Artikel Katja Kanzler* Invective Form in Popular Media Culture: Genre – Mode – Affordance © 2021 Katja Kanzler, licensee De Gruyter Open. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License 27 10.2478/kwg-2021-0011 | 6. Jahrgang 2021 Heft 1: 26–36 Abstract: The following article outlines a way to conceptualize invective form in popular culture that is particularly interested in accommodating the range, fluidity, and slipperiness that define pop-cultural invectivity. It is an approach that draws on one very well-established concept of formal criticism – that of mode – and one concept that has recently been brought to the fold of formalist inquiry – that of affordance. I will argue that conceiving of invective form in popular culture as a mode and as an affordance allows to address the diversity and range of external forms by which pop-cultural invectivity operates. In addition, it brings into focus the fluidity that marks the repertoire of invective popular culture, its paradoxical tendency to gravitate toward routinization in more set conventions, only to conspicuously push against these conventions’ boundaries. Finally, to conceive of the invective valence of the mode’s repertoire not as a fixed property but as an affordance helps talk about the volatility and dynamism of invective performances in popular culture, the way in which their invective effects are contingent on the social positionality from and for which they realized, and the way in which their invective valence is open for resignification. Keywords: invective mode; affordance, genre criticism, modal criticism, popular culture, resignifica- tion, US-American culture – Affordanz, Genrekritik, Populärkultur, Resignifikation, US-amerikanische Kultur, Invektivität, Modaltheorie *Prof. Dr. Katja Kanzler, Leipzig University, American Studies, Professor and Chair for American Literature, katja. kanzler@uni-leipzig.de Throughout the 2010s, HBO’s Veep1 was one of at the Republican National Convention that nom- the reliably successful contenders in television inated Donald Trump as the party’s presidential award competitions. Veep stood out as a profan- candidate. Finally, in the wake of Trump’s even- ity-ridden comedy, revolving around the charac- tual election, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert3 ter of a foulmouthed female vice president and a saw a phenomenal rise in popularity, turning into satirical portrayal of the political class as narcis- the most watched program on the crowded Late sistic and incompetent. The show came to an end Show-market – especially among viewers that in 2019, after both producers and commentators represent the kind of urban, liberal ‘elites’ that had been noting how the arrival of a real pres- the Robertsons regularly belittled. Commentators ident that rivaled the show’s fictional one both consistently suggest that it became so success- in incompetence and offensiveness had made it ful because of its extensive satiric put-downs of difficult to write for the show. At about the same president Trump.4 time, a program that broke viewer records as the That list could be continued. What it illustrates most watched cable reality tv show was Duck is that contemporary US-American popular cul- Dynasty2, a family reality show that staged its ture is ripe with moments of invective:5 Popular protagonists, the Robertsons, as ‘rednecks’ – a media culture of the 21st century, to a significant derogatory stereotype of poor white people in the rural South that the show both actualized in its 3 Colbert (2015–present) Late Show. portrayal of the Robertsons as spectacularly crass 4 This is recurrent theme in commentary on how the rat- and unsophisticated, and that it resignified at the ings of Colbert’s show have been rising since the beginning of Trump’s presidency. For a recent example, see Koblin’s same time as a badge of anti-elite pride. One of article (2019) in The New York Times. the protagonists, Willie Robertson, gave a speech 5 It might seem tempting to trace the invective orienta- tion of contemporary US popular culture to Donald Trump’s presidency. However, I would suggest that Trump’s as- 1 Ianucci (2012–2019) Veep. cendancy to the White House is not cause of the apparent 2 A&E Networks (2012–2017) Duck Dynasty. invective turn in the popular but another symptom. After Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift - 1/2021 28 extent, organizes around performances of depre- and medially specific formations of comedy that ciation, devaluation, disparagement; or, the other producers and consumers treat as genres9 – but it way around, performances of invective unfold runs into its limitations when one is interested in considerable popular appeal in the commercial the larger phenomenon. My thinking in this essay media culture of the contemporary moment. proceeds from the observation that pop-cultural The above examples further illustrate that these invectivity regularly exceeds the boundaries of invective performances are marked by a notable genre(s). There seem to be multiple reasons diversity: They are diverse in terms of the flavors for this. One is that symbolic abuse in popular of symbolic abuse that they dramatize, ranging culture draws on such a wide range of rhetori- from (seemingly playful) ridicule and mockery to cal tools and emotional registers, from insult to (seemingly serious) insult and vituperation. They mockery, from rage to condescension, from the