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Better Living through Reality TV
Television and Post-Welfare Citizenship

"Better Living through Reality TV achieves what cultural theory does at its best: a fascinating, insightful, and clear-eyed look at contemporary society as seen through the lens of pop culture."
–Mark Andrejevic

"With this book, reality TV scholarship finally 'gets real'."
–Nick Couldry

Laurie Ouellette (Author), James Hay (Author)

9781405134408, Wiley

Hardback, published 8 January 2008

272 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 1.8 cm, 0.517 kg

“This book does not simply pay lip service to the claim that reality television is a democratic and populist force.” (Communication Booknotes Quarterly, Jan.-Mar. 2009)

“Better Living presents Foucault’s concept of govermentality in an accessible way as the authors combine this theoretical concept with rich textual examples from various reality TV shows. In fact, one of the strengths of Better Living is the detailed examples that Ouellette and Hay provide to support their arguments.” (Journal of the Communication Inquiry)

Combining cutting-edge theories of culture and government with programming examples—including Todd TV, Survivor, and American Idol—Better Living through Reality TV moves beyond the established concerns of political economy and cultural studies to conceptualize television's evolving role in the contemporary period.

  • A major textbook on the impact of reality and lifestyle television on today’s programming, and on broader social, cultural and political trends
  • Draws on a range of examples from The Apprentice and American Idol to Extreme Makeover and Wife Swap
  • Argues that reality television teaches viewers to monitor, motivate, improve, transform and protect themselves in the name of freedom, enterprise, and personal responsibility

List of Illustrations vi

Introduction 1

1 Charity TV: Privatizing Care, Mobilizing Compassion 32

2 TV Interventions: Personal Responsibility and Techniques of the Self 63

3 Makeover TV: Labors of Reinvention 99

4 TV and the Self-Defensive Citizen 134

5 TV’s Constitutions of Citizenship 170

6 Playing TV’s Democracy Game 203

Notes 225

Index 245

Subject Areas: Sociology & anthropology [JH]
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