What Not to Wear...to be a good citizen

Here is another example of ideology operating in entertainment television.

Gitlin (1979) notes that one of the formal conventions in primetime TV that supports the larger hegemonic structure is genre: the types of shows we tend to see a lot of at any given moment say a lot about popular taste at the moment, and highlights shifting moods and sensitivities. Are we watching a lot of crime shows? Shows about young urban singles in the city? Gitlin suggests popular genres acknowledge our new concerns, while placating them.

Kristen brings up reality shows- which are certainly a hugely popular genre today! Which leads to the question- why? What are reality shows telling us about ourselves? What do they teach us? How do they reinforce hegemony?

Let's look at the makeover reality show (because we might not want to lump all reality shows together- there are many subtypes.) One interesting interpretation comes from "Better Living Through Reality TV," by Ouellette and Hay (2008). The suggest that these shows tell us how to be a good citizen in today's society- and what that means is ever more emphasis on individualism. We are more and more responsible these days for taking care of ourselves, as we come less and less to depend on the welfare state to do so.

A show like What Not to Wear, they argue, teaches us to view our selves as commodities "to be molded, packaged, managed, reinvented, and sold" (7). They show this to be an empowering process, in which you revamp your looks, even your personality, to better compete for jobs, or even love! In a world of outsourcing, job loss and corporate restructuring, it becomes each individual's personal responsibility to improve one's position, and keep oneself current (so we don't have to address those much more complex problems as a society!) And these shows instruct you exactly how to do it. That this happens to be through consumer culture (clothes, makeup) is not surprising. Yet shopping is reframed from being simply for pleasure to being highly rational: "...shopping ceases to be a recreational venue for escaping the drudgery of work...and becomes instead a route to carefully building an image that is salable in the marketplace of work." (115)

What are the other types of reality TV and what do they teach us?