are also diverse in terms of how they actualize the fictionalized or playful to the sincerely vitriolic – antagonistic constellation of invective practices,6 and, frequently, pop-cultural materials keep the from scenarios of intradiegetic confrontation in boundaries between these poles conspicuously which invector and invectee are present in and blurry. As pop-cultural invectivity thus spans not as characters, to constellations of invective by individual but a multiplicity of genres, where it proxy in which the devaluation originates from the is more or less pronounced, conceptualizing it authorial agency of the ‘text’, manifesting itself in solely in terms of genre would result in a list of patterns of characterization that invectively con- genres that always feels incomplete. struct characters as other, debased, inferior.7 A second reason is that the popular forms of As a scholar working in the tradition of Amer- symbolic abuse seem to oscillate between poles ican studies, I am chiefly interested in the cul- of fixity and fluidity: On the one hand, they are tural work that these invective moments do, and often tied to tried-and-true conventions, to for- I believe that, to fully understand this work, we mulas and stereotypes that have proven to put need to look at their form(s): The forms of pop- down, to provoke. But on the other hand, they are ular culture organize what its materials can say constantly adapting to new medial and social eco- and do; they ‘order, pattern, and shape’ the ways systems, within a market framework that encour- in which these materials can “help[...] construct ages some degree of distinction, e.g. through the frameworks, fashion the metaphors, create the strategies of “serial outbidding” that Kelleter/ the very language by which people comprehend Jahn-Sudmann theorize.10 Invective popular cul- their experiences and think about their world.”8 ture seems to intensify the “dialectic of repeti- But how is it possible to conceptualize the formal tion and innovation” that Eco observes in popular principles of pop-cultural invectivity in the face culture in general:11 Invectivity is uniquely suited of such diversity? The arguable master category for the conspicuous breaking of conventions, for of formal criticism, genre, is very productive for pushing the boundaries of what is usually seen exploring the conventions of specific formations and heard on popular media, for moments of of this invectivity – say, of particular, historically provocation. At the same time, invectivity in pop- ular culture seems to require routinization and all, Trump’s public persona, which he still capitalizes on, ritual, possibly to defang and reign it in, possibly was made on television. also in order to accrue cultural meaning. 6 In talking about constellations of invective practice, A third and final reason might be that – because I am taking my cue from Ellerbrock/Koch/Müller-Mall et invectivity in popular culture is not primarily al. (2017) Invektivität. The article serves as a major intel- lectual framework for my thinking throughout this essay. 7 For a more detailed discussion of the distinction between 9 As Jane Feuer (1992) highlights, television-, and more authorial and figural invective in narrative materials, see broadly, popular media-studies tends to work with a con- Kanzler (2019) (Meta)Disparagement, p. 16f. cept of genre as a “tacit contract between the motion pic- 8 Lauter (1999) Reconfiguring, p. 23. This is Paul Lauter’s ture industry and the audience” (p. 143), as “systems of influential definition of cultural work. The phrase ‘order, orientations, expectations, and conventions that circulate pattern, and shape’ is adapted from Caroline Levine’s between industry, texts, and subjects” (p. 144), as she conception of form in her influential book Forms: Whole, puts it with Steve Neale. Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network, which has greatly inspired 10 Kelleter/Jahn-Sudmann (2012) Dynamik. my overall thinking in this essay. 11 Eco (1997) Innovation and Repetition, p. 26. 29 10.2478/kwg-2021-0011 | 6. Jahrgang 2021 Heft 1: 26–36 designed to hurt and put down people, but to sell ries of its use.13 No generic category, he finds, entertainment – it is notoriously slippery in its rhe- can accommodate “satire’s immense and perhaps torical motivations and meanings. As the economic incomprehensible variety: (in verse alone) logic of commercial popular culture demands formal satire, epistle, letter from the country, that its materials reach the largest possible audi- lampoon, epigram, session of the poets, advice ence,12 one might even argue that its materials to a painter — to say nothing of parodic forms.”14 are actively interested in not offending anyone. So Along with several other scholars,15 he instead invective popular culture tends to ambiguate its proposes to think of satire as a mode or “pro- intentions and meanings, playing with the bound- cedure” that can tie itself to all kinds of formal aries between actual and non-actual communica- expressions. tion (e.g., fiction/non-fiction, irony/sincerity), and Yet not only a form like satire, that shares the often encouraging practices of appropriation that diversity and dynamism of invective, poses such resignify insult as empowerment. problems, also a seemingly more narrow and In the following, I want to outline a way to specific literary form like the picaresque does. conceptualize invective form