Core Post — Week 8

In all honesty, I was not entirely sure in which direction I wanted to take this post on reality television. On the one hand, Chad Raphael’s industrial account provides a robust framework through which we might revisit a million different reality television programs. On the other, Anna McCarthy’s “Neoliberal Theater of Suffering” offers an interesting diagnosis of our relationship as democratic citizens to certain reality programs. Combining these two differing scopes with the fact that I find myself watching alarming amounts of reality television seemed to only further muddle my synthesis of this week’s articles.

McCarthy’s piece is primarily concerned with “makeover” reality programs. Early on, she emphasizes reality television’s proclivity to simultaneously publicize many aspects private lives while also shifting certain forms of civic governance back into the private realm. 

“Extreme Makeover: Home Edition presents itself as a different kind of neoliberal public service, its rehabilitation of a home vandalized by hate crimes rendered as both justice and therapy. It blends a kind of economic award akin to compensatory damages with the rehabilitation of the wounded soul. Still, in each case, some aspect of the work of the state in the realm of social citizenship — work that a may be reparative, in the case of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, or punitive, in the case of  Judge Judy — seems to have been outsourced to the private sector, specifically television, and individualized in particular selves and experiences.” (18).

While McCarthy is by no means demarcating the upper limits of potential state work with these two classifications, I wonder what the nature of other types of work might be.

I have been watching an embarrassing amount of Fear Factor (2001–2006) lately, and in doing so have started to wonder how McCarthy’s explication of a “neoliberal theater of suffering” may translate from makeover to competition-based programs. Central to McCarthy’s argument is a two-pronged framework, which locates reality television as the intersection of “where trauma and governmentality meet” and where we as viewers discover our civic subjectivity (21). Additionally, she finds that makeover television is equally about governing the self, and the impossibility of doing so when past trauma has already taken a prominent position in dominating one’s psyche (31). This leads me to viewing Fear Factor in its contemporary historical moment. Though the show premiered in June of 2001, it’s worth noting that it’s ratings grew in subsequent seasons. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, how might we describe the national trauma, Fear Factor’s relation to it, and our relationship to that relationship? We might note the cruel spontaneity and unbelievability of trauma, be it in a hijacked commercial flight, or in a tank full of live rats. Moreover, supervision by Joe Rogan and the show’s professional stuntmen and stuntwomen tap into McCarthy’s idea of non-state organizations now responsible for what was previously official government business. Fear Factor’s narrated disclaimer goes as such: “Imagine a world where your greatest fears become reality. Welcome to Fear Factor. Each shows, six contestants from around the country battle each other in three extreme stunts. These stunts are designed to challenge the contestants both physically and mentally. If the contestant is too afraid to complete a stunt, they're eliminated. If they fail a stunt, they're eliminated. But if they succeed, they will be one step closer to the grand prize, $50,000.”

Swiftly, we are attuned to the new imperative of self-governmentality in a post-9/11 world. The work being done by Fear Factor is neither reparative, nor punitive, but I think something else that may require more than a single adjective. Specifically, it is plugged into its moment of domestic anxiety and doubles down on a form of American idealism that promotes meritocracy and resilience as something that may, ultimately, overcome “unassimilable”, “unrationalizable”, and “ungovernable” trauma by yielding a cash prize of approximately $72,000 in today’s money. The end result is not a makeover, but a recognition and reification of the individual for whom, “evidently, fear is not a factor.”