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This paper explores the jurisprudential concepts of the reality competition series RuPaul's Drag Race (RPDR): how legal norms and aesthetics are intrinsic to the show’s structure, and how in turn RPDR queers, or ‘drags up’, legal language, symbols and concepts. We consider the jurisprudence of RPDR across three frames: (1) the structuring of its legal system through the framework of the reality competition, its rules, and the role of RuPaul as judge, jury and executioner; (2) legal and moral principles: how values including liberty and equality are represented in RPDR; (3) RPDR’s court system: how law is performed, and its aesthetics and culture parodied and reproduced. Through RPDR, concepts of legality are queered, manipulated and reproduced in ways that both reinforce and reproduce those legal concepts and aesthetics. We argue however that RPDR is unable to realize its potential for radically queer, transformative, counter-normative change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the fourth season of MTV's Ex on the Beach, Adore Delano disrupts a rich and complicated tradition of queer visibility and representation. Unlike her queer predecessors, who often used unscripted talk shows and reality television to seek normalization, Adore demonstrates a conspicuous lack of appeals to normality while actively working toward coalition among her cis, straight counterparts. Recognizing the mediated nature of reality television as a simulation of Bakhtin's carnival, this paper argues that Adore's queer disruptions coalesce to glitch the homogenizing function of a simulated carnival. Throughout her time on the show, Adore actively and consciously produces discourses of gender that examine illegibility; enact and deconstruct hegemonic masculinities; and use the rhetorics of gender to hail cis and trans women into coalition. Together, these interventions provide a rich text through which we might understand alternative notions of visibility and coalition-building in the face of a political climate that intends to annihilate queer communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a new, popular, award-winning reality television show, Your Home Made Perfect. Drawing on insights from Sara Ahmed's work on the promise of happiness, our thematic analysis of nineteen episodes of Your Home shows how architectural entertainment is uniquely positioned through its use of Virtual Reality (VR) technology to circulate happiness and uplifting emotions and to critique the power imbalances of architect-client relationships. The paper argues how Your Home foregrounds happy emotions to the re-design of homes, where emotions are mobilized through design visualizations that turn both home and architects into "happy objects." Moreover, through "happy objects," this property television show seeks to deflect anxieties of housing precarity and growing wealth disparity. Finally, the paper reveals how architectural TV entertainment reinforces regressive ideas of identity and home ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay uncovers how and why so many U.S. Americans so easily and so gleefully accepted the tenets of Donald J. Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) platform by arguing that U.S. American culture was effectively primed for MAGA values through reality television (RTV) consumption. At a nexus of genres that include "man v. nature," "redneck," "dirty" job romanticization, and "copaganda," RTV primed the U.S. for Trumpism by presenting audiences with a harsh, violent, and nostalgic view of reality in an altogether entertaining format. This essay positions three RTV programs—Ice Road Truckers, Swamp People, and Appalachian Outlaws—as useful heuristics in demonstrating how RTV further foregrounded MAGA values of white hegemony, hegemonic masculinity, carnivalesque violence, and nostalgia in American culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines "process" discourse and the politics of reassurance across the prototypically American media domains of reality TV and cable news. Using The Bachelorette 's 2020 season and CNN's concurrent coverage of 2020s famously disputed presidential election as case studies, it argues that both broadcasts' copious references to the soundness of the "processes" they purport to depict both naturalize and stabilize the tenuous notions of heterosexuality and democracy on which they rest. The two programs' exemplary televisual "process" discourse reassures even cynical viewers that, though much of the pleasure US audience-members take in their broadcasts derives from the spectacle (or threat) of dysfunctionality, we can ultimately rely on the functionality of the systems that govern our lives. Not least, it courts the perception that television is the true arbiter of "the process," and thus that TV itself deserves Americans' trust—a vitally important impression to maintain during a global pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zoom became a critical part of media consumption in the COVID-19 pandemic's early lockdown months, appearing in everything from education to the nightly news to reality television. How did Zoom produce a new screen world that made everyday life look like TV? This essay examines how Zoom has figured on and as TV, focusing on it as a means to comment upon and also craft one's own mise-en-scène. What might Zoom TV offer to our understanding of participatory media and of the racialized, gendered, and classed features of both television and everyday life? