COURSE BLOG for GWSS 3307: Feminist Film/Media Studies (Fall 2007)

I watched an episode of “House Hunters� on HGtv. I watched on the actual channel (channel 40 on my TV, we have cable). I chose this show mainly because I guessed few others in class would pick it. I’ve seen bits and pieces of other episodes of this show (it seems to be on all the time late at night) but this was the first time I watched an episode in its entirety.

While it may be the case that this show strives to profile people looking to buy a home in all socio-economic situations, people of color, or people in pairings other than hetero marriages (or single people buying homes for that matter), but this episode focused on a couple where were clearly wealthy (their “budget� was no more than $800,000), white, and were a male/ female married couple. The realtors working with couple were also white and seemed to be at least upper middle class.

The city the couple was looking at condos in was Seattle, which I would guess as a major metropolitan city, would have some ethnic and socio-economic diversity, but none was shown in this episode. They were specifically looking in an area they were calling “The Pearl District�, which looked a heck of a lot like the up and coming (gentrified) Nicolet/Franklin developments.

The couple performed their genders very, very well. The wife, with her long hair and perky personality, wanted more than anything, a nice kitchen “with stainless steel appliances and granite counter tops� and a space to “entertain�. The husband wanted a home office (they both worked office jobs, but only he seemed to mention his work) and a porch or deck to grill on. So, girls cook in the kitchen and have friends over, men grill out and work.

There was no debate about what it means to spend that much money on a home (a small condo, nonetheless) or why they were so desperate to live in an “urban area� as they kept calling it, but were obsessed with “safety features� like a doorman, or wanting to be in the Penthouse instead of ground floor so nobody could break in.
The show is 30 minutes, the last five of which show the couple settled into their new home, about 4 months after the footage was shot of them looking at the three different homes. They are shown entertaining in their fancy new kitchen, the wife serving white wine to her girlfriends, and the men all outside admiring the new grill.
While no products were specifically highlighted during the show (other than, of course, the joy brought in fulfilling the American Dream), all the ads during commercial breaks were for insurance, expensive cars, diapers, HomeDepot, ING financial, and Target which tells me that the targeted audience is men/women, ages 25plus, and a wealthy, or at least of an upwardly-mobile mindset.

I have to say, if the show’s agenda is to make a viewer want to go out and boost the local economy by buying an over-priced condo, it sure works. I suffered a bit of ennui after the show- I was still sitting in my over-crowded apartment, surrounded by toys because my son’s room is too small to hold them all, and thought “well, geez, if it so easy to go spend almost a million dollars and get a nice condo, then I’m in!� But, then I remembered that I don’t have that kind of money, and that I don’t want to live in a Penthouse, and changed the channel. Luckily, there was a re-run of “A Shot at Love� to cheer me up…….

--I'm editing to add a bit about theory from the readings. My show is a bit different than the other reality shows in that it isn't a contest- just a couple buying a home, they are looking and choosing between three houses, but there is no humiliation, no chance or suprise element. But in the reading "Normalization of heterorelations in the Bachelor" by Yep and Camacho, there is an idea that totally applies to "House Hunters". The authors of this essay quote a passage from another scholar that says "heterogendered division of labor and heterosexual supremecy are well preserved in TV." This is dead-on to how the couple presented themselves on the show (or, were edited to seem like this is how they presented themselves) - wife wants kitchen, man wants grill and work space.
Sienna Moore

Posted by Sienna Moore at 1:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I Love New York 2 is based off of a woman named Tiffany Pollard, aka New York, who is trying to find her true love, again. The show was created by Chris Abrego and Mark Cronin, who are also the executive producers along with Ben Samek and airs on VH1. In Season 1 of I Love New York, New York chose Tango, who then dumped her on the reunion show, the first time they had seen each other after she picked up. Season 2 is New York’s second attempt to find another “true love�.
Tiffany got her nickname (New York), her fame, and her own show from her previous involvement with the show Flavor of Love. William Drayton, aka Flavor Flave from Public Enemy, had the same concept for his reality show: seeking love from a large cast of women that wanted to be with him. He never chose New York as the winner in either episode, but she drew much attention from viewers all over the country.
The targeted audience seems to be aimed at younger viewers considering it is aired on VH1. Many of the commercials are on other shows that are on VH1 and also other products that would fit the “lives� of a younger group: beer, partying, perfume/cologne, and music.
New York is a perfect example of performativity. She has long, smooth hair, pounds of makeup, long nails, long eyelashes, and huge breasts (from her implant surgery after Season 1). She is hyper-feminine most of the time while also being very blunt about her control over all of the men in the house. The gaze of New York is constructed by the way the camera focuses mostly in a close up of her plastered face, and a shot that emphasizes her enormous breasts. The gaze of the men is openly talked about whenever New York walks into the room, they all complement her on how good she looks, they all are never afraid to tell her that she is really sexy, and are definitely not afraid to tell the camera (in the confessional room) and other men how willing they are to have sex with New York.
The episode I watched was called Mind Games. New York takes the contestants to see her therapist for “couples counseling� and to a Psychology Technician. When they are in couples counseling New York makes it clear to all the men that she wants to be the male figure in the relationship and she wants them to be her “wife�. The therapist then asks the men what they think of this and some reply that they would do whatever it takes to make New York happy, while others, such as Buddha, say that he will always “be the man�. In the essay Commentary and Criticism Into by Karen Ross and Sujata Moorti, they remark that most reality television shows are based on hetero gendered relationships, which favor men over women and thus duplicates the patriarchal social structure and presents the female body for the voyeuristic gaze. New York questions this theory of hetero gendered relationships by opening saying that she will pick a man based on his ability to let her take the control in the relationship and take the role of the “wife�. On the other hand, she assimilates with the concept of the women playing the role of the object for the voyeuristic gaze produced by the camera and by the men. Although, she does project her own voyeuristic gaze onto the men by constantly commenting on their physical bodies and their “assets�.
For the most part, I Love New York 2 portrays the concept discussed by Ross and Moorti of glamorizing the traditional roles of women and men and normalizes acceptable behaviors between the both of them. Although she does exert her own agency onto the men by telling them what to do, making them worship her and love her, she is still the object of desire amongst the camera, the men, and the viewers.

Posted by Timac at 1:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I watched an episode of Bravo’s Work Out online. I purchased it through ITunes. I chose to analyze Episode 204 of season 2. Work Out is a reality TV show based around Jackie, a personal trainer who has her own gym and spa, named Sky Sport & Spa, in the wealthy area of Beverly Hills. She employs a staff to train at her gym, all of whom she considers to have close personal relationships with. The main focus of the show is Jackie’s gym and the business she has with her clients and employees. The show also takes a look into Jackie’s personal life, as well as the lives of her employees.

Jackie happens to be a lesbian, and a number of her employees are also gay and bisexual. This show targets a more mature audience, with an emphasis on a gay audience. However, I feel that most anyone would appreciate this show because of it looks at the work ethic that running a business entails and how to balance a career with your personal life.

There are several feminist concepts within Work Out. The trainers are all very attractive, young people. They wear stylish workout clothes that often reveal their toned and tan bodies. Both the women and the men who train and work at Sky Sport & Spa are essentially obsessed with their bodies. This is shown by the religious workouts and the camera shots of them often looking in the mirrors to examine their bodies. There are various races and ethnicities in the show. Most of the employees seem to get along, with the exception of a few quarrels here and there. The background and lighting for the shots in the show are set behind a beautiful skyline with bright lighting that emphasizes the attractive bodies of the employees, and also highlights the problem areas with the client’s bodies.

I chose to watch the episode that analyzes several issues within the team at Sky. Jackie is known to be a compulsive dater, often dating several women at once and has a hard time defining her feelings about all of them. In this episode, her love life is a source of gossip for her employees, who feel that she is getting a little excessive. Jackie visits a therapist to try to explore her issues. There are other issues of attraction between heterosexual and homosexual individuals. There is also often an overlaying theme of the Alpha Male, which is ironic because Jackie often assumes that role. The representations of roles are often intermixed within all aspects of the show. Someone is always assuming a role that is not stereotypical of them. I particularly like the fact that there are not always defined lines between homosexual and heterosexual. People are accepted for who they are, unless they are out of shape that is!

For most of the episode, I notice how much Mulvey’s “gaze� concept is employed. This is a workout center, with hot employees that are highly sexualized and to some point, objectified. Narcissism plays a role throughout. People, both clients and employees are being looked at and critiqued at all times. They look at themselves and are verbally critiqued by others in the show (it is their job after all). I do like, however, that this episode and whole season for that matter is showing a woman who is in charge of her life. Yes she is beautiful and strong (both physically and mentally!) and she hope to make others just as beautiful and strong as she is, inside and out. She is as real as real can be, and those she has been called (jokingly) "that exercise obsessed hottie lesbian!" she still has problems and issues as a successful and accomplished business woman.

Posted by Nicole Berg at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I located the Bachelor on ABC.com. It was easy to find because it’s the website on which ABC puts “just aired� episodes of all of there current TV shows. ABC studios is part of the Disney television production company.

I am so disturbed by the depictions of heterosexual love upheld by dating shows such as the Bachelor.
Personally, my “fairy tale� ending does not include competing and selling myself as a desirable commodity for some random man I didn’t choose.
This type of show seems so so dangerous to me. One man, 25 women. The suggestion for me is that women are disposable in relationships, there are always many to choose from. It upholds male control in male female relations. He is the one with agency; he has the absurd power of the rose ceremony, the power to reject.

This is also upheld through the way in which the show is shot. I counted several low angle upward shots of Brad, (this seasons bachelor). As the viewer, you were looking upward at him as though he was a giant. In his interactions with the women, many are of him embracing and lifting them; into a hug, into a pool, into a boat. Efforts are taken to present him as masculine, powerful, and benevolent.

Of all the shots they have to choose from, they make sure to include ample, unnecessary footage of the women stripping down into their bikini and either showering, or jumping into water. Doesn’t matter who they are right? Nope, not as long as they look sexy almost naked. I mean, that’s what’s really important right?

Hmm. I couldn’t help but notice that of the 3 final women, one girl differed in body type from the other two. She had a larger chest and was a little thicker around the hip region. I never would have noticed it had it on been for the way the camera filmed her. The other women were shown repeatedly in their swim suits, from multiple angles. Dianna, the woman with hips was only shown from the chest up immersed in water in her swim suit, and one very quick shot with the Bachelors arms around her, thereby hiding most of her body.

“If I don’t see the true women in her today then I never will.�
-Brad, the Bachelor

Ok…can we talk about the commercials shown during the show?
Please?

“Boys, lets face it, they’re just built different�
-Toy commercial

I think this next one speaks for itself. Can we please gender our children a little more? Yeah, that'd be great.
Rose Petal Cottage

Scrubbing bubbles automatic shower cleaner
The tag line is “maid for your shower.� It seems to me that these commercials are aimed for young mothers, or women who want to be mothers. They positively reek of domesticity. I am bothered by the cleaning commercial reinforcement of the white middle class woman and her shower, (her oh so very important shower) and her need to have some sort of “maid� to clean it for her. Especially when one of the women portrayed as maid is an older woman, and another is a woman of color.

Or how about Nexus’s slogan in their commercial, “I used to be wild.� Apparently, there is a certain amount of “taming� that must be done to our hair. The commercial was filled with a long series of shots of white women with their long straight hair. I am sick of being sold a hair product (or a life product) meant to tame me. I will exercise my own private rebellion by way of teasing my hair. I shall embrace and empower myself through split ends and fly away frizz.

Then again…lets check out what hair products are sitting on my shelf:
Ego boost
Hard head
Manipulator
After-Party
Creative Genius
Small Talk
Cocky
Boy Toy
Head Rush
Head Banger
All by the company Tigi, whose BEDHEAD hair products I adore.

Damn it.
I’m still a product of advertising. Just because I choose which specific product doesn’t make me an less of a consumer.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ROCK OF LOVE

The ROCK OF LOVE is a dating show to win the heart of Bret Michaels; former lead singer of Poison. Contestants are asked to do stuff that only a rocker would request such as dumpster dive and hook up an electric guitar to an amp.

CONTENT: Rock Of Love is a show that appeared on Vh1 at the beginning of fall 2007. Bret Michaels was producing as well as being the main character. I noticed this trend when seeing that Flavor Flav also helped produce his show. I watched the show on Vh1 online to recapture the attitude and storyline. The target audience is early twenties to early forties. It was on at 9:00 pm and on an adult style network. The commercials breaks consisted of Venus razors, music, and food. I would say the show is cast toward both a male and female audience and I know guy and girl friends who watched the show religiously. My dad also per took in the show once in awhile as Poison was more of his age group then mine.

CONTENT: The content of the show follows the original dating show strategy. We have the girls we fall in love with and the girls that we love to hate. Jess, the winner of the show, was everyone’s sweetheart. Lacey was the devil in the flesh. These are only portrayals of the characters through editing eyes. Heather after viewing her spot on the show was upset to see the pieces they kept and the pieces they cut. She was cut into what the editor thought she should be. “A study conducted for Psychology Today found that RTV viewers place a high value on both revenge and competition; most prominent among the attitudes expressed by fans surveyed, however, is their desire for prestige and status.� We like to see failure and we like the girl that is not our favorite to go home. Even better is to see that perfect Barbie doll make a fool of her self, this signifies that she is human. “Are female viewers reassured in this way that they’re not alone in their personal flaws or failures?� All of these dating shows allow us to put female against female. Why are we fighting for one guy and hurting our sex in return? The idea of many women fighting amongst each other and the audience fighting against those viewed is terrible sexism. Not of males looking at females, but females disgracing and putting down their own selves! This bothers me immensely that a show can put such misogynistic thoughts in our heads. Besides the female on female sexism there is the inevitable sexism of the males who watch. They are looking at the female as an object breaking her down quality by fault. Voyeurism at its worst is occurring, which one is the best? The outfits worn in the football episode were scandalous and half the time the girls walk around/dance around half naked. Bret Michaels hardly takes his shirt off let alone bare more. “Privileged men and exploited women, in the institution of patriarchal heterosexuality.� He is the king, they flock to him, fight over him while being partially nude and made embarrassed through stupid tasks. Another article I looked at had this to say about sexuality and sexism in RTV, “Repressive codes [of attitude of sexuality on TV and oppression of women] were replaced not by a culture based on mutual respect, but by a deluge of prurience…. An increase in “anything goes� culture… style or substance, shouldn’t there be both?� He argues respectfully in saying that it is too much, its overboard, flash is not a good thing and dating RTV is losing the feminist strength that many worked for.

FORM: The actual set of the show is made to sexually exploit the women. There is a hot tub in the kitchen, a full bar full of alcohol, AND a stripper pole in the living room. The idea is that there are many taboo items for the girls to get in trouble with. There is a certain stage set for them to walk in and use. There is red and leopard print every where as would be seen in a sensual scene of a movie. Also as in many dating show the girls are made to sleep in little beds, some even bunk beds. They are belittled beyond adults to be looked at as children playing a game. The whole set up is to make the women sexual objects for Bret Michaels to play with.

Overall it is an entertaining show with no substance. People love sex, and sexuality. The saying is ‘sex sells’. The problem is it sells more than ratings; it sells sexism and patriarchy.

Posted by Lindsey Peck at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I watched a new episode of the fourth season of Project Runway. The show aired on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 9:00pm. Project Runway is shown on cable television on Bravo. The premise of the show is that a group of fashion designers are chosen to compete each week with a new challenge that incorporates designing and sewing an outfit. Each week, one contestant is eliminated based on the judge’s decisions. The show’s main host is supermodel Heidi Klum and the co-host is Tim Gunn, who now has another show on Bravo called Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style. Regular judges are Michael Kors, who is described as a “notable fashion designer� and Nina Garcia, who is the fashion editor of Elle magazine. This week’s show in particular featured a surprise guest judge, Sarah Jessica Parker, well known from the show Sex and the City. The lineup of judges is a familiar formula that several other reality TV shows have, for example America’s Next Top Model and American Idol. The judges are supposed to be experts in the field and typically are brutally honest and harsh when critiquing the contestants. This formula creates the humiliation element that Mendible argues is “an essential of the success of sub-genre “survival� shows.� The contestants pour all of their energy and personal creativity into designing and creating an outfit for the judges to cut them down without any personal regard, all for our entertainment. In the episode I watched, the judges told one of the contestants that his outfit looked like an “80’s nightmare,� which made the contestant cried in front of everyone.
The show seemed to be aimed mostly at women, and middle to upper-class people who are interested in fashion and beauty products. The advertising within the show was pretty blatant. Heidi recited to the contestants what they could win, “a Saturn, a spread in Elle magazine, $100,000 from TRESemme Professional Hairline, and a chance to sell your line on Bluefly.com.� The brand names for these prizes were shown in various ways, Tim Gunn mentioned that the models would get ready in the “TRESemme salon� and there were shots of the hair products being used, the brands were also painted on the walls of the studio in which the contestants were filmed working. During the commercial breaks there were more advertisements for these same products in addition to other things like a bridal collection.
These advertisements and the judges all seemed to reinforce that there is one way to be beautiful and hip. One of Heidi’s lines that she says every show is, “in fashion you’re either in or you’re out,� suggesting that if you don’t present something that the judges like (judges who create fashion and edit magazines catering only to thin, “perfect� looking women), you are not going to make it. One thing I found interesting is that the clothing models this season, although are still very slim, are not as skinny as the last season’s. So, perhaps the show is trying to represent women better (although the models are still very thin).

Posted by MacKenzie Duffy at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I watched Newport Harbor, episode 8 online at MTV.ca.
The show, Newport Harbor, is considered the fourth season of the original Laguna Beach, both titled “The Real Orange Country� playing off of the popular television show The O.C.. The show was created by the same woman, Liz Gately, as The Hills. Newport Harbor is targeted at teenagers as it focuses on a group of privileged teens living in California. This can also be seen by the fact that the show airs on MTV which attends to a primarily younger audience.

