The Cutaway to the Toilet: Towards a Visual Grammar of Spatial Stigma in Factual Welfare Television

Jayne Raisborough, Lisa Taylor, Katherine Harrison and Shelly Dulson
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Jayne Raisborough: Leeds Beckett University, UK
Lisa Taylor: Leeds Beckett University, UK
Katherine Harrison: Leeds Beckett University, UK
Shelly Dulson: Independent Research Associate

Sociological Research Online, 2023, vol. 28, issue 2, 558-576

Abstract: Editing techniques used in Factual Welfare Television (FWT) in the UK undermine narratives of hardship and structural inequality in representations of the living places of welfare claimants. This research identifies the affects of a televisual syntax – or ‘visual grammar’ – of spatial stigma in FWT. Using original data generated in a study of Channel 5’s documentary series On Benefits (2015–2019), we conduct a visual grammar analysis to argue that cutaway editing, which inserts camera shots of toilets, canine excrement, and fly-tipping into programmes, undermines potentially sympathetic representations of poverty communicated via narrator voiceovers, and/or verbal testimonies of participants. Our findings show that cutaway editing is a significant feature in the production of On Benefits and is oppositional to the articulated narrative. The research concludes that cutaway editing in FWT generates disgust towards the living places of benefits claimants, which is productive of a powerful visual grammar of spatial stigma.

Keywords: disgust; documentary; Factual Welfare Television; poverty; spatial stigma; visual grammar (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socres:v:28:y:2023:i:2:p:558-576

DOI: 10.1177/13607804211066118

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