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paranormal reality shows have been a ubiquitous presence on American television since its inception, though they have not been widely studied in scholarship on reality TV and television history more broadly. This essay sets out to highlight how two of the earliest paranormal reality programs, Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond and In Search Of..., adopted various elements of documentary style and direct audience address in order to create a sense of realism and immediacy for viewers. The essay also illustrates how these early paranormal reality shows expose the tension between fact and fiction at the heart of the reality show genre by exploring it directly rather than obliquely. In addition to putting these shows into conversation with existing scholarship on reality television style and the concept of televisual realism, the essay also contributes to what might be considered a lost history of paranormal reality programming in the U.S., arguing that these shows should be studied as key elements of reality TV's history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interventional reality programmes often give rise to speculations about how they treat their contributors. However, little is known about the actual production practices that lie behind these complex and often contradictory media texts. Based on in-depth interviews with crew members of a variety of popular formats, this article explores how ordinary people are turned into subjects of emancipation and spectacular transformations. By analysing the ideals, tactics and constraints characterising this process, I address how particular discursive and organisational mechanisms support or hinder morally viable compromises in situations where the imperative of 'selling strong performances' and personal standpoints come into conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses how three South Korean multicultural-themed reality television programmes discursively produce Koreanness. We ground our study in scholarship on 'othering' and the notion of banal nationalism (Billig, 1995) and conduct a thematic analysis of the shows. Our findings show that the programmes adopt a Korea-foreign dichotomy that becomes a lens through which viewers can vicariously experience the existence of a unified South Korean culture. We argue that the juxtaposition of a Korean 'us' against a foreign 'them' precludes imagining a more pluralistic South Korea – even as the programmes ostensibly celebrate South Korea's increasing diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay asks how the nostalgic attachments to particular Black women's performances on reality television inform current uses of those images through internet GIFs and memes. Examining the usage and exchange of files depicting the mid-2000s reality television star Tiffany Pollard on Twitter, I compare appropriation of black women's humour within digital spaces alongside appreciation of 'bad television' [McCoy, C.A., and Scarborough, R.C., 2014. Watching "bad" television: ironic consumption, camp, and guilty pleasures. Poetics, 47, 41–59] and the useful potentials of 'negative' representation [Gates, R.J., 2018. Double negative: The black image and popular culture. Duke University Press]. Debates about representational politics are complicated when circulating digital images and files that invoke nostalgic response through racialized gendered performances. What does circulation of these GIFs and memes say about nostalgia for a unique moment in reality television where 'ratchet' behaviour [Brock, A., 2020. Distributed blackness. New York University Press] was encouraged and the limits of respectability politics were experimented with? Examining how some have labelled exchange of these GIFs as perpetuating 'digital blackface' [Jackson, L.M., 2017. We need to talk about digital blackface in reaction GIFs. Teen vogue, 2], I theorize how contemporary accusations of exploiting stereotypical depictions of Black people in order to gain online social capital mirrors the history of American minstrelsy's purported nostalgia for 'authentic' Black performance. As the majority of popular GIFs of Pollard present 'ugly feelings' [Ngai, S., 2005. Ugly Feelings. Harvard University Press] such as irritation, resentment and disgust, the relationship between nostalgia for so-called better times, and desire for a recent moment in cable television's past in which the boundaries of 'good representation' were pushed and disregarded become entangled. By looking to animation of disembodied digital images in the use of GIFs as moving image files that are looped, refigured and circulated, I draw attention to new sites of digital racialization, popular culture criticism and examination of digital affect as it corresponds with Black diasporic cultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the phenomenon of the commercialization of the American Dream through the example of consumerism around the realm of the suburban home, a key element of this concept in the United States, as well as the role of reality television in creating and encouraging inflated standards of consumption. It uses the example of the American television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The article outlines the history and role of the American Dream, particularly