Reality Television and Class - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1844573982 ISBN 13: 9781844573981

Publisher: British Film Institute, 2011

Synopsis

How does class get 'cast' and made performative? What modes are there for people to wrestle-back their forms of representation? And how should we understand this intense manipulation of feeling? This bookexamines why class politics matter against much political and academic rhetoric which refract inequality through other means.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

T?his is the first book about reality television to make class its central focus. Despite popular and media debate about the 'classed' behaviour of reality stars such as Jade Goody and Shilpa Shetty, and the class confrontations depicted in shows such as Wife Swap, class politics have been overlooked in much political and academic discussion of reality television. In their introduction, the editors spell out how reality television – by making visible new forms of performance labour – invites a serious discussion of class. Internationally-renowned media scholars and sociologists explore the ways in which 'ordinary people' enter the television frame, and how discourses of class are routed through national concerns and fears.

Through an analysis of programmes such as Celebrity Big Brother, The Hills, MasterChef and Ladette to Lady, the contributors tackle common assumptions in television analysis to show how the mere fact of 'being on tv' is not a straightforward route to recognition, democracy, mobility or value; how new moral economies are emerging in which judgement and aspiration are normalised; and that class relationships are key dramatic devices in the spectacle of television entertainment.

About the Author:

BEVERLEY SKEGGSProfessorinthe Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK. She held the Kerstin Hesselgren Professor in Gender Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden,and is an Academician of the Academy of the Learned Societies for the Social Sciences, UK. Her previous books include Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable (1997) and Class, Self and Culture (2004).
HELEN WOOD Reader in Media and Communication at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. She is the author of Talking With Television: Women, Talk Shows and Modern Self-Reflexivity (2009).

About this edition

• Publisher: British Film Institute
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1844573982
• ISBN 13: 9781844573981
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 264
• Editor: Skeggs Beverley, Wood Helen