Abstract
Competitive reality television is a pervasive part of contemporary American culture and encompasses a range of topics and forms. We identify three categories, or spheres, of contestant-elimination reality shows: External Vote, Internal Vote, and Choosing Individual/Deity. Within each sphere, we examine the locus of blame and the structure of the show as contexts for the elimination as symbolic death. This symbolic death presents allegories of loss of fame, social isolation, and individual loss of job, career, or love across these spheres. Contestants perform eulogy work to cope publicly with their elimination at the moment of exit. Eulogy work enables departing contestants to frame their “death” as a good death and to “cool themselves out” in an attempt to save face. In this way, contestants deal with conceptions of self in the show and the transfer of that self back to a reality outside of the bracketed time and space of the show. Drawing on literature from the sociology of emotions, the sociology of death, and the sociology of ritual, we provide the concept of eulogy work to capture the performance of the self specifically in the context of loss.
Although reality television seems artificial and decidedly unreal, popular shows engage contestants and viewers in imagining processes of individual change. The world of competitive reality television continually grapples with the concepts of transition and role adjustment. The most significant transition occurs at the end of the contestant’s road: the expulsion, rejection, and veritable demise of that person on that show. It is this key transition—symbolic death on competitive reality TV shows—which interests us. We ask how contestants make sense of this moment and manage their emotions as they contemplate their transition from reality TV back into the real world.
Reality television is an important cultural phenomenon, cocreated by cultural producers and viewers and embedded in local social worlds (Griswold 2013). Of the five highest rated prime-time network TV shows for the week of May 20, 2013, four were competitive reality TV (Nielsen Media Research 2013). Reality television routinely wins its time slots 1 and provokes responses even from those who are emphatic nonwatchers (Peterson and Kern 1995). Theorists assert the importance and benefits of studying games (Caillois 1961; DiCicco-Bloom and Gibson 2010) and how we occupy our leisure time (Stebbins 2007). As games and as a vibrant, if controversial, component of American culture, reality television warrants ongoing study.
Focusing on the final moments of competitive reality TV shows, we suggest that eliminations represent a symbolic death that contestants must manage, and we argue that a specific form of emotion work (Hochschild [1979] 2003) occurs during this transition. As participants are eliminated, they use their last public moment to emotionally frame their time on the show. We call this kind of emotional labor “eulogy work” because, similar to the ways in which eulogies frame a deceased person’s life, participants deal with conceptions of self on the show and the transfer of self to a post-show reality. Eulogy work encompasses the conception and framing of self within the show at the moment of symbolic death, a contestant’s exit, a moment of transition and loss. Where the show is a metaphor for the life journey and its seemingly inevitable end, eulogy work is also reputation management (Fine 2001). Contestants find themselves in a liminal space during elimination, and they engage in eulogy work justifying their symbolic death to themselves and their audience, real and imagined.
Below we offer our theoretical grounding, describe our selected reality TV shows and methods, and proceed with our analysis in each of three categories. First, we describe and explain the life and death allegories unique to each category. We then analyze the role blame plays in each category, focusing on how contestants frame blame in the context of the game’s structure. Third, we explain how contestants employ eulogy work as an emotion management strategy within each category. Finally, we offer concluding thoughts on the role and significance of eulogy work in American popular culture, as well as on how ethnographic methods can help investigate technologically mediated presentations of the self.
Emotions and Transitions of Loss
We draw on three broad literatures—the sociology of emotions, the sociology of death, and the sociology of ritual—to make sense of how reality TV participants perform emotion work in a highly ritualized and public experience of loss. Americans may be averse to public discussions of death but, as our study suggests, Americans publicly grapple with the meaning of symbolic death. Sociologists have written extensively about grief and death (Charmaz and Milligan 2006; Lofland 1985; Walter 1991 ), as well as transitions, particularly those involving identity shifts (Aronson 2008; Charmaz 1991; Grove, Lavallee, and Gordon 1997) and the combination of transition of loss and identity shifts across a variety of fields (Latack and Dozier 1986; Sherman 2009; van den Hoonaard 2001).
Goffman’s conceptual development of “cooling the mark out” (1952a) is a fruitful frame for this transition. Goffman identifies the work that both the “con man” and the “mark” undertake to manage a potentially public loss of status. Contestants effectively cool themselves out by publicly performing their own eulogy and framing their death as a good death. While this loss of status may seem expected within the context of the game, losing is still stigmatized on a larger social scale (Goffman 1963; Sandage 2006). We apply and expand on the cooling out concept as a kind of public labor where multiple individuals and organizations engage in the process of conning and cooling out both contestants and viewers.
Sociologists theorize about the ways in which emotions have increasingly required management in the modern world (Giddens 1993; Illouz 2007; Zelizer 2005). Most notably, Hochschild ([1979] 2003) introduces the concepts of “emotion work” (the labor that individuals perform to bring their emotions in line with contextual norms) and “feeling rules” (the norms that govern the expression of feelings). Subsequent studies focus on the stratification of emotional labor and its costs (Lively 2006) and how individuals use the resources around them—including their own bodies—to shape their emotional behavior in everyday life (Katz 2001). While studies note that reality TV involves emotional labor, such as emotion-laden confessions and authenticity (Aslama and Pantti 2006) and “emotional recruitment” of audiences and participants (Bonsu, Darmody, and Parmentier 2010), none engage with moments of transition or ejection.
