Core Post #3

I am intrigued by Anna McCarthy’s Foucouldian account of reality TV as “neoliberal theater of suffering.” Her accounts on the relationship between the conception of citizenship and the affective logic of Reality TV show is very helpful to deepen understanding of affective component of the public sphere.

Although I was very much convinced by her explication of reality TV as a space characterizable as a neoliberal theater of suffering, I cannot help but think if there are also possibilities to think reality TV as a space where a private expression of suffering or trauma is transformed into public speech in a way that TV gives socio-historical context to individual situation. Following Chad Raphael’s remarks the economic restructuring of the US television that brought about the proliferation of “Reali-TV” was sharing the same ground with the diverging program contents. Considering the divergence, I think it might be difficult to understand them monolithically, but rather there might be probabilities to interpret them differently.

I am particularly interested in the applicability of McCarthy’s idea to the programs on the border between television documentary and reality television. For example, programs like Extremely Private Document, Nippon Real that is Japanese television series aired in the period from 2014 to 2016 serves as an interesting example where the autobiographical mode of documentary meets the confessional style of reality TV. In this program, TV producers in production companies display their everyday life in connection to the social issues surrounding their lives. For example, in one episode, a director portrays her reunion with her family in her hometown where the diminishing population suffocates the local economy. Here, the depiction of her intimate conversation with her family is inextricably intertwined the larger social issue of an aging society of low birthdate. I think there is a possibility of depicting personal affairs in a way it would not be reduced to exploitation of sufferings in a complicit with the logic of neoliberalism.