Supplemental Response #3_Ann

 I find this week’s readings fascinatingly diverse with their approaches to the seemingly narrow topic of reality television. While Raphael’s piece focuses almost exclusively on the economy behind the popularization of reality television in the 90s, Strings and Bui’s article is an interesting case study of race and representation based on a recent reality TV show, RuPaul’s Drag Race (which I will discuss a little later). While I enjoyed all of the pieces, I do find Ouellette and Hay’s as well as McCarthy’s writings most relevant not only in the discussion of reality television, but also in the discourse of governance today. 

Somewhat discursively, what McCarthy’s article reminds me is the recent incident that happened during the snowstorm and the subsequent power outage in Texas where mayor Tim Boyd posted on social media and he says: “No one owes you [and] your family anything; nor is it the local government’s responsibility to support you during trying times like this!…Only the strong will survive and the weak will perish” (BBC News). This outrageously unapologetic statement coming from a mayor, a governing personality, represents an extreme case of Foucault’s “liberal ideal of governing at a distance” (McCarthy 25). McCarthy continues to write: “Governmentality finds its principle of rationality in the axiom that individuals are sovereign beings best ruled under circumstances in which they are encouraged to self-manage, taking on responsibilities for their welfare, growth, and security that might otherwise be assumed by the state” (25). She also invokes the “pastoral responsibilities of the state” to emphasize the subtle shift—although not so subtle in Tim Boyd’s case—of responsibilities from the state to the individual under neoliberalism and its media representations (25). What is interesting to me here is not the connection between Tim Boyd’s self-destructive statement and reality television, but the backlash Tim Boyd got by posting his statements. On the one hand, there was no doubt that Tim Boyd would get serious backlash, criticism, and anger with what he posted, and he did resign because of that. On the other hand, reality televisions like Random 1 are rather commonly seen, but the “pastoral responsibilities” embedded in these shows are not as visible as those in Boyd’s post. As a result, these shows are not discussed in the same light as Boyd’s post although they do share commonalities. To be honest, I wouldn’t even make the connection between Boyd and reality television without reading McCarthy’s or Ouellette and Hay’s writings. If, as McCarthy argued, reality television is one of the catalysts in prevailing this kind of unhealthy self-governing, then through what means can the audience detect the embedded ideology? This is a question I think worth pondering because reality television, existing on the thin line between reality and entertainment, can mask itself so effectively that the audience cannot detect the hegemony embedded within. 

Now going back to the analysis of RuPaul’s by Strings and Bui’s, as much as I enjoyed reading this article, I do think they are missing something in the analysis of Manila Luzon, the Pilipino drag queen. Strings and Bui center their argument around the idea that “gender is problematized while race is either rendered invisible or naturalized, gender appears to be mutable, but race is made to look ‘real’ or natural” (822). While I really liked their analysis of the black and brown bodies and the queens’ representations in “the Boogers”, I think they are missing an important point in the analysis of “the Heathers”, especially the analysis of the Asian queens. First of all, I think while the grouping together of White-passing/Asian queens is truthful to the TV show, it is limiting in the theorization of the article. Strings and Bui writes that “The difference, it seems, is the Heathers’ sense that race is a mutable characteristic. Not constrained by the history of racial marking in the same way as the black and brown persons, they feel comfortable stepping out of their racial cast, and trying on various racial/ethnic hats” (832). This argument becomes less sound when we consider the fact that Asian ethnicities/nationalities are often grouped-together in popular media as one marketable demography, which was also indicated in our last week’s reading on the failure of ImaginAsian by Han. Popular media tends not to distinguish between many Asian identities and presents a somewhat false identity that is “Asian American”, which helps in the capitalization process but not in terms of distinguishing between racial and cultural identities. As a result, in my opinion, Manila was not “stepping out of their racial cast, and trying on various racial/ethnic hats”, rather, she was performing the false identity of “Asian American” which both fits the hegemony already embedded in the media and also gives the judges enough “personalities” that helped her win. She was able to perform nationalities and ethnicities not her own precisely because the judges do not distinguish Asian identities as they distinguish between White/Black identities. Personally, I have not seen the entirety of RuPaul’s so I cannot theorize more on her overall performances, but I think it might be important to consider the Asian identities more specifically.

Work Cited:

BBC News. "Texas snow: Mayor quits after 'only strong will survive' post". February 17th, 2021. BBC News US & Canada. Retreived from: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56100743