Academic Bibliography - Task 2

The Making of Channel 4 – Peter Catterall

“They were there as part of our educational output. I wanted the wildest possible diversity and therefore doled out commissions and penny pockets to see what people could do in the hope that the very difference of what they would come up with would give channel 4 its distinctiveness” –     pg. 106

“the importance of political impartiality in the overall output of Channel 4; of course I knew that was a requirement and a requirement that I was happy to live with. I did, however, think that it would have to be interpreted differently on Channel 4 than it had been on ITV if the channel was to appear more lively, more outspoken, more provocative, more stimulating, than ITV or BBC had ever succeeded in being”  - pg. 106

Catterall, P. (1999). The making of Channel 4 (p. 106). London: F. Cass.

Reacting to Reality Television: Performance, Audience and Value – Beverley Skeggs and Helen Wood

“Writers on reality television have pointed out how class distinctions mediate the representations of consumption in many lifestyle shows: the ‘new you’ of the make-over is a bourgeois you where the symbolic markers of class taste are neutralized” – pg. 37

“Whilst lifestyling is promoted as a signal of the demise of class and the potential attainability of a more affluent (individualized) consumer self, the process itself works to devalue working class culture and taste and instate the middle class as the ‘particular universal class’ (Savage 2003:536) – pg. 37

“Some of the research on reality television also reproduces the classed distinctions that structure the genre, in the same way Jon Cook (2000) proposes about Bourieu’s work, by suggesting that only high culture constitutes cultural capital and working class culture is located as value-less (Skeggs 2011) – pg. 37

“Whereas in the social-realist documentary tradition representations of working class life were couched in valorized discourses of community culture, now emphasis upon the individual in reality television has been psychologized and premised on personal failure (Ringrose and Walkerdine 2008) – pg. 37

“In US programmes like America’s most wanted the representation of crime is taken out of any historical context to represent the perpetrators as pathological, as deviants without location, motivation, or any connection to civil culture” – pg. 37

Skeggs, B., & Wood, H. (2012). Reacting to reality television: Performance, audience and value (p. 37). New York: Routledge.

“Depictions of ‘reality’ increasingly figure the fantasy of social possibility detached from social conditions” – pg. ?

“A great deal of research maps how reality television is a product of political economy, where the commercial pressure to chase exportable ‘formats’ (ideally with increased interactive potential and alternative revenue streams) determines programme content (Moran 2005). – pg. ?

“Any documentary should have at its core, some purchase or claim on ‘truth’ as a relatively objective, observable phenomenon, notwithstanding the variation in the presence of the voice of the film-maker” – pg.23

“Critics of the staging of reality television, its emphasis upon narrative editing, the selection of participants, the prominence of personalities and plot, suggest that the ‘fakeness’ of the reality which it purports to represent is the problem. – pg.23

“The more audiences become used to the idea of the constructedness of reality, the less credible genuine attempts at social intervention become and the less film-makers will be attached to a sense of social responsibility, since it is simply no longer expected of them” – pg.23

 “’spectacles of particularity’ run directly counter to any socio-political project, replacing the rational exploration of macro socio-economic issues, with the emotive instances of the micro, the particular and the personal” – pg.23

Skeggs, B., & Wood, H. (2012). Reacting to reality television: Performance, audience and value (p. 23). New York: Routledge.

“The regularity and importance of the close up across all reality programmes, coupled with ironic music and juxtapositional editing, register the close proximity reality programming has to melodrama and its manipulation of affect.”

“Private lives are transformed into public spectacle through an emphasis upon drama and performance over information” – pg.?

“Research which details the historical rise of the ‘telling self’ as establishing a precedent in the attainment of poor relief where redemptive narratives become a measure of a respectable and ‘worthy’ citizen, marking the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor” – pg.36

Skeggs, B., & Wood, H. (2012). Reacting to reality television: Performance, audience and value (p.36). New York: Routledge.

Reality Television and Class Beverley Skeggs and Helen Wood

"When finally given the choice, viewers turned away from state television's serious news shows, political discussions, talking heads, art films and other 'quality' programmes in favour of talk shows, competitive reality programmes and locally produced soap operas" - pg.91

"Reality programmes are identified as the trashiest form of television. While the critical outrage about the quality of commercial television is justified on the whole, the refusal to take such programmes seriously as proper objects of analysis also reveals a defensive class position taken by -- often formerly dissident -- intellectuals. The intellectual elite is in danger of losing the national leadership roles with which it has been historically charged, a role essential to securing its position within the post-socialist 'cultural bourgeois'. - pg.91

"Programmes such as Gyozike constitute a synergy between the objectionable racial and class quality of their protagonists- pg.91

Skeggs, B. (2012). Reality television and class (p. 91). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

"In the West, the middle class viewer addressed by reality shows easily distances oneself from the abject spectacle of traumatised individuals in need of televisual charity and self help"

The Ethics of Reality TV - Wendy N. Wyatt and Kristie Bunton

"Despite these encouraging presentations of ordinary, under-represented people, reality television programmes also have presented and reinforced stereotypes of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, socio-economic class and other identity characteristics. Media activist Jennifer Pozner suggests these stereotypes are 'endemic, even necessary' to some reality shows"

"Pozner and other critics say the stereotyping begins with casting, when reality producers deliberately choose participants for stock roles"

"Symbolic annihilation suggests groups of people who are not presented or who are severely under-represented by television may be mentally erased from viewers' thoughts and therefore dismissed as unimportant to the larger culture" - pg.33

Wyatt, W. (2012). The ethics of reality TV: A philosophical examination (p. 33). New York: Continuum

"It was the success of early reality TV shows that led to the creation and growth of the genre"- pg.168

Wyatt, W. (2012). The ethics of reality TV: A philosophical examination (p. 168). New York: Continuum

"The bulk of scholarship on reality TV focuses on the potential for programming to perpetuate unhelpful stereotypes and stimulate increased demand for humiliation and degredation of participants" - pg.106

Wyatt, W. (2012). The ethics of reality TV: A philosophical examination (p. 106). New York: Continuum