Expanding the family frame: Social specialists, mediated experiences, and gendered images of mobility in transnational wedding videos

Abstract

This contribution explores the role of wedding videos in shaping transnational social relationships. Examining the production and aesthetic means of these 'mobile images of mobility', I show how videographers serve as ritual and social specialists to bring to the fore a fictionalized, imagined place of transnational social relationships. As evidence of 'memory objects' for life events, these videos form the basis for mediated experiences in transnational settings, relating those depicted to those engaging in and those watching the videos. They all become part of the social relationships that are inscribed in the video. Yet this imaginary filmic space creates gendered, contested spaces of mobility and immobility.