When my first daughter was born a few years ago, I entered a celebrity news blackout, a somewhat discomfiting condition for a sociologist of celebrity. When she entered preschool, though, I ...resubscribed to Us Weekly and devoured its morsels like a starving man at McDonald's: Kim Kardashian and her then-boyfriend ate at Chipotle on their first date! Ashton Kutcher was mad about his neighbor's noisy construction! Lindsay Lohan is back in rehab! I felt less disconnected from others, comforted by the familiar company, a little dirtier and a little lighter.
In this article, we offer an empirical contribution to complement cultural analyses of social class-making in Reality Television (RTV). We draw on qualitative interviews with young people in England ...(aged 14–19). Analysing these discursively, we explore how young people take up, resist and rework discourses of 'authenticity' within RTV shows including The Apprentice and The X Factor. We conceptualise young people's talk about RTV as performative, part of their 'identity work' through which they position themselves and others, and as embedded in wider processes of social distinction. We show that young people reject RTV contestants who are seen as too authentic in order to construct themselves as ordinary and thus normalise middle-classness. However, despite inviting audiences to make classed moral judgements, RTV provokes multiple readings. Specifically, some, mainly working-class, young people reject dominant discourses that pathologise working-class RTV contestants and instead value their lack of pretentiousness.
Against the background of the media commercialization reform since the 1990s in China and drawing on the case of »X-Change« (2006-2019), Wei Dong investigates the affective meaning-making mechanism ...in the multimodal text of Chinese reality TV. The focus lies on the ways in which emotions are appropriated and disciplined by regimes of power and identity, and the ways in which affect - in this case primarily kuqing (bitter emotions) communicated by the material and the body - have the potential to challenge or exceed existing relations of power in the mediascape. Wei Dong shows how Chinese reality TV provides a historical and theoretical opportunity for understanding the affective structures of contemporary China in the dynamic process of fracture and integration.
Insightful and provocative, and new in paperback. Examines the social, cultural, political and commercial implications of RuPaul's Drag Race, from its groundbreaking, subversive entry into the ...reality television arena, to a now mainstream, increasingly non-LGBTQ+, audience reach and relationship with fans. International contributors. 40 b/w illus. New Books Network (New Books in Popular Culture) interview with Cameron Crookston.
This longitudinal study explored the popularity and social significance of the 2005 season of the prominent Chinese television show Super Girls' Voice (a talent show similar to Pop Idol in the UK) ...regarding gender issues. Based on three focus group studies of the show's young female audience conducted in 2007, 2010, and 2015, we contend that tomboyish contestants, specifically Li Yuchun, were designated androgynous by most participants. Androgyny was largely perceived as a flexible gender identity that integrated the favorable appearance and personality traits of femininity and masculinity, a view that challenges normative femininity. Most participants also applied this meaning of the term to their own social lives, while some of the participants who were of school age in 2005 applied it to both their social lives and their construction of gender identity by copying the androgynous style. From a time-related perspective, however, we suggest that those participants who had copied the androgynous style were more willing to conform their appearance to the standards of normative femininity several years later, and renegotiated their gender identity in alignment with traditional patriarchal norms.
The Makeover Sender, Katherine
10/2012, Letnik:
26
eBook
Watch this show, buy this product, you can be a whole new you! Makeover television shows repeatedly promise self-renewal and the opportunity for reinvention, but what do we know about the people who ...watch them? As it turns out, surprisingly little.The Makeover is the first book to consider the rapid rise of makeover shows from the perspectives of their viewers. Katherine Sender argues that this genre of reality television continues a long history of self-improvement, shaped through contemporary media, technological, and economic contexts. Most people think that reality television viewers are ideological dupes and obliging consumers. Sender, however, finds that they have a much more nuanced and reflexive approach to the shows they watch. They are critical of the instruction, the consumer plugs, and the manipulative editing in the shows. At the same time, they buy into the shows' imperative to construct a reflexive self: an inner self that can be seen as if from the outside, and must be explored and expressed to others. The Makeover intervenes in debates about both reality television and audience research, offering the concept of the reflexive self to move these debates forward.
Las estructuras de poder internacionales presentan un patrón de transición donde Estados Unidos ya no es capaz de afianzar su poder de manera global. Los eslóganes de Donald Trump: Make America great ...again o America first, ejemplifican el interés mediático del presidente norteamericano en que sus electores piensen que es posible recuperar la hegemonía perdida. Este artículo examina los encuentros bilaterales de Donald Trump con los políticos Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Shinzõ Abe, Theresa May, Justin Trudeau, Giuseppe Conte y Jean-Claude Juncker. Unas reuniones marcadas por saludos extravagantes y comportamientos políticamente incorrectos que parecen más propias de un reality show que de un encuentro bilateral de líderes políticos. Mediante los datos extraídos de la plataforma Google Trends se estudia el impacto de las reuniones entre Donald Trump y los jefes de estado del G7 para examinar las variaciones de popularidad del presidente norteamericano y otros mandatarios internacionales.
The present study aims to gain an understanding of the patterns of representation and appearances of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the genre of reality shows in Israel. This genre has become ...extremely dominant in the television-broadcasting schedule. The mere fact that Arab people are visually present in TV entertainment, and in reality shows more specifically, should not lead us to conclude that Israeli TV is witnessing a move toward pluralism. It is important to examine the precise mode of representation of the "others." That is to say: we must look at the visibility of Arab participants in those reality shows in which they appear (research question 1); how Arabs are represented in such programs (research question 2), and at the types of interaction between Arabs and other, Jewish-majority, participants in the program (research question 3). Content analyses were conducted for all reality shows broadcast on Israel's commercial TV channels between 2003 and 2007 that included Arab participants. Results show the reality show genre is still firmly ruled by a Jewish hegemony that represents the Palestinian Arab as the "other" and that the overwhelming majority of spectators are Jewish.
Why Do We Enjoy Reality Shows Hershman-Shitrit, Michal; Cohen, Jonathan
Journal of media psychology,
2018, Letnik:
30, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The increased popularity of reality shows has been
followed by criticism that they rely on viewers' enjoyment of the
humiliation and degradation of participants. This study included 163 Israelis
who ...reported on their own willingness to participate in reality shows and how
they would react if family members were to participate. Positive correlations
between these responses and reported viewing enjoyment dispel the myth that
viewers' enjoyment comes primarily from watching others suffer and being
humiliated.
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