in popular culture When Wicks theorizes the picaresque as it mani- that is particularly interested in accommodating fests itself from 17th-century Spanish narratives the range, fluidity, and slipperiness that define to the 20th-century novel, he also finds that the pop-cultural invectivity. It is an approach that concept of genre does not work: draws on one very well-established concept of formal criticism – that of mode – and one concept The search for a picaresque genre concept has fluc- that has recently been brought to the fold of for- tuated between two extremes, which ultimately cancel themselves out: a rigidly historical approach that malist inquiry – that of affordance. My underly- seeks a genre so pure that no two texts together can ing argument is that conceiving of popular invec- verify it, and an ahistorical approach that posits a tive as a mode and as an affordance brings into genre concept so inclusive that its many texts in their focus aspects that are quite central to the phe- diversity invalidate it.16 nomenon yet hard to grasp with other formalist approaches. I will illustrate my theoretical reflec- His solution, too, is to conceptualize the picares- tions with a few examples from the tv show Duck que as a mode which features “in widely varying Dynasty that I just mentioned. degrees in much fiction that could not by even the most generous generic measure be conside- red picaresque fictions proper.”17 1 M ode: Invective as In their details, the modal concepts that Griffin (Performative) Practice and Wicks use are not fully congruous – in fact, it often seems that mode can operate as a solution to problems of genre criticism precisely because For quite some time now, the concept of mode it is a somewhat suggestive category, capable of has been a go-to fix for moments when formal mobilizing thinking thanks to a productive open- criticism runs into the limitations of genre. It is ness18. What does unite Griffin’s and Wicks’ uses particularly in moments where scholars aim to of mode, however, is that they approach it as a theorize forms across historical periods or media that the concept of genre often becomes too rigid. This is the case, for example, when Griffin 13 See especially Münkler in this issue. seeks to conceptualize satire across the centu- 14 Griffin (1994) Satire, p. 3. 15 See, e.g., Fowler (1982) Kinds; Knight (2004) Litera- ture; Phiddian (2013) Satire. 12 The economic organization of commercial popular cul- 16 Wicks (1989) Picaresque, p. 36f. ture has, of course, changed considerably with the advent 17 Wicks (1989) Picaresque, p. 43. of new media and the attendant shift from an economy 18 Because the term ‘mode’ is so suggestively open, it of broadcasting to one of ‘narrowcasting’ and niche mar- has been employed and theorized in several contexts. Next keting. In this new economy, it can make sense to offend to its development in the context of genre criticism, with and lose some audiences in order to win and bind other, which I am concerned here, one notable other example economically more interesting audiences. But even in such would be the concept of ‘narrative modes’ that is used in niche constellations, audience size does matter. narratology. Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift - 1/2021 30 category that is independent of form in the nar- and productive kinds that ‘bleed’ into modes. In row sense – as, if you will, a practice rather than modes, the generic properties of kinds become a form. Wicks thinks of modes as distinct ways of translated into more generalized, more flexible imagining fictional worlds – of imagining them as and mobile, less formally bound principles. Com- “better than the world of experience, […] worse pared to kinds, modes feature a reduced generic than it, or […] more or less equal to it”;19 for Griffin, repertoire, “a selection only of the correspond- modes denote even more loosely conceived ‘pro- ing kind’s features, and one from which over- cedures’ of fiction. Across its often incongruous all external structure is absent.”23 The fact that uses, the term mode denotes specific practices modal terms tend to be adjectives (satiric, come- of creating textual artifacts: ways of writing20 or dic) while the terms for genres are nouns (satire, performing aesthetically mediated communica- comedy), for Fowler, highlights that “modal terms tion, which can be realized in a potentially open- never imply an external form.”24 One of the key ended variety of formal ways. This conception of effects of a kind’s transformation into a mode is mode as a practice has two consequences that mobilization: Its generic repertoire gets mobi- are particularly significant for my purposes. One lized both synchronically, across different exter- is gradability: Modes do not have to be thought nal forms, and diachronically, across time. of in terms of absolute presence or absence; they If one follows Fowler’s ideas to think the can be present in textual artifacts to a gradable invective in popular culture as a mode, this extent, i.e., more or less prominently. The second immediately raises the question what might be consequence follows from this: Textual artifacts the parent genre of such an invective mode. This are regularly informed by more than one mode. is a challenging question – and its challenges, in Modes regularly cohabit and interact with each fact, echo the problems that Fowler himself has other in textual artifacts. when