The affects of elitism in three-tiered semioscapes: Mountain View’s ‘secret of happiness’

Abstract

Gated communities, as privately governed residential enclaves, have gained currency among scholars who opt to explore contemporary mechanisms of neoliberal localisation and expressions of inequality. In the past few years, several privileged gated communities in Egypt have received attention in Ramadan advertisements and advertising campaigns, notably in the year 2021. Real-estate development companies have joined the crowd with high-profile promotional materials that package the aesthetics of unique architectural and prestigious suburban lifestyles. This research endeavour carries out a three-pronged analysis of the urban imperative and (post)-neoliberal urban governance of one emerging gated community in Egypt, namely ‘Mountain View’. More specifically, the article critically examines the local dynamics of the pertinent global semioscape associated with cultural capital and doing elitism in one recent TV advertisement entitled ‘the secret of happiness’. The study reconciles disciplinary tools to elucidate the trajectories of change mobilised through (post)-neoliberal strategies at three different ‘scapes’ that generate distinction. The essential contribution of the study is the proposition of a three-tiered semioscape analytical model for the study of how elite discourse is affectively encoded through the lens of the (post)-neoliberal governing paradigm as evoked in TV advertisements. Arguably, the ‘Mountain View’ elite economic and financial residents (individual and collective) re-signify idealisations of elitism with a potentially new mantra and heterogeneous communal and institutional consequences.