Contestants, we argue, engage in emotional labor in the face of social loss and transition. Emotion management is a contingent phenomenon influenced by not only the structural aspects of the settings in which it emerges, but by how people negotiate cultural systems of meaning. Reality TV provides a germane example of how emotion management is not an “inevitable” characteristic of modernity, but an emergent feature of various types of interactional settings (Alexander 2006).
Reality TV is not merely an arena for the public display of emotion but a highly ritualized context that guides this display. Symbolic interactionists have productively theorized ritual (Collins 2004), its power (Travers 1982), its role in meaning making (Bocock 1974), and the interactive relationship between “self” and “other” (Goffman 1952b, 1957). Elimination routines on reality TV shows exemplify such rituals, and contestants manage their emotions according to norms established on past and present seasons of the show.
Crucial to the elimination ritual is a contestant’s emotion-laden symbolic show-death. While some scholars focus on grief as an emotional response to death (Charmaz and Milligan 2006; Lofland 1985), others theorize how groups frame and manage death (Bonsu 2007; Timmermans 1998; Turner and Edgley 1976). Turner and Edgley (1976) provide an analytical framework to investigate death at the intersection between the emotional and the ritualistic. Extending Turner and Edgley’s (1976) notion of “death as theater” 2 to the sphere of reality TV, we show how participants dramaturgically negotiate their own exits from the show by self-eulogizing in ritualistic ways. In this dramaturgical process, contestants both manage and convey emotional experiences. Reality TV offers a particularly productive source of data for ethnographically exploring the partially public negotiation of the self in contexts of loss. We must be careful, of course, not to assume that reality TV selves are somehow unedited, raw versions of the self, given that they are carefully crafted by individuals and show producers who are, in some ways, managing the emotions of contestants (Thoits 1996).
We propose the concept of “eulogy work” as a term that unites these three theoretical threads and describes how competitive reality TV contestants manage the specific transition of exiting the show. First, eulogy work involves the Goffmanian process of cooling out (1952a) in that contestants and their compatriots must deal with a loss of status. Second, eulogy work involves emotion management (Hochschild [1979] 2003), which entails bringing contestants’ display and experience of emotions in line with the feeling rules of the show. Third, eulogy work both contains and conveys the emotional energy generated within the context of the show, furthering an interaction ritual chain (Collins 2004) that conditions the repertoire of actions available in future shows. The location of blame in the shows produces variety in the form eulogy work takes across these spheres. 3
Setting and Methodology
Reality TV shows cover diverse topics, including MTV’s The Real World, Survivor, America’s Next Top Model, Master Chef, and The Biggest Loser, among many others. This list presents a competition-oriented reality television to American viewers; it is this form in which we are interested. These shows present allegories for real-world events. While we focus on American reality TV shows as our data source, we acknowledge that reality TV shows originated elsewhere and may operate similarly in other cultural contexts, but further research should be conducted in those contexts.
Competitive reality TV shows contain unique but partially formulaic exit rituals that govern how a member leaves. These shows relate to other competitive scenarios we encounter in everyday life. Within these allegories, viewers can play with the ideas of death, job loss, and social isolation in a “safe” way.
After viewing a range of competitive reality TV shows to orient ourselves to the setting, three spheres of reality television emerged according to the location of power and blame; External Vote, Internal Vote, and Choosing Individual/Deity.
The External Vote category involves the TV audience voting. Audience members cast votes after a performance show by phone or text message. Examples of this category are So You Think You Can Dance, American Idol, and America’s Got Talent. The Internal Vote category features contestants voting out members of their own group. Voting members may include the whole group of contestants or a subset of the whole. Examples include Survivor, Beauty and the Geek, and Big Brother. The Choosing Individual/Deity category involves a single person or a small oligarchy evaluating contestants and determining who should be eliminated. Examples include The Apprentice, Master Chef, and The Bachelor/ette.
As viewers seemingly removed from the experience of competition, studying reality TV ethnographically required an innovative approach. We used ethnographic content analysis (ECA) (Altheide 2004; Altheide and Schneider 2013), a form of qualitative media analysis distinct from content analysis (Adorjan 2011; Altheide and Schneider 2013). ECA embraces reflexivity, often disavowed by content analysis (Altheide and Schneider 2013:23), and focuses the attention of the researcher on contexts where meaning-making occurs (Adorjan 2011). ECA allows sensitizing concepts (Blumer 1954; van den Hoonaard 1997) to emerge from reflexive fieldwork through constant discovery and comparison. While ECA has limitations, it pushes the boundaries of how we think about technology-mediated interaction. This innovative approach combines ethnographic practice with content analysis and acknowledges the intertextuality of self and text (Bloome and Egan-Robertson 1993; Kristeva 1980), challenging the limits of participant-observation as we, as embodied researchers, watch with intention. Our fieldnotes and memos, such as emotional reactions and reflexive thinking, included in the data, show evidence of our affective engagement (Kavka 2008; Massumi 2002) with the material as we achieve immersion and make meaning of what we see.
