Lisa Kirby and Gabriel Winant both discuss reality TV shows about blue-collar jobs. How are their perspectives different?
Week 12 Day 2 Discussion Question 5
May 1, 2018 | 1 Comment
Class, Culture, Representation
May 1, 2018 | 1 Comment
Lisa Kirby and Gabriel Winant both discuss reality TV shows about blue-collar jobs. How are their perspectives different?
April 23, 2019 at 9:24 pm
Kirby argues “reality” shows about the working class, most notably Deadliest Catch, win their audience with masculine tropes. Kirby says 9/11 influenced this development by elevating working class individuals (predominantly men) such as police men and firefighters to heroic status. The focus on masculine portrayals of the working class comes not from cultural intent but from profit motive. Deadliest Catch had more male viewers over 25 than anything but sports. Tropes of masculinity are present not just in the dangerous tasks carried out by the male crews of Deadliest Catch boats, but by the way the show structures ‘reality’. According to Bill Mann, the show’s formula reflects a military style with lots of jargon, an emphasis on the hierarchical structure of the crew, and the way new guys learn lessons ‘the hard way’. Kirby concludes by discussing the show’s celebration of hard blue-collar work.
In contrast, Winant spends little time investigating the intersection of masculinity and working-class ‘reality’ TV but describes how workers’ plight is converted into capitalist propaganda through the miracle of ‘reality’ TV. Winant points out that the content of shows like Coal, Undercover Boss, or Dirty Jobs would have been muckraking in the 1930s, but that the medium of ‘reality TV’ manages to put a capitalist spin on these issues. For instance, in Undercover Boss, the boss ends each episode by giving gifts to the workers he or she encountered. These gifts respond to specific plights of these workers which are always caused or exacerbated by the low pay they receive at the company. Rather than portray these profitable firms as extractive and cruel compared to their struggling employees, they are spun as philanthropic. In one such episode, an underemployed nurse short on cash told the boss: “Thank you for creating the job”. Winant quips this is the stuff of “Mitt Romney’s subconscious” but the nurse’s statement has economic merit and reflects how economic models have become moral code. The idea that lowering wages (below ‘equilibrium’) increases employment and that raising wages (above ‘equilibrium’) causes fewer jobs is a cornerstone of modern economic theory. However, this economic theory has absorbed and replaced moral codes about distributive justice such as those found in Christianity (I use Christianity here because it is probably the second (if not first) most consequential moral code in America after economic utilitarianism).
Interestingly, Winant ties Reality TV’s neoliberal bent to its neoliberal origins. Reality TV first came about due to the cost-cutting competition that attacked the writer’s guild. This relation is furthered by the fact that the same dynamics that created reality TV were practiced by Cobalt Coal of the show Coal. This is paralleled in the actions of Cobalt Coal when the company refused to bargain with the worker’s after they voted for unionization.
Overall, Winant focuses on the intersection of neoliberal values and Reality TV whereas Kirby’s focus is how such shows depend upon and reinforce American masculinity.