the origins of the term itself, coined by Truslow Adams. The behaviour that Thorsten Veblen calls conspicuous consumption, which is characterized by a tendency to display material status in order to gain social respectability and prestige, is identified. The suburban house as a key element of the American Dream is analysed through the example of the makeovers presented in the programme. Their significant scale and unrealistic nature are often at odds with the real financial capabilities of the participants and are the cause of bankruptcies and financial problems. As the programme belongs to a genre that is supposed to reflect reality, in the light of the cultivation theory, created by George Gerbner, it influences viewers whose world-view is shaped by it and whose role models are imitated. Thus, the presented standards of a comfortable home in line with the American Dream can influence viewers' consumption behaviour by showing them that the acquisition of possessions is a solution to problems, a reward for an honest life and that there are no financial consequences associated with them. The lavishness of the houses and their luxury reinforce this impression. Finally, the article seeks to answer the question to what extent and why the need of Americans to live up to the vision of living the illusive American Dream – thus creating an image of success and social status – is exaggerated and its standards are taken to an 'extreme'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is interested in representations of mass surveillance in Hunted, Channel 4's reality tv series in which 'ordinary British citizens' roleplay as 'fugitives' that must evade surveillance and capture by 'the state.' Here contentious powers of state surveillance are mitigated by (a) the programme's deployment of a myth of surveillance 'symmetry' and a 'fugitive fantasy' that obfuscate the racial politics of 'being watched' in a post-9/11 climate; (b) personal stories of contestants or 'fugitives' that enable a 'therapeutic self' that situates the mass surveillance experience as productive and transformative; and (c) the 'gamification' of surveillance itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A combination of feminist and media framing theories allows for a perspective of the world in which power structures play a role in the construction of identities. In mass media spaces, those who hold power can shape the reality for viewers. This longitudinal case study content analysis of one reality television show, MTV’s The Challenge, reveals an ongoing scenario where producers encourage and devote airtime to sexism, racism, and violence, possibly with the intent to increase viewership, resulting in mixed messages for cast members regarding problematic behaviors. Over time, instances of these problematic behaviors increased, and cast members who engaged in these behaviors were more likely to be re-cast than those who did not. Negative behaviors are sometimes met with consequences, but these are inconsistent. As a result, cast members may be misled about acceptable behaviors and may suffer social, professional, and mental health consequences. Further, the content leaves viewers vulnerable to mixed messages on important issues such as sexism, racism, and violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reality Television is often regarded as a mirror to society; a feedback loop of media sustained by and produced for its audience. In just two decades, it has transformed the television industry by establishing not only a unique production culture but by also participating in culture production. Through its purported depiction of “reality,” it has been able to serve as a rich site for studying social, political, economic, and cultural trends. Further, where secrecy is a vibrant part of this entertainment sector, the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) has flourished. While a plethora of works study the television industry, the rising popularity of the genre, and the crucial role NDAs played leading up to the #MeToo movement, there is a lack of academic discourse surrounding a synthesis of Reality Television and NDAs in the present era. My thesis seeks to remedy this gap by analyzing the industry’s harmful labor practices paired with its use of NDAs in an increasingly digital age by conducting a case study of a recent controversy: Season 25 of The Bachelor. I conducted the study by examining critical media scholarship, television footage, interviews, trade publications, social media posts, as well as NDAs and legal sources. I found that the Reality Television industry has dominated the culture industry and has influenced numerous spheres of collective culture in tandem with harmful labor practices being silenced by confidentiality agreements. My thesis concludes that the use of the NDA has codified and perpetuated an ongoing and legalized system of racism not only within the industry but for the consumption and normalization of American audiences.

