Page 453 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Real ty Telev s on

programming, sometimes requiring a special room for these personal revelation
sessions.
Reality TV’s interventions into private spaces, as critics have argued, have an
educational or training component. They provide models of behavior with im-
plications for shaping selves into citizens. Reality TV or “lifestyle” television acts
as instructional programming whose effect is to encourage self-responsibility,
self-entrepreneurialism, and self-improvement. According to some cultural
analysts, these interventions are integral to a neoliberal form of governance, in
which political solutions are outsourced to private citizens and groups, while
the populace learns to become responsible by relying on various lifestyle ex-
perts. Others note that this training parallels the forms of labor required in an
information society or post-Fordist economy. Programs like The Apprentice are
obvious choices, but numerous others encourage individuals to learn the art of
self-promotion, ways of being adaptable to new tasks, and working in collab-
orative team-based projects (e.g., Project Runway, Top Chef, Dream Job, Kept,
I Wanna Be a Hilton, The Scholar, The Contender, Who Wants to Be a Super-
hero?, Hell’s Kitchen). As a result, individuals learn to become flexible and to be
constantly open to new experiences, but also to new program commands and
external stimuli. In addition, subjects learn how to strategize and work the rules
of any game so as not to get eliminated. While the programs stimulate and draw
upon the powers of transformation, those desires are often organized around
narrow values pertaining to competition, fame, and money.

see also Celebrity Worship and Fandom; Dating Shows; Embedding Journal-
ists; Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Queer Representations on TV;
Hypercommercialism; Innovation and Imitation in Commercial Media; Media
and the Crisis of Values; Narrative Power and Media Influence; Product Place-
ment; Ratings; Representations of Class; Representations of Women; Surveil-
lance and Privacy; User-Created Content and Audience Participation.

Further reading: Andersen, Robin. Consumer Culture and TV Programming. Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1995; Andrejevic, Mark. Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched.
Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield, 2003; Biressi, Anita, and Heather Nunn. Reality
TV: Realism and Revelation. New York: Wallflower, 2005; Bratich, Jack. “ ‘Nothing Is Left
Alone for too Long’: Reality Programming and Making Malleable Subjects in Control
Societies.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 30 (January 2006): 65–83; Brenton, Sam,
and Reuben Cohen. Shooting People: Adventures in Reality TV. New York: Verso, 2003;
Hay, James, and Laurie Ouellette. Guidelines for Living: Television and the Government of
Everyday Life. Malden, MA: Blackwell Press, 2007; Heller, Dana, ed. Reading Makeover
Television: Realities Remodeled. London: I. B. Tauris, 2007; Hill, Annette. Reality TV: Factual
Entertainment and Television Audiences. New York: Routledge, 2005; Holmes, Su,
and Deborah Jermyn, eds. Understanding Reality Television. New York: Routledge, 2004;
Huff, Richard M. Reality Television. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006; Murray, Susan, and
Laurie Ouellette, eds. Reality Television: Remaking Television Culture. New York: NYU
Press, 2004; Wright, Christopher J. Tribal Warfare: Survivor and the Political Unconscious
of Reality Television. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2006.
Jack Z. Bratich