identifying a singular generic ‘source’ for Thus approaching mode as a practice makes it some of the modes he discusses.25 Perhaps the a very open, perhaps unproductively vague con- process of exchange between genres and modes cept. To get a better fix on its conceptual bound- it not as unidirectional as Fowler wants to have it, aries, several scholars have considered a rela- but rather goes both ways: Genres can become tionship between modes and genres. Fowler, who mobilized as modes, and just as regularly, modes has developed one of the most comprehensive coagulate into genres, i.e., they attach them- theorizations of literary types in Anglo-American selves to external forms that become convention- studies, argues that modes are closely related alized as historically situated kinds. The question to genres, or “kinds”, as he calls them. For him, what came first, the genre or the mode, might be kinds are historically situated genres that dis- less significant than acknowledging a dialectical tinguish themselves by particular properties – a relationship between the two. “generic repertoire”21 – which usually includes Reconceiving Fowler’s ideas in this way slightly a broad range of aspects: distinctive subjects, shifts the question, to the effect of asking what character types, plot-structures, topoi, moods, might have been early genre formations in which styles, values, and, importantly, always a dis- the invective mode took solid shape and evolved tinctive external form. Some of these kinds, he its modal repertoire. I want to point to two par- observes, become transformed into modes. And ticularly influential formations within English-lan- while Fowler concedes that we simply might not guage traditions – which, incidentally, overlap to yet have recognized all the modes that are cir- an extent that seems to stand testimony to the culating in the culture,22 his examples suggest existence of a connecting, possibly prior, modal that it tends to be the culturally most resonant 23 Fowler (1982) Kinds, p. 107. 19 Wicks (1989) Picaresque, p. 41. 24 Fowler (1982) Kinds, p. 107. 20 The phrase ‘ways of writing’ indicates that there is sig- 25 For Fowler (1982) Kinds, the most challenging mode is, nificant overlap between the modal theory I outline and again, the satiric: “Satire is the most problematic mode to German-language theorizing on ‘Schreibweisen’ (see es- the taxonomist, since it appears never to have correspond- pecially Hempfer [1973]). ed to any one kind”, he writes, and ends up concluding: 21 Fowler (1982) Kinds, p. 55. “Diversity of form is paradoxically the ‘fixed’ form of satire” 22 Fowler (1982) Kinds, p. 109. (p. 110). 31 10.2478/kwg-2021-0011 | 6. Jahrgang 2021 Heft 1: 26–36 impulse. One is a form known as ‘flyting,’ a prac- turally recognized conventions and evolved its tice of stylized invective contest that circulated modal repertoire. across some of the earliest canonical English The other genre I want to point out is sat- texts, including Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and ire, with its robust and lively tradition in the Eng- several of Shakespeare’s plays, and that became lish-language imagination, which also informs tightly conventionalized in 15th- and 16th-century so much of contemporary popular culture. Of Scottish poetry.26 These flyting poems – like the course, it would be more accurate to speak of other literary uses, related to even older conven- several generic formations here, since the satiric, tions of flyting in heroic epic traditions – were as already noted, has tied itself to several exter- highly patterned confrontations between two nal forms, also in the foundational periods of poets, in which each tried to demonstrate his Anglophone literary history, ranging, if you will, superior poetic skill through ever more elabo- from John Dryden’s poetry to Jonathan Swift’s rate and fanciful insults of the other. While per- prose. Satire is one of the literary formations that formances of flyting in the epic tradition charac- Northrop Frye discusses in his seminal Anatomy teristically involve warrior-characters who follow of Criticism, and interestingly, he delineates it by up their verbal confrontation with physical battle, talking about its boundaries to neighboring for- Parks notes, Scottish flyting poetry constitutes mations, including that of flyting (which he treats what he calls “ludic flyting” which “does not seem as synonymous with ‘invective’). He points to to bring with it any martial entailments.”27 In fly- two properties that supposedly distinguish satire, ting poetry, poets take out their rivalry on the and his phrasing indicates that they mark highly field of a purely verbal, invective contest. While porous boundaries. One is the moral motivation the rivalry between them might have been real that ostensibly drives invective attacks in satire – and might have formed an actual motivation for the conviction that the people, human behav- the attack, its performance in poetry was framed iors, or social formations that are disparaged are as entertainment.28 The genre’s conventionalized wrong, and that attacking them serves a greater strategies for demonstrating superiority include good. Frye aptly depicts this as a claim that satiric the use of technically demanding stanzaic forms, materials make, a textual performance that might creative realizations of the established topoi of be as fictional as other moments in the