Respectability and shame: the depiction of coloured, female murderers in the Daily Voice and Son tabloids - 2008 to 2012

This work analyses the depiction of coloured women on trial for murder in South Africa’s Western Cape tabloids, the Daily Voice and Son. It argues that these depictions preserve conservative race, class, and gender norms. The coverage of the murder trials of Najwa Petersen, Ellen Pakkies, Zulfa Jacobs, and Chantel Booysen constructs a notion of illegitimate femininity that is rooted in apartheid and colonial discourse on coloured femininity. The ideologies present in this coverage indicate how themes of sexuality; motherhood; victimhood and trauma; class and community; and religion expel the threat female offenders pose to traditional performances of identity. This work is motivated by the shortage of local research on the depiction of female offenders. While international research have developed useful typologies for how female offenders are represented, and have shown how these depictions are sites for the communication of gender expectations, an acknowledgement of the diversity of women’s experiences necessitates a focus on how local discourses of race, class, and gender further influence these representations. Moreover, this work is motivated by the opportunity to offer an indication of how tabloid content works ideologically. By focusing on the depiction of women on trial for murder, this work offers a snapshot of the discourses on race, gender, and class that circulate in the publics created by these titles. The construction of deviant femininity, and its intersection with 'colouredness’ and a working-class identity, is the means through which the status quo is communicated. This work relies on a Foucauldian frame to privilege the power of discourse to construct identity, and the work of Judith Butler to consider how identity is produced and performed under constraint. In line with this focus on language, and due to a specific consideration of the Cape Flats vernacular, this work employs critical discourse analysis to analyse a purposive sample of the coverage of Petersen, Pakkies, Jacobs, and Booysen’s murder trials. Interviews conducted with journalists who have authored these tabloid accounts, and focus groups with tabloid readers who hail from the Cape Flats supplement this analysis. The results of this triangulation indicate the complex interaction between discourses in subduing the threat female offenders pose to normative identities. It also indicates the potential for tabloid newspapers to cement hegemonic and essentialised notions of racialised gender identities, despite South Africa’s post-apartheid context. Tabloids’ recognition of marginalised subjects does not automatically signify democratic transformation, partly because such subjects are represented by corporate monopolies who rely on cultural translators to communicate fixed ways of being. If media are to transform, they need to break from the apartheid era's subjugating and pathologising discourses. This work demonstrates that an interrogation of race, class, and gender politics is crucial for analysing South African tabloids’ contribution to public discourse.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Centre for Film and Media Studies

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Samson, Sean

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Haupt, Adam
• Bosch, Tanja E

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12962

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/12962