Watch Out For The Big Grrrls, Lizzo's successful extension into reality television content, showcases the rhetorical power of fat-flaunting. This close textual analysis of the series finds that Lizzo enacts emancipatory rhetoric to impart her method of strategic fat-flaunting to aspiring fat women dancers. Self-love and vulnerability emerge as critical elements required for delivering the hopeful Big Grrrls from the burdens of fat-hate and maintaining Lizzo's buoyancy above her critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cameo is part of a growing set of new media platforms trending toward direct routes for monetizing fame. Cameo allows fans to book personalized shout-out videos and provides celebrities—celetoids and reality stars in particular—access to new modes of income, which became increasingly important amid the pandemic. This research explores how the direct monetization of the fan-celebrity relationship is re-shaping the power dynamic of these parasocial relationships. Using digital ventriloquism as an analytical lens to study reality stars (e.g. Real Housewives) on Cameo, this study introduces the concept of paid puppeteering on digital platforms, defined as a form of digital ventriloquism in which a celebrity's public persona is manipulated and incentivized through financial means on a paid digital platform for the illusion of close parasocial connections with fans. Paid puppeteering reinforces celebrities as gig workers as Cameo mitigates fan access to celebrities—for a fee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On their surface, medicalised reality television series about food addiction and fatness seem to reinforce the same discourses of neoliberalism that have come to define our understanding of contemporary reality TV. However, this article considers how one of these shows, My 600 Pound Life (2012), negotiates and de-centres discourses of neoliberalism through medicalisation and spectacle. The bodies and behaviours on medicalised reality TV programmes can be engendering of sympathy as much or more than of discipline and shame, which reflects expanding and shifting narratives of the 'obesity epidemic'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the use of gesture by participants of the reality television show Sisters Who Make Waves. Based on 23.5 h of footage involving 30 participants, the analysis focuses on gestural communication by the female participants, who must straddle a formal/informal communicative environment dictated by the medium of reality television. More specifically, I examine two features of pointing gestures by the participants: social parameters and context constraints. The main interest is how a combination of general cultural norms as well as considerations of the interlocutor's social status contribute to gesture use. Context constraints and pragmatic concerns are also analyzed regarding the choice of manual or non-manual pointing gestures. These factors are seen to play a strong role in gesture choice. The findings show that the participants are sensitive to these social and contextual variables, especially regarding concepts like saving face, politeness, and friendly intimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using fieldnotes and headnotes from a study I conducted on African American viewers of Bravo's The Real Housewives of Atlanta, this article evaluates the ethnographic potential of the focus group for audience studies researchers. In particular, I argue the focus group is a method that allows researchers to pursue "closeness"—a value ethnographers have long celebrated as essential for cultivating emic understandings of people and the lives they live. The article outlines two key strategies for achieving ethnographic "closeness" in focus group encounters – the construction of the focus group as a field site and recognition of the focus group as a point of access to the contexts audiences use to make sense of media texts. If properly executed, I conclude focus groups have the potential to effectively function as "safe spaces," allowing participants to push back against damaging media representations and define themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how scandal functions to determine “appropriate behaviour” for women participating in the Bachelor/ette format. Based on Adut’s (2005) three key components of a scandal—the violation, the reaction, and the subsequent discredit—we examine how reality TV participants can be positioned as “transgressive”. We use two case studies to provide insight into regional variations of a franchise usually explored from an American perspective, examining the narratives of Abbie Chatfield and Lesina Nakhid-Schuster in The Bachelor/ette in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. We uncover the assumptions, revealed through scandal, underpinning the idea of a “good” romantic heroine within this format; and explore the ways in which these participants have navigated scandal and reshaped their narratives post-show in order to reclaim the narrative position of heroine. We argue that sincerity is fundamental to being considered a heroine: both our case studies were positioned as disingenuous during the show, but post-show were able to lay claim to a level of authenticity and sincerity that allowed them to reposition themselves.