This episode follows the teens as they prepare for some of them to go off to college, or in one case, Europe. One couple, Chrissy and Clay, have to face leaving each other as Chrissy leaves for college and Clay stays in high school. Meanwhile, Allie and her friend Samantha prepare to go to Europe for the summer. The entire show, no matter whether they discuss college or Europe, has to do with the boy-girl relationships occurring or not occurring. As Allie prepares to go to Europe, she has an awkward goodbye with an ex, Chase, who left her for another bleach blonde Newport Beach girl.

The scenes are shot to reinforce the drama, often ending in meaningful glances between characters. In addition, the lighting, camera angles, and overall film quality are chosen to give a more ethereal look and to enhance the overall beauty of the landscape in addition to the characters themselves. This is in contrast to other reality television shows which do not have the same film quality.

Gust Yep and Ariana Ochoa Camacho essay on the Bachelor discusses how they hand picked the women to appear on the Bachelor how these women were chosen to “look good in a hot tub�. (Yep and Camacho, 339) This seems to be the same for Laguna Beach, but, I don’t think the gaze was aimed just at women. Being a first time watcher, it was difficult for me to tell the characters apart – all the girls were blonde, overly made up, and had fit, thin bodies. However, the boys as well were well-built attractive men with about the same hair-cut. The same article points out that the women were placed in scenes which would accentuate their bodies as well. This occurs as well in Newport Harbor but to a lesser extent. The opening scene of the episode features the two main male characters surfing and walking the beach in skin-tight wetsuits followed by a scene with Chrissy and her friend playing tennis in super short skirts.

In “Is the Gaze Male?� Kaplan discusses how, as spectators, we, the viewers, become voyeurs during sex scenes in films. (Kaplan, 120) I believe this also occurs often during this show, although there are no sex scenes, the majority of this episode is focused around the relationship of Chrissy and Clay in their intimate last date before she goes to college. The camera is positioned so near their faces as they kiss, you even feel slightly uncomfortable as you become a voyeuristic viewer.

Overall, the show uses the beautiful, rich lives of Orange County teenagers to allow other teenagers to live vicariously through their glamorous and gorgeous relationships.

Posted by Karin Fisher at 6:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Content-The show I chose to watch was “A shot at Love with Tila Tequila�, episode eight: Welcome to the family-Tila meets the parents. This is a show about a bisexual bachelorette looking for love. She started with 16 men and 16 women and is now down to the final four. She has the men and women competing against each other for individual one-on-one time with her. At the end of every show, Tila usually eliminates one man and one woman until she gets down to one. The specific episode I watched was episode eight, at two in the morning on Wednesday, today. Tila visited her last four contestants’ families. She went all across the country to visit Bobby, Amanda, Dani, and Ryan’s families. All of the visits went well, even though a couple of families were taken back and downright shocked that Tila is bisexual. After meeting the parents, and hanging out, Tila went back to California to the elimination. In the end, she decided to eliminate Ryan because his family was the least comfortable with Tila being bisexual since his family is more conservative.
Context-MTV is the network that airs this series. There are a number of producers, but the executive producer is Sally Ann Salsano. This show is aimed at an audience of young women who are sucked in by the theme of looking for love and men who want to drool over hot women getting physical.
Form-The episode consisted of lighting on the hair during individual interviews made their hair shiny and silky looking, especially the tall pretty blonde, Amanda. The sun always seemed to capture the right spot of the bodies of the women to make them look like they are glowing. And the men’s’ bodies looked muscular and smooth. There were cuts to individual interviews of everyone to give quick insights or thoughts about what is happening around them. Also, during the interviews, in this particular episode, the women’s hair was blowing in the wind, like trying to be sexy. And at one point, Tila looked topless in one of her interviews. One thing I noticed was that the blonde, Amanda, is highly sexualized and I can’t help but think she stays to the end to draw in more viewers since she is an attractive blonde with huge boobs. The background music changes so much with what is happening during specific events, like when Tila is getting ready to give the last key to her final contestant that will not be eliminated, the music changes to a anticipation-type sound, to peak the viewers suspense of needing to know who is going home. The ideas and ideals that are being sold in this representation is basically a show for dirty men to watch to get off from seeing two females being affectionate towards each other. The use of gazes is important because the women’s bodies in this show are so sexualized and objectified and another time the gaze is important is when Tila is giving out the keys to the people who she wants to stay, she is looking up at her “heroes� because they are bigger and stronger than her and she needs them to protect her, while they are looking down at her petite frame. The odd one out in this show is Dani, the more masculine female. She is has short hair, does not appear to wear makeup or dresses, is more laid back and not catty, like other females that were in the house, but I would say that Dani is more of the “stereotypical� lesbian, since “girly-girls� are perceived to be heterosexual.

Posted by Kristen Kramer at 3:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

America’s Most Smartest Model is a VH1 show featuring male and female models of various levels of experience competing for $100,000 and a spot in a V05 commercial. The contestants participate in one event geared at measuring their intelligence and one event geared at measuring their modeling ability per episode. The show purports to be engaging in an attempt to discover if the stereotype about models is true: Are they really stupid?

The show seems to be aimed at 13 -35 female age bracket, or thereabouts. I watched the episode via iTunes, but I was able to catch an episode on actual broadcast over the weekend. The commercials were varied, but definitely directed towards women. Cosmetics, advertisements for other VH1 shows, and advertisements for household products were common. The V05 produce featured as the key product sponsor seems to sport an “edgy� image, and I think this is supported by the opening credit sequence of the show itself. It is apparently “edgy� to make fun of models.

In this particular episode, the contestants have a science fair with the help of Bill Nye. The winners of the science fair are given an “edge� for the modeling competition later in the show.

The creators of the show, Mark Cronin and Cris Abrego, have worked on many of the same shows in the past. Their resume includes shows such as Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School, I Love New York, The Surreal Life: Fame Games, and Flavor of Love. Ben Stein and Mary Alice Stephenson host the show, with Stein judging the contestants mental capabilities and Stephenson judging the contestants modeling potential.

Because Stephenson is the primary judge of the contestant’s appearance, interesting questions are raised about the overall, controlling locus of the gaze on the show. The contestants are forced to please the gaze of Stephenson. Still, Stephenson’s gaze is not entirely her own – the bodies within the context of the competition, and most of the bodies within the fashion world, are similar in their adherence to dominant beauty standards. Given the complexity of the gazes and the concept of control throughout the series, interesting questions are raised regarding whether the gaze is always male, which is a debate we visited when discussing The Piano in the work of Laura Mulvey and Diana Saco.

In the specific episode I viewed, Night of the Hairy Grizilla Monster, normative bodies are used in a different way. During the modeling competition portion of the show, the contestants are broken into teams of two. Each group is given a “nerd� who has been sitting in basement playing World of Warcraft for a really long time. The “nerds� are really pale as a result and the groups have to make their respective “nerd� appear tan using regular household items. One group has won the privilege of using sunless tanner on their “nerd.� The regular show contestants make various rude comments about the “nerds.� Examples include complaining about body hair, complaining about the way the fake tan looked (like the “nerds� had acquired a skin disease), and never referring to “their� respective “nerds� by name. One model suggests that the man her team is to be photographed with does not usually get to hang out with people “of her caliber.�

The contest is intended to be funny and recalls Schick’s notion as introduced Myra Mendible’s Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV in which gloating over the humiliation of another person is an integral part of a given process (336-337). The “nerds� are humiliated before both the contestants and the viewers, both of whom have the chance to gloat and be glad they are not one of the “nerds.� The bodies of the “nerds� are additionally used to boost the image of the bodies of the models as ideal.

In checking the Wikipedia page for the show, it seems that the most outwardly intelligent contestants have been eliminated along with the really ditzy contestants. This, to me, speaks to what the show is selling. The contestants on the show are already models. The concept of the show is supposed to encourage finding America’s “Most Smartest� Model. Why then is the only model that was able to correctly answer most of the simplistic questions posed in the pilot episode eliminated? The message is clear: Being intelligent and academically accomplished is okay, but it is not as important as being pretty. Furthermore, the show exalts the fashion industry’s most normative standards of beauty and reassures us as viewers once again that no one is as pretty or successful as models (or people who look like them).

Posted by Heather Larson at 3:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I watched A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila ep. 7 on youtube. This show is about a bisexual girl want to find true love, while straight boys and lesbian girls live in one big house together and compete for Tila’s affection.
The context of this show targets women who love drama and men who want to kill their time by watching contestants fighting for one bisexual woman and by looking at women’s body and also queer audiences who would like to watch people who have similar experiences.
I think that this show is mostly about three elements: jealousy, gender, and humiliation.
It was ridiculous to watch when Tila talked about everyone’s drama. Of course, there are drama going on among contestants, since they are all living in one area with no privacy and they are thinking about the same thing; ‘I am going to win this game to have one on one date with Tila.’ The contestants are sited in the place where each of them have to hate or feel jealous when anther gets more attention from Tila. And also Tila cause that jealous more and more by kissing a contestant in front of the other.

it was interesting that this show is now about just straight women and men competing but it is all about straight men accept the fact that they are not only fighting against men but also fighting against lesbians, bisexual women proudly tell her identity and find true love among contestants, and lesbians’s drama involved with Tila’s affection. Amenda asked Ryan if he is fighting for cheak or dude. This explains me that they are not just against with one particular gender. The show is definitely not about normative people competing for lovely women. However, to talk about this mixed gender reality is now one of the components that audiences are interested affected and wanted to watch: something spectacle. ( Liz Morrish and Kathleen O’Mra)

All contestants have the same goal; be Tila’s true love. However, at the same time, they are against with each other. Because of so many jealousy that caused from them, they are humiliating each other to let them look stronger. Brandi is a lesbian contestant who left Tila’s house because of her drama with Vanessa. Hoever, she came back to house for returning to Tila. While she was talking to Tila, all the other contestants, especially Amenda, didn’t feel good about it, because for her Brandi was biggest competitor. She likes Brandi, but she doesn’t want her to be back, because then she will be danger from elimination. There was shot that Amenda explain “reality.� She said, “ I feel I am the best person in the house for her… I love them all, BUT I am not going to be happy for them if they end up with the girl that I am love with. THAT IS JUST REALITY.
I watched A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila ep. 7 on youtube. This show is about a bisexual girl want to find true love, while straight boys and lesbian girls live in one big house together and compete for Tila’s affection.
The context of this show targets women who love drama and men who want to kill their time by watching contestants fighting for one bisexual woman and by looking at women’s body and also queer audiences who would like to watch people who have similar experiences.
I think that this show is mostly about three elements: jealousy, gender, and humiliation.
It was ridiculous to watch when Tila talked about everyone’s drama. Of course, there are drama going on among contestants, since they are all living in one area with no privacy and they are thinking about the same thing; ‘I am going to win this game to have one on one date with Tila.’ The contestants are sited in the place where each of them have to hate or feel jealous when anther gets more attention from Tila. And also Tila cause that jealous more and more by kissing a contestant in front of the other.

it was interesting that this show is now about just straight women and men competing but it is all about straight men accept the fact that they are not only fighting against men but also fighting against lesbians, bisexual women proudly tell her identity and find true love among contestants, and lesbians’s drama involved with Tila’s affection. Amenda asked Ryan if he is fighting for cheak or dude. This explains me that they are not just against with one particular gender. The show is definitely not about normative people competing for lovely women. However, to talk about this mixed gender reality is now one of the components that audiences are interested affected and wanted to watch: something spectacle. ( Liz Morrish and Kathleen O’Mra)

All contestants have the same goal; be Tila’s true love. However, at the same time, they are against with each other. Because of so many jealousy that caused from them, they are humiliating each other to let them look stronger. Brandi is a lesbian contestant who left Tila’s house because of her drama with Vanessa. Hoever, she came back to house for returning to Tila. While she was talking to Tila, all the other contestants, especially Amenda, didn’t feel good about it, because for her Brandi was biggest competitor. She likes Brandi, but she doesn’t want her to be back, because then she will be danger from elimination. There was shot that Amenda explain “reality.� She said, “ I feel I am the best person in the house for her… I love them all, BUT I am not going to be happy for them if they end up with the girl that I am love with. THAT IS JUST REALITY.

There was lots of pink during the show and that increased my heart beet faster as the shot went fast. Flash back helped me recall what was going on in last episode. And also there were lots of interviews that everyone got chance to summarize what is happening and to show their emotions. I believe that it is all about use of editing that make this show interesting. Editor can make some events more exaggerate or serious or even make a person look really bad by editing only particular shots. For example, there were flash back in the beginning where two lesbians were fighting against each other. Camera only captured them say bad words or being violence.
I had to watch from Ep. 1 to actually know what was going on. While I was watching it, I had only thought about this show is really bad because it is playing with human’s emotion and feelings. And I dough that they are not true about their feeling while they are on ridiculous competition such as drag chololate in the bucket by only using their body, eat cow testicles, etc. I thought that they were just playing around for the show. However, after I watched Ep.7, I realized that all that is serious event for them. I can just sit on the chair and watch them thought the screen but they are serious about their situations and their emotions. Maybe this was also set up through challenge of editing, but who knows!
Again, this show interests audiences by focusing the topic on outside of normalization or norm which most of other reality tv focus on straight men or women’s true love.

WORK CITED
Reading from course document Humiliation, Subjectivity, and reality Tv and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

Posted by Stella at 1:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The context of this show targets people who are overweight, whether men or women. “The Biggest Loser� is hosted by Alison Sweeney who is an actress in Days of our Lives. She is a host because she used to be overweight and now is a huge advertiser for weight loss. The network that airs this show is NBC 11, one of the basic channels that you don’t need cable for. It is shown every Tuesday night at 7pm central time.

The content of the show is to lose the most weight. All of the contestants are overweight and separated into three teams; blue, red, and black. The teams are trained by 3 different training instructors. In the beginning they work as a team and closer to the end they compete with one another, the way to win is by losing the most weight so you don’t get eliminated. The main episode I watched focused on competing with one another to win a trip to Tamarak Village with their family. There were 3 males and 4 females left. Bill, one of the males, won the contest. The goal was to hold onto a pole as long as you can so you don’t hit the water below.

The form of this episode showed a lot of shot by shot, from one contestant to the other. It was mostly shots of them in the gym. They are sweating, pushing themselves to the limit, and almost giving up (some do). The show shot by shot who they are competing with and they usually have an over voice of one of the contestants speaking about their experience or what they think about their situation thus far.

This show is very much focused on “scaling of bodies’ or ranking of body types. They focus so much on how much weight is lost but when you compare men to women, they all started the program at the same time and the men’s weight loss is almost double of women, the positive competition is all contestants compete depending on their weight lost percentage to their original weight. In Myra Mendible’s article, she writes about the humiliation that comes from reality T.V. People in this show are in it to lose weight but if you are a threat then you are voted off for losing too much weight. They love showing people break down because they are not capable of completing certain work out tasks instructed by their instructor.

Posted by Padao Vang at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Tuesday November 27th at 8pm I watched the show Married Away on the Style Network. Married Away is an hour long ‘reality’ show which showcases two new couples each episode. The show follows each couple, their families, and their wedding planner to far off places around the world where they are having the wedding. Quoting the shows website, “Uniting two families in holy matrimony is one thing, but bringing together two very different clans in a distant locale is quite another. Between the planning, the culture clashes and the jagged nerves, there's room for plenty of high drama. Because when unfamiliar languages, cultures and traditions come into play, executing a wedding can be quite a challenge!�

The show is produced by Endemol. The particular episode I watched was titled “Bonjour & Buon Giorno�. The two couples featured on the show were Leslie & Rich and Rob & Natasha. Leslie & Rich are a “non-traditional� couple as the narrator and they themselves put it. They are in their late thirties and Leslie was the pursuer throughout the relationship even up to the proposal; she asked him. Rob & Natasha meet while studying abroad and after the semester was over Rob decided to join her on a trip to Paris. At the end of this trip, knowing he had to go back to Florida and she was returning to her home in Russia, and knowing he “didn’t want to be without her� as he put it, Rob proposed. They returned to Florida together to live in Rob’s mother’s house. Leslie & Rich choose Italy for their wedding, and Rob & Natasha choose Paris. I have to be honest, I was a little let down by the show. It really wasn’t as exciting as the websites description wants you to believe. I guess if I want drama I have to watch good ‘ole I love New York. Anyway, the show is clearly geared towards women, with all the commercials for things like eharmony, slimquick, Dove chocolate, Playtex bra, a Hallmark movie about a boy who wants a husband for his mother for Christmas, department stores like Marshalls and T.J. Maxx, and KY massaging oil. The stories on the show are really upbeat. The lighting and style is ‘natural’ or not really messed with. The editing and music both are used to help tell the story and tell the viewers how to feel ‘cue close up and sappy instrumental music’. There were a lot of action shots of the two couples and their families exploring the cities, which I enjoyed. The scenery was nice. Also the cameras followed the wedding planners around who were frantically trying to get everything perfect. One thing, I have to say, that struck me and that I liked, was that the show wasn’t strictly focused on the bride like other wedding shows I have seen. Neither of the brides were portrayed as bridezillas which is the premise of most wedding stories. The only stereotypes and/or ideas and ideals I saw coming from this show were the heteronormativity and the apparent stereotyping of women through the commercials chosen to be aired during the show.

Posted by Emily Dolentz at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

G-String Divas was a reality television series that began airing in 2000 on HBO. Although the series only had nine episodes, it continues to live on in late-night reruns (and is available on websites that index pirated television content). The show followed the lives and work of a group of nine dancers who worked at a club in Philadelphia, PA.

The show was marketed as erotica to straight men; the website for the show invites them “inside the sexy, flirtatious lives of erotic dancers.� Accordingly, the show featured copious amounts of nudity, depicting the women working on stage and doing lap dances in slow motion with soft lighting and cheesy softcore porn music in the background.

