This challenging article is worth reading more than once for its rewarding insights. The author shows how ‘reality TV’ is a very profitable programme format for television companies, and points out how many of the participants are drawn from working-class backgrounds. She draws attention to the complex interplay between programme and audience, and the fact that viewers react in different ways.
Note how the programmes are structured so that viewers are encouraged to make moral judgements about the participants, and how there is often a focus on ‘undesirable excesses’ (e.g. dirt, weight and habits such as smoking). The article includes interesting references to class relations, and to the fact that structural factors (e.g. those that might lead to poverty) are often ‘airbrushed out’, so that the circumstances in which participants find themselves are portrayed as purely personal problems.
Your organisation does not have access to this article.
Sign up today to give your students the edge they need to achieve their best grades with subject expertise
Subscribe
