‘Authentic’ Men and ‘Angry’ Women: Trump, Reality Television, and Gendered Constructions of Business and Politics

This study examines the dynamics of cultural politics in reality television shows featuring North Korean resettlers (NKR2) in South Korea. As existing studies focus on the role of media representation reproducing a dominant ideology for the resettlers, this paper focuses on the specific media rituals of NKR2 programs, which can be seen as a product of the neoliberalist localization process of the global media industry. In doing so, this paper demonstrates how NKR2 programs interrupt the current dynamics of emotions in regard to North Korean resettlers in South Korea. We argue that in shaping civic identity as an effect of the NKR2 show, cultural politics of citizenship in South Korea on North Korean resettlers serve the formation of relatively conservative and sexist civic identity.

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Reality Bites: The Downfall of New York's Misappropriation Claim in the World of Reality Television

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.1271651 ◽

2008 ◽

Author(s):

Samantha Fredrickson

Keyword(s):

Reality Television ◽

The World

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Scholars do Bravo Too: Reality Television, Public History, and the Historians on Housewives Podcast

Journal of Women s History ◽

10.1353/jowh.2020.0043 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 32 (4) ◽

pp. 135-138

Author(s):

Kacey Calahane ◽

Jessica Millward ◽

Max Speare

Keyword(s):

Public History ◽

Reality Television

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Look at me, I’m on TV: the political dimensions of reality television participation

Media Culture & Society ◽

10.1177/01634437211036979 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 016344372110369

Author(s):

Bethany Klein ◽

Stephen Coleman

Keyword(s):

Public Sphere ◽

Reality Television ◽

Social Issues ◽

Electoral Systems ◽

The Political ◽

Democratic Representation ◽

Political Dimensions

It has been over 20 years since the reality television genre attracted the attention of fans, critics and scholars. Reality programmes produced high viewing figures, suggesting a strong appetite for the form; critics dismissed the programmes as mindless and the participants as desperate for fame; and scholars assessed the formats, audiences and meanings of reality television, offering a complex, if rarely celebratory, account. While some commentators and scholars made connections between vote-based formats and electoral systems, or between opportunities afforded audiences for the deliberation of social issues and the idealized public sphere, the civic dimension of participation itself has not been explored. In this article, we take a closer look at reality television participants, drawing on press interviews and coverage in order to highlight how participants enact representative performances that might supplement more formal modes of democratic representation.

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