However, the show was not as one-dimensional as its marketing copy would make it seem. It featured personal interviews with the dancers in which they talked honestly about their lives and their feelings about their work. Although some of the dancers were portrayed as being enthusiastic about what they did and seeing it as empowering, others said candidly that they thought it was boring, but that it paid the bills. In the process of showing them working, they were seen in both positive and negative relationships with co-workers and customers. They were also shown in their lives outside the club – the women included an artist and one who had a master's degree in psychology, and they were shown dealing with issues such as jealous boyfriends, religious upbringings and the stigma that they faced from the outside world because of their work.

The show also deals extensively with the dancers' performance of gender identity, although it does not describe it as such. Performativity is an integral part of sex work. Dancers work hard to perform and portray a fantasy of an idealized woman. However, they also have to negotiate performing this idealized female role with the fact that their use of overt sexuality directly contradicts it; they have to play both the madonna and the whore, “giving performances that break conventional patriarchal notions of female sexuality while simultaneously reinforcing patriarchal norms� (Fogel). The dancers use more than their acting skills for this performance; they have to attempt to literally embody this ideal. In order to portray this exaggerated ideal of femininity, they make up, dress up, and work to change their bodies. Episodes of the show included “Recipe for a Stripper's Body,� featuring the women giving tips on using exercise, diet and surgery to make themselves proper objects of the male gaze.

The feminine ideals that they work to embody are so far from reality that they require considerable amounts of work to even approach, but they are more attainable for some women than others. Sex work makes this very plain: women who do a better job of playing the role make more money, but the playing field is not level. For example. the one Black dancer in the otherwise all-white club, Cashmere, feels that she has to straighten her hair to fit in with white standards of beauty. The dancers are ranked by body, skin and hair type and color, with the ones who can most easily fit these standards at the top. That said, making money in strip clubs often has at least as much to do with hustling skills than looks. Cashmere expresses in her interview that she has to work harder to get to the same place – much as women of color often have to in the real world. Although she never uses the word "intersectionality," it, like much of the theory we have studied, is clearly at play.

Works Cited:

Fogel, Curtis. “Presenting the Naked Self: The Accumulation of Performative Capital in the Female Strip Trade.� Gender Forum. Köln: 2007. , Iss. 17;1 pgs

Posted by Peachtree at 9:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In high school, one of my favorite shows was Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica. I repeatedly watched the episodes when they aired on MTV from 2003 to 2005. The episode I choose to watch is titled “Jessica’s Dessert,� and it is from the second season. I watched it on the DVD collection of the second and third seasons.

The producers of Newlyweds are Rod Aissa and Lois Clark Curren. They have produced many other reality television shows together including: Punk’d, The Osbournes, and Cheyenne, which all aired on MTV. MTV is targeting people between the ages of 12 to 34 years. It has a large target audience because fans of 98 Degrees (Nick’s former boy band) and Jessica Simpson tune in to watch two of their favorite celebrities, and newly married couples can relate to the stuff displayed on screen. And some just tuned in, in hope that something outrageously dumb would come out of Jessica’s mouth (“Is this tuna or fish, I know it say’s fish but….�). The show follows Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson, both B-list stars before the show, on the first few years of their marriage while they deal with the pressures of stardom. The episode “Jessica’s Dessert� follows Nick and Jessica to Manhattan, where Jess will have a photo shoot for her line of beauty products, Dessert Beauty, which are completely edible. During this time, rumors spread that Jess may be pregnant, and she actually ends up getting sick in the episode.

The shots edited in are mostly of Jessica, even if Nick is talking in a conversation. For example, Nick and Jessica were out to dinner with his brother, Drew, and sister-in-law, Lea, and the majority of shots were of Jessica and Leah on one side of the table. Jessica usually has the camera close up on her, from the chest-up, if she is not moving. If she is walking or standing, the shot usually was from the calves-up, showing off her figure. However, Nick tended to have chest-up shots. The lighting was very soft and made their skin appear flawless and void of imperfections. Music was edited in as the show was progressing in or out from a commercial break. As the show shifted from one place to another, establishing shots of the place or situation were inserted. For example, at the beginning of the show the first clip shown is of the New York City skyline. At the Dessert Beauty photo shoot the outside of the building is shown, followed by numerous shots of the different areas in the studio that are being used for the shoot.

Nick and Jessica are constructed as following gender roles very strictly. Nick is the man’s man, who is portrayed as being smarter than his wife (but that isn’t too difficult in this show) and has an unbelievable passion for sports. He is repeatedly shown watching sports, and even goes to ESPN Zone in this episode with ‘the boys.’ He is very inattentive towards Jessica until he is not too busy or desires her sexually. Jessica on the other hand makes herself seem as if she is a complete idiot, living up and confirming the stereotype of dumb blondes. For example, at the beginning of the episode Jessica recalls a moment in seventh grade when the teacher asked the class what the names of the seven continents were, and she raised her hand and said “A, E, I, O, U.� Nick then points out that those are not even consonants; they are vowels. In the article on humiliation, subjectivity, and reality television, Fredric Schick believes “that a defining characteristic of the process is that the victim is made passive and conscious of the humiliating act.� Jessica consciously contributed her story knowing that she would be made fun of, but passively sat there laughing at herself, along with everyone else in the car. Throughout the rest of the episode, there are two more situations where Jessica subjects herself to being made fun of. Another example is when Jessica is having a discussion about her performing at the Golden Globes post-party. She does not know if post means before or after the show, which leads her to discuss that you put a postage stamp on a letter before you mail it. Even though Jessica is making herself appear stupid to millions of people, it does not matter because people have continuously tuned in. The show also sent her career skyrocketing. Mark Burnett believes that “even the losers are gratified by their experience.� This show transformed them from b-list celebrities to household names, and this was mirrored in the increase of album sales and success seen in other projects. It did not matter how they were being portrayed as long as they profited from it or publicized their projects.

Posted by Tapex002 at 9:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“The Hills� is a spin off of “Laguna Beach� and based on the life of narrator Lauren Conrad. “The Hills� is produced by Adam Devillo and currently airs on MTV weekly, but I watched this episode on mtv.com. I would say that this show targets younger female audiences but is probably on the televisions of many college students today. The content of the show is Lauren and a number of her friend’s lives. The camera follows them through all of their drama at work; school, home, parties, etc. Lauren’s ex-best friend Heidi and her fiancé, Spencer, are a large part of the drama that takes up this show. Lauren is mad at the pair for a number of reasons such betraying her friendship with Heidi and her rumors involving her past romance. Lauren cannot escape from Heidi’s life because Heidi feels as though she has done no damage and wants to reconcile with Lauren. The two seem to run into each other, because of their similar jobs at large Los Angel’s companies, at a number of parties and events where the drama unfolds. Heidi’s drama does not stop with Lauren, she is continuously arguing with Spencer about a wide range of things but most recently planning their wedding.

In this episode of “The Hills,� Heidi and Spencer cannot agree on anything regarding their wedding. Heidi wants to get married in a church, but Spencer hasn’t even told his parents about the proposal and simply wants to elope in Cabo. While they are discussing this, Heidi says, “I thought boys didn’t care about this stuff.� This relates back to what Yep and Camacho say in “The Normalization of Heterogendered Relations in The Bachelor,� to quote what Audre Lorde states as a “mythical norm� in our society. This phrase is a stereotype that is allowing the viewer to see men as careless bodies. Later in the episode, Lauren, Audrina (Lauren’s good friend and roommate) and Whitney (Lauren’s coworker at Teen Vogue, her internship) are at the gym where a trainer is leading them in exercises. The girls are maintaining a feminine balance between their working out and looking good for the handsome trainer. Lauren suggests that the four of them go to a sports bar called Big Wang’s. This made me chuckle, a sports bar named Big Wang’s? This name for a bar places a ranking of body size on the male organ. With that being said, it is also a sports bar, which means that it is stereotypically predominately male dominated. Throughout the show, the gaze is on the looks of the women who are the main characters. There is a constant gaze on what they are wearing and their outer appearance. They even mention that because they are going to a “sports� bar it isn’t considered one of the places they go out to look their best. The girls dress down for themselves, but to the majority of the public they would look great (while also looking a bit shallow, ahem!).

I have to admit that I actually did enjoy watching this episode of “The Hills� and I can totally see how the male producer is able to make this an entertaining show for young women. Because, hey, women love drama!

Posted by Greta Fay at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just finished watching the first part of a two-part season finale for Beauty and the Geek. While I think that there would be some better episodes than the one that I watched, as this was focused just on two couples post-transformation, so the element of cruelty was tuned down, I still found the entire premise of this show to still be very offensive. This division, between people who are beautiful and people that are geeks perpetuates the stereotypes of what it means to be geeky and what it means to be cool, and while these stereotypes are a reflection of current social norms, it still serves to perpetuate such preexisting beliefs and divisions.

The show presents itself as being about "transformation." To be fair, there is meant to be transformation for both the geek as well as the beauty, but this does little to change the overall message of the show, which is that geeks should stop being so damn geeky and learn how to conform a little. The forced social transformation of the geeks into people that are slightly less geeky already occured at this episode, though flashbacks helped to illustrate the ways in which the geeks had changed throughout the season. The only moment in the episode that really lived up to the cruelty of the shows premise in its delivery of degradation came when the male geek, Dave, had his partner, Jasmine, play a Live Action Role Playing Game (LARP) with some of his friends. They dressed up in fantasy costumes, complete with swords and shields and enacted a fantasy scenario involving swordplay. This moment in the show exists mostly for the viewers amusment, to laugh at the ridiculousness of going to the park and playing dress up. It is because of things like this, the interest in fantasy and the willingness to play a LARP that defines Dave as a geek and this social atribution is exploited for the viewers amusement in this sequence.
One thing that was interesting about this particular episode/season is for the first time, they had a partnership that was between a male beauty and a female geek. This is somewhat of an interesting idea, in that idiotic reality TV sort of way, but it serves as little more than a gimmick. It is evenhanded I suppose, the idea that not just men are geeks - women can be geeky social outcasts too! And men can be hunky! Gee, what a deeply nuanced and complex society we live in. It does show, at the least, that women can be ridiculed for their nerdy and antiscoial qualities, the same way that men are. The alleged geekiness of her character isn't really exploited in this episode, enough so that I'm not really sure why she was picked for the show. She doesn't seem to be the most social person, but she certainly doesn't seem to be an extreme example of what a geeky woman looks like. Is she geeky just because she is shy and inteligent?

The character that is most fascinating to me in this episode would have to be Jasmine, the female beauty. Her charatcter (can you even call someone in this kind of show a person anymore?) is so uninteligent and stereotypically 'ditzy', qualities which all too often are equated with being attractive in our current social climate. Some highlights: "I'm so excited to go home! I hope we get to go shopping!" "I don't look like them or talk like them and some people will judge you for that" (in reference to Dave's friends.) The first quote, obviously, relates to the expectation/cultural conditioning that women who are beautiful must also be consumers...a message that is so prevalent that it may perhaps be the dominant message of television. Her preppy, bubbly uninteligence also further drives the message down people's throats that to be cool or pretty, you need to keep your inteligence in check.

Formally speaking, this show looks a lot like most other reality TV shows. Yes, there are subtle differences, but the style of these shows tends to be so similar. Lots of fast cutting, used to cover up the lack of any thoughtful mise-en-scene. Constant musical pieces that use every musical cliche to elicit an immediate emotional reaction out of the viewer. This particular stylistic choice within reality TV is very often used in an ironic fashion, particularly in this show, as its not meant to be a particularly serious slice of hyperreality. The style of the show in general is meant to be entertaining and humorous, and is not meant to be taken very seriously. This is a show that is meant to be a family show, as it is rated "TVPG", is on at an early time (7:00 pm) and the adverteisments are clearly meant to be geared towards a family audience, with WalMart being the sponser of the show. Of course, when things are not meant to be taken very seriously, when its just "family entertainment", this is when they seep into our subconcious most easily. When ideology is invisible is when ideology is most at work.

Posted by Robin Youngman at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

America’s Next Top Model is a reality TV show where young women compete against each other in the modeling industry. I watched the episode entitled “The Girls Go to Shanghai.� I watched it on Cwtv.com. It was quick and easy to watch. The Executive Producers are Ken Mok, Tyra Banks, and Daniel Soiseth. It is produced by 10 By 10 Entertainment and Bankable Productions. Because of the commercials, it is obvious the show is targeted towards women who are interested in the fashion industry, mostly aged 16-30 but it could vary more depending on the woman. The commercials consist of Covergirl makeup, Victoria’s Secret, and other feminine products/services.

The content of the show is made up of six girls going to Shanghai to compete in a couple different competitions. First, they went to the Hollywood of Shangai to do martial arts stunt work. The chinese men first were hooked up to wires and then flown through the sky while doing martial arts. After, the girls had to do it. With their long bodies it was hard to control what they were doing in the air, making them look rather silly. One of the girls started to cry and would not go up. Are all girls like this? No, they are not, but in society girls are known to be more afraid then men(even though I do not believe this). Then, they all had to record a commercial for the Covergirl Queen Collection. The form of the show varied from scene to scene. There was a lot of fast motion, in order to express the life in Shanghai in a short amount of time. Also, chinese music complimented the location. Many red and golds were used in the furniture and props of the show.

Throughout the entire show the girls are very feminine and dainty. There skin is always soft, and hair always done. They were tighter clothing and high heels. Out of the six girls, there are two white women, two black women, one dark haired white woman, and one women of color (I think she is half black and half white). There are a couple different ethnicities but there are so many missing from the group (asian, middle-eastern, hispanic,...etc.) But, I do feel that Tyra Banks judges on their modeling abilities and not by the way they look. She uses fair judging guidelines and always explains herself when she eliminates a girl. I also think the show does a good job of encouraging women. Especially because the line of Covergirl makeup’s motto is “Every woman is a queen.�

“The opening essay, by Myra Mendible, considers the usefulness of the concept of
humiliation in the game show as genre, arguing that our interest in watching others
being humiliated is an essential aspect of the success of sub-genre "survival" shows.�
This quote from “Commentary and Criticism Introduction� really relates to this particular episode. There is a girl competing named Heather. Time after time the camera focuses on her when she says or does “stupid� things. Not only is it entertaining for the participant to do humiliating things, but it is also entertaining when the other participants make fun of or humiliate her as well. Much of the camera time at the house focused on Sarah being made fun of by the other girls in the house. She is also the girl in the house who is known to be not as good looking as the other girls.

There were no plus-size models in this episode; however, I do recall a couple of times where plus-size models have been in the show. But it seems they never last long. Just like plus-size fashion magazines don’t last long either: “ Now the plus-sized woman has become a locus of attention in women’s magazines. The emergence of fashion magazines devoted to “large� women heralded a fashion revolution.� -Introduction: Gender and the plus-size body. Unfortunately, it goes on to say that none of the magazines have lasted, just like none of the plus-size models have not lasted. Are they being put on the show just to say they have a plus-size model on the show? Then they eliminate them when the competition gets fierce.

Posted by myk08 at 4:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Monday night I was able to catch an episode of “Two-A-Days�, a reality television show on MTV following the Buccaneers, member s of the Hoover, Alabama High School football team.

I watched this particular show on MTV 2 which was airing a marathon of the series late night. Produced by Amy Bailey who does other shows for MTV such as “Engaged and Underage� and “MTV Show Choir� she is obviously a seasoned hand at reality television targeted to a younger audience. The show is filmed in a lower quality hand held fashion, seemingly to make it more “real� to the audience. There were also instances of the players with their own cameras, in this episode shown at the end before Mark and Brittany head off into the deer stand together, a sport which Brittany does not love but will do in order to spend time with her football star boyfriend.
Having never seen the show before I was unfamiliar with the characters, but viewed an episode in which Charlie was dealing with the stress of a not so up to par report card and the unwanted wrath from his parents. Also featured in the episode were Mark and his girlfriend, head cheerleader Brittany, as they plan to go on a hunting trip together.
The one episode that I did see of this show made it quite clear to me that the importance of football to this town was beyond a normal obsession with the sport. The equipment that they were using, the professional nature of the field where the game was played and the sheer amount of fans that attended the game made it clear what was prioritized in this town. Looking at the website for this television show (littered with advertisements for sports shoes) to learn more about it I was not surprised to see a link to an article about the head coach stepping down from his position in response to allegations of grade changing and preferential treatment of players. This glorification of male athleticism, especially America’s favorite pastime of football, works to normalize heteronormative masculinity in this town. These stereotypical strong men were never particularly talkative throughout the episode, the conversation was usually kept to a minimal yes or no, but what was really telling was the way the boys acted on the field. The aggression level rose, these seemingly soft spoken boys began yelling and hitting each other, they drew ritualistic black markings on their faces, and there was a sense of comradery between the players. This is how they were in fact able to play out their masculinity, this is what was expected of them and they performed it well, an anti essentialist stance which brings to light the fact that perhaps men too have a gender.
Another aspect of this episode that grabbed my attention was the issue of the gaze. At one point in time Mark and Brittany are shopping for hunting gear. Brittany goes into the dressing room in order to try on her head to toe camo outfit, emerging from the dressing room adorned in the hunting gear and her high heels. The male gaze from not only Mark, but the camera as well objectifies her as the panicle of male desire, but she seems to take enjoyment from her position in the gaze. Is it possible that women can indeed take pleasure from the gaze, in a sense to use Judith Butler’s terminology to ‘resignify’ what the gaze means to us, to in essence own that gaze and use it as a tool through which we possess agency. This idea is not one like that of Kaplan’s questioning whether or not women occupy a social space that allows for us to return the gaze, or for men to be the object of the gaze, but allows for an awareness of the power women hold.
The documentary by Byron Hurt also comes to mind in the discussion of gazes in this particular reality show. The displaying of sexualized homoerotic bodies and practices in the game of football is something that should not be overlooked. The boys are often in very tight clothing, or no clothing at all in the locker room. Through the façade of contact sports they are able to become close to one another, engaging in sexual touching and talk with one another. And being a publically broadcast television show I do not doubt that all of the teenage boys who tune in do so in order to watch the scantily clad cheerleaders.
At the conclusion of the show the boys won their football game, the cheerleaders and fans cheered loudly, and I was hardly able to resist watching the rest of the marathon.