materi- insult (non-normative physical appearance, sex- als,30 but a property that distinguishes the generic ual practices, family origin, poetical [in]eptitude, repertoires of satire. The other property he iden- etc.), the use of a conspicuously sophisticated tifies is the use of humor and irony. He describes lexicon but also of conspicuously vulgar words.29 flyting as “satire in which there is relatively little Flyting poetry – with its many ties in foundational irony”;31 and he adds: “Attack without humor, or Anglophone literary traditions and its many ech- pure denunciation, forms one of the boundaries oes in contemporary popular culture – could be of satire”,32 admitting: “[i]t is a very hazy bound- argued to be one early genre formation in which ary.”33 Frye sees the reason for this haziness in the invective mode attached itself to a set of cul- the popular appeal of invective – “[i]t is an estab- lished datum of literature that we like hearing people cursed and are bored with hearing them 26 See, e.g., Hendricks (2012) Battle, especially pp. 71–74 and p. 90f. 27 Parks (1986) Flyting, p. 441. 30 Frye himself uses the satiric technique of mockery to 28 As Hendricks (2012) Battle, p. 73, points out, “[l]ate make this point, singling out the English writer Alexander medieval Scottish flytings were typically performed at Pope as his target: “The satirist commonly takes the high court and have usually been discussed as light-hearted – moral line. Pope asserts that he is ‘To Virtue only and her albeit vulgar – roasts appropriate for an intimate group of friends a friend,’ suggesting this is what he is really being courtiers”. when he is reflecting on the cleanliness of the underwear 29 These conventions are identified in Flynn and Mitchell’s worn by a lady who had jilted him” (Frye [1957] Anatomy, analysis of two of the most well-known examples of flyt- p. 225). ing poetry, The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie (ca. 1490– 31 Frye (1957) Anatomy, p. 223. 1505) and Invectuies Captain Allexander Montgomeree and 32 Frye (1957) Anatomy, p. 224. Pollvart (ca. 1580–83) (Flynn/Mitchell [2014] Interpreting). 33 Frye (1957) Anatomy, p. 224. Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift - 1/2021 32 praised”34 – which makes it tempting for writ- Dynasty slightly varies these conventions in that ers to falsely claim moral motivations in order to its protagonists are not prior media celebrities, legitimize their invective writing. One might add but a Louisiana-based family staged as ‘regular’, that the boundary is also hazy because humor is the Robertsons, who became rich within one gen- not entirely absent from flyting, either, but rather eration with a business that markets parapherna- forms an important part of its generic repertoire. lia for duck hunting. It would hardly be convincing So I suggest that, in English-language imagi- to call the family reality show an invective genre, nary traditions, flyting and forms of satire are two yet it clearly features invective moments that it early and influential genre formations in which the shares with other formats of (popular) culture. It invective mode evolved its modal repertoire. This is, in other words, informed by an invective mode. repertoire revolves around a poetics of devalua- In Duck Dynasty – as in other shows of this tion, negotiating a hierarchy between a speaker genre – the invective mode manifests itself, (speaking directly or indirectly, through figural or for one, in how the protagonists are portrayed. authorial voices) and an addressee (addressed The poetics of devaluation that animate this directly or by proxy). The repertoire can suture portrayal particularly surface in how the show the audience into the textual world in different takes recourse to an established derogatory ste- places, often – through not always – working to reotype – that of the ‘redneck’. ‘Redneck’ is an make them side with the invective agency. This (originally) disparaging epithet for poor white is a highly volatile operation, whose volatility a people from the rural South, figuring them as purely modal concept cannot fully explain. I will “God-fearing, gun-toting, truck-driving, inbred come back to this. When it comes to formal tech- bumpkin[s],”36 as Marshall polemically summa- niques, the repertoire of the invective mode is rizes the stereot ype’s contemporary semantics. very broad and constantly evolving. This breadth The show’s recourse to this stereotype becomes and dynamism is tied to the diversity of formal visible in its visual staging of the (male) Robert- techniques in the genre formations in which the sons’ non-optimized bodies, with long, seemingly invective mode has developed its repertoire. It is unkempt hair and beards, and usually clad in additionally tied to the premium that these gen- camouflage; in extensively dramatizing their love res have placed on inventiveness and creativity for hunting and fishing; in staging them as loud in invective expression. Finally, I would note that and crass. As other pop-cultural artifacts that are the invective mode regularly cohabits with other informed by the invective mode, the show hyper- modes, especially when it is realized in (larger) bolizes and spectacularizes its protagonists’ devi- narrative forms: Narrative, thanks to the require- ance from contemporary norms (normative body ments of emplotment, rarely can do with a poet- practices, norms of gentility, etc.) in ways