Celebrity culture and exploitation: the case of reality TV

• Main Author: Williamson, Milly
• Other Authors: Wayne, M, O'Neill, D
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Brill and Haymarket Press 2017
• Subjects: Dyer; Terranova
• Online Access: https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/21084/; https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/21084/1/9789004319516_O%27Neill_Wayne_16-Williamson_proof-01.pdf; http://www.brill.com/products/book/considering-class-theory-culture-and-media-21st-century

There has been much important work on the role that celebrity culture has played in providing working class audiences with a popular image of meritocracy – fuelled as it has been historically by the myth that anyone can ‘make it’, the sham that fame and fortune are open to all and are desirable (Dyer, 1979). Contemporary television culture has advanced that myth, as more and more ordinary people seem to ‘make it’ on reality TV, even while they are often denigrated. However, instead of focusing on representation, this paper will examine the role of ordinary celebrity in the political economy of the television industry. Producers of reality television came to rely on formats built around ‘ordinary’ celebrity in order to undermine the power of unions representing workers in the US and UK television industries at the end of the 1990s. As in other industries, television attempted to address the challenges thrown up by the development of digital technology, increased competition and rising costs by attacking workers conditions. Unscripted, devoid of actors and less dependent on the skills of other creative and technical personnel, reality TV was able to temporarily side-step unionised labour in the US, while in the UK government policy forced public service broadcasters to outsource to independent companies, who were, unlike the workers in the BBC, non-unionised and often on precarious contracts. Thus an examination of the political economy of reality TV completely undermines the claims made by cultural populists that ordinary celebrity represents ‘democratainment’ (Hartley, 1999 and 2008). But it also opens up questions about the more critical view that reality TV is part of a broader shift in patterns of the social relations of exploitation (Andrejevic 2003, Terranova 2004), whereby ’free’ activities like the ‘work of watching’ TV’ or using the internet are considered to be a mode of exploited labour when media organisations ‘capture’ it and turn it to profit. This is seen to mark a new ubiquitous mode of ...