Posted by kate at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I decided to watch the MTV reality show “Next.� This is where a guy or a girl gets set up on dates with five different people. If that individual does not like a certain contestant he/she can “next� that person, send them back on the bus and meet the next person in line. I accessed this through my television, on Tuesday afternoon on MTV.
Kalissa Miller is one of the producers of the show. I am positive that there are a team of producers that work on most of the MTV reality shows that are aired. The target audience is anyone who watches MTV. I think the majority are young viewers, especially young girls. There is a lot of reality shows that are aired on MTV.
I think this show is absolutely ridiculous. It is all about first impressions and looks. The main guy/girl looking for the date bases his/her judgments all on outward appearances. If he/she does not like what they see, they will simply send them back on the bus waiting to meet the next person. It is exactly opposite of the old saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.�
The idea that is being sent to the audience is that you better look and be attractive to the dater or else you are a loser. I think this message is very horrible to be sending to the young audience that is viewing shows like this. Life is not all about who finds you attractive and what you look like. In this particular episode, all of the five girls get “next-ed� by this guy. The first three girls last only one minute, because he did not like what they looked like. One of the girls, according to him, had too much junk in the trunk. The fourth girl lasted 30 minutes, but he “next-ed� her because she was not having fun doing the activity that he picked out. The fifth girl lasted 72 minutes, but he “next-ed� her because after the activity he found out that she worked at a tanning salon and did not agree with the whole “fake and bake� idea.
The form had a lot of close-up shots. At first the individuals were shown by introducing themselves to us, the audience. I also noted that in each of their introductions, there was always a sexual connotation that was slipped in. Then when an individual would be rejected by the date, both of them would be talking directly into the camera with some harsh criticism about one another. There were also a lot of over the shoulder shots when the daters were first meeting each other, so we the audience could get a real look at their impressions.
It always seems that in this particular reality show, the heterosexual guys are always looking for that pretty girl with a great body, and anything else gets tossed to the side. So this is reinforcing femininity with young girls because these girls that view this will want to achieve that perfect body because that is what guys supposedly want. The thing I do not understand is how this television show is stilled being aired. It is so far from reality that it is almost funny.

Posted by Rachel Kyllander at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I watched “Hearts Afire� episode 38 of “Girls Next Door� which first aired in April 2007. I viewed it at 8 on a Monday night on channel 49 (E!). This episode showed ‘the girls’ celebrating Valentine’s day and Mardi Gras with their boyfriend Hugh Hefner. The show followed Bridget, Kendra, and Holly, three beautiful skinny blonde women, around for Valentines day which included a dog date where Bridget and Holly drove their dogs around Playboy park, and creating cakes for Hugh. The women were shown preparing for the Mardi Gras party and then enjoying the party.
During the show, while the women spoke to each other, carnival music wasvplaying in the background. This was also on while the women were giving their personal interviews, and while baking the cake for Hugh. This music, as someone else has mentioned, subtracts value from what the women have to say and gives the audience permission to not take the women seriously. However, when Hugh was speaking, or the women were talking about Hugh, big band music was playing in the background, making Hugh seem very glamorous and classy (the exact opposite of how I think he should be portrayed).
The women were the objects of an assumed male gaze. During the personal interviews the women were shot from the chest up, making sure to include their barely contained busts, which would appeal to a male audience. Also, during the Valentine’s day dinner, one of the playmates shoulder straps kept falling down, revealing her breasts, and a sound effect (like a bloooop sound) was added in for extra emphasis, just in case anyone missed the naked breast at the dinner table. In addition to the table incident, women were getting their costumes ‘painted on’ before the Mardi Gras party, and Hugh was in the room watching the women get ready. Of course the women’s privates were blurred out, but little was left to the imagination. The camera showed the women being looked at by an assumed male audience, as well as by Hugh.
I also am led to believe the targeted audience is male because of the advertisements in between segments of the show. Alcohol, male enhancement drugs and Holiday DVD ads with sales pitches like “wanna bring the girls home for the holidays?� appeal to a male audience.
According to Margalit as discussed in “Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV�, humiliation is the treating of a person as an object or tool, and this is what unifies reality t.v. The women in “Girls Next Door� are definitely depicted as sub-human, they are shown as sex objects, and as sexy yet unintelligent women than don’t even deserve the audiences respect to listen to their interviews without carnival music in the background. This reality show definitely takes away the women’s dignity as human beings and questions our societies ethics and morality in the inclusion of this type of show in our entertainment.
Word count: 486

Posted by Sparky4 at 9:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I viewed VH1's Celebrity Fit Club 3 on the TV Guide Network. This one hour reality show follows eight celebrities on two teams of four as they go through "fit camp" and face public weigh-ins in front of three judges consisting of their physical trainer, a psychologist, and a doctor. The most dramatic event of the show set in a grand hall and dimly lit with candles is the weigh-in which takes up 30 minutes of the hour long time slot. Each celebrity is weighed individually and then they are weighed as teams. The team weigh-in is done on a giant set of old fashioned scales complete with fog machine to dramatize the moment. The team that wins (loses the most weight) will win a cash grand prize.

This reality tv show promotes the idea that people have to be thin in order to be beautiful. The panel of judges gives each celeb a target weight loss goal that they must reach by the next weigh in. By other people telling them the amount of weight they must lose takes a person's control of their own looks out of their hands. The judges then have control of what this person is supposed to look like in order to be beautiful. By breaking the celebrities into teams and having them compete for money makes weight loss and sex appeal out to be competitions for the everyday person as well. They must mentally compete with those celebrities in order to physically look like they do in order to be sexy and beautiful.

Most astounding are the women in the show who weigh around 170-180 pounds. They are on a weight loss show which immediate labels them as overweight. The women, especially Tempest and Kelly, look fit, healthy, and attractive. However, they are still told to continue losing weight in order to pursue new roles in their careers. Another celeb on the show is Countess Vaughn. She weighed in on this show at 126lbs after losing four pounds from the previous weigh-in. Since she reached her goal weight loss she was offered a glamorous photo shoot from Smooth Magazine and the judges informed her that she must lose another 3lbs to prepare for the shoot. Apparently for Hollywood, even 126 pounds is not thin enough for their celebrities.

The image of woman on this show is especially alarming. The celebrities that look fit and healthy are constantly told they must continue to lose weight in order to maintain their jobs. The Americans that watch these shows and that look up to stick thin celebrities like this show promotes feel that they too must be this thin in order to have sex appeal. These shows do not support a healthy lifestyle like they purport to do, instead they support the idea that thin equals beautiful. Additionally, the winning team is awarded money which tells the viewer that more sex appeal equals more money and that you have to be thin to have sex appeal.

The commercials between segments of the show also promote these ideas of weight loss and beauty. They are advertising weight loss plans and pills mixed with health foods and sexy perfume ads. The combined effect of these commercials is the same as the message of the show: you have to be thin to be beautiful.

Posted by Katie at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The show that I watched has already been discussed in a post, so I will try not to include similar information. The show that I viewed was The Girls Next Door. I do not have cable however; I viewed this show through DVD. The show is based around the life of three women, Holly, Bridget and Kendra. These three women have one thing in common, they are dating Hugh Hefner, and I think we all are familiar with what he is famous for, Playboy. I watched several episodes, but I only want to focus on one of them. The episode I would like to discuss is the very first episode of the show. This show included a miny episode; however the main thing it included was an introduction to the three women.
The first episodes titled Meet the Girls was first aired on Sunday, August 7, 2005 on the channel E!. The show is targeted towards adults, female or male. I have seen this show on E! and I believe on television it is more targeted towards females, however the DVD includes deleted scenes, which basically are all nude scenes, which brings the targeting more towards men. The topic of the show is basically the following of Hugh Hefner's girlfriends. It shows the lives of three women trying to fill their day with anything they want to do, pretty much. For example, in one episode Bridget throws a birthday party for her dog, in which the staff of the mansion has to cater to the dogs. This is not real life, this is pathetic. The construction of the show is to make these women look as dumb as possible; unfortunately I don't think it takes too much for them. For example one of them, Bridget has her master's degree, yet she is portrayed as a "dumb blonde" throughout the show. The more I watched the show, the more I believe she plays the role of the "dumb blonde" purely for the show. I believe this is because if there was an intelligent woman on the show, no one would watch it. People want to see the "dumb blonde" on television, they want that character, so they can mock and laugh at the stupidity of an individual. As discussed in “Humiliation, Subjectivity & Reality TV� “humiliation is the unifying principle behind a successful reality show�. By this I mean every reality television show focuses on one thing, the humiliation of the stars. The Girls Next Door is no different. The way the show is edited is to show the stupidity of the women. For example, most of the time during the solo interviews, they edit in music to make Kendra appear dumber. Now I will be the first to say, that I don’t believe it is just editing that makes her appear dumb, but they increase it by playing music. For example in one interview, she was thinking of something for a while and they added the jeopardy music. That would be okay if something brilliant was said to follow but that was not the case. All and all the show plays with the idea of the stereotypical “dumb blonde� and the “goldigger�, by following these three women.

Posted by Amanda Amundson at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't watch a great deal of television, but one show that catches my attention every time is called Intervention. Intervention runs on the A&E network typically on Sunday nights and in hourly segments. The show is about individuals who are addicted to an unhealthy and demonizing lifestyle that is destroying their families (mainly alcoholism and drugs). The addicts agree to be followed and believe they are helping A&E make a biography, however they have no idea that at the end of the show they will be faced with an intervention. This reality series is going on its fourth season with A&E and the executive producers are Robert Sharenow, Colleen Conway. Both producers have previous experience and an extensive background for reality television. Since this TV show features a different individual and their family every segment, I have chosen to focus on episode 31, season 2- Cristy for my critique.
The show introduces Cristy as a fun loving 20 something girl, who was born into a tight nite family and once had aspirations of being a clothing designer. However, things didn't go as planned for Cristy, she quickly fell into a lifestyle that could be the end of her according to her mother. Cristy is addicted to Crystal meth and alcohol. Throughout the show Cristy is never sober, and basically displayed as a waste of life according to the critiques. She supports her habits by stripping at a local club, and stealing from her loved ones. She is shown on television basically naked in many scenes desperate for cash. Her family is portrayed as very loving, but tired of her abuse. As for Cristy she is very disrespectful toward her family and very single minded in the episode, which could be edited to portray this or could be reality. This episode is very heart wrenching and hard to watch, like most Intervention segments that air on A&E but for the viewer, we just can't seem to get enough.
Intervention's audience is that of a wide array. The show draws in viewers who are both young and old, current users looking for help, and people who have never used at all. This show is good at further demonizing alcohol abuse and drugs by showing the audience it can happen to anyone, however is a very extreme example(s). I feel that people who watch the show or who get really into the show have something to gain from it. Possibly because they have a family member that needs help and the viewer doesn't know how to help them. It's important to note that this series doesn't always end with an happy ending. Sometimes the intervention is not successful and the users relapse or even pass away. The show leaves the viewer almost empty in episodes where there are children involved and families ripped apart. It also shows people at their lowest of lows and is degrading to women by showing their bodies nude on TV. A&E's producers are trying to get the message out that if someone needs help to get it before it's too late. It's very close to a public announcement type reality show to scare people straight. The producers have shown music that relates to how people are feeling throughout the episode, and the filming is very harsh. There doesn't seem to be much editing out or anything that the show doesn't show, they catch it all and show the harsh realities of drug addiction and alcoholism. The family’s members of the addict are interviewed and speak throughout the whole segment, disclosing how they feel and how it's turned their life upside down. There is a lot of crying, begging, and violence in the episodes, but are often closed with counseling. The interviews of family members are very sad and give the audience a glimpse of their reality. This is very useful in the production of this show and also what makes it so interesting to watch.
The series focuses on all types of addicts and people involved. They are all ages from 13-65 and of all walks of life. The stories told are from all over the United States not just a given state and all have one thing in common, and that is that they will face an intervention at the end of the episode. The show often features lower class individuals though, and often displays them as dirty. It's important to keep in mind that not all addicts are dirty or of lower class, so there is some stereo type going on here. In more than a couple episodes the addicts are shown to be stealing in order to support their habit and not all addicts steal either. There are some issues the way this show represents people and needs. The bottom line is that A&E wants to generate money and the only way to do so is to make a show that keep viewers coming back for more.
There are many, many different types of gazes throughout these different episodes of Intervention. The way people view themselves and others. Cristy for example strippers to make money to support herself and her family doesn't support this behavior. They feel that if she gets out of the stripping environment she could stop using meth. The temptation and drugs wouldn't be there if she worked somewhere else according to her family. In conclusion this series is very heart wrenching and humiliating for individuals. Like that of the reading, if the show successfully humiliates individuals and they can look at themselves on nation television, we have high hopes that this will bring on change.

Posted by Jessica Haddrill at 9:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I watched Extreme Makeover Home Edition on ABC Sunday night with my mom and my sister at home. The show was featuring the Swenson-Lee family in Minnetonka, Minnesota and my sister’s coworker is related to the family. This two hour special also included families from past shows because this was their 100th episode.
The target audience of this show was definitely middle-class, men and women with families.

Extreme Makeover Home Edition is about a crew of people who travel around the U.S. and makeover homes of families that have had a huge tragedy or loss happen to them in hopes of making life easier for them in some way. The crew receives a video diary of the family’s story and they build an outrageously elaborate and beautiful home in seven days for them while the family is sent on vacation. The people and contractors in the home town of the family volunteer their time and get the job done as a community. Many other gifts are given to the family and there is never a moment that isn’t fully pact with emotion.

This episode featuring the Swenson-Lee family of Minnetonka was heartbreaking. The story was centered on Taylor Lee, a 13-year-old girl who witnessed the death of both of her parents. Five years ago Taylor was riding in a car with her dad and the car crashed and her father died. About a year ago Taylor’s mother and her mother’s boyfriend were shot to death by her mother’s ex-boyfriend and Taylor witnessed the shooting. After Taylor and her three siblings were left without parents or a place to live, their Aunt, Vickie Swenson and her husband and their four kids took them in. Vickie, pregnant at the time realized that their house was not nearly big enough for 10 people.

More importantly relating to gender, was the emphasis of the dangers of domestic violence. Everyone in the episode addressed the issue and Taylor Lee and her Aunt Vickie have introduced bills to the Minnesota legislature dealing with preventative measures of domestic violence. These women were portrayed as strong, intelligent and passionate about the protection of other families from domestic violence.

On the other hand, performative gender roles were very clearly seen as the designers asked the young boys and girls what they wanted for their new rooms. The young girl wanted everything pink and yes, the designer went ahead and made the room look like someone puked Pepto-Bismol all over it. The designer for the boys’ room decided that since they were boys and they roughed around a lot everything would be made of steel. Not only did the designer give the boys a nice ‘manly’ room, but he filled it with all kinds of autographed sporting goods including things from the Twins, the Vikings and other Minnesota male sporting teams.

This is a sort of normalization of gender roles. In article titled The Normalization of Heterogendered Relations in The Bachelor, these gender roles are addressed. “Throughout the episodes, many of the women discussed their dream weddings, marriage, and the details of being a good wife. These sound bites explicitly reinforced heteronormative standards for women� (Gust Yep and Ariana Ochoa Camacho).

It seems at points that although this show promotes constructiveness and healing, it seems that it is purely sensational to a point that the audience is so overwhelmed with emotion that it causes a heightened response that keeps the viewer glued to the TV. The ways in which the tragic stories are told and retold over and over again gives this show a sense of gripping terror, sadness, happiness and hopefulness that paralyzes the viewer. From the audience, little attention is paid to how gender is being performed during this emotional bombardment of tragedy, loss and hope for the future.

This show was so emotionally charged that it was hard to take note of the form but I did notice some filmic construction.
There were a ton of close-ups when things got emotional (which happened quite often).
There were also handheld cameras that jiggled everywhere as people ran around with them.
The shots of the house zoomed in and zoomed out a lot showing the outside conditions.

Posted by Mary Ellen McCormick at 1:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County is a half hour reality program that has aired on MTV since 2004. It has, since then, been a central focus on their programming; although there has not been a new season since Fall of 2006. When it airs, it is one of their highest rated programs both on their network and overall among cable networks. The premise of the show revolves around teens that live in Laguna Beach, and what happens to them as the camera “follows� them. Laguna Beach provides a look into a high social class that fascinates many in our country, especially among younger social groups that thrive on the power of money. We see these teens experience relationships, dances and graduation. Their socialization and interaction with one another is captured by the camera and cleverly edited for us viewers. A specific narrator of the show, usually the girl who gets the most screen time, directs us. In the episode I watched, her name was Kristen. Through Kristen we are able to see her point of view of those on the show. Usually if there is someone she does not like, the show will skew him or her in a negative light. Although it is said to be “all real�, it is quite obvious that situations are contrived and scripted. But then again, I don’t mind; I own all the DVD’s. This is the epitome of a guilty pleasure that many would never admit to watching.