We chose two shows from each of the External Vote, Internal Vote, and Choosing Individual/Deity spheres and three seasons from each show; the third season (so that show norms would have been established), the most recent season, and whichever season fell in between. We should note that because of the date of some earlier shows we were occasionally unable to view every single episode in the older seasons. We watched 117 exit rituals, resulting in 117 observations per author (a total of 351 observations) across 18 seasons of 6 shows. While some shows required that we watch the entire show to understand contestants’ comments at the end, we recorded our observations and analyzed only the exit rituals themselves.
After our informal watching, we prepared for our formal observations by watching sample exit rituals from a cross section of shows we had selected to orient ourselves specifically to these rituals. We developed a data sheet to record our observations, according to sensitizing concepts that had already begun to emerge and the structural proclivities of each show. In the Internal Vote category, for example, we separated our observation sheet into four segments, capturing the phases of the elimination process: the excommunication (as we came to call it through our memos) reveal, the excommunication itself, final words, and the post-excommunication. Observation sheets included space to record details such as whether the show was initially broadcast live, as well as our own impressions and emotional experience as ethnographers and our emerging questions.
We watched each exit, from the start of the scene to the end of the show, three times, and we rotated each researcher’s focus with each viewing. For example, researcher #1 attended to the on-stage happenings and the host for the first viewing, the off-stage contestants (who are often shown on camera reacting) in the second viewing, and, in the third viewing, collected specific quotes from the host, as well as growth-related remarks. We assigned more than one researcher to attend to areas that emerged as most salient; for example, researcher #2 would also attend to the on-stage happenings and the host during the second viewing. We reflexively revisited the data sheet and the division of attention throughout this process and talked frequently about what we observed and experienced. Once we had collected our data, ethnographic notes, and memos from throughout the process, we continued these reflexive conversations. We used a consensus-based process in which we independently reviewed our field notes and met to discuss emerging themes as we coded the data. Thus, we allowed themes and our analyses to proceed inductively.
We now briefly describe how we arrived at one conclusion through ECA to illustrate the inductive and reflexive nature of our research. As we began watching informally, we noticed explicit references to show-exits expressed great finality. Contestants and hosts made explicit reference to life and death imagery. References such as those likening applause to oxygen (AI, 3, 34) * or being “gone” (S, 3, 22) routinely jumped out, and these comments, along with dramatic music and lighting, suggested that the exiting contestant was seen as “deceased.” Our memos to each other consistently pointed out that the “death-talk,” as we came to refer to it, was emerging as meaningful for those departing the shows as well as the hosts. When we read the observations and reviewed our memos, the theme of death-talk dominated our conversations. The data ultimately led us to conclude that the exit represents a symbolic death.
We found that the External Vote sphere had the most clearly articulated examples of death-talk. We allowed the data to shape the sections as we wrote them (Charmaz 2006; van den Hoonaard 2011), while choosing representative quotes to convey our analysis, as follows in this section on death-talk.
As we watched episode after episode, the death-talk became apparent: Singing for his life. (Ryan Seacrest) (AI, 10, 21) For someone it is the end of their life. (Ryan Seacrest) (AI, 3, 28) Have the viewers voted to save your skin? (Tom Bergeron) (DWTS, 12, 11)
Furthermore, after contestants are voted off the show, they are very rarely mentioned. However, in season five of Dancing with the Stars, “America” unexpectedly voted off Sabrina Bryan. In the following episode, the remaining contestants wore black arm bands, a symbolic remembrance of her death. This was a highly unusual breach of the expectation that those voted off will not be referred to again. This particular way of showing their outrage suggested contestants interpreted her disappearance as a symbolic death. These quotes and choice of material props are representative of the kind of death-talk common on each show.
This death marks a transition point between the constructed reality of the show itself and the post-show, real-world reality. Importantly, as we show below, death frames contestants’ exit from the show, structuring the ways contestants talk about their elimination in terms of “life, “death,” and new beginnings. Our affective engagement with death as a transition point is evident in our reflective memos: I would say that the emotion exhibited in the show extends from the judges and audience to viewers and is both creative and reflexive. That is, it’s not just about showing people how to mourn, or even a parody (or a satire) of how to mourn. It makes me think about the mini-deaths that may be created around us all the time. Perhaps these shows are the latest in a long line of stories we tell each other about people disappearing from our lives and the inevitably emotional way we respond to these disappearances. (Memo, July 7, 2011)
Our memos suggest that we identified and challenged the concept of death rituals through our affective engagement with show exit rituals. Given this understanding of reality TV eliminations as symbolic death, we proceed by presenting our analysis of each of the three categories of reality television.
