Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CULTURAL STUDIES
Volume 24, Issue 2, Pages 266-289Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/1367877920957348
Keywords
family photos; Iran; mediawork; remediation; vintage
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This article explores the various social roles and meanings of Iranian vintage family photos entering the global visual economy as representations, including as tools for diasporic nostalgia, soft power in public diplomacy, and sources for viral news contributing to clickbait orientalism. Utilizing gendered orientalist tropes, the indexical power of family photographs, and four decades of geopolitical tension, these digital soft weapons attract attention and revenue. Ultimately, these further manipulations render such family snapshots as anonymous, symbolic, weaponized, and monetized, proving that latent orientalist ideologies persist despite changing manifestations over time.
What happens when vintage family photos are digitized and enter the global visual economy as representations of a people, politics, time, and place? In this article, I examine the social life of an exemplary viral snapshot from pre-revolutionary Iran to demonstrate three of the many shifting uses and social meanings of these snapshots in online global circulations: as representations for diasporic nostalgizing, as tools of soft power in public diplomacy, and as sources for viral journalism that contribute to what I call clickbait orientalism. A 21st-century form of digital soft weaponry, this latter use of Iranian vintage photos trades on gendered orientalist tropes, the indexical power of family photographs, and the context of four decades of geopolitical tension to attract attention and thus revenue. Ultimately, these further remediations render such family snapshots as anonymous, symbolic, weaponized, and monetized, confirming that latent orientalist ideologies continue to circulate even as their manifest forms change over time.
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