One of the many concepts that is emitted here are the stereotypes of males and females, and the roles that they play. In The Normalization of Heterogendered Relations in The Bachelor, Gust Yep and Ariana Ochoa Camacho state that, “…[the male] has tremendous proactive power…while the women are given very limited reactive power� (339). This observation can be studied during one specific scene during the episode “Since You Been Gone�. In this particular scene, characters Jessica and Jason are on a date at a restaurant. The camera stays at a mid level shot, flipping going back and forth in the same stationary position as they talk to each other. Jessica has dressed nicely for him, wearing a nice top and earrings. Jason has chosen not to dress nicely for Jessica, wearing only a white t-shirt and an unshaved face. Jessica goes to put her hair up in a ponytail, but Jason immediately stops her and says, “No. Leave it down.� She complies, and rests her hands and leaves her hair down and smiles. He then smiles back at her, given that she complied with his command. Jessica then tries to flatter him by playing footsie with his leg, which he chooses not to participate in. She then says they should spend the night at her house, and he smiles coyly and raises his eyebrows as if suggesting they should participate in a certain activity. It is becoming clear here that Jessica is there to serve Jason’s aesthetic and physical needs. She doesn’t even talk much with him; she just smiles at him and does what he says. Like Yep and Camacho said, Jessica has limited power and Jason has tremendous proactive power.

There is an abundance of the principle “scaling of bodies� in Laguna Beach. By this, I mean there are constant notations of the character’s hair color, skin color, income status, clothing, hair, and etc. In one scene in the episode “Since You Been Gone�, Kristen and her friends are around a table playing cards and talking about the appearance of the “new girl� Casey. They say that Casey’s hair is “ratty� with horrible extensions. The camera then show’s Casey getting her hair professionally done, and her hair appears flawless. They say her skin is nasty, and then the camera shows a close up of her face with gleaming white teeth and no visible pores. Their comments do not hold any ground, because clearly Casey does not represent any of their assumed commentary. But as the viewers watch the show, there is no one contrasting their opinion so we must believe it to be true. This show thrives on direct characterization. In the opening shots of the show, we see Kristen and her two friends Alex and Jessica tanning outside by a pool. They are showing off their bronzed bodies, perky breasts, sun bleached hair and white teeth. The way these girls talk and act convey that they know they look good, and that the camera will think the same thing too.

Overall Laguna Beach is a television show aiming at teenagers. MTV is a network that strives to soak up younger audiences. They throw these contrived “reality� shows at them in attempt for them to buy into them and the products they heavily advertise with it. Sure Real World and Road Rules were true to form back when they first originated, but now they have strayed from that sense of production. If all you see on Laguna Beach is shopping, and then they immediately follow the clip with commercials for clothing brands, the viewer will be more susceptible to consume. The ideas associated with it will be that of consumption and other things that MTV associates with them. When I think of Laguna Beach, I think of key scenes from the show, from going to Cabo for spring break, throwing a Black & White party and drinking an ominous liquid from red cups. What do these say to MTV? Go on MTV Spring break, have parties and drink alcohol.

The director for most Laguna Beach episodes is male. The main characters of Laguna Beach are female. We see them through a glossy lens that shows them all dolled up and subservient to male needs. They are shown as helpless to men, always on the lookout for cute boys and the need to “hookup� with people. The guys are shown as idiotic, when they have conversations it is usually short worded “yes� or “no� or “dude�. The girls are shown tanning, shopping, playing with makeup, or looking in the mirror. Males are shown playing basketball, surfing, eating or driving.

Posted by Mr. Hilton at 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Context: America’s Most Smartest Model is an elimination show with male and female models competing for a V05 commercial spot, $100,000.00 and the ridiculous title of “America’s most smartest model.� This show is aired on Vh1 on Sunday nights at nine pm. Because the contestants are both very attractive male and female models it seems that the show is geared toward all genders and judging by the commercials, individuals ranging from teenagers to early middle age. Most of the commercials were either for the show’s sponsor: V05 styling products or for other Vh1 reality shows such as I Love New York 2. Interestingly the advertisements were either geared strongly toward the female consumer with moms in cleaning product ads and young female models displaying “V05 perfect hair� or strongly toward a male target audience with hypermasculinized commercials for Burger King and Guitar Hero.

Content: In the episode that I watched the contestants first competed in a “survival of the fittest� challenge in which they were divided into teams and the males ran on a treadmill while another contestant who was female answered trivia questions. The difficulty setting of the treadmills was set depending on how many answers the female contestants answered correctly and then the men had to compete by running with whoever ran the longest winning the challenge. Next in the episode the models are shown in their house forming alliances against each other, gossiping and calling one another names in video diaries. The “final challenge� of the episode was a runway challenge in which the losing term had to run an obstacle course in between costume changes. The two judges of the show are Ben Stein who is constructed as the “smart judge� because he uses big words and judges the trivia competition and Mary Alice Stephenson who is the “model� or beauty judge because she judges and comments on the runway competition. This was the first episode that I watched of the show, and was late in the season, I watched this episode with my friends who have been following the show and informed me that the reason why there are only 2 women to the 4 guys left on the show is because all the other female contestants were eliminated for not being “smart� enough.

Form: The opening credits of the show feature male and female stick figures dancing about the screen to music. Interspersed with these figures are images of equations and chemistry formulas which are also displayed in the background of every model’s video diary seeming to symbolize that the show is designed to test contestant’s intelligence although, beside from a series of 5 trivia questions the show has nothing to do with the model’s intellectual abilities. Throughout the episode the camera is constantly objectifying contestants by zooming in on specific body parts (i.e., the men’s muscles and women’s breasts and legs). This objectification is made even more blatant when the guest “fashion judge� is introduced and the camera shows a still frame of his face with his name and title underneath and framed pictures of female body parts behind his head such as, breasts with the head cropped out. The show employs sound effects to make spectacles out of the female models during the runway challenge by playing horse sound effects when one model fumbles with her shoes as she walks the runway.

Feminist Analysis: This competition is supposedly based on intelligence in “street� and “book� smarts as well as, of course how attractive the models are and how talented they are at modeling. However, although the premise of the show would have one believe that it is concerned with the models’ intelligence, like many reality television shows, after watching only one episode it becomes quite clear that the program is really about reinforcing stereotypical , heteronormative gender beaneries. Even the sequences that purport to be concerned with the models’ intelligence levels simply serve to humiliate them for the audiences’ viewing pleasure by making them into the unintelligent, public spectacles so typical of reality television.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this show and perhaps of the modeling world in general, is the different representations of the idealized male and female bodies. Specifically, male bodies (except for Ben Stein’s) are all excessively toned and muscular whereas in contrast the female models are emaciated and anything but physically strong. This stereotypical gender binary of strong male versus weak female is made abundantly clear in the “rapid fire� challenge, wherein the female models answer the trivia questions while the male models perform the only physical aspect of the challenge and their female “teammates� merely stand at their sides with water bottles. The message that this challenge sends to young women is clear and disturbingly reminiscent of the Victorian age: men do physical work while women are simply beautiful helpers and are too frail to engage in the rigorous physical activity that men can.

Although the show appears to be coed, it consistently privileges the male contestants over the female contestants in a manner that “replicates the familiar patriarchal society and presents the female body for voyeuristic gaze� (Moorti, & Ross, 2004), which is accomplished in several ways. Specifically, the dramatic underrepresentation of men to women on the show (5 men to 3 women including the judges) serves to maintain the representation perpetuated by larger patriarchal society of women as an inferior minority. Furthermore, according to my friends who have been following the show the women who were eliminated early on in the season were typecast as extremely ditzy and unintelligent and relentlessly made fun of by the judges. Such an elimination and casting strategy seems to echo the argument presented by Bertolini and Graham (2004) that Joe Millionaire “glamorizes traditional notions of appropriate demeanors for women and normalizes ideas about roles acceptable for women to assume and the goals that women should aspire to.� Such “heterogendered divisions� are also maintained by the seemingly deliberate choice of the female judge of beauty and the male judge of intelligence.

Perhaps an even clearer device employed by the show that demonstrates the strongly patriarchal, heteronormative and heterogendered message of the show is the dialogue used by both the models and the judges. Specifically, while the male models are competing they use extremely hypermasculinized terms to describe themselves, for example phrases such as “I am the God of this competition� and “This is war� are frequently employed by the male models but never by the two women on the show. In contrast, the female contestants talk far less than the males and when they do, one displays personal insecurities about her performance and the other gossips and forms alliances. Perhaps even more disturbing is the different dialogue used by the two judges. Specifically, the male judge is clearly the “intelligent one� as he is always using carefully constructed sentences with large words whereas the female judge has far fewer lines and uses grammatically incorrect language such as “I’m not sure if you have the smartness or the modelness enough to win this thing.� Yikes! The message this sends is awful: women are dumb but beautiful and men are strong and/or smart.

In conclusion, I feel deeply disturbed and saddened from watching only one hour of “America’s Most Smartest Model� because the message that it sends so blatantly reaffirms stereotyped gender beaneries in which women are skinny, ditzy, dumb and conniving and men are strong, powerful and smart.

Posted by Rose Coleman at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“Doesn’t pay to be in a stolen car, does it?�
“Nope.�
“Enjoy jail, man.�

For this assignment, I watched “COPS.� That’s right: “old-school� reality TV. And in case anyone cares, it was episode #2005.

CONTEXT
“COPS� is in its 19th broadcast season – which, eerily enough, puts it neck-and-neck with “The Simpsons.� The show broadcasts on FOX, and was created by John Langely of Langely Productions (and in 1995, Langely Films). Langely also acts as Executive Producer. If you cruise by the official “COPS� website (www.cops.com), you’ll find he’s REALLY proud to have “pioneered� the “video verite� feel of his cash baby.

CONTENT
“COPS� follows various officers of law enforcement as they do their various jobs. Often this means syncing a wireless mic on the cop as the poor cameraman doesn’t kill him/herself trying to keep up. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty INACOURTOFLAW.

FORM
Any given episode of “COPS� is filmed with one high-quality camera and an extremely small and agile crew. The result is the shaky “video verite� the series is known for. No matter where they go, footage is never shot from the suspect’s perspective. Shot duration is long, but always in movement. Any “story� is edited to run within nine minutes.

WHO CARES?
Even though “COPS� doesn’t have the glamour of modern reality television, I still found Mendible’s essay on Humiliation relevant. To echo Stanley’s 'New York Times' quote, the humiliation “COPS� employs is the show’s leading, most unifying principle. Why else do we tune in but to see society’s “rougher edges� get ironed out – live, in front of our eyes? And Schick’s “forced humiliation� can’t get more forced than from a cop sitting on your back and a camera crew inches away from your face. The object (perpetrator) knows s/he’s humiliated, and the subject (cop) is willfully exercising his/her power.

The fact that “all suspects are innocent until proven guilty� is stated only to cover the asses at Langely Productions; when black kid X is thrown against the police car after being written up for Possession with Intent, nothing about the show’s construction reinforces his innocence. And because this pervading sense of guilt is never questioned, viewers are able to slide into a world of self-satisfaction relative to the events on “COPS.� Thus Schick’s cycle of humiliation is complete.

“COPS� is like any other game show, only without the game. Or a winner.

Posted by Christopher Kehoe at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I chose to watch the show My Super Sweet Sixteen which is on MTV and produced by . This show focuses on rich girls turning sixteen who force their parents into giving them the birthday party of their dreams. The show is aimed at young girls within their teenage years. It is all about looking fabulous and having the biggest and the best of everything. The show creates this atmosphere by using quick shots and fast music to keep their viewers attention. Also I noticed anytime Kat was to beg for something the show would become more quite and slow down, as to keep the viewer in suspense, waiting for her Father’s answer. When her Father said “yes� as he always would, a shiny star would bling in Kat’s teeth showing everyone that she had won and who had the power.

Although Kat has power over her Father she does not have the power to control the Gaze in this show. The camera moves up and down her body freely and without her knowledge. This turns her audience into voyeres. She becomes nothing more than a shiny and enthusiastic thing to look at. She is only sixteen but with the help of MTV’s editing team she is looked at like she is twenty five. There are even certain parts where her body is fragmented and cut so that it almost dehumanizes her. Mulvey explains what this can do to a woman’s body, “One part of a fragmented body destroys the renaissance space, the illusion of depth demanded by the narrative; it gives flatness, the quality of a cut-out or iccon, rather than verisimilitude, to the screen� (Mulvey 40). This girl is only 16. Her body is being edited and taken apart without her permission or input. She is being looked at like she is nothing but entertainment. What gives MTV the right to objectify and take apart a minor.
In some of the articles about reality TV it talked about what a major role editing has in these shows. I couldn’t agree more. Kat is seen as a spoiled brat who can get anything she wants if she just whines to her Daddy. She is made out to be a seductive dresser, party girl, and a person who cares only about what her friends think and say. Every time we see Kat she is put into one of these categories. MTV could have chosen to display and show Kat while she is having a normal conversation with her father, hanging out with her friends instead of her dancing and saying, “let’s get crunk,� or even just a shot without her cleavage in it. Although Kat may be some of these things I am sure she does not act like this every moment of her life. MTV paints a picture of Kat that fits into the image they want to display. This is so sad, considering that this show is one of MTV’s most popular and thousands of young teenage girls watch this and think that this is what they are supposed to act and think like.

Posted by sketch at 8:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The reality show I watched was The Girls Next Door. I saw The Girls Next Door on E! at 7:00 PM on a Sunday night. The show was developed by Kevin Burns. The target audience is younger (teenage-college age) girls/women. The commercials tended to be for movies coming out on DVD, new movie trailers, fashion lines such as Dolce and Gabbana, and other shows that aired on E!
The overall topic of The Girls Next Door is to show the lives of Hugh Hefner’s three girlfriends, Holly, Bridget, and Kendra. One of the interesting aspects of the show is that though the three women have a very unique relationship status they and Hugh Hefner go about their lives like it is a completely normal situation. The episode I watched, My Bare Lady, focused on Holly, Bridget, and Kendra’s career aspirations. This episode had very little interaction between the three women as each was working on their individual goals— Holly to become a Playboy pictorial editor, Bridget to become a television host and anchor woman, and Kendra to invest in a condo that she will rent out.
For the most part the show has a very light feel to it. The music is generally upbeat “happy� music that does not allow viewers to take any of the women seriously. Occasionally there are moments with more dramatic music (like the dun dun dun… stuff). However, this over-the-top dramatic music is strategically placed during moments that are really not that dramatic—making it seem like the issues that Holly, Bridget, and Kendra care about are not really that important. An example of this is when Holly was concerned about the color of the paint being used in a photo shoot and they cut to a shot of the painted stairs with high pitched scream and scary music added to make it seem like the issue of the paint color was being over-stressed. Both the upbeat and the dramatic music are used for comic effect. One of the things I enjoy about the show is the clever editing. The editors often will use sound effects to make it seem like things are happening that are not. One instance of this is when Bridget leaves the room carrying a big tray of cupcakes. The editors added in the sound of a metal tray hitting the floor to make it sound like she dropped it even though she did not.
The article “The Normalization of Heterogendered Relations in The Bachelor� states that, “heterogender refers to the asymmetrical stratification of the sexes, privileging men and exploiting women.� This is also true in The Girls Next Door. Hugh Hefner is an eighty-one year-old man who is dating three attractive, and much younger, women—Holly (27), Bridget (34), Kendra (22). Hefner often refers to the trio as “the girls.� This might be somewhat demeaning to them, but they do often refer to themselves as girls as well, so I have to assume they don’t mind it. He has a lot of power in this relationship because, in my opinion, it seem like all three women feel like they are very privileged to be “Hef’s� girlfriend even if they have to share him. The same article quotes the producer of The Bachelor. When asked about the qualifications for the casting of the women on the show he states, “most importantly, they have to look good in the hot tub.� This is apparently one of Hugh Hefner’s major criteria as well. All three women have the stereotypical blonde "Barbie Doll" look. When Kendra is signing the paperwork for her condo she says in a personal interview, “this is my second major investment, my first being my boobs… my boobs bought my condo…thank you boobs!� She is totally aware that her physical image has gotten her where she is today.

Posted by Brigitte Bartholdi at 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The show I picked was My Super Sweet Sixteen regularly broadcast on MTV and produced by them as well. I do not have cable so I saw this via MTV.com. I was looking for a show to watch that I have never seen before, versus a reality show that I love, in order to be as objective as I could be. Before I watched the show, I knew the premise: young girls approaching their sixteenth birthday are planning a huge, lavish party thanks to their parents’ money to celebrate. This show is aimed at young girls from pre-teen years to teen years. The pace of the show is fast and flashy, with lots of quick shots as Alex and her posse of girlfriends goes from “fabulous� place to “fabulous� place. The episode is also accompanied by upbeat music, mostly hip-hop sounding. Even the intro to the show is flashy and displays wealthy lifestyle in a short period.

The particular episode features Alex, a young girl from Boston. As she is showing the viewer how “great� her life is she admits that she has done nothing to earn it, nor does she do anything on her own. She just loves her bed and thinks it is so wonderful, but then she stops to tell us that the cleaners make it. It is also important for us to know that all her friends are rich too, so that is why it is important for her to have a great party. During the episode, Alex also has her mom take her to the BMW dealership to pick out her birthday present. Alex felt it was important to “look good� in her car. She wanted the car to complement her. The car she wanted was $120,000. Alex did not think that was too expensive. Her mother asked her to look at something else.

A running theme though this show was “looking good� to her peers, and she wanted to be looked at. She had 100+ “friends� to her birthday party. Ultimately, Alex appeared to only wanted for these “friends� to judge her in a positive way. She also wanted to display her wealth, which really isn’t hers, but her parents. She comes off to be surrounded by people who value not who you are but what you have (or can get others to give you with nothing in return). I feel this can be related to the Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV essay. While Alex was not intentionally trying to humiliate herself, she did put herself on display and made a spectacle of herself. This left her wide open to humiliation. And while she does embarrass herself mildly I think (saying something dumb or her attempt at break dancing), she doesn’t seem fazed by the awkward glances strangers or friends give her. Schick argues, “that gloating involves
thinking oneself somehow superior to another; it is a judgment of "relative standing� (Mendible 337). Alex has what is important to her and her social circle (money and stuff) so to be embarrassed by those who she does not perceive to be her peers, their judgments do not matter. While I think most of us remember and understand being 15 or 16 years old and that need for acceptance, My Super Sweet Sixteen takes it to the next disturbing and annoying level.

