A Companion to Reality Television

A Companion to Reality Television presents a comprehensive guide to the study of reality, factual and nonfiction entertainment television. Broader in scope and scale than existing collections, the Companion encompasses major primetime entertainment formats, including talent competitions, makeovers, dating programs, reality soap operas and social experiments; it also covers lifestyle/how–to programming, game shows and talk shows featuring ordinary people, and online initiatives that evoke the shifting boundaries of producer versus consumer, content versus advertising, and ordinary versus celebrity.

International in scope, the Companion synthesizes and intervenes within important theories, debates and issues, and traces and explains the social, historical, political, commercial, ethical, and creative dimensions of reality/factual/non–fiction television entertainment. It also analyzes the production, conventions and reception of major formats, and situates reality television as a global and local phenomenon, identifying and commenting upon emergent trends.

Leading scholars in the intersecting fields of media studies, television studies, cinema studies, and cultural studies provide theoretical depth and clarity on the history of nonfiction and reality television, forge links to important scholarly debates, and analyze the politics of reality entertainment worldwide.

Introduction 1
Laurie Ouellette

Part One Producing Reality: Industry, Labor, and Marketing 9

1 Mapping Commercialization in Reality Television 11
June Deery

2 Reality Television and the Political Economy of Amateurism 29
Andrew Ross

3 When Everyone Has Their Own Reality Show 40
Mark Andrejevic

4 Cast–aways: The Plights and Pleasures of Reality Casting and Production Studies 57
Vicki Mayer

5 Program Format Franchising in the Age of Reality Television 74
Albert Moran

Part Two Television Realities: History, Genre, and Realism 95

6 Realism and Reality Formats 97
Jonathan Bignell

7 Reality TV Experiences: Audiences, Fact, and Fiction 116
Annette Hill

8 From Participatory Video to Reality Television 134
Daniel Marcus

9 Manufacturing Massness : Aesthetic Form and Industry Practice in the Reality Television Contest 155
Hollis Griffin

10 God, Capitalism, and the Family Dog 171
Eileen R. Meehan

Part Three Dilemmas of Visibility: Identity and Difference 189

11 The Bachelorette s Postfeminist Therapy: Transforming Women for Love 191
Rachel E. Dubrofsky

12 Fractured Feminism: Articulations of Feminism, Sex, and Class by Reality TV Viewers 208
Andrea L. Press

13 It s Been a While Since I ve Seen, Like, Straight People : Queer Visibility in the Age of Postnetwork Reality Television 227
Joshua Gamson

14 The Wild Bunch: Men, Labor, and Reality Television 247
Gareth Palmer

15 The Conundrum of Race and Reality Television 264
Catherine R. Squires

16 Tan TV: Reality Television s Postracial Delusion 283
Hunter Hargraves

Part Four Empowerment or Exploitation? Ordinary People and Reality Television 307

17 Reality Television and the Demotic Turn 309
Graeme Turner

18 DI(t)Y, Reality–Style: The Cultural Work of Ordinary Celebrity 324
Laura Grindstaff

19 Reality Television s Construction of Ordinary People: Class–Based and Nonelitist Articulations of Ordinary People and Their Discursive Affordances 345
Nico Carpentier

Part Five Subjects of Reality: Making/Selling Selves and Lifestyles 367

20 Mapping the Makeover Maze: The Contours and Contradictions of Makeover Television 369
Brenda Weber

21 House Hunters, Real Estate Television and Everyday Cosmopolitanism 386
Mimi White

22 Life Coaches, Style Mavens, and Design Gurus: Everyday Experts on Reality Television 402
Tania Lewis

23 Reality Television Celebrity: Star Consumption and Self–Production in Media Culture 421
Julie A. Wilson

24 Producing Reality : Branded Content, Branded Selves, Precarious Futures 437
Alison Hearn

Part Six Affective Registers: Reality, Sentimentality, and Feeling 457

25 A Matter of Feeling: Mediated Affect in Reality Television 459
Misha Kavka

26 Walking in Another s Shoes : Sentimentality and Philanthropy on Reality Television 478
Heather Nunn and Anita Biressi

Part Seven The Politics of Reality: Global Culture, National Identity, and Public Life 499

27 Reality Television, Public Service, and Public Life: A Critical Theory Perspective 501
Peter Lunt

28 Reality Talent Shows in China: Transnational Format, Affective Engagement, and the Chinese Dream 516
Ling Yang

29 Reality Television from Big Brother to the Arab Uprisings: Neoliberal, Liberal, and Geopolitical Considerations 541
Marwan M. Kraidy

Index 557

Laurie Ouellette is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches Critical Media Studies. She has published extensively on reality television and is co–editor of Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (2004 and 2009), and co–author of Better Living Through Reality TV: Television and Post–Welfare Citizenship (Wiley, 2008).