External Vote
The two shows we focused on in the External Vote sphere are American Idol (AI) and Dancing with the Stars (DWTS). In each show, contestants perform in front of an in-studio audience and panel of celebrity judges, and the viewing audience’s vote determines who is eliminated from the show. In the case of American Idol, a panel of famous judges evaluates contestants’ singing performances. In Dancing with the Stars, famous contestants are paired with professional dancers to learn and execute challenging ballroom dance routines. While, for American Idol, viewers alone determine who is eliminated, for Dancing with the Stars, contestants are eliminated based on an overall score combining viewers’ and judges’ votes.
In each case, an hour-long results show gradually reveals safe or at-risk contestants until, in the last few minutes of air-time, two or three quivering contestants stand awaiting the final result. After taking a commercial break, well timed to draw out the suspense, the host opens an envelope and, as the lights and music dramatically shift, he or she reads the name of the eliminated contestant. After the voted-off contestant’s name is spoken, the lighting reverts to a less intense format and the exit ritual quickly follows. The parting contestant and the surviving contestant hug briefly. The judges may offer a word or two and then the show presents a short video montage of the eliminated contestant’s life on the show. On American Idol, host Ryan Seacrest refers to this montage as “your American Idol Tribute” (Season 3, Episode 24). The eliminated contestant then provides a few parting words.
Allegory: Fame = Life
A contestants’ life on the show ends with their symbolic death, but life within the context of the show has specific meaning. That is, contestants are alive while they have access to fame, and they may access fame while they are on the show. The symbolic death becomes an allegory for loss of fame. Fame is life, and death suggests the loss of access to the life-giving resource of fame, followed by a return to presumably mundane reality. Contestants differentially perform emotion work around their loss of fame-life, “cooling themselves out” (Goffman 1952a) in accordance with their experience of fame.
This process becomes manifest when we compare American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. Those being voted off of American Idol seem much more distraught than Dancing with the Stars contestants because American Idol contestants’ death involves a greater loss of fame. In other words, contestants on these two shows have different access to “fame capital.” 4 Those on Dancing with the Stars are celebrities with existing careers and, in a world where fame equals life, they are not dying a complete death. Dancing with the Stars contestants’ extant fame capital allows them to transition from the real contexts of the show to the post-show reality of their everyday celebrity lives while, for American Idol contestants, post-show realities may feature short-term, localized fame capital, at best.
The Blame Game: “America Votes”
Blame for the loss of fame capital is particularly salient within the structure of the show: Did the viewers rally to save you? (Tom Bergeron) (DWTS, 12, 5) There is a dark side to you, America. Think about what you do. Someone’s dreams are being crushed and it’s all your fault. (Disembodied announcer voice) (AI, 3, 20)
As these quotes illustrate, the structure of the show places the responsibility for life and death firmly on the audience. We noted a felt sense of blame in our memos: “I’m beginning to wonder: what really drives the show? Is it the somewhat morbid chiding that the host does to the viewers that keeps them weirdly interested in executing more contestants and watching the show consistently?” (Memo, July 8, 2011). Yet while hosts and disembodied announcers go to great lengths to establish that the blame rests at America’s feet, contestants rarely refer to blame in their final words. The manner in which the show manages the issue of blame cools out the contestants through a combination of public ritual and placing the onus on the departing contestant to frame their death as a good one, thus mitigating some of the anger contestants might otherwise feel in their moment of death. Forgetting that the show is ultimately responsible for the structure of the game, contestants let the blame sit, unremarked, on the audience and instead routinely express profound gratitude toward the judges, partners, and the show. In contrast, as we will show later, blame becomes much more salient in the actual eulogy work in the Internal Voting sphere when it is entangled throughout all the interactions of the contestants.
Eulogy Work: Themes and Strategies
Contestants engage in eulogy work during the exit ritual, which takes place within the above context of blame and life as fame. Differential access to fame capital becomes relevant. On Dancing with the Stars, we see contestants’ relationship to fame as they refer to their external fame to lessen the symbolic severity of their show death. Ralph (DWTS 12, 17) reflects on his experience as “a highlight in my entire career,” while Lil’ Kim reminds herself and others of her external fan base saying, “I think I brought different viewers [to the show]” (DWTS 8, 17). In these examples, Ralph’s and Lil’ Kim’s comments suggest that the negative effects of their death on the show are mitigated by their preexisting “career” and “different viewers.”
Furthermore, contestants on Dancing with the Stars smooth their transition between realities by referencing their real-life relationships: [I’m ready to] be the daddy. [I] haven’t seen my kids in four weeks. (Chris) (DWTS, 12, 11) I’m not the best dancer but [I] am the best mom . . . and I’m coming home. (Kendra) (DWTS, 12, 13)
Referencing the future helps contestants put their experience on the show into perspective and minimizes the emotional impact of their death. Such future-talk bridges their fame within the context of the show to their (still famous, but differently so) lives outside of the show: contestants understand the ways in which they are occupying liminal space-time on the show, and justify this transient liminality as well as their transition out of it.
