SWISHA EN MISSNÖJD KRITIKER
En kvalitativ textnära innehållsanalys av teaterrecensioner och teaterrecensenter ur ett genusperspektiv
The purpose of this study is to acquire knowledge about how professional theater critics in traditional Swedish newspaper write. The aim is to investigate how critics write their reviews and if there are differences because of gender or cultural capital. We also have the ambition to seek a commonly language in the reviews.
The profession as a critic is diffuse due to lack of education in the area. The study has been performed by a qualitative method where we analyzed sixteen reviews and four theatre critics at four different newspapers: Dagens Nyheter, Göteborgs Posten, Borås Tidning and Kristianstadsbladet. These four newspapers have been chosen since our intention is to reach a geographical spread.
The purpose is to investigate if there is a difference in the way the critics write their reviews due to education or long experience in the sphere. Our theoretical framework is mostly Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, but we also use the theory of Doing gender.
The study has been performed with a gender perspective where we also investigated if there is a difference in how female and male critics write their reviews. Do the reviews have masculine or feminine attributes? Can we find significance by gender?
The findings of the study show that there is a difference in the way theater critics write their reviews. These differences had more to do with cultural capital rather than gender. The qualitative method showed that the critics with higher cultural capital write their reviews with more attitude, better arguments and more adjectives.
The analyzed results also showed similarities as established patterns in the way that the reviewers write. All reviews had arguments characterized by logos and pathos which became a preponderance and it was clear early in the review whether the critic liked the performance or not. Another similarity is the fact that the reviewers showed awareness by mentioning several parts of the theater performance. Not only did the reviewers mention the actors and the director, they also included parts like the music and costume.