Reality TV’s bourgeois gaze morally moralises working-class deficit as lack of will

Evidence

In their important study Reacting To Reality Television: Performance, Audience and Value, Beverley Skeggs and Helen Wood argue that much reality TV posits an implied bourgeois gaze, which judges working-class participants as lacking, by comparison with the middle class. Moreover, this lack is understood in heavily moralised terms; it isn’t to be explained by the working class’s lack of resources or opportunities, but by a deficit in will and effort. This implied perspective — seldom actually stated, but informing the whole way in which programmes are produced — is typical of the post-reality TV documentary. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 710

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s running theme in ch42 that workfare reality TV structures blame to fall on individuals rather than systems. — connects to: Workfare reality TV structures blame to fall on individuals rather than systems — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 631; Bourgeois libertinism spread downward undermines working-class moral discipline; Outdated middle-class moral codes become authoritarian when severed from lived conditions — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 232 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Reality TV packaged contempt for misfits alongside their redemption #exemplifies (0.85) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 240
• Bourgeois libertinism spread downward undermines working-class moral discipline #expands (0.82)
• Outdated middle-class moral codes become authoritarian when severed from lived conditions #expands (0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 232