Reality television (RT) programming is frequently and rightfully criticized and yet its popularity among adolescent and young adult viewers is also undeniable. In response to the need for media literacy programs to address the pleasures, the problems, and the pedagogy of the genre, we have chosen to take a cross‐national, comparative approach and to model a process for teaching through our own research. Three popular reality tv programs were selected from each of our respective nations (China, South Korea, the United States) from one of three subgenres: Dancing, Restaurants, and Travel. We each watched episodes of all nine programs, inventoried their features and took notes. We then compared and contrasted the programs cross‐nationally and across genres, and identified four themes: Pedagogy; Individualism and Collectivism; Tradition and Modernity; and Globalism and Nationalism. We found striking differences across nations in our analysis that provide important insights into our respective national cultures. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of our process for teaching about RT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The aim of this study was to describe how nurses' dialogue compares with that of doctors in the Australian reality television program Emergency and to explain how this dialogue and the use of narration and direct‐to‐camera monologues contribute to the portrayal of nurses. The final aim was to outline how these findings can inform the actions of nurses, nursing organizations and writers and journalists. Design: A descriptive study conducted in 2021 and 2022. Methods: Character network analysis was used to describe the verbal interaction of nurses and doctors and identify major, minor and background characters. Narration and direct‐to‐camera monologues were analysed through frequency counts. Cultivation theory was used to interpret the results. Results: Fifty‐four characters were identified, with 19 of these being nurses. Doctors spoke 87.9% of the dialogue. Most of the dialogue (43%) was monologue by doctors directly to the camera. All major characters were doctors, and only one nurse was a minor character. The mean number of mentions by the narrator of a nurse per episode was 4, and 30 for a doctor. Conclusion: The portrayal of nurses in Emergency is inaccurate and the production methods are used to privilege the role of doctors. This finding comes after decades of research showing inaccurate images of nursing in television. Drawing on recent Australian inquiries and the challenges experienced by mental health and aged care nursing, several approaches for collaborative action to improve these images are suggested. Impact This is the first study of the portrayal of nursing in reality television. These results suggest that much effort is still required even in contemporary reality television to accurately reflect the work and contribution of nurses. It is the shared responsibility of individual nurses, nursing organizations and writers and journalists to accurately portray nurses in the media. No patient or public contribution: This network analysis of a postproduction television program did not allow patient or public involvement in the design or analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Love on the Spectrum (2019–) premiered on Netflix in July 2020. The reality television show follows young autistic adults in Australia as they date, fall in love, and get married. I argue Love on the Spectrum (LOTS) ignores the marginalizing forces of ableist structures in favor of telling individual "supercrip" stories of autistic success that are grounded in heteronormative conventions of the romantic comedy genre. Specifically, I suggest LOTS sends a message to the loved ones of autistic people that "It Gets Better" through a classist and heteronormative narrative that suggests the problems of autism—familial dependence and being nonverbal—can be solved through heterosexual love and societal tolerance. LOTS erases queer identities (i.e. asexuality and bisexuality) to normalize neurodiversity and reinforce heteronormativity. The show calls on its presumed neurotypical audience to root for the "right" kind of autists — those who are palatable and place romance before personal interests—while problematically marking as strange and laughable autists who are too far removed from neurotypicality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metaculture is a theory first posited by Greg Urban in 2001. Metaculture is culture about culture, according to Urban. Fandom is a community of individuals who share a love for a text or person and discuss that text or person. Many fandoms create their own subcultures surrounding the object of their fannish activities. In those discussions and activities, metaculture is created and becomes a central aspect of what makes a fandom. While all fandoms use and create metaculture similarly, the object of their fandom has a unique relationship with metaculture that is influential in the creation of and a part of that fandom. This article describes the relationship between fandom and metaculture generally as well as in the context of Hamilton: An American Musical, Glamberts and Ratatouille: The Tik-Tok Musical by drawing upon Urban, Henry Jenkins and Katherine Meizel, among others, to discuss how reality television, musical theatre and social media all interact with metaculture differently, influencing the creation and continuing existence of fandoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers, contrasts and compares the images of three of Ireland's Taoisigh – Brian Cowen, Enda Kenny, and Leo Varadkar – by situating each Taoiseach along an axis of consumption, stretching from austerity on one hand, to overconsumption on the other. In particular, the popular image of Varadkar is carefully explored, charting how artefacts such as Instagram photos of carefully prepared lunches and birthday celebrations, form a key part of Varadkar's efforts to position himself as the ardent champion of neoliberalism. Despite such