Summary

International in scope and more comprehensive than existing collections, A Companion to Reality Television presents a complete guide to the study of reality, factual and nonfiction television entertainment, encompassing a wide range of formats and incorporating cutting-edge work in critical, social and political theory.

Original in bringing cutting-edge work in critical, social and political theory into the conversation about reality TV
Consolidates the latest, broadest range of scholarship on the politics of reality television and its vexed relationship to culture, society, identity, democracy, and “ordinary people” in the media
Includes primetime reality entertainment as well as precursors such as daytime talk shows in the scope of discussion
Contributions from a list of international, leading scholars in this field

Author Biography

Laurie Ouellette is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches Critical Media Studies. She has published extensively on reality television and is co-author of Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (2004 and 2009), and Better Living Through Reality TV: Television and Post-Welfare Citizenship (Wiley, 2008).

Introduction
Laurie Ouellette

Part 1: Industry Moves: Producing and Selling Reality

1. Mapping Commercialism in Reality Television
June Deery

2. Reality TV and the Political Economy of Amateurism
Andrew Ross

3. When Everyone Has Their Own Reality Show
Mark Andrejevic

4. Cast-aways: The Plights and Pleasures of Reality Casting and Production Studies
Vicki Mayer

5. Program Format Franchising in the Age of Reality Television
Albert Moran

Part 2: Blurred Realities: History, Genre and Realism

6. Realism and Reality Formats
Jonathan Bignell

7. Reality TV Experiences: Audiences, Fact, and Fiction
Annette Hill

8. From Participatory Video to Reality TV
Daniel Marcus

9. Manufacturing “Massness”: Aesthetic Form and Industry Practice in the Reality Television Contest
Hollis Griffin

10. God, Capitalism and the Family Dog
Eileen Meehan

Part 3: Dilemmas of Visibility: Identity and Difference

11. The Bachelorette’s Postfeminist Therapy: Transforming Women for Love
Rachel E. Dubrofsky

12. Fractured Feminism: Articulations of Feminism, Sex and Class by Reality TV Viewers
Andrea Press

13. “It’s Been a While Since I’ve Seen, Like, Straight People:” Queer Visibility in the Age of Post-Network Reality Television
Joshua Gamson

14. The Wild Bunch: Men, Labor and Reality Television
Gareth Palmer

15. The Conundrum of Race and Reality TV
Catherine Squires

16. Tan TV: Reality Television’s Post-Racial Delusion
Hunter Hargraves

Part 4: Ordinary People on TV: Empowerment or Exploitation?

17. Reality TV and the Demotic Turn
Graeme Turner

18. DIY(t)Y, Reality-Style: The Cultural Word of Ordinary Celebrity
Laura Grindstaff

19. Reality TV’s Construction of Ordinary People: Class-Based and Non-Elitist Articulations
Nico Carpentier

Part 5: Subjects of Reality: Making and Selling Selves and Lifestyles

20. Mapping the Makeover Maze: The Contours and Contradictions of Makeover TV
Brenda Weber

21. House Hunters, Real Estate TV and Everyday Cosmopolitanism
Mimi White

22. Life Coaches, Style Mavens and Design Gurus: Everyday Experts on Reality TV
Tania Lewis

23. Reality Television Celebrity: Star Consumption and Self-Production in Media Culture
Julie Wilson

24. Producing “Reality”: Branded Content, Branded Selves, Precarious Futures
Alison Hearn

Part 6: Affective Registers: Reality, Sentimentality and Feeling

25. A Matter of Feeling: Mediated Affect in Reality TV
Misha Kavka

26. “Walking in Another’s Shoes: Sentimentality and Philanthropy on Reality TV
Heather Nunn and Anita Biressi

Part 7: Political Realities: Citizenship, Policy and Public Life

27. Reality Television and the Reinvention of Government
James Hay and Laurie Ouellette

28. Reality Television, Public Service and Public Life: A Critical Theory Perspective
Peter Lunt

29. Reality Talent Shows in China: Transnational Format, Affective Engagement and the Chinese Dream
Ling Yang

30. Reality Television From Big Brother to the Arab Uprisings: Neoliberal, Liberal and Geopolitical Considerations
Marwan Kraidy

Supplemental Materials

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