Better Living through Reality TV

Television and Post-Welfare Citizenship

James Hay author Laurie Ouellette author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:John Wiley and Sons Ltd

Published:8th Jan '08

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This hardback is available in another edition too:

Better Living through Reality TV cover

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
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“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)

ISBN: 9781405134408

Dimensions: 236mm x 158mm x 18mm

Weight: 517g

264 pages