Similarly, contestants thank their professional dance partner and contextualize their experience, further emphasizing personal relationships and minimizing the death: I wish I could have done better for Jonathan. . . . I couldn’t ask for a better partner. (Belinda) (DWTS, 8, 3) It was nothing but a pleasurable experience. Made a lot of good friends. (Mike) (DWTS, 12, 5)
Here, eulogy work normalizes these relationships as aspects of ongoing celebrity life. These relationship references allow contestants’ eliminations to function as moments of self-development and understanding for celebrities with already-existing fame capital. Given that their fame is less at stake relative to American Idol contestants, Dancing with the Stars contestants are able to focus on family and friendships.
On American Idol, however, contestants on the chopping block must perform more challenging eulogy work. Once the results are read, a brief montage helps the deceased understand him or herself in the context of the show, from the point of view of the show. The montage provides a frame for the newly deceased as they try to interpret their elimination. Contestants, not the show, provide their own eulogy before departing the “American Idol Universe” (AI, 10, 21).
Like contestants on Dancing with the Stars, those voted off of American Idol reference fame, but in ways that highlight their lack of fame outside the show and their return to mundane post-show reality. The contestants arrive with little to no fame capital and seek to earn it through their life on the show. Their eulogy work entails gratitude toward American Idol and the judges while referencing the value of fame capital as the American dream: It’s like a dream come true. You perform for 30 million people. All the things you think of when you dream about being an entertainer. American Idol made it happen instantly for me. I’ll never forget this experience. (George) (AI 3, 36) This is the American dream. (Matthew) (AI 3, 24)
Comments referring to contestants’ dreams suggest that valuable fame capital was “instantly” generated through the show itself, although whether and how this dream will continue is uncertain after contestants disappear from the show. Their death means something different, hitting contestants harder and turning their eulogy into a dramatic final moment of farewells.
American Idol contestants also engage in future-talk, but because of their lesser fame capital, they cannot do so in the same way as those on Dancing with the Stars. However, American Idol contestants (in addition to show producers) still actively engage in hopefully generating future fame capital through processes of memory-making (Braun 1999); that is, the contestants on American Idol construct their futures in terms of their pasts on the show, citing newly realized dreams. There is often no foreseeable future of fame and stardom that awaits them, and many will return to their previous lives without achieving any more renown. The host’s reproachful assertion to the viewing audience that one American Idol participant will be on the “Gary Coleman express train to has-been-ville and it’s your fault” (AI, 3, 20) emphasizes this. As we have shown, this characteristic eulogy work helps them frame their death as a good death.
Internal Vote
Shows where the power of the chopping block rests with the contestants themselves fall into the Internal Vote category. In this category, we analyzed Survivor (S) and Big Brother (BB). Here, contestants are sequestered together—either in the remote wilderness or in a cushy, colorful, and heavily surveilled home—for several weeks and, after rounds of voting, the final contestant standing wins. A series host provides structure and occasional commentary on the weekly action. In these shows, the exit ritual occurs as the culmination of a series of challenges in which contestents vie for “immunity” during the vote at the end of that week or episode. The contestents then vote individually to eject a peer from the game.
In Survivor, contestants gather in the evening around a flickering fire for “tribal council” where they discuss the week’s events. They then tromp, one-by-one, to the voting area and write another contestent’s name on a slip of paper. Amidst dramatic music, Jeff Probst, the host, reads the names one at a time, while the camera frequently focuses on various contestans, their eyes darting nervously to others with whom they had voting arrangements. Finally a contestant accumulates enough votes to be voted “off the island.” The ejected contestant approaches Probst with his torch, which is extinguished as a symbolic ritual act, and he or she must leave immediately.
In Big Brother, contestants gather in the living room and walk individually to the “diary room” where they will cast their vote on video. Upon completion of the voting, the host, located outside of the contestants’ house, announces, amid suspensful music, who has been evicted. This contestant must exit immediately, grabbing perfuctory hugs as he or she exits the front door, back into the outside world. In both shows, a brief ceremony accomplishes the removal of a contestant. The eliminated contestant has the opportunity to vent and perform eulogy work to a camera off-site (i.e., not in front of the remaining contestants), with the knowledge that the video, or clips of it, will be aired on the show.
While the External Vote shows provide clear and simple frames with easy-to-digest story lines, Internal Vote shows seek to dramatize interpersonal relations. This relationship focus, combined with the locus of blame, creates different themes in the eulogy work of these participants. Contestants are, however, still engaging in the same processes of understanding their departure, saving face, cooling out their own death, and trying to frame their death as a good one, for the imagined audience and themselves, while publicly coping with the emotions of the moment. Because of the heightened complexity of the emotions in play in this sphere, our analysis necessarily becomes more complex, particularly around issues of blame.