Posted by Ashley Day at 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Charm School was a VH1 program featuring thirteen "Flavorettes" aka, thirteen women who were on season one or two of Flavor of Love. Charm School is one of the spin-off shows including both seasons of I Love New York. The producers for Charm School are Michelle Brando and Mark Cronin who are also the producers of the other shows. The target audience for these shows are young women between the ages of 18 to 35 because the advertisements were for hair care and birth control.

The premise for this show was to take thirteen unruly, not upper middle class acting women and teach them the "Ten Commandments of Charm School" which were:
1) Check Thyself Before Thou Wreck Thyself
2) Thou Shalt Goeth, Girl
3) Thou Shalt Show Some Class
4) Thou Shalt Work What Thou Art Working With
5) Thou Shalt Spit Mad Game With Style
6) Thou Shalt Mind Thy Money
7) Thou Shalt Payeth It Back
8) Thou Shalt Represent
9) Unless Thou Can Play, Thou Wilt Be Played
10) Thou Shalt Be Fully Fabulous

These commandments were posed by the 'expert' on etiquette Mo'Nique and she judged if the contestants were to stay or be kicked off. Also in the shows 'experts' were brought in to show the women how to act. These 'experts' were usually white and middle to upper class. The shots of the contestants often showed them in 'un-ladylike' circumstances, poses, and the dialog between them. They were constantly dropping swear words and talking down about the other women. The editing of the show does create more story lines and different reactions than what actually happened; however, this is commonplace in reality television shows.

The specific episode I watched was Episode Three "Dirty Drawers Done Dirt Cheap" and was aired on April 22, 2007. I viewed this episode on VH1's website "V Spot." The commandment in this episode was "Thou Shalt Show Some Class". In this episode the contestants went in front of an etiquette coach and was scolded and mocked by this coach because of the behavior shown. For example, one of the girls "showed her Britney" when she crossed her legs. The participants in this program played their stereotypical roles. The Flavorettes played the lower class and most of them were women of color except a couple of 'white trash' women. Mo'Nique, who presides over the girls, is shown to be higher class, always looked put together, and always acted above the Flavorettes because she was the 'expert'. The other people brought in for this particular episode were the etiquette coach, who was a blond haired white women (because they always know the best way to act) and a upper class man who owned a winery. The ranking of bodies in this is obvious.

In this representation of reality the ideal being communicated is that to be considered a woman you have to act like a lady. This is by imposing the commandments set by Mo'Nique and by humiliating the contestants to show this ideal. Humiliation is a key role in this television program and "is the unifying principle behind a successful reality show" (Mendrid 335). However, the contestants in Charm School subject themselves to this humiliation by succumbing to the rules of the game and acting out their stereotypical, overly dramatized roles. The Mendrid article explains this by, "This interdependence is central and unique to humiliation; the object of humiliation must know s/he is being humiliated and the perpetrator must be willfully exercising that power" (336). This is the case with Charm School: The Flavorettes know they are being humiliated through the challenges and the contrast with the 'experts' and the 'experts' are willfully exercising the power to humiliate them.

word count: 614

Posted by Ashley Abel at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was originally going to watch the bachelor when stumbled upon this solid gold reality television show. I watched Beauty and the Geek on cwtv.com. It is produced by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg, the producers of Punk'd.

As described by the CW Network, the show is about "gorgeous but academically challenged women pairing with brilliant but socially challenged men." Just as I was preparing my rant about the opening credits which include women in bikinis standing next to normally dressed men, I noticed that there was a half naked man standing next to a woman wearing a button down and glasses. That's right, they threw in a monkey wrench and added one "beautiful" man and "geeky" girl to the competition. Though at first glance the description of the show seems accurate, it isn't. The women are beautiful according to Hue Heffner, and the men aren't all intelligent. In fact the "geeks" are mostly comic book collecters and gamers, not brilliant scholars. The beauties are comprised of women with long straight (or straightened) hair and slim bodies, and one man with chiseled abs and a fake tan. The show suggests that beauty and character are one dimensional qualities, and that one can be either smart or pretty, so directly in fact that there is a survey at the bottom of the screen asking you whether you are a beauty or a geek. The show is a prime example of intersectional analysis of ones self, asking people "are you beautiful or smart, and which is more prevelant, which do you identify with?" The show is a competition where beauties are paired with geeks and forced to engage in ridiculous and pointless challenges. Allesandra Stanley says, as cited in Myra Mendible's Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV, "humiliation is the unifying principle behind a successful reality TV show," and knowing the producers' hunger for humiliation, exhibited in Punk'd, the challenges are no doubt a mechanism for embarrassing the contestants. The show also raises the issue of normalizing the view of women as objects and men as subjects. In general the geeks assume the position of leader and dictate a plan of action while the ditsy women do as they are told. Even the pretty man takes charge while his passive geeky woman follows suit. According to the advertisements for a pageant show, the target audience of this show is teenage girls and voyeuristic horny men.

Posted by Tara Weinberg at 7:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pageant Place, “After the Fall�—Episode 1:

I found this show on the homepage of mtv.com. I had never heard of this show so I thought I would check it out because it looked perfect for this assignment. I watched the first episode since I had no background of this show.

Context: Pageant Place is produced by Donald Trump and the Miss Universe Organization and is aired on MTV. The target audience is young women in their teens and twenties. The commercials are for cell phones, other MTV shows, make-up, etc.

Content: This show follows the lives of Miss Teen USA, Miss USA, and Miss Universe as they live together in a New York apartment and travel around working for the Miss Universe Organization. This particular episode introduces the audience to the title-holders, Katie, Rachel, and Riyo (who moves in at the beginning of the episode.) We learn about tension between Katie and the Former Miss USA, Tara. This drama becomes important when Donald Trump announces that Tara is coming back to live with the girls as a representative of the organization. There is also drama that surfaces between Katie and her boyfriend when he arrives at one of her photo shoots and sees her posing with a male-model.

Form: The main structure is built on quick “testimonial� interviews where the women can talk about each other and the situations privately, meetings with the organization, organization events such as traveling and photo shoots, and “private� moments such as dates. The music is very melodramatic, adding to the absurdity of the “serious� moments. There are a lot of fragmented shots of the women’s bodies, usually focusing on their waists and legs. There are multiple, flashy montage sequences, usually showing the glitz and glam of a certain class of New York City lifestyle. These are mostly used to indicate the passage of time.

Feminist Analysis: This show is overflowing with stereotypes about femininity, beauty, heterosexuality, and heteronormativity. The whole premise revolves around the glamorous lives of wealthy, beautiful, young women. The show relies on the assumption that these women will create drama and scandal by not being able to get along, thus creating interesting reality television. This drama is often created through the use of humiliation. In the first scene, Katie makes Rachel re-live her onstage fall over and over again, telling her it “looked like [she] had flubber on her ass.� In her article “Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV,� Myra Mendible brings up an interesting point about the role of the spectator in this humiliation, and possibly representation as a whole. “Are female viewers reassured in this way that they’re not alone in their personal flaws or failures? (…) And does registering judgment empower women by allowing them to participate in the process of validating or rejecting evaluative criteria, or does it further reinforce gender biases and unrealistic expectations?�

Continuing to examine the title and premise of this show, the word “pageant� indicates a very specific type of femininity and the show perpetuates those concepts without fail. The girls are thin, fashionable, have long, flowing hair, and all talk with sweet, southern accents (except for Riyo—she is from Japan and when compared to the other girls, creates the “other�.) They are often seen wearing short skirts and dresses and high heels and there are multiple shots of them applying make-up. No matter what time of day it is, they are showering, primping, etc. The women are constantly represented through their materialism. There are tons of shots of the girls cramming as much as they can into their suitcases. They give a quick tour of the bedrooms in the beginning, describing the hierarchy of the room assignments (i.e. Miss Universe has the largest room with the most stuff). This ideal femininity is further reinforced when the girls try to travel to Indiana for work and Riyo does not bring her passport or identification to the airport. This “reminds� us that the pretty girls are not intelligent enough to function in simple circumstances. Lucky for her, she brought her Miss Universe sash and used that to get through security!

This specific type of femininity is furthered through the use of a masculine gaze. Not only are the girls literally “owned� by Donald Trump, who is watching their every move, but the way in which the show is filmed/edited constructs their existence through a male gaze. We see shots from the waist down, accentuating their smooth, long legs, short dresses you can almost see up, and tall heels that are impossible to walk in. In the last part of this episode, the photo shoot is being run by men who are gazing at the women through their cameras, and then Josh adds another male gaze when he arrives on the shoot.

Heterosexuality/Heteronormativity is another important site of analysis. In the first meeting with the organization, a representative accuses Katie of kissing a Former Miss USA and Katie is left firmly denying such a thing. This accusation surfaces again in a meeting with Donald Trump and her relationship with Tara is called into question. Throughout the rest of the episode, Katie’s boyfriend is in most of the scenes, almost proving to the audience that she is the right kind of pageant girl by being in a heterosexual/heteronormative relationship.

Posted by R.S. at 5:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“The Real Housewives of Orange County� Season 3

Context: This show created by and aired on Bravo follows the lives of five actual “housewives� living in a privileged gated community in Orange County, California. In recent years, shows such as The O.C. have created buzz around places of extreme wealth and privilege, and Orange County in southern California is one such place. The episode I watched was a rerun from Season 3—which means that this show got high enough ratings and enough advertising dollars to produce three seasons of nonsense. The show was created and produced by Scott Dunlop, a native of Orange County.

Content: Most of the women on this show looked alike (large breasts, tanned skin, coifed blonde hair), so it was very difficult for me to tell them apart and keep their stories straight.

Their daughters tend to look alike as well, and there were few young men on the show. Colton, a 15 year old son of one of the clone housewives, appears to be constantly in trouble for having parties when his mother is out of town. Like any responsible parent, she expresses concern over her son’s behavior, but he repeatedly demonstrates to the audience that she has absolutely no control over him—she takes away his golf cart, and he finds a way to break the lock; she asks him what happened to all of their beach towels and he makes a scene in front of his friends, yelling that he “doesn’t give a damn about her goddamn stupid towels.�

The housewives are introduced in the credits, bragging about how much money they have, how much they love money and partying, and how important it is for them to “look hot.� One woman tells us that she thinks there is nothing better than tanning, having golden skin and blonde hair. She says that she knows it’s probably not a good idea to tan so much at her age, but she is driven to look good. She tells us that “one of [her] biggest goals right now is to be as hot as [she] can� as she is turning 40 in a month.

Form: The opening credits of the show are quite telling. Script appears across the screen, telling us that 7 million families live in gated communities. Gated communities are highly exclusive, and residents must usually sign restrictive covenants promising to adhere to a certain set of aesthetics and behavior. Considering that one of the women tells us that she wishes to be a unique individual (manifested through the construction of an underwater volcano in her prospective backyard pool) to whom it is “important to me to be the best, to have the newest and greatest� clothes, jewelry, etc, it is highly ironic that she strives for this individualism in a setting in which individualism is signed away when one moves in.

This show is all about products. The three daughters of one housewife drive a Hummer customized to market some energy beverage their father created. None of them can even drive or park it safely, and one girl even mentions that “you always have to crash a brand new car once to break it in.� Crass materialism seems to make up much of their existence. One woman goes on a Harley ride with her husband(?) and some of his friends, and she confesses that be best part of the biking experience is the unique Harley shopping. These women live out the American cultural fantasy of bourgeois consumerism—they appear to be able to spend money however they wish. However, they also spend ‘rashly,’ allowing the audience to participate in a certain degree of disdain for their irresponsibility. The paradox of the audiences’ position: aspiring and fantasizing their lifestyle while simultaneously viewing their inability for thrift is echoed in the type of commercials aired.

Commercials ranged from Sandals resorts for upper-middle class couples (luxuries and gourmet restaurants, etc) to LA Weight Loss ControlTrim (so women viewing have hope of easily looking as ‘hot’ as the housewives), to other shows on the same channel to (my favorite) Glad bags. The Glad storage bag commercial best exemplified the paradoxical position of the viewer: Glad bags are the thrifty alternative to those ‘expensive Ziploc’ brand storage bags. A smart housewife (because it sure wasn’t a man demonstrating the quality of the plastic bags) knows that she shouldn’t spend too much money on a throw-a-way item. The commercial went so far as to imply that thriftiness is moral, and one way a smart woman can show this is by purchasing one bag rather than the other. Talk about a mixed message.

*As a side note of interest, my boyfriend’s (not as wealthy, but solidly upper-middle class) parents live in OC, and he went to high school with one of the sons who didn’t appear to be present much in Season 3 but whose family participated in the show. The kid was a spoiled jerk—clear evidence that while some of these families’ petty concerns over tanning and matching Playboy track suits is constructed, it has quite a bit of basis in reality.

Posted by Maren Mattson at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I chose to do my reality tv report post on the episode called "Zach's Emergency" in "Little People Big World." I was at my house on Thanksgiving watching the "Little People Big World" marathon all day and this episode aired in mid afternoon.

The show is produced by the discovery channel (they did not give an exact name) but is aired on TLC. The show lasts about thiry minutes long and each episode is a mini-documentary of a family of two dwarf parents with one dwarf child and three regular sized children. The target audience is clearly family based and aimed at a female dominated audience with Dawn ads running inbetween each segment, along with the new Chevy minivan, and Viva papertowels. By looking at the commericals alone, you can tell they are aiming at a more domesticated person. Since this episode was more serious than others, the our gaze seemed more focused on Zach, more than ever. In the episode, he has a mysterious illness related to his dwarfism and is potentially deadly if not fixed right away. Therefore, our gaze is set upon Zach lying in his hospital bed and the camera is higher than usual, but aiming downward to present an omniscent feeling and to be able to capture the people surrounding his hospital bed at all times. The camera also dramatically switches from slow paced, focused on the face shots (when the family is praying for Zach) to operating room shots that are dramatic, and short. You can also tell that they changed the lens to make the image look more sharp and detail oriented in the dramatic scenes in the operating room. Also, when the father was being interviewed, the audience experienced flashbacks, showing pictures of him when he was in the exact same situation as Zach. The music came in and slowed down to a slower pace to make the audience focus intently on the pictures presented in front of the camera, depicting a dramatic scene once again. Myra Mendible puts it best by saying that, "The "reality" in these shows stems not from their lack of a script or
professional actors . . .but from the ways it reflects the underlying logic of our social order." The show is able to depict such raw emotion of a family that is not in the majority and able to challenge the stereotypes that people have with dwarfism, therefore challenging the logic we absorb from society.

Posted by Meredith Martyr at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I analyzed an episode of So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD). Since I am a fan of this show, it was easy to pick an episode, and I was able to access it since I recorded it when it was originally aired on August 15th, 2007. I chose this episode because it was the final competition show of the season, and all of the dancers had to dance with each other; which meant that for the first time, it wouldn’t just be a guy/girl dance or a solo, there would be a guy/guy dance and a girl/girl dance. I was very interested to analyze how the same sex partnering would be framed, and I decided to focus my analysis on those two dances and not discuss much else since this was a 2 hour-long episode.

SYTYCD is a summer reality competition show. It is produced by Nigel Lithgoe, Simon Fuller, and Barry Adelman and aired on FOX. The aim of the competition is to find “America’s Favorite Dancer,� and the dancer who wins gets $250,000. The show has the same generic construction as every other reality competition show. There are three judges: a British man, a loud and crazy woman, and another man. The host of the show is a tall, skinny, white woman who has blond hair. The show uses clips of auditions and past shows, interviews with contestants, and shots from rehearsals before the contestants dance live. The rehearsal shots are always the same: the contestants are shown being silly and goofing around much to the choreographers disappointment, then they are worried that the dance is too hard and they can’t do it which builds drama, and then they perform the dance well. The target audience is teenage girls.

There are many ideas and ideals presented by SYTYCD. First of all, the women who made it to the final show were small, they always showed a lot of skin when the danced, and they were sexy. The men who made it to the final show were strong, tough, and were able to pick up their female partners. The dances throughout the season and this episode often involved simulated sex acts with one major exception: when the boys danced with boys and when the girls danced with girls.

When a male and female dance, there is no story required, they just act like they want to have sex with each other. However, when a male and a male or a female and a female dance together, the choreographers needed to invent a story in order to explain why they were dancing together. When the two females, Sabra and Lacy, danced together, the choreographer decided that the story of the dance was that they were mother and daughter foxes. When the females danced together, they weren’t even humans, they were animals. And Sabra said that it reminded her of being a child, so they weren’t just dehumanized they were infantilized. However, they were still sexy because the choreographer still called them “foxy foxes.�

When the two males, Neil and Danny, danced together, the story was that they were two princes battling for a throne. During rehearsal the choreographer stated that when two guys dance together it is different than when a girl and a guy dance together because they aren’t worried about being careful or safe. The dancers themselves, the choreographer and the judges described the dance as being aggressive, dangerous, raw and strong. This is very different than the mother/daughter dance, which was childlike, soft, careful, and loving.

In The Normalization of Heterogendered Relations in The Bachelor, Yep and Ochoa Camacho said: “The heterosexual imaginary constitutes an ideology that conceals the relationship between heterosexuality and gender, foreclosing any critical analysis of heterosexuality as an organizing institution… One powerful strategy for this closure is normalization. Normalization refers to the process of constructing, establishing, and (re)producing a taken-for-granted, unquestionable, and all-encompassing standard used to measure goodness, desirability, morality, rationality, and superiority� (339). In this episode, the link between gender and heterosexuality is clear: when men and women dance they should act like they want to have sex, when men dance with each other they should act like they are fighting, and when women dance with each other they should reproduce an acceptable female relationship such as that of mother and daughter.

