitics of the Migrant Family in Accented Cinema: Love and
Creativity in Empire 197
Patricia Pisters
List of Contributors 213
Index 217
Shooting/family 27-01-2005 18:20 Pagina 7
7
Introduction
Patricia Pisters and Wim Staat
Do contemporary movements of migration and the ever-increasing abundance of
audiovisual media correspond to or even cause shifts in the definition of both the
bourgeois nuclear family and the tribal extended family? In this book we will investi-
gate the transfigured role of the family both as the mediator and as the mediated in
a transnational world in which intercultural values are negotiated through mass
media like film and television, as well as through particularistic media like home
movies and videos. “Shooting the family” has a double meaning. On the one hand,
we claim that the family is under pressure and being altered by the forces of global-
ization and migration (the family that is “shot to pieces”). On the other hand, fam-
ily matters of all kinds, pertaining both to reinforcements and radical reconfigura-
tions of traditional family values, are increasingly constructed and refigured in a
mediated form: the “reel family” (as in the “visual family shot”) has become an im-
portant medium for intercultural affairs.
This book originated in the Department of Media and Culture of the University of
Amsterdam. As a group of media scholars with a special interest in intercultural
exchanges related to transnational media culture, we discovered that the concept
of the family had not been very elaborately analyzed in this respect. Although both
the Western nuclear family and the non-Western extended family is under pres-
sure (from internal struggles and divorces and from external causes like migra-
tion that tear families apart), no extended study has related the concept of the
family in an intercultural perspective to media use and media theory. This striking
absence in intercultural media theory led to the idea of writing this book.
From the beginning, we also had the idea of relating these theoretical notions
to certain media practices. We were therefore very happy that the center for mi-
gration and image culture, Imagine IC (Imagine Identity and Culture) in Amster-
Shooting/family 27-01-2005 18:20 Pagina 8
8 PATRICIA PISTERS AND WIM STAAT
dam was immediately interested in collaborating with us on this theme. Imagine
IChas programmed a set of screenings, talks, audiovisual assignments, etc., to
complement the “Shooting the Family” project. The book and the events present
a dialogue between media theory and practice that discusses intercultural values
related to family matters.1
The Family, Interculturality, and the Media
In contrast to media studies, in sociology, the family has been studied extensively
in relation to interculturality and multiculturalism. For instance, in their book
Families in Multicultural Perspectives, Bron Ingoldsby and Suzanna Smith, give an
overview of the different ways in which the family can be understood in all its cul-
tural diversity.2They discuss and compare familial issues like marital structure,
kinship rules, family members’ functional roles, parenting and “family life cycles”
(from marriage to families with young children and aging families) in all their cul-
tural diversities. In this way they demonstrate that although the traditional family
of (white) heterosexual parents and their children is often taken as the normative
definition of the family, from a multicultural perspective this definition can be ex-
tended in many ways as long as it is considered as a group of people that care for
each other and provide children a safe place to grow up. Of course, families can be
dysfunctional as well, and these unsuccessful families have also been studied ex-
tensively from a sociological perspective.3In these cases, the family is researched
with respect to its function in demographical descriptions of social organiza-
tions.
When we address the family in this book, we do not so much refer to the exten-
sive sociological studies on the family. Our references will be taken from studies
in the humanities, especially philosophy and esthetics. Questions of identity, par-
ticular esthetic traditions, and ethical concerns will therefore inform our analy-
ses. Moreover, all of the chapters in this book analyze particular media texts (fic-
tion films, documentaries, television series, and home videos) and look at how in
these particular texts the family is (re)presented. The underlying questions are al-
ways related to the double meaning of the title of the book: how is the family rede-
fined or even undermined by the forces of globalization, migration and intercul-
tural encounters, and what is the function of media in this redefinition of the
family?
—————————————————
1 See www.imagineic.nl.
2 Bron Ingoldsby and Suzanna Smith (eds.), Families in Multicultural Perspective(New York: The
Guilford Press, 1995).
3 See, for example, Richard Kagan and Shirley Schlosberg, Families in Perpetual Crisis (New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989).