Allegory: Community = Light = Life
The exit emotions in this sphere are connected to feelings of social exclusion. Death suggests an allegory of excommunication and social isolation where light, which symbolizes community, is life; the absence of light, therefore, symbolizes expulsion from community. In Big Brother, for example, when an individual is “evicted” from the house, his or her photograph shifts from color to black and white, moving them metaphorically out of the light and into the shadows of death. In Survivor, the connection to light is even more explicit, as Probst states that “in this game, fire represents your life . . . when the fire’s gone, so are you” (S, 22, 3). As each contestant is voted off, Probst symbolically extinguishes the contestant’s torch with a ceremonial snuffer, and the contestant must leave immediately, without speaking again. Remaining contestants may respond in a low-key manner if an appropriately quiet goodbye is called over the departing shoulder, but other than simple, brief responses, the contestant is now dead.
Contestants on both shows embrace the symbolism of light as community. In one of the Survivor seasons, eliminated contestants live in isolation on “Redemption Island” for a period of time and then compete in a challenge to try to return to the game. As Ralph is voted off, he neglects to take his extinguished torch with him. Probst stops him, saying, “Not so fast. Grab your torch, head to Redemption Island. You’re still in this game” (S, 22, 11). Although the torch was extinguished, Ralph had to bring it with him if he had any hope of reentering the game. In other seasons, the torch is left behind, as there is no hope of redemption, a term which in itself supports the symbolism of life as an allegory for community membership and death as an allegory for excommunication and social isolation.
Contestants centrally reference community in their eulogy work. When Matt is voted out, he says in his eulogy, “I like these people. I wanna be friends with these people. Well, they don’t wanna be friends with me. Apparently, I’m just not very good at this game of Survivor” (S, 22, 8). One’s relationship to community is of paramount importance in the voting, and contestants cool each other out by referencing community membership. As part of the voting ritual, contestants may say a few words about their fellow contestants to the camera as they cast their vote. Sarita justifies her vote by saying, “maybe if you spent more time thinking about how you fit in with this tribe you would still be around” (S, 22, 6). Probst, offering a few words of explanation after one such ritual states that the vote “illustrates how you live together in a society and get along” (S, 22, 10). Providing such a ritual script gives contestants the vocabulary with which to frame their own departures and their justifications for why others should be (or should have been) the ones to go.
Big Brother contestants are also invested in bonding, community, and membership. Contestants reflect on their time in the Big Brother house by referencing their experience of community therein, such as when Lane states, “You are my second family” (BB, 12, 19). Big Brother’s and Survivor’s contestants’ eulogic references to bonds with their (temporary) communities illustrate the powerful excommunication-as-death allegory employed in the Internal Vote shows. Contestants frame this excommunication as uniquely painful and perform emotion work to manage it, as we show below, both for themselves and for their fellow contestants. Excommunication runs the risk of stigmatizing contestants as they shamefully transition to the post-show real world, a risk they must manage by referencing their family and friendship skills.
The Blame Game: Show Glorification Structure → as All-Powerful → Structure Justifies Action
Due to the allegory in play, and the focus on heightened interpersonal drama, blame in this sphere is placed on the group or a subset of the group, and those engaged in eulogy work often emphasize this community-directed blame. Before describing the strategies that accomplish this eulogy work, we turn to themes originating in the structure of the show. In short, Internal Vote shows require contestants to glorify the game. As such, the structure becomes viewed as all-powerful, justifying actions and focusing blame on community members.
A. Show glorification
Contestants glorify the game in a number of ways. For example, contestants in Big Brother employ the term “showmance” to describe a romance occurring within the context of the show. Such an exalted game creates a bracketed space and time where activities, such as romance, take on special meaning and terms within the game. Those showmances that continue outside the post-show reality carry with them a certain sacredness relative to the rest of our profane romances. This significance is evidenced by the existence of websites such as “Big Brother: Best and Worst Showmances” 5 and the appearance of a showmance couple, Rachel and Brendon, as a team on another reality TV show, The Amazing Race.
In addition, the rhetoric Big Brother contestants use firmly brackets the space and time of the show from non-show reality. Ragan, for example, clearly separates reality television and real-reality when he remarks that “I thought I would backstab and be different than in the real world, but I really bonded with Matt” (BB, 12, 25). This “real world” versus reality TV distinction requires a separation between the deified show and mundane real reality.
Contestants are even more explicit on Survivor about the glorification of the game: I feel honored to be able to play a game that not many people get to play. (Jessica) (S, 14, 1) It feels so good to play with you amateurs. You give away so much. You don’t even know enough to keep your mouth shut. (Boston Rob) (S, 22, 1)
These quotes suggest how contestants raise the game aloft. While Jessica feels honored, Boston Rob exults in the game by pointing out the tremendous requisite skill he feels he possesses. He clearly believes that those engaged in the game need to bring appropriate, unique skills to bear to escape his scorn. Contestants’ locatedness within the game is grounds for altered, normalized behavior that may not be acceptable in the context of post-game reality.
B. Structure as all-powerful
When contestants invest the game with such status, its structure becomes all-powerful. On several occasions, Probst, as host, emphasizes this attention to the show’s structure: If there is one truth to this game, it is you have to want to win it to make it to the end. Four of you remaining all say that you do. (S, 14, 8)
The “truth” of Survivor and individual motivations within the show are tightly linked to the show’s particular and inescapable structure. The definition of the situation (Thomas 1923) the contestants hold is that the game format deeply affects all emotions and behavior during the course of play. Awareness of this pervasive structure is exemplified when David arrives on Redemption Island on Survivor and talks to Matt:
What is Survivor doing to us?
