TOWARD a POLITICAL ECONOMY of BODIES a Dissertation
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WOMEN AND REALITY TV IN EVERDAY LIFE: TOWARD A POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BODIES A dissertation presented to the faculty of the Scripps College of Communication of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Danielle M. Stern June 2007 This dissertation entitled WOMEN AND REALITY TV IN EVERDAY LIFE: TOWARD A POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BODIES by DANIELLE M. STERN has been approved for the School of Telecommunications and the Scripps College of Communication by Norma Pecora Associate Professor of Telecommunications Gregory J. Shepherd Dean, Scripps College of Communication Abstract STERN, DANIELLE M., Ph.D, June 2007, Mass Communications WOMEN AND REALITY TV IN EVERYDAY LIFE: TOWARD A POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BODIES (216 pp.) Director of Dissertation: Norma Pecora By moving beyond the representation of “women” in specific texts and locating the body as a critical site of meaning in a hybrid televisual genre—narrative reality television—this dissertation challenges assumptions about production, text, audience, and researcher. Drawing from existing theories of the body and political economy in the feminist and critical rhetoric literature and using MTV’s popular long-running program The Real World as a case study, this dissertation examines the interrelationship of the construction and consumption of bodies in an increasingly surveillance-based, commercial, hybrid media culture. Twenty college-aged women viewers of The Real World wrote brief journal entries to episodes of the program prior to participating in individual interviews. Additionally, the researcher conducted interviews with four creative directors of the program. Finally, the interviews informed a rhetorical analysis of the 25 episodes of the seventeenth season of The Real World, set in Key West, which aired from February to August 2006. Three general themes of women’s bodies on The Real World emerged from the concurrent methods: 1) the constructed nature of bodies in crisis, 2) the heteronormative double bind of college female bodies expected to party hard yet retain their dignity, and 3) the impact of these bodies and other Real World features on viewers’ daily lives whereby, despite their often fabricated nature, narrative bodies on The Real World are ostensibly real for viewers. The author positions a conception of material, commodity bodies in hybrid television within the profit-motivated, macro- institution of television production and celebrity worship, as well as the micro-structures of peer relationships and meaning negotiation. Representations and interpretations of bodies as conflicted and starved for attention move beyond theoretical assumptions of bodies as power to bodies as sites of learning for real world relational exchanges within popular culture. Because the macro-structures and micro-practices of production happen simultaneously within a larger schema of cultural production that goes beyond the daily routines of creating a reality TV program, scholars should continue to link the capital with the cultural and reevaluate our roles as critics and interpreters of meaning. Approved: Norma Pecora Associate Professor of Telecommunications Acknowledgments From my first memories of watching MTV, television has been both an inspiration and a frustration for me. I must first thank my mother, Brenda Austin, for not placing restrictions on my viewing. Thank you to her, my father, Bob Stern, my stepfather, Terry Austin, my aunt, Carla Sprankle, and my grandmother, Rosalie Stern, for always encouraging me to pursue my dream of becoming a writer and an academic. This pursuit would have been in vain if not for the support and comic relief of— and drinks shared with—the many friends I depended on during my time at Ohio University, especially Lisa Marshall, Lisa Wagner, and Michael Koch. Thank you also to Stacey Stufflebeam and Natasha Gregg for being there for me across the miles. I am forever grateful to Dr. Michaela Meyer and Michael Willits for assisting in the creative process, whether through looking at early drafts, providing technical support, or inspiring me to have faith in my abilities as a scholar. My chair and mentor, Dr. Norma Pecora, taught me about the “art” of scholarship and revision. Although my research shifted at numerous points, Dr. Pecora welcomed and encouraged this metamorphosis. I cannot thank her enough for letting my voice emerge, but also for pulling me back, gently, when I went off course. Thank you to Dr. Raymie McKerrow for helping to make this dissertation a different—better—project than I had first conceived. If not for him introducing me to a little way of thinking known as critical rhetoric, I may not have been as excited about the research process. I thank Dr. Mia Consalvo and Dr. Susan Burgess for asking the tough questions and guiding me in the right direction. My appreciation is also reserved for Dr. Roger Cooper and Dr. Greg Shepherd, who kindly granted me an extra year to work on this project. The support staff in the School of Telecommunications, especially Paula Carpenter and Debbie Nogrady, helped keep me organized and sane during the past four years. I must also thank the staff at Athens’ own Village Bakery and Perk’s Coffee House for keeping me caffeinated and providing soothing atmospheres in which to write. Much of the pages here were written at their facilities on my now retired laptop. Without the assistance of Bunim/Murray Productions this project would have been just another critique of corporate television. Thank you to Saul Friedman for fielding all of my emails and telephone calls and organizing my interviews, Paul Yuan for providing me with ratings data, and Mark Raudonis, Sasha Alpert, Joyce Corrington, and Jon Murray for their candid responses. I thank them also for providing me with hope for the future of production research. Finally, I am indebted to the women who opened their doors and minds to me about growing up with The Real World and the problems facing young women today. Although unnamed here, I will always remember and be thankful for each of them. Their stories, while heartbreaking at times, reminded me why I do feminist research. 7 Table of Contents Page Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................5 List of Figures...................................................................................................................9 The Real World and Women Viewers as a Case Study ....................................................10 Reality TV for the MTV Generation .....................................................................11 The Feminist Media Body Project: In Brief...........................................................12 Finding Real World Meaning in The Real World ..................................................18 Chapter Development ...........................................................................................20 Chapter 1: Political Economy, Embodiment, and the Politics of Critical Interpretation....24 Political Economy: Mass Communication and Social Change..............................25 Theory/Praxis: A Feminist Sensibility in Media Studies........................................29 Hybrid Television and the Panopticon...................................................................32 Embodied Rhetoricity: Speaking Nearby the Body ...............................................40 A Critical Perspective on Production, Text, and Reception Analyses ....................44 The Role of Burke ................................................................................................45 Chapter 2: Hybrid Programming for the MTV Generation: The Real World Fifteen Years On ...................................................................................49 “Real” Television .................................................................................................50 Confession and Conflict........................................................................................55 The Importance of Casting....................................................................................57 Branded Bodies ....................................................................................................59 Real World Sexuality............................................................................................62 The Real World: A Summary of Bodies ................................................................66 Research Questions...............................................................................................74 Chapter 3: The Methods: Reception, Production, and Text..............................................77 Reception: Rhetorical Analysis of Real World Consumer Narratives.....................78 Production: Interviewing Real World Executives ..................................................81 Text: Rhetorical Analysis of The Real World Key West.........................................82 Chapter 4: “We’re not all size zeroes”: Bodies as Constructed and Scorned ....................85 An Introduction to The Real World Key West and the Importance of Female Bodies..................................................................................................86 Constructing the Stereotyped Female Body...........................................................90 Constructing the Scorned Female Body ................................................................97 The Troubled Body.............................................................................................108