Core Response

In Reality Television: a Neoliberal Theater of Suffering Anna McCarthy argues that“[p]roducing scene after scene of painful civic pedagogy, suffused with tears, rage, and insults and pushing the limits of the self to mental and physical extremes, the genre’s affective dimensions might have something new to teach us about the processes of self-organization in which modern subjects find themselves caught”(19).

In most reality TV shows, there comes a time when their participants manifest feelings based on their own failures, frustrations, discontents and weaknesses. For some participants of the aforementioned shows, in order to win the final prize, they do not mind creating harm and even enjoy seeing the supposed “brother” of the house suffer.

This seems to be the main objective of Big Brother. To be locked up or imprisoned in one place for so long, observing the same thing always, the same routine, having nothing more to do, that idleness of every day, leads to a behavior that is not common.

Earning the weeks challenge or surviving to earn a bigger prize at the end, feeds the contestants of Big Brother the highest level of insecurity, fear, and irritability. The participants know that there are a number of cameras recording their personal intimacies, 24 hours a day, transmitting it to the viewer, showing the lowest instincts of survival, reaching evilness and cruelty.

The enclosure is not only physical and limited space, there are other closure, the psychological in which the susceptibility will be even more indifferent and not confident in itself. Feelings are suppressed and then released in tears or angry cries. Being isolated for a long periods of time also generates other unresolved personal conflicts, such as suffering from, subsequently, emotional disorders or simply not being mentally prepared to this type of television exposures can lead to unforeseen tragedies.

Idleness gives rise to personality traits that are not virtuous, pleasant or funny. The final reward, keeps many them in the house; that is their final goal, no matter who they humiliate or offend. And there is a public that is fascinated by these behaviors, one can questions if this public lives on the morbidity, the suffering of others and feeds on seeing the anguish, disappointment, desolation and torture to the point of agony.

TV & Reality (Core Response 4): A Neoliberal Theater of Suffering- Reality TV Humanitarianism and Hurricane Katrina

During this week’s readings, I was really appreciated the connections between reality TV and neoliberalism made by Anna McCarthy (2007) in “Reality Television: a Neoliberal Theater of Suffering.” In general, neoliberal discourse, in contemporary America, also correspond with ideas of postfeminism and colorblind/postracial ideologies, which are also recurring topics throughout this semester. In general, present-day neoliberalism is reflective of Michel Foucault’s idea of governmentality, which McCarthy (2007) describes as when “state policies synchronize with cultural practices to apply market-based individualism as a governmental rationale across the institutions and practices of everyday life” (21). The application of neoliberal ideology to governing entails a maximizing of “individual freedoms” and limiting of state aid and intervention: “governmentality finds its principle of rationality in the axiom that individuals are sovereign beings best ruled under circumstances in which they are encouraged to self-manage, taking on responsibilities for their welfare, growth, and security that might otherwise be assumed by the state” (McCarthy 2007, 25). Of course, this ultimately reflects, once again, the claim of meritocracy in the United States—that anyone can achieve wealth and “greatness” if only they tried hard enough. As McCarthy (2007) details in relation to the reality series Random 1, Bruce’s story and its aftermath are ruled by a logic of “chance” and “randomness,” aspects highly reminiscent of meritocracy and divorcing current individual situations from an overarching systemic and institutional issue.

As McCarthy (2007) details in relation to Bruce, “His story, it seems to me, offers a potent allegory for the drama of neoliberal citizenship today—a drama of randomness and its aftermath that was horrifically played out by the abandoned citizens of New Orleans in 2005, but which is felt on the level of daily subsistence by those whose job security, health care, and education are ruled by the vicissitudes of the market” (35-6). As Sean Alfano (2005) discussed for CBS News a few days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the question was raised about the relationship between the horrendously poor response to the situation in Louisiana and its relationship to the fact that “those most affected are poor” and African Americans. President George W. Bush was highly criticized for the lack of evacuation plan and “no urgent effort to rescue” those remaining in New Orleans. Additionally, Henry A. Giroux (2015) details, Hurricane Katrina and neoliberalism are complexly weaved and inseparable. As in the case of Bruce in Random 1, Hurricane Katrina demonstrated a rhetoric of private individual (as opposed to collective) challenges; in both instances those “left behind” were abandoned to “fend for themselves,” and “increasingly rendered disposable." This idea of disposable bodies in the face of free-market ideologies recalls McCarthy’s (2007) argument that, in relation to Bruce in Random 1, “we are left with the distinct impression that instead of receiving charity, he has in fact given it. Bruce has essentially donated his trauma to John and Andre, to help them advance their careers as philanthropist filmmakers. Trauma’s intersubjective witnessing is transformed into a property that benefits the witness most” (32). In relation to Hurricane Katrina, I wonder how this statement made by McCarthy might also apply to individuals, like Sean Penn, being highly publicized and recognized for their efforts in helping the aftermath of the disaster, as opposed to reporting on the actual issues leading up to and effecting the people in New Orleans, and how the logic of neoliberalism not only enables but cherishes/places value on these "humanitarian" behaviors.

Alfano, Sean. 2005. “Race An Issue In Katrina Response.” CBS News, 3 Sep 2005, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/race-an-issue-in-katrina-response/.

Giroux, Henry A. 2015. “Revisiting Hurricane Katrina: Racist Violence and the Politics of Disposability.” Truthout, 8 Sep 2015, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/32629-revisiting-hurricane-katrina-racist-violence-and-the-politics-of-disposability.