efforts, I argue that it is Kenny who emerges as a paragon of neoliberal citizenship, and thus is an ideal host for 2021 travel history series Iarnród Enda. The article then explores the ideological resonances of the series and its role in rehabilitating the somewhat damaged image of its host, as well as the symbiotic relationship Kenny enjoys with the rural landscape through which he travels, illuminating the function of the series in presenting a consummately neoliberal vision of rural Ireland. Iarnród Enda, I argue, further acts as an extension of existing State campaigns advocating for a relocation from overcrowded, expensive cities into rural hinterlands conceptualised as an entrepreneurial nirvana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her teatro-cabaret piece Los caballeros las prefieren presas, Minerva Valenzuela offers a searing critique of the inconceivably cruel abuses women suffer in Mexico's prison system. She does so by way of the charming protagonist Marilynares. Taking center stage with platinum blonde hair, red lipstick, a white body suit, and black heels, she channels the glamour of Marilyn Monroe. However, Marilynares is not an actress, but an inmate at the fictional Santa Martha Lamitas prison, hence the blue smock she wears over her form-fitting outfit. She is also contestant No. 10, competing for her freedom on the metatheatrical reality show "Hoy se decide mi vida." Coached and directed by an invisible voz en off belonging to Mr. Destino, the show's producer and host, Marilynares is instructed to share the most intimate details related to prison life by way of confessional addresses and musical numbers. However, when our protagonist realizes she is being exploited, she decidedly rejects and subverts central tenets of the neoliberal gameshow model: stark individualism and the sought-after "money shot." In refusing to play by someone else's rules, Marilynares hopes her audience will find compassion not just for her, but also for the thousands of women locked away across Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces one manifestation of the unique process of Asian-American abjection (Shimakawa, K. [2002]. "I should be—American!" Abjection and the Asian (American) Body. In National Abjection (pp. 23–56). Duke University Press.), produced from a dialectic of an aspirational model minority myth and the targeted status of an ever-evolving yellow peril. I highlight the nuances of such abjection through a "lacking personality" metanarrative imposed on Asian-American finalists on the reality television show, So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD). I forward an Asian-American rhetorical approach informed by critical rhetorics of race by Lacy and Ono (2011. Critical Rhetorics of Race. New York University Press) and Ono and Pham (2009. Asian Americans and the media , Vol. 2. Polity) to problematize rhetoric that abjects Asian-Americans. I suggest that depictions of Asian-Americans as lacking personality in popular media are part of the same continuum of racialized yellow peril abjection, upholding a conditional belonging that allows anti-Asian racial violence to flourish, particularly in moments of crisis and public moral panic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here the author presents a collage of inter-relatable quotations. The excerpts include discourses from/regarding reality dating shows, media coverage of Ukraine's invasion, gamification in dating apps, the role of affect in media remixing and sense-making, military and business strategy, computerized games, and literary authors and social theory. Questions emerge: How do various forms of popular/social media "interpellate" us? How does affect precede and result from participation, watching, and/or collaboration? How might varied discursive contexts present overlapping (and destabilizing) phrasing and points of focus across platforms? The performative text is designed to meet the moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reality television is an incredibly successful genre of entertainment. Reality TV has had enormous ratings success beginning in the early 2000s, and its influence (and revenues) are only likely to increase. Given the value of these properties, an important issue for reality TV creators and producers is the degree to which intellectual property protection is available to stop competitors from appropriating the content of reality programming. This Article first documents the rise of the reality genre. It then explores both copyright and trademark jurisprudence affecting reality plaintiffs and offers original analysis of this important aspect of intellectual property law.