Don’t know, man. (S, 22, 9)
The game is not only anthropomorphized, but held responsible for profoundly affecting or changing the participants. As Brendon points out on Big Brother: Nobody understands. I mean, you’re locked in that house. It’s a really nice version of prison. . . . Brains go out the window as soon as you walk through those doors. (BB, 12, 22)
Here, the structure of the show is seen as analogous to prison, and “brains” (or behaviors normalized in non-show reality) are prohibited by the embodied constraints of the show. In the end, contestants believe that they must bow to the all-powerful sway of the structure of the game by developing a game-specific set of expert skills (and morals) to survive.
The rules and norms of the game are the central elements of the structure of these shows. While rules are explicit, norms are powerful. For example, while the skill of the “blindside,” shocking another contestant by turning coat and voting him or her off in a surprise elimination, is not written into the rule-book, it is an expected and revered part of the game. Although some try to play the game without partaking in this seemingly backhanded behavior, previous seasons have firmly established a norm of ruthless behavior. When Matt is voted back to Redemption Island a second time, the remaining contestants exclaim:
Let the fireworks begin.
Genius is what that was.
Oh my God, that poor kid.
What the hell guys? (S, 22, 8)
David’s comments about the genius maneuver of the blindside acknowledge the structure of the game and its emotional effects. Contestants are shocked and impressed by the blindside as a skill.
Many do suffer at the mercy of these expectations and rules. Conflicted, Monet says, “I thought it would be easier for me to be fake buddy-buddy” (BB, 12, 7). In the end, however, the norms are clear: Only your second Tribal Council and already a vicious blindside. You guys are learning this game quickly. (Probst) (S, 22, 2)
Contestants learn the strategies of “buddy-buddy” and “blindside” strategies as behaviors required by the structure of the show.
C. Structure Justifies Action
Within this rigid, all powerful system, the structure justifies actions and is the context for blame. The interpretation of the game as society offers an opportunity for cooling out fellow contestants and for managing guilt about game strategy. A contestant can blame the game if he or she has to vote off someone he or she likes. The following are typical of this kind of blame-talk: This is not a vote of betrayal; this is a vote of strategy. Thank you so much for the friendship. (During the voting) (S, 3, 10) Sorry, Michelle, it’s nothing personal. Just playing the game. (During the voting) (S, 14, 9) You became too much of a competitor and too much of a threat. I’m sorry. (Ashley voting for Grant) (S, 22, 13)
In these quotes, the distinction between feelings like “betrayal,” sorrow, and game-justified behavior (“strategy,” “playing the game,” “threat,” and “war”) suggest how the structure of the game enables contestants to explain their otherwise hurtful behavior, cooling themselves out in the context of their expulsion.
If a contestant must vote off someone whom he or she dislikes, the game can be used as justification for judging that person in specific ways, particularly because life is framed within an allegory for social participation and community: Frank, you have been nothing but rude, grouchy, and a poor sport. The last few days with you have been insufferable. Bottom line, you been a real downer. I can’t wait to see you gone. (During the voting) (S, 3, 9) You actually dug your own grave in this one, my friend. (Matt about Andrew) (BB, 12, 10) I vote to evict tequila, vomit, and $100 bills—Rachel. (Britney) (BB, 12, 16)
Here, contestants being evicted are constructed as social outcasts who have earned their own death.
The eulogy work also reveals the locus of blame within the structure of the game: [Screams] Aaaaaaaaaaar. I’m extremely pissed off. I’m angry. They got me good, man. . . . Didn’t see anything coming. All of a sudden—Boom. Got smoked in the mouth with a cinder block. (Rocky) (S, 14, 7) So I’ve been had, and, um, I’m not too happy about it. Um, I actually really, really like the entire group of both tribes. . . . Right now I’m just looking forward to seeing them all after they’ve clawed each other’s eyes out, later on. (Sylvia) (S, 14, 3)
Rocky, for example, ruefully acknowledges that he has been blindsided and sees his eviction as part of the game. He does not see them as behaving outside the rules or norms of the game. Sylvia, one of the first voted off in her season, looks forward with glee to the expected behavior that lies ahead. Even feelings of schadenfreude are allowable, given the structure of the game.
Eulogy Work: Themes and Strategies
The structure of the deified game, with the official rules and the expected norms, provides a foundation for contestants’ eulogy work. Three dominant strategies emerge: display of extreme emotions, reclamation of pride, and reinforcement or overcoming of the allegory.
