Better Living through Reality TV

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