Reality Television Production As Dirty Work
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 Good Character: Reality Television Production as Dirty Work Junhow Wei University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Communication Commons, Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons, and the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Wei, Junhow, "Good Character: Reality Television Production as Dirty Work" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2094. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2094 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2094 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Good Character: Reality Television Production as Dirty Work Abstract Audiences, critics, and academics have raised significant moral concerns about reality television. The genre is commonly criticized for being exploitative, harmful, and fake. By extension, reality TV workers are morally tainted, seen as dirty workers of questionable character. This dissertation describes the sources of moral taint in reality television production and how production workers dispel this taint—making their work acceptable and even glorious to themselves and others—through everyday micro-level interaction. The data for this study comes from approximately 2 years of ethnographic observation at 2 reality TV production companies, attendance at 2 reality TV industry conferences, and interviews with 83 respondents, including reality TV production workers, television network executives, and people who auditioned to be on reality shows. Findings focus on the development process, during which production companies generate ideas for new television shows and pitch those ideas to television networks. First, I describe the development process and three significant moral dilemmas that workers face at this initial stage of production: creating negative representations (e.g. stereotypes), falsifying reality, and exploiting workers. Second, I discuss how even though some reality TV workers aspire to create “authentic” television and portray cast in a dignified manner, commercial demands sometimes pressure them into compromising their values. I find that workers justify making such creative compromises by distancing themselves from their actions or tweaking their standards of quality in their everyday shop floor talk. Third, I describe the significant creative contributions unpaid interns made at one production company and propose that supervisors dispel the moral taint of exploitation by framing their relationships with unpaid interns in terms of mentorship and friendship. Finally, I describe how people who audition for reality shows in development are concerned about workers’ professional legitimacy and moral character, and how workers craft their credentials and manage their affective styles of self presentation to convince prospective cast of their good reputation. I discuss implications of these findings for esearr ch on work and labor in cultural industries and for understanding stigmatized workers’ selves and identities in any occupation. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Sociology First Advisor David Grazian Keywords Cultural industries, Dirty work, Morals, Production, Reality TV, Stigma Subject Categories Communication | Organizational Behavior and Theory | Sociology This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2094 GOOD CHARACTER: REALITY TELEVISION PRODUCTION AS DIRTY WORK Junhow Wei A DISSERTATION in Sociology Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Supervisor of Dissertation ______________________ David Grazian Associate Professor of Sociology Graduate Group Chairperson ______________________ David Grazian, Associate Professor of Sociology Dissertation Committee Annette Lareau, Stanley I. Sheerr Term Professor in the Social Sciences, Professor of Sociology Robin Leidner, Associate Professor of Sociology Guobin Yang, Associate Professor of Sociology and Communication GOOD CHARACTER: REALITY TELEVISION PRODUCTION AS DIRTY WORK COPYRIGHT 2016 Junhow Wei This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to extend sincere thanks to the leadership at Pinnacle Productions and Sunshine Productions for welcoming me into their companies. I especially thank Mark and the casting team at Pinnacle for not only sharing their stories and opinions with me, but also for their friendship and encouragement. Particular thanks also goes to David and the development team at Sunshine for being so supportive of my studies. To all of the producers, network executives, and cast who took time away from their busy schedules to be interviewed for this research, I am truly grateful. I am exceptionally lucky to have had advisors who provided indispensable feedback on this project and gave me the tools to become a better scholar in general. To my committee—David Grazian, Annette Lareau, Robin Leidner, and Guobin Yang—I cannot thank you enough for your advice and support, intellectually and otherwise. Also, I wish to thank other scholars at Penn and beyond who have generously supported and inspired my research, especially Randall Collins, Emily Hannum, Laura Grindstaff, and Josh Gamson. Thanks to Audra Rogers, Aline Rowens, and Nancy Bolinski for answering my many questions over the years. Thanks to my cohort and my adoptive cohorts for their friendship and feedback on early drafts and ideas. Special thanks to my study buddies Carla Medalia, Caroline Hartnett, Sarah Spell, Radha Modi, Aliya Rao, Rachel Ellis, HyeJeong Jo, and especially Sebastian Cherng. To Janet and Kevin, your friendship and cheerleading have been invaluable. Finally, a huge thanks to my family—my mother, father, and sister—for their endless love and support. iii ABSTRACT GOOD CHARACTER: REALITY TELEVISION PRODUCTION AS DIRTY WORK Junhow Wei David Grazian Audiences, critics, and academics have raised significant moral concerns about reality television. The genre is commonly criticized for being exploitative, harmful, and fake. By extension, reality TV workers are morally tainted, seen as dirty workers of questionable character. This dissertation describes the sources of moral taint in reality television production and how production workers dispel this taint—making their work acceptable and even glorious to themselves and others—through everyday micro-level interaction. The data for this study comes from approximately 2 years of ethnographic observation at 2 reality TV production companies, attendance at 2 reality TV industry conferences, and interviews with 83 respondents, including reality TV production workers, television network executives, and people who auditioned to be on reality shows. Findings focus on the development process, during which production companies generate ideas for new television shows and pitch those ideas to television networks. First, I describe the development process and three significant moral dilemmas that workers face at this initial stage of production: creating negative representations (e.g. stereotypes), falsifying reality, and exploiting workers. Second, I discuss how even though some reality TV workers aspire to create “authentic” television and portray cast in a dignified manner, commercial demands sometimes pressure them into compromising their values. I find that workers justify making such creative compromises by distancing themselves from their actions or tweaking their standards of quality in their everyday iv shop floor talk. Third, I describe the significant creative contributions unpaid interns made at one production company and propose that supervisors dispel the moral taint of exploitation by framing their relationships with unpaid interns in terms of mentorship and friendship. Finally, I describe how people who audition for reality shows in development are concerned about workers’ professional legitimacy and moral character, and how workers craft their credentials and manage their affective styles of self presentation to convince prospective cast of their good reputation. I discuss implications of these findings for research on work and labor in cultural industries and for understanding stigmatized workers’ selves and identities in any occupation. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................................................................... iii ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................... iv LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................. viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 1 Moral Objections to Reality TV ........................................................................................................ 2 The Dubious Character of Reality TV Producers ............................................................................. 7 What is “Reality TV”? ..................................................................................................................... 12 Cultural Production as Dirty Work .................................................................................................