Posted by crowjane at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I watched the episode “Carrie� from “What Not to Wear�, produced by Abigail Harvey and directed by Kasheed Daniel. “What Not to Wear� is a reality show airing on The Learning Channel, TLC, which airs on Friday nights at 9/8c. The show is based off of the British version of the show. Hosted by fashion gurus, Clinton Kelly and Stacy London, “What Not to Wear� has the main premise of restyling a person’s fashion over two days.
Normally the show has participants nominated by their family and friends as well as self-nominations for a special occasion such as class reunions. The nominated participants will have two weeks of “secret footage� shown to them when they are surprised by the “What Not to Wear� crew. After viewing the footage, the nominee is offered to travel to New York City and shop in the city using a Visa card with $5000. The catch is that the person’s wardrobe is sent as well to New York City, and will be critiqued and most articles of clothing thrown away. If the nominee agrees to the terms, which everyone does, they spend time in New York City shopping, and getting a new hair style and makeup tips.
The shots of the show range from establishing to close ups. Establishing shots are mainly used to show the audience the show the participant enters, along with shots show the city of New York. Another shot normally used in “What Not to Wear� is the wide shot that shows the entire body of someone. This shot allows the view to see the person’s clothing. After hair and makeup are completed, a close up shot is used.
The show is appeals mainly to women from teenagers to the elderly. The commercials during the show are for other retail stores such as Macy’s, H&M, and Bloomingdales. The commercials also are for the other reality shows on TLC. “ London Ink,� “Meerkat Manor,� and “Little People Big World� are the shows publicized in the commercials.
Mulvey’s theory of the gaze is most prevalent in “What Not to Wear.� The show is empowering the norm of having to look beautiful for others. Participants are critiqued over and over on how they look, and are told how to look better. Even the 360 degree mirror participants must enter reinforces the scopophilic ideals of “taking other people as objects.�
Although “What Not to Wear" does enforce the heteronormativity in society, the show also helps women improve confidence and self-esteem.

Posted by Ashley Pritchard at 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I viewed the America’s Next Top Model episode: The Girl Who Starts to Loose Her Cool, the episode after The Girl Who Crawls
I watched the show during its original broadcast on The CW, November 14th. As is previously stated, the show is produced by Tyra Banks, Ken Mok, and Anthony Dominucci. Banks is an accomplished runway star, talk show host, and creator of Top Model. Mok has been a part of several reality television programs that failed to garner the same success as Top Model, he also produced the hollywood film Invincible (2006). Dominucci has a long history with MTV’s The Real World, he has been a producer, a director, and casting director for the program.

The whole Top Model hour is devoted to selling. The program sells products featured in specific episodes (magazines, clothes), as well as an ideal femininity– which can be attained through buying featured products in the show and those in the advertisements surrounding the program. Commercials for a variety of feminine things surround the show: cosmetics, clothes, celebrity gossip, shampoo and body washes. There are also ads that are less explicitly aimed at women, adds for Walmart, K-mart, and cars all say “these are sensible ways for you to make your family happy during the holidays.� Not too extravagant. These adds are aimed at care givers, mothers. Ads for mops and appliances are not targeting students– high school or college. The inference can be made that kids are watching this show with their parents, girls with their mothers. This means whatever ideals are being sold by the show are trans-generational.
What ideals is Top Model selling? A hyper-femininity, both thin and young, not necessarily college (or high school) educated. In this particular episode a white executive, giving feedback to one of the contestants, said “when you spoke it was a weak moment.� To him these women are just to be looked at and objectified. There is an analogy to “hoes and sisters� in Beyond Beats and Rhymes and the difficulty the women of the Lusty Lady faced organizing, somehow women who work with their do embody an impossible feminine ideal of thin are denied things like intelligence or rights to choose how people see and interpret their bodies. Deborah Sarbin sees these ideals as “infantilizng women by freezing their appearance in their 20s,� because of the realities of aging the mothers who might watch this show with their children are denied real access to the feminine ideal the show is selling– Top Model says that some how these “normal� women are not enough woman (241). Along with making models only pretty faces, there is an incredible fat prejudice in the United States. Fashion magazines will not take a fat, or even average sized woman seriously, but model-type women are essentialized in our culture as vapid– you can’t be smart an pretty. How can any woman beat the system?

Top Model does some good too though, it rejects heteronormativiy to an extent. Featuring different gender identities without making them token. Gay and straight men are both part of the fashion industry, as are gay and straight women. On of the judges, Miss Jay, is ambiguously gendered. These different identities are embraced, which is a positive feminist ideal.

Posted by Eben Kowler at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just finished watching the latest episode of I Love New York 2; its episode 7. In this episode the x-girlfriends of the male contestants come onto the show to talk about their ex-boyfriend/contestant. It airs at 8pm on Mondays on VH1. In this show, Tiffany Patterson, known as New York on the show, is looking for a man to love and who loves her back. This is the second season of the show because in the end, the first man she chose, “Tango,� did not have love for New York.

The producers of the show are Chris Abrego and Mark Cronin. Together their company has produced “The Surreal Life,� “Flavor of Love,� “Rock of Love,� and “Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School.� These shows are directed at a younger audience: teenagers and young adults. The commercials during the show include other VH1 shows, Xbox 360, Ipod touch, teen movies, and Rap/R&B CDs.

New York is portrayed as sex symbol on the show. She is always wearing tight clothes, high heals, belly shirts, or a bikini. She loves to hear the men on the show tell her how sexy they think she is. Even though this show is about her finding “love,� it furthers objectification of women and the idea that women are simply sexual objects to men. Similarly, New York mainly judges the men based upon their looks. She continually suggests that her “love� for one contestant, Buddah, is based mostly on her sexual attraction to him. The article Gender Trouble in Paradise (Hotel), or a Good Women is Hard to Find, Marla Harris says, “Programs like The Bachelorette claim to be feminist, but, in turn, only risk revealing the women to be as superficial as the bachelors who spurred them.�
A definite “scaling of bodies� occurs during this episode, for New York analyzes each ex-girlfriend based upon her looks. She doesn’t say anything negative about the beautiful thin girls that walked in the door, but the minute that a “thicker� girl walks in she makes negative comments. She says that the Entertainer’s girlfriend looks “big� and “she looks like she likes to eat in her spare time.� Furthermore, she was “shocked� to see that Tailor Made’s wife was a “big woman� and commented that she was also ugly, nothing like the “Beyonce or Ciara� she “expected to see.� Her comments are obviously derogatory to all women because they further the notion that to be beautiful and accepted, a woman needs to be thin and physically attractive. It also proves that she is shocked that these men would date anyone outside society’s image of “beautiful.� Her mother, Sister Patterson, even comments on whomever ends up with New York will surely get an “upgrade.� This issue is addressed in the essay Woman is Not Born But Becomes Woman, which says, “culture is so saturated with male bias that women almost never get to see themselves culturally through their own eyes.�

Firstly, most of the focus/gaze is upon New York. We see her, along with her commentary the most while watching the show. The lighting on New York usually comes from above and the shots are either of her whole body, just cut off right under her breasts, or of her backside as she is walking. The music during elimination is dramatic and the lighting is darker than it is during the rest of the show. Also, there is are direct face shots of each contestant commenting on what is going on during the show, so the audience can feel like they know what exactly each person is thinking at that moment.

Word count: 601

Posted by Magda Bilska at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I watched A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila on MTV. Talk about some quality television. This show has a classic premise: Girl wants to find true love, makes other singles compete ridiculously for her affection. What makes this show different?? One, Tila is famous for having millions of friends on myspace, which makes her what, a d list celebrity? Also, the big twist of the show is that Tila comes out as bisexual, and both men and women are competing for her affection.
The episode I watched focused, as many reality shows do, on humiliation. First, the contestants had to race to see who could eat their plate of cow testicles the fastest, the winner getting one on one time with Tila. Then Tila decides to have everyone help her with the eliminations by explaining to the group who they think is the least compatible for her and why. It was heart warming.
The show used similar filmic forms as many others. There is of course, the interview with the camera shots, where we get to see the inner thoughts of the contestants, and why they hate that other girl or why they arent getting a fair chance, making the viewers feel as if they really know these people. Then there is the wonderfully dramatic music whenever someone hurts Tila's feelings. Always a nice touch. The episode I watched also contained several flashbacks to earlier episodes. There would be a flash of white light, and magically we are transported to the past, which is black and white, just to make it perfectly clear that we are no longer mid-elimination in Tila's living room.
I watched an afternoon rerun on MTV, which was filled with commercials for acne cream, axe body spray, target, cell phones, and occasionally music. I picture the target audience for this show to be exactly my wonderful gentlemen neighbors: college students who have nothing better to do all day but lounge around and watch whatever is on MTV. MTV advertised during the program as well, scrolling words across the top of the screen, often over contestant's faces, announcing the start time of some other quality MTV production. It was distracting.
The show does view its characters through a male gaze. Every single girl is thin with big boobs, wearing plenty of makeup, and usually wearing minimal clothing. Even in the interviews, the ladies where revealing shirts, and the camera is sure to capture her cleavage, while the male interviews are often from the shoulders up.
One thing I always think of when watching reality tv is I wonder how much film is edited, or how boring their days are between cat fights and humiliating competitions. I would love to see how reality tv is edited together to form the wonderful storylines we love to hate.

Posted by Katherine Schmieg at 9:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Bachelor is a popular reality television show on ABC. The show is produced by Next Entertainment in association with Telepictures, and the producer is Mike Fleiss with co-executive producers Lisa Levenson, Scott Jeffress and Jason Carbon. The topic of the show consists of a single man who is looking to find true love from a group of 25 women. Every week the bachelor eliminates at least one woman from the group until the final rose ceremony where one woman is left who has won over his heart.

This season the bachelor is Brad Womack who is 34 and is a successful bar owner. This episode was the final rose ceremony where Brad has to pick between two women for the one he could potentially marry. Brad is portrayed as the ultimate male with the whole package whom all of the women are competing for. He is ripped, hot, nice and has plenty of money to spare. Brad and his family are very wealthy and are of the white, upper middle class.

Dubrofsky explains in her article that The Bachelor is a show that is ‘raced,’ and that the only reason women of color are put on the show is to facilitate the coupling of white people (Dubrofsky 39). It is true that the majority of the women that are on the show are white, and there are usually only a small handful of women of color on the show. There has only been one bachelorette, Mary, who has been of color, and she was Latino. According to Dubrofsky she was portrayed how a stereotypical Latino is thought of – one who dances quite sexually and has a large booty, etc (Dubrofsky 50). However, even if this image was portrayed on Mary she was one of my favorite women on the show who showed a lot of class and was much more mature then all of the other women. She was a crowd favorite, and I don’t think her race negatively affected her in any way.

The majority of women on the show are white, beautiful women. They have “Barbie�-like bodies with long blonde or brown hair. On this episode one of the last women standing is a Phoenix Suns cheerleader, and she has the stereotypical cheerleader personality and figure – very ditzy, a cheesy laugh, skinny, etc. As Yep and Camacho reveal in their article the producer of the show, Mike Fleiss, explains the type of role the women need to fill, “Most importantly, they have to look good in the hot tub (Camacho 339).� This just goes to show that women are the object of desire to be filmed upon as sex objects and that aren’t there for their intelligence and personality.

The opening scene shows Brad on a balcony where he is surrounded in a beautiful landscape with luscious flowers and vegetation, which gives the viewer a sense that he is in somewhat of a fairytale. The camera is on the ground looking up at him to make him seem like he’s this superior, god-like figure. When the camera is on Brad and either of the women, rather then when its Brad with his family, it is much more zoomed in. This gives the viewer the feeling of closeness and really emphasizes the intimacy and emotions between Brad and the women.

Brad is the man the two women are competing for, thus making him the object of desire. He has had all these women throwing themselves at him, which in a sense sort of classifies him a classy pimp. He is the one who has all the power and controls what women can stay or must leave. The Bachelor is supposed to be about a show where one can find true love, but in this season he rejects both of the women. This just reinforces that Brad, the male protagonist is the one with the power who is able to control the women as however he feels so.

After he rejects both of the women he leads them to the limo to be driven off. The setting completely changes form a beautiful scenery with bright flowers and the ocean in the background to this much darker, smaller, cramped back seat within the limo. There are no more lights that are hitting the women’s hair at the right angle to emphasize their beauty, but the setting is depressing with sad, slow music playing the background.

This show really caters to females ranging from young teens to older women. Women usually are more into romance and finding true love compared to men, while men often tend to watch shows that deal with sports, comedy or violence.

There weren’t as many commercials as I remember compared to previous seasons, which may be a result of previously getting a longer air time. The commercials that frequently appeared dealt with the show October Sky and the news. I have never seen October Sky before, but the story seems to be about a love triangle existing between a young woman and two different men. It sounded like the relationships between them are very complicated, and that the woman is just trying to figure out who her true love is. This commercial seemed to really fit with the theme of The Bachelor and the type of audience who would be watching. The news previews also frequently played, and they weren’t optimistic stories that fit with the romance theme of The Bachelor. One preview dealt with a pilot who got caught drunk before trying to fly to Milwaukee, and the other story dealt with a college student’s death in Mankato.

Works Cited

Yup, Gust, and Ariana O. Camacho. "The Normalization of Heterogendered Relations in The
Bachelor." Feminist Media Studes 4 (2004): 338-341.

Dubrofsky, Rachel. "The Bachelor : Whiteness in the Harem." Critical Studies in Media
Communication 23 (2006): 39-56. 19. Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. U of M
Lib., MN. 19 Nov. 2007 .

Posted by Cassie Setter at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Produced by Ashton Kutcher the reality TV show “Beauty and the Geek� first aired in 2005 and is now in the middle of its fourth season. This show consists of a group of 10 “beauties� who rely heavily on their looks in life, and a group of 10 geeks who rely on their smarts and are socially awkward. Ashton Kutcher who created and produces this show describes it as a comedy reality show. Each beauty is paired with a geek and they are supposed to teach each other and they compete for the grand prize of $250,000. The episode that I analyzed was the fifth episode of the fourth season called “Viva La Mexico�. I watched this on the CW website on Sunday night because I had missed it when it aired on Tuesday. The five couples left in the competition traveled to Mexico and the beauties had to learn about Mayan culture while the geeks had to learn how to salsa dance.
The CW, which is the merge of the WB and UPN, airs this show. According to the CW’s president “the networks shows are going to appeal to 18-34 year olds�, but this show leans more toward the lower end of the spectrum. Many of the viewers are young men and women who admire and look up to the contestants. The commercials vary from Pledge Cleaner to other products for adults, but mostly they are for other TV shows that young adults watch like Smallville. The shots of this show are usually not long. They alternate between shots of the competition and personal interviews with the contestants. These interviews shots are also strategically placed, so that only the women’s head and breasts fit in the frame.
Most girls watch this show because they want to look like the girl contestants, because they are portrayed as the girls all the guys want. While boys watch to look at the girls because they are hot and usually only half dressed, which shows the voyeuristic gaze of the audience. There is also a male gaze within the contestants as well. All the male contestants look at the women only for their looks. From our reading of Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema we learned that pleasure doesn’t just come from looking at others it also comes from being looked at. Men enjoy looking at the women on this show, but part of the reason these women agree to do this is because they get pleasure and enjoy being looked at. As Fredric Schick states the object of humiliation must know s/he is being humiliated and the perpetrator must be willfully exercising that power. Obviously Ashton Kutcher knew that humiliation would be part of his show and the women he chooses know that they are going to be humiliated, but I don’t think either party thinks about the impact that this humiliation will have on their audience. Young boys and girls shouldn’t be watching their role models be humiliated.
This show reinforces the many stereotypes of women by portraying them as beautiful, dumb, and dependent on men. All the women contestants have long, flowing hair, lots of makeup, skinny, and of course big breasts. The only woman who actually represents the average female is a “geek�. This constructs an image that to be smart you have to be fat or to be pretty you have to be stupid. Never are any of the women contestants shown eating, but ironically they are often drinking. From champagne to tequila shots alcohol plays a large role in this show as if these women aren’t acting stupid enough they always have alcohol to help. I guess it doesn’t really matter that women are being portrayed poorly, because for some reason I can’t put down the remote!

Posted by Marial Weidner at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The other night I watched I Love New York episode 6: Nip/Suck on VH1 around nine pm on Thursday night. The
creators of the show, Michelle Brando and Mark Cronin, do an unbelievable job of making this absolutely ridiculous show simply irresistible. The film that airs on VH1, draws in an audience from upper teens to people in their young thirties. This station, that used to be primarily music driven, has now dipped into the reality world. In this specific episode, they went to the set of Nip/Tuck, giving the FX network some publicity; as if to tell their viewers that Nip/Tuck will be just as enjoyable. They plug other VH1 shows during commercials, and focus on a life style that they're trying to project. Being well know for their "Fabulous Life of: ___" they are trying to sell a life style that is rich and glamorous. One of the "contestants," ‘Tailor Made’, gave New York a eight hundred dollar dress, which she in turn, picks him first (to not be eliminated) because he "was trying the hardest for her love." She openly admits that she will take the material things over actual love.

New York also spends more time talking about the sexual appeal of the men, then their actual personality. A contestant, ‘Punk,’ in a previous episode talked about how he went to Harvard Law; New York found that dull conversation. When she had a date with ‘Budda’ she was so into their date and could not stop talking about how physically attracted she was to him. He is the perfect man in her eyes: tall, muscular, powerful and black. New York sets up this biased of what a man should be. She even mentions that ‘Budda’ is the only person she feels so physically attracted to. Amidst her sexual needs and interest, she herself is tempting the men.

I don’t think I’ve seen one episode where her breasts were not half way out of her shirt/dress. Neither, has she kept her bra un-visible for most of her dates. New York is gladly wishing the men to lust for her, as is the purpose of the show. Between the men on the show, and the viewers, she invites us to gaze upon her best assets, by showing them though skimpy clothing. Although she is sometimes withheld by the producers, New York acts upon her own agency. She is in control of the men, what they do, how they act, how they feel about her etc.

