Abstract
This article aims to approach the phenomenon of cringe in four steps: First, from a sociological perspective, the distinction between shame and embarrassment is discussed and a working definition is developed that conceives of this difference as situational rather than essential. In a second step, this distinction will be used to examine more closely how the actors’ self-representation is decomposed in the reality format Wife Swap and what role cringe—understood as “Fremdscham” or “vicarious embarrassment”—plays in this. Third, an explanation for the attractiveness of these formats is offered that draws on the concept of “flexible normalism” and further specifies the latent functions of these formats sociologically. Finally, with a look at current cringe comedy, it is elaborated that the use of cringe as made in Wife Swap is a very restricted and truncated variety of this phenomenon. Cringe in a comprehensive sense, meanwhile, turns out to be a reflexive resource based on an unresolved ambiguity of multiple and often intersecting attributions.
Highlights
Shades of Cringe: Problems inA collapsing stage set during a speech by Theresa May, the tweet “#Cofveve” by Donald Trump, a disastrously failed “high-five”, a pushy quiz host coercing “little kisses”from children on camera, a middle-aged reporter unsuccessfully trying his hand at youth slang, casting shows in which contestants clearly overestimate themselves—the film clips, which are commented on in social media and video portals with a short, but emphatic,“Cringe!”, are innumerable and of the most diverse nature
If we look at Wife Swap, we see that the publicly recognizable self-presentation of the actor in question fails completely; but why does it fail, and not sometimes, not randomly, but almost always and absolutely reliably? It is because the repair mechanisms of embarrassing situations mentioned at the beginning are deliberately over-ridden by these TV shows, for any externally or self-staged overcoming of embarrassing moments or situations is undermined
If we rely on the working definition of shame and embarrassment I proposed in the first chapter, there might be an explanation for bearing the unbearable: the decomposition of self-representation as performed in Wife Swap turns out to be an attractive means of affectively stabilized self-assurance of the viewer, that his own socio-moral grammar works properly, and this effect is achieved only when embarrassment is attributed not to situations, but to persons, and merges into an unfulfilled expectation of individual shame
Summary
A collapsing stage set during a speech by Theresa May, the tweet “#Cofveve” by Donald Trump, a disastrously failed “high-five”, a pushy quiz host coercing “little kisses”. For a media studies perspective interested in the forms and functions of “cringe” and “cringeworthy” moments, it is natural to refer to studies that have focused attention on a very related concept: awkwardness. Without denying the validity of this approach in any way, the considerations presented here choose a different way of coming to grips with the phenomenon of cringe They initially refrain from a more detailed examination of the media-spectator relation and a further use of the concept of awkwardness; instead, they focus on the sociological difference between shame and embarrassment. The full spectrum of cringe, only comes into play when there is no one to blame for the discomfort you feel and no one you can be vicariously embarrassed for It is only such a constellation that leads to those awkward situations that Kotsko and Middleton analyse so thoroughly. “Fremdscham” and “vicarious embarrassment” already contain social attributions that anticipate the (supposed) origins and responsibilities for this discomfort
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