The Discursive Production of Subjectivity in Television News: Reflecting the Other on the Obese Child's Body

In this paper, I expand on poststructuralist and feminist theories of the body, gender, and subjectivity through an analysis of media discourse on childhood obesity. Through textual and narrative analyses of news segments on childhood obesity, I demonstrate that the obese child's body, as an abnormal body, is represented as a text of the 'abnormal' conditions in which that body is produced. Thus, the single-mother family structure and/or nonwhite and working class families -- families saturated with the excessive, out-of-control subjectivity of the Other-- are visible on the excessive, out-ofcontrol body of the obese child. I will argue that the discourse surrounding childhood obesity is indicative of a moral panic, where children's bodies are used to express a fear of the destabilization of the normative family structure and a fear of an irrational, excessive, over-consuming society saturated with the subjectivity of the Other.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Sociology

Year

2005

Author dc:creator

• Chatelain, Elise

Contributors dc:contributor

• Jenkins, Pamela
• Luft, Rachel
• Mann, Susan

• Children
• Subjectivity
• Body
• Representations
• Television
• Obesity
• Moral panic

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/221

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.uno.edu:td-1225