This article reads the premiere episode of Top Chef 's fourteenth season, Top Chef: Charleston (2016), for its engagement with the history of slavery in the United States, arguing that Top Chef deploys acknowledgments of historical violences for the purpose of concealing those same violences. By analyzing the discursive and visual content of Charleston's premiere's elimination challenge, which required two chefs to cook head-to-head at a plantation, this article outlines how race shapes the action of Top Chef both overtly and covertly, emerging as an organizing factor for the program as a whole. Charleston's premiere episode illuminates how history is repackaged into popular discursive and material formations, while also suggesting the potential for such formations to cohere around race in unexpected and unpredictable ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how scandal functions to determine “appropriate behaviour” for women participating in the Bachelor/ette format. Based on Adut’s (2005) three key components of a scandal—the violation, the reaction, and the subsequent discredit—we examine how reality TV participants can be positioned as “transgressive”. We use two case studies to provide insight into regional variations of a franchise usually explored from an American perspective, examining the narratives of Abbie Chatfield and Lesina Nakhid-Schuster in The Bachelor/ette in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. We uncover the assumptions, revealed through scandal, underpinning the idea of a “good” romantic heroine within this format; and explore the ways in which these participants have navigated scandal and reshaped their narratives post-show in order to reclaim the narrative position of heroine. We argue that sincerity is fundamental to being considered a heroine: both our case studies were positioned as disingenuous during the show, but postshow were able to lay claim to a level of authenticity and sincerity that allowed them to reposition themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking off from the theory of social semiotics and using the methods of multimodal critical discourse analysis, this paper demonstrates how the communicative affordances of a Swedish reality makeover show, The Great Health Journey, are used to promote discourses normalizing extreme fitness ideals. It is a show that reduces health to body fitness and supports a particular health consciousness gaining prominence today, an ideology here depicted as fitnessism. Progressing the ideas put forward by Crawford with the notion of healthism, fitnessism accentuates the careful submission to strict fitness-related regimes as crucial for a healthy lifestyle. It turns the very fit body into a sign of good morals, indicating the values of self-discipline, self-control, and willpower, personal characteristics seen as crucial in the neoliberal era. But the healthiness of this fitness ideal can be questioned. Rather than serving the interest of public health, fitnessism seems to mainly encourage "aesthetic labour" and support commercial interests to exploit body dissatisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the intersections of racial identity performance, culinary style, and neoliberal logics within reality cooking television. By close reading the performance and evaluation of Top Chef: New York contestant Carla Hall, this article argues that reality cooking competitions depend on a grammar of stereotype in order to transform contestants into characters, and the contestants both acquiesce to and resist these preconceived notions, sometimes simultaneously. Neoliberal logics of personhood both constrain contestants within their 'characters'/'brands' and also allow chefs to agentially and reflexively self-construct particular personas out of their own culinary ethos. Relatedly, food operates as a multivalent racialized signifier of identity, in which the contestants racialize the food and the food racializes the contestants. As Carla Hall's performance in Top Chef: New York demonstrates, reality cooking competitions place demands on their contestants to 'appropriately' perform their identities, and contestants are evaluated by both the judges and the viewers on how they navigate these performances. This article contends that in its reliance on racial stereotype and conflations between labor, identity, and being, Top Chef propagates neoliberal and multicultural/postracial logics, demanding that its contestants of color perform their individualized, racialized identities in ways that the program deems 'authentic' and 'appropriate'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013, Hunan Television, one of China's most successful provincial satellite television stations, debuted a reality TV series featuring celebrity fathers and their children. A localized version of a Korean-developed format, Where Are We Going, Dad (baba quna'er) brought dads and kids together to different locations in the countryside, usually very remote and exotic, to complete certain assignments. This inquiry takes Where Are We Going, Dad as its focus; it seeks to understand how and how far notions of fatherhood are being constructed and circulated in contemporary China. It does so by way of audiences. While the show was evidently configuring and promoting their versions of fatherhood, we wanted to find out what viewers thought of the show, and of fatherhood. Located in the juncture of fatherhood and reality show studies, this exploratory inquiry identifies three themes from the conversations of four families in urban China. First, they articulate the difficulty of being a good father in a rapidly changing China and the concomitant longing to a return of traditional Chinese fatherhood. A second recurring theme concerns the ways in which they accept this tension between tradition and modernity. Finally, they demonstrate savviness in their viewing of the show. We build on the three themes to argue that such reality shows do impact on Chinese families' understanding of fatherhood, but their savvy viewership points to the limit of such media impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The TV recap has become one of the most ubiquitous forms of criticism in contemporary media culture, proliferating across multiple media spheres and domains. At its simplest, it provides an opportunity for people to catch up with what they have missed. However, it is also a space for engaging with reactions to a program: an inherently affective and social experience. This article seeks to theorize the TV recap, its uses, and its pleasures. It considers the recap as a form of paratext, and seeks to unpack its relationship to textuality. Specifically, it considers the practice of reality TV recapping, which often positions both recapper and reader/viewer as consuming the text ironically. This article uses a corpus of recaps of the 2020 season of The Bachelor Australia – including recaps by the author – to answer three questions: how does the recap energize, contextualize, and modify textuality? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reality television has featured over 15 years of weight loss competitions reflecting American obsession with obesity and weight loss. Qualitative content analysis was performed on 16 premiere and finale episode pairs for six seasons of NBC’s The Biggest Loser (TBL) using a Foucauldian confessional framework. Analysis shows how TBL presents contestants as sinful, fat bodies in need of redemption with the show and the viewing audience as the confessional stage. Contestants frame their motivations for weight loss in gendered ways related to family responsibility. Women felt like role model failures, while men worried about early death and family abandonment. Season finales were the settings of redemption through extreme weight loss where women were now able to be the thin parent role models, shepherding their whole family into weight loss and men were reborn, on a path toward living forever for their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant research suggests that crime reality television advances biased narratives about offenders, police officers, and the nature of crime. This study contributes to the literature by investigating the prevalence, severity, and proportionality of police use of force in Under Arrest, a Canadian crime reality television show. Using a content analysis of all 65 Under Arrest episodes, research reveals that police use of physical force is portrayed in nearly half of vignettes, and over half of force used is excessive force. Logistic regression indicates that the racial composition of the suspect pool does not predict use of force when controlling for other relevant variables. However, suspect race is the strongest predictor of excessive force even when controlling for initial crime seriousness, gender, suspect intoxication, and weapon possession. Results indicate that Under Arrest contributes to law and order ideology by portraying police use of force as a necessary and justified tool for controlling crime committed by racialized suspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of production techniques in shaping representations of cultural diversity in South Korean reality television. We first discuss the South Korean government's evolving guidelines concerning the representation of minorities on television and identify in the guidelines exhortations against discriminatory framing of migrants. Next, we qualitatively examine three popular multicultural-themed reality television shows and demonstrate that the shows ultimately circumvent the government guidelines via specific production techniques, including voice-overs and format decisions. We argue that these techniques, in combination with genre constraints and financial constraints, play a crucial role in othering the migrants portrayed on South Korean reality television. We conclude by considering how reality television can, and should, more accurately reflect the country's changing demographics, more positively represent minority guests, and more actively encourage transformative dialogue about South Korea's multicultural present and future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History is littered with tales of the absurd, odd, and unusual. From Gorgons and mermaids to bearded ladies and elephant men, people have, for centuries, been fascinated by those who deviate from physical and mental social norms. Such fascinations seemed to peak during the 19th century when showmen, like PT Barnum, bought and exhibited those deemed too different and macabre for “normal” society. However, as science and medicine progressed, and the protection of human rights became more important, freak shows and travelling sideshows dwindled (Nicholas & Chambers, 2016). Society’s fascination with the unusual though, did not. Despite increased political correctness and calls to end “fat shaming,” bullying and the like, reality television appears to encourage “a dehumanising process that actually lessens our regard for other people” (Sardar, 2000). While some writers have considered how reality television exploits stereotypes and links social norms to hegemonic whiteness (Cooke-Jackson & Hansen, 2008; Rennels, 2015), few have commented on the similarities between such programming and the stylings of the 19th century freak show. Utilising Thomson’s (1996) concept of freak discourse, and Bogdan’s (1996) assessment of freak narrative, this article examines how reality television programming as a genre, despite its varied plots, uses a narrative formula that can be likened to 19th century freak shows to enhance its storylines and “produce a human spectacle” (Thomson, 1996, p. 7).