The Biggest Loser
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.