that ics of devaluation alone. recall the 19th-century format of the freak show.37 Let me take a moment to illustrate this with the One recurrent motif in the Robertsons’ staging as example of Duck Dynasty. The show is shaped by crass is an open disdain for the kind of urban, the conventions of a reality tv-subgenre typically bourgeois identity against which the stereotype called family reality shows: depictions of a fami- measures the ‘redneck’s’ alleged inferiority and ly’s everyday life that claim to be factual (though pathology: The Robertsons, and especially family they are, of course, highly stylized and formu- senior Phil Robertson, regularly bad-mouth peo- laic). Most family reality shows focus on celebri- ple whom they call ‘yuppies’, but they also use ties, with the dual promise of offering tabloid-like this designation to playfully insult each other. So insights into the private lives of media stars, and of disclosing the eccentricities, if not pathologies, 36 As Huber (1995) outlines, the stereotype of the ‘red- that lie hidden underneath the glamor.35 Duck neck’ has been refigured several times throughout the his- tory of its use. Especially in recent years, it has been used for the valorization of (Southern) whiteness. 34 Frye (1957) Anatomy, p. 224. 37 Several scholars have made comparisons between 35 E.g. The Osbournes (2002-2005), Newlyweds: Nick and contemporary reality tv and the 19th-century format of the Jessica (2003–2005), Run’s House (2005–2009), and, of freak show. See, e.g., Dovey (2000) Freakshow. For a con- course, Keeping up with the Kardashians (2007–present). ceptual discussion of invective as spectacle, see Kanzler See Andrejvic (2004) Reality TV, pp. 10–12. (2019) Veep, p. 149f. 33 10.2478/kwg-2021-0011 | 6. Jahrgang 2021 Heft 1: 26–36 in addition to the authorial invective of the pro- are connoted as actual and which as instances tagonists’ enfreakment, there are performances of non-actual speech (family members playfully of figural invective that are equally woven into insulting each other, for instance, are thus addi- the fabric of the format’s conventions. tionally marked as expressions of affection). The Finally, the show clearly does not rely on an sentimental frame also orients the implied audi- invective mode alone. One other modal touch- ence in its affective response to the Robertsons, stone I want to mention is the sentimental mode, encouraging a sense of closeness – the audience on which the show especially draws in its stag- being invited to feel with and for the Robertsons – ing of the Robertsons’ ‘family values’ – in how it which complicates the show’s use of a derogatory glorifies the Robertson family as an ideal space stereotype in its portrayal of the family. Thus, the of mutual affection and functioning sociability.38 invective mode’s realizations in this piece of pop- The show does this, e.g., by regularly staging ular culture are greatly shaped by the other modal the bonds of affection that tie the Robertsons impulses that suffuse the material. together, which among the male main characters sometimes express themselves through playful practices of invective. Yet it especially does this in 2 A ffordance: Invective and/as the formulaic ending that the format features in Latent Potential its episodes: It is an ending that sees the family gathered at the dinner table, with patriarch Phil As outlined so far, a modal approach can be leading a prayer of grace and his son Willie, in useful for conceptualizing the invective moments voice over, commenting on how the episode’s lit- in a format like Duck Dynasty, and for placing tle crises and conflicts have been resolved. This the show and its genre within larger contexts of formulaic final scene – which emphasizes the invectively flavored popular culture. But there patriarchal, Christian, tradition-oriented nature of are aspects of Duck Dynasty’s invectivity that the the family – works as a move of narrative closure modal approach cannot account for. Most notably, that affirms the Robertsons’ familial cohesiveness it cannot account for the volatility and dynamism and happiness. As such, it also signifies back to of the show’s invective operations. For one, the the episode’s invective moments, giving them a show’s use of the ‘redneck’ stereotype has trig- narrative frame that is invested in an ethos quite gered amply documented readings as empower- different from that of invectivity, one of affectively ing those it allegedly belittles.39 Such reading prac- charged expressions of mutual connectivity. So tices could be theorized as resignification – as the the show’s use of the sentimental mode has an performative recoding of “injurious speech acts.”40 impact on how it operates the invective mode (and But is there a way to talk about how such reception the other way around): Its sentimentally charged practices are organized by the formal operations narrative of the Robertsons’ love for each other of the material itself? In addition, Duck Dynasty and of their family as an idealized space frames is surrounded by numerous paratexts that treat any moments of invective as embedded perfor- its invective valences not as a given, but as an mances, demanding them to be read against the object of negotiation or conflict. For example, in horizon of this frame narrative. The frame rein- an interview with the magazine GQ, Phil Robertson forces, e.g., which performances of invective presented a