Core Post #2 Ursula

    Both Anna McCarthy and Ouellette and Hays use their arguments about reality television to explain broader political and economic realities in the United States. The programs these authors draw on from Extreme Makeover to American Idol to The Apprentice are analyzed as structures in which exploited, violated, agency-less participants reveal the ills of American society. While interesting, what I found myself most drawn to thinking about was complexities within the confusing genre called reality television that do not seem to so seamlessly fit into their arguments. For example, within Big Brother and Survivor franchises current participants more frequently identify as super-fans who have analyzed previous seasons and trained recurring challenges coming on the program or are recurring cast members in all-star seasons or back for a redemption arc. In these moments, the participants do not quite seem to fit the image of the traumatized individuals in McCarthy's article and their engagement with the show as a competition to train for and study seems to place it in a different category than one that exactly operates as a study in group democracy like those talked about in Ouellette and Hays article.

    A specific part of the Oullette and Hays article which drew my attention was their inclusion of YouTube as forum for something which kinda fits in the reality television category. The divisions between the content available on YouTube and on TV seem to be shrinking especially in the area of reality television. Whether it is notable YouTubers getting TV show deals like Lilly Singh's talk show and The Try Guys newly announced cooking show or the content on YouTube more and more resembling a show produced for television like James Charles make-up influencer competition show. The melding and cross-over between conventional television outlets and web-based content seems to be possible in the reality television genres than in the scripted ones? I am not quite sure what to make of that, but it seems interesting.

    The final point I want to make is to draw attention to how these articles analyze reality television show within an exclusively American context. Chad Raphael points out that "programs that appear to be products of rapid American innovation when glimpsed from the national perspective were actually the result of an increased international circulation, and recirculation, of products through globalized media markets." Many immensely popular American reality television programs are actually formats imported from around the world. Additionally there are entire genres and styles within the reality television category globally that get very little exposure within the United States for various reasons. In Asia, a wildly popular television style are real variety shows which rely on big name celebrities as recurring cast members. I am curious how the global flows and variations of reality television contribute to and complicate these articles.