'Popular Factual Programming' has rapidly come to occupy a place at the forefront of contemporary television culture on an international scale. Tracing the history of reality TV from Candid Camera to The Osbournes, Understanding Reality Television examines a range of programmes which claim to depict 'real life', from reality formatted game shows to 'real crime' programming and make-over TV. Contributors discuss the phenonenon of reality TV in the context of the debates it has introduced to our social, cultural and televisual agendas, such as the construction of celebrity, fandom, surveillance and the politics of representation.
| Notes on contributors |
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vii | |
| Acknowledgements |
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x | |
| Introduction: understanding Reality TV |
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1 | (210) |
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SU HOLMES AND DEBORAH JERMYN |
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1 Candid Camera and the origins of Reality TV: contextualising a historical precedent |
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33 | (21) |
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2 From Ozzie Nelson to Ozzy Osbourne: the genesis and development of the Reality (star) sitcom |
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54 | (17) |
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3 'This is about real people!': video technologies, actuality and affect in the television crime appeal |
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71 | (20) |
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4 Reality TV, troublesome pictures and panics: reappraising the public controversy around Reality TV in Europe |
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91 | (20) |
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5 'All you've got to worry about is the task, having a cup of tea, and doing a bit of sunbathing': approaching celebrity in Big Brother |
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111 | (25) |
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6 Temporalities of the real: conceptualising time in Reality TV |
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136 | (18) |
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7 In search of community on Reality TV: America's Most Wanted and Survivor |
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154 | (19) |
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8 'The New You': class and transformation in lifestyle television |
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173 | (18) |
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9 Socially soothing stories? Gender, race and class in TLC's A Wedding Story and A Baby Story |
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191 | (20) |
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| 10 The household, the basement and The Real World: gay identity in the constructed reality environment |
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211 | (22) |
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| 11 'It isn't always Shakespeare, but it's genuine': cinema's commentary on documentary hybrids |
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233 | (19) |
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| 12 Big Brother: reconfiguring the 'active' audience of cultural studies? |
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252 | (18) |
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ESTELLA TINCKNELL AND PARVATI RAGHURAM |
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| 13 'Jump in the pool': the competitive culture of Survivor fan networks |
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270 | (20) |
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| 14 Afterword: framing the new |
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290 | (10) |
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| Index |
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300 | |
'Su Holmes is a Lecturer in Media with Cultural Studies at Southampton Institute. She has published widely on the early relations between British television and film culture in journals such as Screen, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television and Journal of Popular British Cinema. She is currently writing on a book on the early cinema programme on British television, and is working more widely on the subject of Reality TV'. Deborah Jermyn is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at University of Surrey, Roehampton. She has published widely on crime and the media, and women and popular culture, including articles in Screen, Feminist Media Studies and The International Journal of Cultural Studies. She is also the co-editor of The Reader in Audience Studies (Routledge, 2002) and The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Transgressor(Wallflower Press, 2003)