narrative of his experience of growing 38 Dobson (1997) influentially defined the sentimental 39 Duck Dynasty’s substantial fan following bears tes- as an “emotional and philosophical ethos that celebrates timony to such reading practices, as does the extensive human connection, both personal and communal” (p. 266), merchandise that is marketed for the show. adding: “[s]entimentalism envisions the self-in-relation; 40 This is Judith Butler’s phrase in Excitable Speech family [...], intimacy, community, and social responsibility (1997), where, building on her thinking about performa- are its primary relational modes” (p. 267). And I am con- tivity and repetition, she writes: “The interval between sciously using the phrase ‘family values’ here to designate instances of utterance not only makes the repetition and the set of ideas, invoked especially in conservative U.S. resignification of the utterance possible, but shows how politics, that “the nuclear family, with a married heterosex- words might, through time, become disjoined from their ual couple and their children, is the foundation of a solid power to injure and recontextualized in more affirmative and healthy democracy” (May [2003] Family Values, p. 7). modes” (p. 15). Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift - 1/2021 34 up in the pre Civil Rights-South that invectively selves to particular subjects. An average chair dismisses the existence of racism and replicates affords sitting down only for an adult human minstrel stereotypes of Blackness: without certain forms of mobility impairment; for other users, it has different affordances. Accord- Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked ing to design theorist Norman, affordances are for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across therefore not properties of designed things but the field ... They’re singing and happy. I never heard “relationship[s] between physical objects and one of them, one black person, say, I tell you what: people,”44 which realize themselves in concrete These doggone white people—not a word! ... Pre-ent- constellations of use. itlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? Levine now suggests that literary – or, more They were godly; they were happy ...41 broadly, communicative – forms45 can be thought in analogy to the shapes, patterns, and textures of The interview provoked responses that were material design; that they, too, can be approached highly confrontational in themselves: While some in terms of their affordances. Doing so means to commentators maintained that the interview ask what aesthetic forms are “capable of doing”46, makes explicit a white supremacist stance that “what potentialities lie latent – though not always is implicit in the show itself, others validated it as obvious – in aesthetic … arrangements.”47 Lev- an accurate depiction of life in the South, char- ine’s appropriation of the concept of affordance ging the other camp of commentators with offen- for formalist critique notably moves beyond its ding white Southerners like Robertson by trying more established adaptation in media studies, to silence them. So, apparently, devaluation is where it has been used to theorize the potential not a fixed and stable property of Duck Dynas- uses prefigured by particular media technologies ty’s various textual moves, but a quality that is and materialities.48 Levine turns her attention to subject of intense negotiation. Is there a way to the less physical shapes, patterns, and textures integrate this into a model of invective form? of various forms – including the kind of aesthetic I want to suggest that amending a modal forms and means that concern me here – arguing approach to pop-cultural invective with the con- that they, too, carry affordances.49 cept of affordance can help address these ques- A promising point where this formalist notion tions. Levine adapted the term ‘affordance’ from of affordance could be brought into conversa- design theory in order to reconceive (not only, tion with the concept of an invective mode is the but also) literary form. In design theory, she idea of a modal repertoire – i.e., of the open- notes, „[a]ffordance is a term used to describe potential uses and actions latent in materials and designs.“42 The design parameters of, say, a chair 44 Norman (2002) Design, p. 11. – the materials that are used (wood, plastics, 45 Actually, Levine (2015) Forms, is interested in a much more broadly conceived notion of form that encompasses etc.), the shapes into which these are moulded – any “arrangement of elements – [any] ordering, pattern- prefigure its use for sitting down. This potential ing, or shaping” (p. 3), be it aesthetic or social. use is programmed into the design of the chair, 46 Levine (2015) Forms, p. 6. Emphasis in the original. but still a chair affords more actions than just 47 Levine (2015) Forms, p. 6f. sitting down: it can be used for standing on it, 48 In media studies, the term affordance has especially for putting one’s feet up when lying on the floor, been employed to discuss the potential uses programmed into new media. See, e.g., the contributions in Gillespie/ etc; and these uses, too, are configured by the Boczkowski/Foot (2014) Media Technologies. The key point chair’s design. While “[d]esigned things may … of reference for such uses of the term is often Hutchby have unexpected affordances generated by imag- (2001) Technologies. inative