McCarthy, Anna. 2007. “Reality Television: a Neoliberal Theater of Suffering.” Social Text 25 (4): 17-41.

Reality TV's Interventions

In light of this week's articles, a couple of which circled around the reality television show's propensity for interventions as a crucial plot point, I wanted to return to one of my favorite intervention moments on reality tv. I'm less interested in the shows that center around interventions, like Intervention or Celebrity Rehab, and more interested in a reality show that ostensibly isn't about an intervention and instead focuses on revealing the lives of a certain group of people, but that within that, an intervention of sorts occurs. Take,  for example, the following clip: http://www.bravotv.com/the-real-housewives-of-new-york-city/season-3/videos/kelly-needs-to-go-to-sleep .

The clip shows a number of the real housewives of New York calling into question a fellow housewife's sanity while trapped in a vacation house on some island somewhere, all while the housewife in question is present, making faces, and snaring. It's an intervention, but one that does not purport to make use of experts, specialists, or doctors. This clip is just one of the many times one or more of the housewives attempt an intervention (and I've only seen three iterations of the Housewives, so I imagine there are many more such scenes).

I wonder how the lax intervention, so to speak, works within reality tv's neoliberal context?

Reality TV Core Response

Ouellette’s reading of American Idol calls my attention to The Voice, another singing competition show which aired its twelfth season on February 27^th. I’ll try not to go too far off topic, though I make no promises, because this is a series I follow with much passion. In the realm of paralleling this competition show to a democratic election, the “electoral” process of selection on The Voice reveals deeper levels of complexity than American Idol. The Voice is a five-stage competition between not only the vocalist contestants but between four celebrity coaches who pick twelve vocalists to be on their team. The winner of the voice also determines the winning coach. Prided on selection by voice not looks, the show does a good job at veiling the work of commodified “trauma” as MCarthy highlights in her reading of Random 1. During the Blind Audition of The Voice, the spectator at home watches a short clip about chosen contests before they audition. Oftentimes the clip highlights a traumatic event that the contestant has had to go through before obtaining their opportunity to be on the show, whether it be the loss of a family member, a drug addiction, having kids at an early age, being bullied, or growing up in a single parent household. This means, that from the start of the show, potential voters know more about and actually “see” the contestant before they audition, unlike the coaches who are the only ones kept blind. Though it’s an admirable thing to believe that someone is chosen simply for their talent, the fact that the audience is the ultimate determinant of who wins the competition, not the coaches—the informational clip negates the premise and promise of the show. Unless there’s a way to disguise each contestant throughout the entire process, the winner is unfortunately never determined solely on their voice. But what I think this show unveils about a democratic process is the way in which our freedom to choice is complicated by our own agendas and desires, by manipulation, by our influences from popular culture, by comparison of each contestant amongst the group of contestants, etc. The reality of the show is obviously not in the spectacle of each vocalist and the dramatization of their story, but of the insidious manipulations at work during an election process.  

Core Post 4: Reality Television

Reading Laurie Ouellette and James Hay's "Better Living through Reality TV," specifically chapter six, made me wince because of it's uncanny prediction of our future. As soon as I read the section "Reality TV is Technically Part of the Political Process," which compares voting on American Idol to voting for the president, states that "sometimes TV blurs the difference between 'real politics' and TV's games or experiments of government" (Ouellette 215), and speaks of The Apprentice as a show "where public and private government intersect" (215), I thought "well Laurie Ouellette must be having a field day with the Trump presidency".

Lo and behold,  Ouellette has been busy furthering her point. "Trump is more than a symptom of manipulative infotainment and cultural decline: His political ascendency speaks to reality TV’s long-established role in governing practices"(Trump Show Abstract). Sounds about on-point with her previous stance in the piece we read this week. In the same way that  "when The Apprentice broadcasts arranged meetings between its young contestants and public office holders (such as New York Senator Charles Schumer and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg), TV invite(d) office holders of state government to authorize TV's own exemplary displays of entrepre­neurialism, corporate citizenship, and private group government," Donald Trump turned the tables and used television and his power within that field to authorize his stances on those same "office holders of state government" (Better Living Through Reality TV 219). 

Ouellette even seems a little tired of having to remind the people that they had it coming.
"As I have argued for some time," she states in her newer article, "reality TV is more than a stage-managed distraction. More than any other mode of television programming to date, it has played a visible (and often material) role in the neoliberal “reinvention” of government. For nearly two decades, reality TV has resonated with critiques of 'big government' and has enacted private alternatives to state oversight and responsibility for public welfare" (Trump Show, 2). Trump not only  took his entertainment value as a celebrity (aka entertainment machine) to take up the most of the airtime and coverage of news sites, but relied upon the cultivated image he created for himself during the past decade of The Apprentice, where he showed his prowess as a business man. "Thanks to reality TV, he is the embodiment of an enterprising subjectivity and a 'no nonsense' approach to leadership that draws legitimacy from the market" (Trump Show, 3). But the problem, as we all know, is that the success of Donald in his controlled televisual "reality" does not translate well to his actions taken as President.

Future of the Screens Conference

Marshall is having a conference on the topic of future of the screens where top hub and other studios executives are talking about the current state of TV.

You can register here https://www.eventbrite.com/e/e2-future-of-screens-tickets-31569936530

If you are interested let me know