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<p>Notes on Contributors ix</p> <p>Introduction 1<br /><i>Laurie Ouellette</i></p> <p><b>Part One Producing Reality: Industry, Labor, and Marketing 9</b></p> <p>1 Mapping Commercialization in Reality Television 11<br /><i>June Deery</i></p> <p>2 Reality Television and the Political Economy of Amateurism 29<br /><i>Andrew Ross</i></p> <p>3 When Everyone Has Their Own Reality Show 40<br /><i>Mark Andrejevic</i></p> <p>4 Cast-aways: The Plights and Pleasures of Reality Casting and Production Studies 57<br /><i>Vicki Mayer</i></p> <p>5 Program Format Franchising in the Age of Reality Television 74<br /><i>Albert Moran</i></p> <p><b>Part Two Television Realities: History, Genre, and Realism 95</b></p> <p>6 Realism and Reality Formats 97<br /><i>Jonathan Bignell</i></p> <p>7 Reality TV Experiences: Audiences, Fact, and Fiction 116<br /><i>Annette Hill</i></p> <p>8 From Participatory Video to Reality Television 134<br /><i>Daniel Marcus</i></p> <p>9 Manufacturing “Massness”: Aesthetic Form and Industry Practice in the Reality Television Contest 155<br /><i>Hollis Griffin</i></p> <p>10 God, Capitalism, and the Family Dog 171<br /><i>Eileen R. Meehan</i></p> <p><b>Part Three Dilemmas of Visibility: Identity and Difference 189</b></p> <p>11 <i>The Bachelorette</i>’s Postfeminist Therapy: Transforming Women for Love 191<br /><i>Rachel E. Dubrofsky</i></p> <p>12 Fractured Feminism: Articulations of Feminism, Sex, and Class by Reality TV Viewers 208<br /><i>Andrea L. Press</i></p> <p>13 “It’s Been a While Since I’ve Seen, Like, Straight People”: Queer Visibility in the Age of Postnetwork Reality Television 227<br /><i>Joshua Gamson</i></p> <p>14 The Wild Bunch: Men, Labor, and Reality Television 247<br /><i>Gareth Palmer</i></p> <p>15 The Conundrum of Race and Reality Television 264<br /><i>Catherine R. Squires</i></p> <p>16 Tan TV: Reality Television’s Postracial Delusion 283<br /><i>Hunter Hargraves</i></p> <p><b>Part Four Empowerment or Exploitation? Ordinary People and Reality Television 307</b></p> <p>17 Reality Television and the Demotic Turn 309<br /><i>Graeme Turner</i></p> <p>18 DI(t)Y, Reality-Style: The Cultural Work of Ordinary Celebrity 324<br /><i>Laura Grindstaff</i></p> <p>19 Reality Television’s Construction of Ordinary People: Class-Based and Nonelitist Articulations of Ordinary People and Their Discursive Affordances 345<br /><i>Nico Carpentier</i></p> <p><b>Part Five Subjects of Reality: Making/Selling Selves and Lifestyles 367</b></p> <p>20 Mapping the Makeover Maze: The Contours and Contradictions of Makeover Television 369<br /><i>Brenda Weber</i></p> <p>21 House Hunters, Real Estate Television and Everyday Cosmopolitanism 386<br /><i>Mimi White</i></p> <p>22 Life Coaches, Style Mavens, and Design Gurus: Everyday Experts on Reality Television 402<br /><i>Tania Lewis</i></p> <p>23 Reality Television Celebrity: Star Consumption and Self-Production in Media Culture 421<br /><i>Julie A. Wilson</i></p> <p>24 Producing “Reality”: Branded Content, Branded Selves, Precarious Futures 437<br /><i>Alison Hearn</i></p> <p><b>Part Six Affective Registers: Reality, Sentimentality, and Feeling 457</b></p> <p>25 A Matter of Feeling: Mediated Affect in Reality Television 459<br /><i>Misha Kavka</i></p> <p>26 “Walking in Another’s Shoes”: Sentimentality and Philanthropy on Reality Television 478<br /><i>Heather Nunn and Anita Biressi</i></p> <p><b>Part Seven The Politics of Reality: Global Culture, National Identity, and Public Life 499</b></p> <p>27 Reality Television, Public Service, and Public Life: A Critical Theory Perspective 501<br /><i>Peter Lunt</i></p> <p>28 Reality Talent Shows in China: Transnational Format, Affective Engagement, and the Chinese Dream 516<br /><i>Ling Yang</i></p> <p>29 Reality Television from <i>Big Brother </i>to the Arab Uprisings: Neoliberal, Liberal, and Geopolitical Considerations 541<br /><i>Marwan M. Kraidy</i></p> <p>Index 557</p>

<p><b>Laurie Ouellette</b> 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-editor of <i>Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture</i> (2004 and 2009), and co-author of <i>Better Living Through Reality TV: Television and Post-Welfare Citizenship</i> (Wiley, 2008).</p>

<p><i>A Companion to Reality Television</i> presents a comprehensive guide to the study of reality, factual and nonfiction entertainment television. Broader in scope and scale than existing collections, the Companion encompasses major primetime entertainment formats, including talent competitions, makeovers, dating programs, reality soap operas and social experiments; it also covers lifestyle/how-to programming, game shows and talk shows featuring “ordinary” people, and online initiatives that evoke the shifting boundaries of producer versus consumer, content versus advertising, and ordinary versus celebrity.</p> <p>International in scope, the Companion synthesizes and intervenes within important theories, debates and issues, and traces and explains the social, historical, political, commercial, ethical, and creative dimensions of reality/factual/non-fiction television entertainment. It also analyzes the production, conventions and reception of major formats, and situates reality television as a global and local phenomenon, identifying and commenting upon emergent trends.</p> <p>Leading scholars in the intersecting fields of media studies, television studies, cinema studies, and cultural studies provide theoretical depth and clarity on the history of nonfiction and reality television, forge links to important scholarly debates, and analyze the politics of reality entertainment worldwide.</p>

“Laurie Ouellette has created an indispensable resource for those working in media studies, television studies, communication, and critical industry studies.  This is a lively and unique collection, including essays by so many and such diverse scholars who take reality television as a context for understanding broader cultural, economic and political conditions and questions about everyday life.  The reach of the book is expansive, beginning with industry and labor issues involved in producing reality television, ending with global politics and distribution, with smart, incisive analyses of histories, identity, affect, and subjectivities in between.  After several decades of reality television and scholarship that investigates it, this book offers a convincing, important, and timely contribution to the field.” –<i>Sarah Banet-Weiser, University of Southern California, USA</i>

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