users,” Levine observes, “[e]ach shape or 49 This formalist adaptation of the concept has begun pattern … lays claim to a limited range of poten- to inspire intriguing scholarship; see, e.g., von Contzen’s 43 (2017) work on the affordances of lists or Jaussen’s (2018) tialities.” What is more, the potential uses that on those of catalogues. While much of this scholarship are latent in the design of a chair address them- takes as its point of departure a specific form and asks for its affordances, I proceed the other way around: As I will 41 Magary (2013) What the Duck, n.pg. outline, my point of departure is a particular affordance – 42 Levine (2015) Forms, p. 6. namely the devaluation and symbolic injury of subjects – 43 Levine (2015) Forms, p. 6. which I tie to the formal repertoire of the invective mode. 35 10.2478/kwg-2021-0011 | 6. Jahrgang 2021 Heft 1: 26–36 ended repertoire of forms and means on which In addition, the concept of affordance brings the invective mode draws. Taking my cue from into focus the extent to which invective repertoires Levine, I want to propose that one way to delin- address themselves to particular subject posi- eate the elements in this modal repertoire would tions. In fact, the relationship between invective be to say that they afford the devaluation and affordances and the subjects who realize them is symbolic injury of subjects. Conceiving of this so strong that such practices can be argued to invective valence as an affordance means to con- performatively bring these subject positions into ceptualize it not as a fixed and stable property being. In this sense, affordances configure sub- of elements in the invective mode’s repertoire, ject positions. For example, the label ‘yuppie’ has but as a latent potential that can (or cannot) be invective affordances only for subject positions realized in its individual uses. At the same time, like the ones from which Duck Dynasty’s protag- it means to acknowledge that the elements of onists speak. At the same time, these invective this modal repertoire have other affordances, affordances configure the ‘plebeian’, rural subject which can be realized in tandem with or alter- position which the Robertsons perform by using native to each other. For example, the insignia the label as an epithet. Similarly, the different of the image of the ‘redneck’ that Duck Dynasty affordances of the ‘redneck’-stereotype depend on operates can be used to signify shame, but they the subject position from which the stereotype’s also afford the expression of pride. For the media insignia are used. In Duck Dynasty, the position commodity that the show is, performances that from which these insignia afford the expression are drenched in offensive stereotypes afford the of pride is both classed and gendered – the male accrual of attention. And, to point to another ele- Robertsons can use them in ways that the female ment in the invective’s modal repertoire, epithets members of the family cannot. The kind of low- – like the word ‘yuppie’ that is framed as an epi- er-class masculinity that the characters perform thet in the show’s storyworld – afford the expres- by realizing the ‘redneck’-stereotype’s potential to sion of disdain (when directed at subjects outside express pride is, again, configured by this affor- the protagonists’ community, demarcating this dance – and it is clearly a performative accom- community’s boundaries in the process), but they plishment: By economic standards, the Robert- also afford playful expressions of affection and sons are, of course, everything but lower class. intimacy within that community. Even the most In what Walton has aptly described as “redneck conventionalized means of invective communica- drag,”50 they perform themselves as proud ‘red- tion are not just invective; nor are they invective necks,’ stylizing themselves in a subject position all the time, nor to everybody. that is configured by the expressive affordances Conceiving disparagement as an affordance of the ‘redneck’-stereotype. opens up several interesting questions for a To conclude, for an interest in the invective new-formalist inquiry into invective popular cul- dynamics in and of US popular culture, con- ture. For one, it directs attention to the kinds of ceptualizing the invective as a mode and as an affordances that accumulate in the invective’s affordance opens up several avenues for pro- modal repertoire – convergences like the ones I ductive inquiry. It allows to address the diversity just exemplified (potentials to express shame – and range of external forms by which pop-cul- pride; injury – attention; disdain – affection). Are tural invectivity operates. In addition, it brings such convergences the result of local realizations into focus the fluidity that marks the repertoire of the invective mode, or are they systematic of invective popular culture, its paradoxical ten- phenomena that inhere in (potentially invective) dency to gravitate toward routinization in more signifiers? Are there expressive affordances that set conventions, only to conspicuously push are intrinsically related? And how exactly are the against these conventions’ boundaries. Finally, to different affordances and their realizations inter- conceive of the invective valence of the mode’s laced in the material and in the media practices repertoire not as a fixed property but as an affor- around it? 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