About the Book
This essay collection focuses on the gendered dimensions of reality television in both the United States and Great Britain. Through close readings of a wide range of reality programming, from Finding Sarah and Sister Wives to Ghost Adventures and Deadliest Warrior, the contributors think through questions of femininity and masculinity, as they relate to the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality. They connect the genre's combination of real people and surreal experiences, of authenticity and artifice, to the production of identity and norms of citizenship, the commodification of selfhood, and the naturalization of regimes of power. Whether assessing the Kardashian family brand, portrayals of hoarders, or big-family programs such as 19 Kids and Counting, the contributors analyze reality television as a relevant site for the production and performance of gender. In the process, they illuminate the larger neoliberal and postfeminist contexts in which reality TV is produced, promoted, watched, and experienced.
Contributors. David Greven, Dana Heller, Su Holmes, Deborah Jermyn, Misha Kavka, Amanda Ann Klein, Susan Lepselter, Diane Negra, Laurie Ouellette, Gareth Palmer, Kirsten Pike, Maria Pramaggiore, Kimberly Springer, Rebecca Stephens, Lindsay Steenberg, Brenda R. Weber
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Trash Talk: The Gender Politics of Reality Television / Brenda R. Weber
Part I. The Pleasures and Perils in Being Seen
1. The "Pig," the "Older Woman," and the "Catfight": Gender, Celebrity, and Controversy in a Decade of British Reality TV / Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn
2. Reality TV and the Gendered Politics of Flaunting / Misha Kavka
3. Keeping Up with the Aspirations: Commercial Family Values and the Kardashian Brand / Maria Pramaggiore and Diane Negra
4. When America's Queen of Talk Saved Britain's Duchess of Pork: Finding Sarah, Oprah Winfrey, and the Transatlantic Politics of Self-Making / Brenda R. Weber
5. Wrecked: Programming Celesbian Reality / Dana Heller
Part II. Citizenship, Ethnicity, and (Trans)National Identity
6. Abject Femininity and Compulsory Masculinity on Jersey Shore / Amanda Ann Klein
7. Supersizing the Family: Nation, Gender, and Recession on Reality TV / Rebecca Stephens
8. "Get More Action" on Gladiatorial Television: Simulation and Masculinity on Deadliest Warrior / Lindsay Steenberg
9. Jade Goody's Preemptive Hagiography: Neoliberal Citizenship and Reality TV Celebrity / Kimberly Springer
Part III. Mediated Freak Shows and Cautionary Tales
10. "It's Not TV, It's Birth Control": Reality TV and the "Problem" of Teenage Pregnancy / Laurie Ouellette
11. Intimating Disaster: Choices, Women, and Hoarding Shows / Susan Lepselter
12. Freaky Five-Year-Olds and Mental Mommies: Narratives of Gender, Race, and Class in TLC's Toddlers & Tiaras / Kirsten Pike
13. Legitimate Targets: Reality Television and Large People / Gareth Palmer
14. Spectral Men: Femininity, Race, and Traumatic Manhood in the RTV Ghost-Hunter Genre / David Greven
Bibliography
Videography
Contributors
Index
About the Author :
Brenda R. Weber is Associate Professor in Gender Studies at Indiana University, where she holds adjunct appointments in American Studies, Cultural Studies, Communication and Culture, and English. She is the author of Women and Literary Celebrity in the Nineteenth Century: The Transatlantic Production of Fame and Gender and Makeover TV: Selfhood, Citizenship, and Celebrity, which is also published by Duke University Press.
Review :
“This book is a must-read for all who are interested in gender studies as well as for economists, sociologists, and people from social sciences who are interested in the social and political effects of the ongoing recession and the rising economic inequality in the United States and Europe. It provides an important missing link between feminist economist and sociological analyses of the gendered causes as well as the gendered impact of the financial crisis and the recession….” - Margunn Bjørnholt (Women's Studies) “This collection of essays is an informative, interesting, and entertaining read, even for someone who has never watched a reality program because the essays are so well-written, and synopses so well-intertwined, that one can easily understand the arguments.” - Sarah Gawronski (Journal of Popular Culture)