The “traditional� role of the man choosing the woman is reversed. Explosions of pink decoration in every room in the house are to remind you this is a show about love (supposedly). They are all playing the role of what society calls what a relationship should be, and what a man should be. The muscleier the men are, the more she likes them, and the thought of anything but a male female relationship is unheard of on reality TV shows. Heteronormativity is largely at play; the men follow their gender performances as they know them. The MTV show, Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, dabbles in the idea of bisexuality, but to my knowledge, there has been few to no shows that go beyond that socially acceptable way we think of relationships.

I Love New York is not the first to be the focus of a reality TV dating show, she is a good representation. Although very characterized, she represents “a social ambiance that reverses celebrities not for their accomplishments but simply because they appear on television, the ‘ideal standard’ is based on the extent to which her behavior is legitimated,� (Mendible 336) as she has no other talents then being wild and crazy. I Love New York attempts to sell the idea of love, but we all know that isn’t anyone’s reason for watching the show. New York appeals to young men to look at her, and young women who want to be her. She sells sex, and the character that she plays to bring in viewers. It falls into the stereotype of all reality TV shows, and is a good definition of what one is. But for some reason, although it’s the most mind numbing thing you can watch, you just can’t turn it off!

Word Count:
712

Posted by RowGophers at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My analysis will focus on an episode of America’s Next Top Model titled “The Girls Who Crawl,� which I watched during its original broadcast on CWTV this month. I also went back to re-view the episode online at cwtv.com.

Executive producers of the show include Ken Mok ("Making the Band"), supermodel Tyra Banks and Daniel Soiseth ("Hell's Kitchen"). The series was created by Tyra Banks and developed by Mok and Kenya Barris. "America's Next Top Model" is produced by 10 by 10 Entertainment in association with Bankable Productions.� (From cwtv.com)

The target audience includes teenage girls up through young-to-middle-aged women. The commercials featured are for the promotion of Cover Girl cosmetics, the teen soap opera Gossip Girls, or women’s apparel.

Thousands of girls apply each year to become America’s Next Top Model. The judges narrow it down to select finalists who get to spend the rest of the season competing in various modeling challenges until finally a winner is chosen and given a modeling contract. One girl is eliminated each week and forced to leave the show.

The episodes go back and forth between shots of the girls competing and shots of the girls being interviewed separately about their reactions. Scenes are edited for the optimal amusing and entertaining effect on the audience. The music is relatively upbeat and modern – flowing well with the ambiance of the program.

ANTM “gives real people an opportunity to prove that they can make it in the high-stress, high-stakes world of supermodeling,� the website declares. Perhaps “real people� is not the best choice of words due to the fact that the average U.S. woman is 5'4 and weighs 152 pounds – measurements which are never that of the ANTM winner.

Tyra tries to communicate that skinny girls are not the only beautiful girls, but her claim loses strength each time a plus-size model is voted off the show. Instead, the ideal of being stick-thin is communicated much more intensely to the viewers. The fashion industry itself is being sold through ANTM by constantly emphasizing that “There are different sorts of sexy, but model-sexy is the sexiest.�

One article states that “any attempt to be like the models in advertisements results in eating disorders. Although advertisements do not depict models vomiting or downing a massive amount of some laxative preparation after they eat, viewers learn that to look like models and to eat like models appear to eat means that some purging activity must take place off camera (Hood 239). This claim is clearly evident during a scene where a contestant named Heather passes out during the shooting of a music video in which she models. She tells the camera, “I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it was 8 o’clock at night.� This is clearly not helping smash the stereotype of the starving model. Women viewers see Heather getting rave reviews from the judges despite (or maybe because of) the fact that she “forgets� to eat, hence supporting Orbach’s aforementioned analysis.

Another article on the issue of body image mentions a study in which “the subjects took a self-esteem inventory, then browsed through popular fashion magazines for thirty minutes. At the end of the half-hour, the subjects took the inventory again, with a majority reporting lower scores of self-esteem in the wake of their fashion mag perusal (Sarbin 241).

An incessant display of low self-esteem is portrayed throughout the episodes of America’s Next Top Model. A shot zooms in on a model named Lisa standing on a scale: “I gained a whole pound,� she proclaims. Another model asks what size she is. “These are a zero....but I can wear up to a size three.� Three of them then stand side by side in front of a full-length mirror and stare at each other’s bodies. The plus-size model Sarah comments on her reactions to being around “all these skinny girls� throughout the day: “So maybe I go to bed not feeling as good as when I woke up…� she laments.

Despite being these beautiful women who were hand selected by the supermodel Tyra Banks, they still find endless things wrong with their bodies – implying to viewers at home that if these models have a few imperfections, then I have a million imperfections. Well, except for Chantal: “I get in front of the camera and I have this natural talent for modeling…I’m not nervous at all because I know this is what I was born to do. God gave me this body and face.�

At the end of the episode, Sarah the ‘plus-size girl’ is kicked off the show. The judges say that she has lost weight and that “you have to be the size to be a plus size model.� So now, Sarah is too skinny to be plus-size, but too fat to be a model-model. So, bye-bye to Sarah, and as Miss Jay comments: “Do we ever have a plus size model in this competition?� Sarah later tells the camera, “I’m glad they chose me, I think it’s a step, next time, maybe someone that looks like me will win.� Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

And finally, “Remember, just be beautiful and use your loveliness.� Love, Tyra.

Posted by Luna Lovegood at 6:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today we watched the film Hip Hop: More then Beats and Rhymes, what I really noticed about our discussion as well as what we watched, was the fact that everyone involved wanted to point blame one someone else. Even in class, as, generally, white middle class college students, even we were pointing to who was thinking the wrong thing, when we have no idea. It's difficult for us to analyze Hip Hop and what was covered in this film, when we've never experienced that culture, or life style. While I do agree that the media has almost encouraged these behaviors, it seems that it's mostly the white men and women who help keep the stereotype alive; as well as the those who live those lives that choose not to address the deeper issues. When addressed, those living on both sides of the spectrum seem to always divert the issue to another issue. It's easy. This is the simplest way to avoid a problem...just hope it goes away. As I said, I've never lived a life like this, and maybe to some it's not worth the time or trouble to deal with the bad messages sent in mainstream media (because there is true hip hop out there...just not as visible). However, I think the finger pointing and blame game is what got us to the mainstream media that is today, and the reason we can't get out of it. What's hard is knowing that change won't happen in a day, it's paitience and taking responsibility that will create positive change. Even as I write this, I'm not different then anyone else in the film because all I'm doing is blaming things on those in the video. I recognize that I'm blaming, but I just hope that someone, not even necessarily in this class, will take the blame on themselves and change the mainstream.

Posted by RowGophers at 8:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The day we watched this movie about strippers was the day I came to class in my stripper costume. I wasn't dressed as the stereotipical stripper with the long legs, big boobs and a nice body, but I was a much larger, unattractive woman. I admit that my costume was somewhat mocking strippers, but I just had to wear it because I got a kick out of it. I also have never been to a strip club, but the way I portrayed them didn't exactly fit the way the women were on screen. A big thing that stuck out was that some were educated, which I did not expect. However, what I 've seen in other movies or tv shows often portrays a sterotypical stripper to be a single mom trying to raise a child. To me this movie showed both ends of fence from having educated women to the typical image of a stripper that gets protrayed in the media.

Posted by Cassie Setter at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

1 - Watch (at least) one 30 minute episode of "Reality" TV

Focus on one particular episode from a "reality" TV show. It's often fruitful to examine a show focused on or targeting women, young girls, or queer audiences. Makeover, weight loss, plastic surgery, model competition, home makeover, family stories, dating competitions, sweet 16s and others would be great choices. You can choose to watch something you watch often (but watch critically or you can choose something you would absolutely not watch unless you were forced to).

If you do not have a television or access to TV or cable, you can visit the FMC lab or other lab on campus, and you can purchase a show off of itunes Store for $1.99 (with a credit card or debit/credit card). To do this, launch itunes, click on "itunes Store", go to "TV shows". They have a "reality TV" category, or choose by Network like "MTV" or . They have plastic surgery shows (Dr. 90210), MTV shows (Sweet 16, Run's House, A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila), TLC shows (What Not To Wear, Little People, Big World, Clean House), and Bravo (Project Runway, Real Housewives).

There are also so many "reality" programs on regular television: Survivor, Amazing Race, KidNation...
Visit sites like reality tv world, to give you some suggestions.

I don't care if you want from a past or current season, as long as you note where/when/how you accessed the media.

PLEASE STRIVE TO WRITE ABOUT A SHOW NOT ALREADY DISCUSSED BY ANOTHER STUDENT! If the show you watched and wrote about is already posted, READ the post and ADD to the analysis (don't simply re-state). There are more than 50 reality shows and this shouldn't be too difficult. My goal is to have a healthy cross-section of shows (from various networks, targeted to various audiences, and that air at different times) to compare in class.

2- Analyze the episode using a feminist intersectional analysis and key concepts from feminist film/media theory

Consider the:
- CONTEXT - WHO is producing the show, what network is airing it, and who is the target audience (hint: are the commercials for minivans or beer)
- CONTENT - WHAT, the topic of the show (overall show and specific episode you've selected)
- FORM - filmic construction (shots, lighting, editing, style, rhythm, pacing, use of music...)

*AND*

Analyze the show using the feminist theory and film theory you’ve read thus far. Use concepts of gaze, intersectionality, identity, stereotypes, “scaling of bodies� / ranking of body type, skin color, hair texture, hair length+ , representational practices (construction of characters/caricatures, stereotypes), constructions of "reality", or any of the "issues" discussed in the course that you see reflected (or ignored) in the show you watched.

ASK YOURSELF: What PRODUCT(s), IDEA(s) and IDEAL(s) are being communicated in this representation of reality?

3 - Use theory to support your ideas/claims

Read the INTRO reading (in 11/28 WebVista folder) - this will give you some idea of what's discussed in the other articles (from a special issue of the journal Feminist Media Studies).

Browse the .pdf files from the special issue of Feminist Media Studies focused on feminist analysis of “reality� television on our WebCT course site. Find an article that can add to your “reading� of the show you watched. You are also welcomed to find an alternative scholarly article to help analyze your viewing experience.

Select a few relevant quotes from any applicable course readings and at least one passage from the additional article (from Feminist Media Studies or other relevant scholarly article) that you chose to read.

4 - Post your 350 to 500 word entry, that cites at least one scholarly essay, by noon on 11/28.

Suggestion: type in word then cut and paste into blog entry to get word count, spell check, and to back up your writing!

Posted by Rae at 2:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jena Six case sparked a disturbing trend: Nooses
The Jena Six case sparked a disturbing trend from NY to Minnesota: nooses. What does it mean?

By Audra D.S. Burch, McClatchy News Service
November 09, 2007

Across the nation, nooses -- an enduring symbol of hate born more than a century ago in the Deep South -- have been left at offices, theaters and historic ships, fire houses and police stations, on a bronzed statue of the late rapper Tupac Shakur and even at Minneapolis Community and Technical College.

READ ON...
http://www.startribune.com/484/story/1541149.html

THE STORY FINISHES WITH:
"In the Minnesota case, an assistant editor at a college newspaper hung a noose as a motivational tool. He was fired in the incident, but was cleared of bigotry. After an inquiry, the college said it found no evidence that the act was racially motivated."

HMMMMM.....

The student was suspended from his job at the school paper, but nothing further has resulted. Apparently, this "wasn't racially motivated", according to the article.

I ask:
- What is the SOLE PURPOSE of a noose (literally and symbolically)?

- What would have happened if a Black student (or other student of color like a Middle Eastern student) hung up some symbol or statement against the white establishment? I would imagine reprimand, expulsion and criminal charges (remember the "Patriot Act" which can claim many acts of p.o.c. speech as hate and be called terroristic, and punished as criminal")

- Why don't the students at MCTC organize? Why don't students understand their history and the legacies of struggle before them? Why are they having so much difficulty organizing?

We NEED to get it together.

Question: How many of you heard about this on the news?

LET'S TALK ABOUT THIS.
-R

Posted by Rae at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am very glad I got to see this movie. My minor is in African American studies, so I especially liked it because of that. I agreed with a lot of the critiques of the form of the film that we discussed afterwards, but I have to say, while I was watching (even though this is a film studies course) I was so moved by the content that I really didn’t notice anything bad, at least not to the point of distracting me from the message.

Being a white woman who has never been sexually abused I couldn’t relate directly to the women in the film. I did, however, feel outrage, compassion, love, sadness, and a strong connection to these women. Although I have never gone through what these women went through I do know some females and males who have. Also, this film made me question myself and my past when I have compromised my wants or non wants to please a man. Having to reevaluate my past experiences in this way has been quite an eye opener to say the least. I also liked hearing the experiences of the women fighting in the civil rights movements while fighting sexism from the men they were fighting alongside. It was interesting to get that “behind the scenes� account of a big event in Americas past. So, all in all, I agree that there were some things that could have been done in the filmmaking choices but I think this film is important anyways.

Posted by Emily Dolentz at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As i was watching thie screen and the article about it, i felt that the women who were in the movie are very strong woman. Most often, people want to hide "happens" to the other people because they feel embarace and guilty which they shouldn't think in that way. Thus, they wouldn't like to talk about that subject matter and start to distrust people once they got hurt from the other. However, I thought that those women are very strong emotionaly and physically and mentally.

I read the article about three weeks ago that a korean female movie director is producing an independent movie about herlife which she had been raped. I can't remember the name of the movie or her name (I was just reading it for fun,,;;) but she said that it is hard to tell the story that isn't from herself. Because people don't want to show embaracing moment or want to only say something that they think it is okay and not say things that they don't want to, she decided to put her story into her movie and convey the message.

Although she might took alot of time to heal herself from her memory,I thought that this director is brave on her decision and she is powerful woman, because she is telling the truth that many other people don't know.

Posted by Stella at 9:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In my recent travels and political and community work and speeches around the country, it became so very obvious that many American males are unaware of the monumental problem of domestic violence in our nation. Since October just ended and was Domestic Violence Awareness Month, this seems as good a time as any to address this urgent and overlooked issue. Why is it that so few of us actually think about violence against women and girls, or think that it's our problem? Why do we go on believing it's all good, even as our sisters, our mothers, and our daughters suffer and a growing number of us participate in the brutality of berating, beating, or killing our female counterparts?

All you have to do is scan the local newspapers or ask the right questions of your circle of friends, neighbors, or co-workers on a regular basis, and you'll see and hear similar stories coming up again and again. There's the horribly tragic case of Megan Williams, a 20-year-old West Virginia woman, who was kidnapped for several days. The woman's captors forced her to eat rat droppings, choked her with a cable cord and stabbed her in the leg while calling her, a Black female, a racial slur, according to criminal complaints. They also poured hot water over her, made her drink from a toilet, and beat and sexually assaulted her during a span of about a week, the documents say. There's the woman I knew, in Atlanta, Georgia, whose enraged husband pummeled her at home, stalked her at work and, finally, in a fit of fury, stabbed her to death as her six-year-old son watched in horror.

READ ON...

Here's Kevin's 2003 book:

Posted by Rae at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Before I went to class on October 31,2007 I have to admit, I had a completely different idea of what the film Live Nude Girls Unite would be like. Just from the title of this film I was picturing strippers on a stage infront of old, drooling, married men, just there to gain pleasure (and the strippers high on multiple types of drugs). However the film really wasn't like that at all. I thought it was done very classy and in a very mature manner, but most importantly depicted real life/job struggles. The film was truely about a union and I'm happy to say that pleased me. Before this documentary I had different ideas about what it was that strippers were like or what they represented. I guess I have lived kind of a shettled life, but I have never known a stripper or been to a strip club, so I had this idea (ignorant) that strippers were usually uneducated, easy, and drug users. On the other hand, this film had strippers that were very educated and determined, which made me think "Wow!! I was wrong." These women were determined for all the right reasons and now I have a whole new idea, and respect for the sex industry in a sense. I no longer think these women as uneducated or easy, but just out making a living like everyone else. I'm very thankful we screened this film in class because I feel like I learned something from it and something about myself (that sometimes I'm too quick to judge others and I should probably evaluated where I gain my knowledge from before I apply it to a whole working class of individuals).

Posted by Jessica Haddrill at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I really enjoyed Live Nude Girls Unite. I think Julie Query made a very honest and revealing documentary about an area of the sex industry, but also I think it is a great look at the struggle of workers trying to unionize. Although I would assume that these workers had a much harder time unionizing then other industry workers have. Seeing who the ladies really were i(n the "real world") was very interesting and enlightening. Also, hearing their views on the issues involved with the job was quite interesting. It was very uplifting to see women triumph and feel empowered while working in a job that many feel is degrading and objectifies women. I still am not sure how I personally feel about the sex industry, I really do see both sides of the argument. The documentary reminded me of a book I read this summer, "Candy Girl: a Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper" by Diablo Cody. It is a writers yearlong experience working in many different strip clubs and peep shows in the Minneapolis area. it is a very witty and revealing story so check it out if you get a chance.

Posted by Emily Dolentz at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday November 6th @ 6.30 pm

Welcome to the Women's Student Activist Collective's 2007 student group
potluck! This event's purpose is mainly to promote friendship and
collaboration amongst the cultural centers on the second floor of Coffman,
but individuals are also very welcome to attend.

WHO: You and other members of your student organization located on the
second floor of Coffman Memorial Union (CMU)! All other students welcome
too!

WHAT: A POTLUCK to promote networking, friendship, and events between our
groups put on by members of the Women’s Student Activist Collective! Food,
games and prizes!

WHEN: Tuesday, November 6th, 6.30 pm second floor Hallway, CMU

WHY: Because who does not want free food, friends and a chance to make
connections with other great student groups?

Send RSVP and any questions to wsac@umn.edu
Volunteer at this event contact: wsac@umn.edu

We hope to see you there!
/WSAC

Posted by Rae at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)