Because of the elevated interpersonal drama within Internal Vote shows, contestants must cope with heightened emotions, both individually and in front of a public audience. While a range of emotional expressions emerge from Survivor and Big Brother, we found that there were slightly more expressions of love on Big Brother, while comments from contestant expulsions on Survivor tended towards hate and anger: I hope to never see you again. (S, 22, 1) I was very, very shocked by the vote tonight. It hurts to get blindsided like that. . . . When the next challenge comes around, think about voting me off and think about who you kept. And if you go home empty-handed, maybe you should think about the decision you made. (Erica) (S, 14, 2) Love you guys as brothers. (Enzo) (BB, 12, 30) You are my second family (Lane) (BB, 12, 19)
While these comments demonstrate how contestants managed the heightened negative and positive emotions of these kinds of shows, much of the eulogy work is dedicated to reclaiming one’s pride as contestants prepare to transition back to the post-show real world. The allegory of death on the show as excommunication and potential isolation becomes more salient. The individual has just been cast out by his or her fellow contestants, and they are no longer a part of the show’s community, yet they must prepare to rejoin their post-show communities. It takes some significant eulogy work to frame their death as a good death. When the deceased attempt to reclaim pride, they refer to their own personal strengths, their family, and their ability to be part of a community. The excommunicated attempt to mitigate the implications of death as an allegory for being a social outcast.
Personal strengths can include skill in the game, but also the strength to stay true to oneself despite it. Andrew emphasizes that his family will be proud that he “remained faithful . . . in this atmosphere” (BB, 12, 10). Mookie is more ambivalent as he strives for the right balance between blaming shifting alliances and wishing to participate in community: I’m pretty relieved to be outta the game, but at the same time it would’ve been nice to still [be] in the game, had the alliances stayed put for me. . . . I wish I could be back there, raising hell and making everyone’s lives miserable, just as miserable as mine has been. Kinda like grass is greener on the other side. It’s unfortunate that I’m out of the game, but it was a great experience and I wouldn’t take it back for anything. (S, 14, 11)
Anthony, however, gives a more typical litany, asserting that he is socially skilled: I’m a little pissed off. I’m a lot pissed off. I’m mad at myself for apparently not screaming to the world, being a jerk, because that’s what you need to prove that you’re out for a million dollars. . . . Regardless of what Rocky said, I have great social skills. [emphasis added] (S, 14, 6)
As these quotes suggest, by underscoring an ability to participate in community skillfully, the deceased frames his or her departure to avoid looking like a social failure. Although the game is allegedly about how well you can work in the group, those on their way out reframe their exit to reinforce a sense of self and pride in their social skills.
In reframing their experiences, contestants challenge the allegory of social isolation itself. On Big Brother, we found that contestants work to create links to relationships in the real world, outside the context of the show.
If what you have is real like you tell me, it’s probably worth more than a half-million. (Hayden to Rachel about her showmance with Brendon) (BB, 12, 16) I love each and every one of you. . . . We’re friends forever, like it or not. (Britney) (BB, 12, 22)
In these two cases, a good death involves the continuation of relationships created in the context of the show, suggesting that contestants challenge the allegory of the show as an all-powerful structured reality distinct from everyday life. There are instances, however, where the contestant reinforces the allegory, such as when Kristen avows, “I am gonna be the same way I am outside. . . . I am true to myself” (BB, 12, 13). Here, she reinforces the allegory by acknowledging that there is an “inside” and an “outside.” She strives to maintain a unified and impervious self, while recognizing that this requires work, otherwise she would not have to say it explicitly.
On Survivor, contestants are far more likely to reinforce the community-as-life allegory in their eulogy work: It’s a real reality right now that my second chance is over and the game’s over. (Krista) (S, 22, 6) I still have nothing to hang my head about. And I’m proud of how I played the game and I wouldn’t change anything. (Ashley) (S, 22, 14)
Again, these contestants engage in game glorification in the liminal time-space of the game to separate themselves and their lives in the post-show world from their temporarily-real time on the show. Their eulogy work recognizes their emotions, their pride, and their stake in the structure of the game.
Choosing Individual/Deity
The two shows we chose for this category are The Apprentice (A) and The Bachelor/ette (B/Bt). Contestants must compete to win the economic or affectionate favor of a single, powerful decision maker; that is, a choosing individual, or oligarchy, makes the decision about whom to keep and whom to cut. Action centers on contestants’ efforts to succeed in various business-oriented tasks (in the case of The Apprentice) and in group and individual dates (in the case of The Bachelor/ette). Each show offers broad parameters, rules, and norms in their structure to aid the choosing individual.
In The Bachelor, the rose ceremony features the choosing individual distributing roses contestants must accept to remain in the game. He must choose whom to retain based on whom he considers relationship-worthy. In the end, however, the bachelor makes his decision based on his own criteria either before the rose ceremony or in the moment of the ceremony itself. The rose ceremony consists of the bevy of hopeful romantics gathered in a semicircle facing the choosing hunk (or hunkette, in the case of The Bachelorette) who hovers over a pile of roses numbering one less than the number of hopefuls. He or she distributes the roses one by one, asking if the hopeful will accept the rose. The bachelor or bacholorette may justify their decision before they say the name of who gets the next rose, but they may not. Finally, there are two left without roses, hopefuls waiting to hear their name. The contestant left rose-less must leave immediately.
In The Apprentice, Donald Trump wields his choosing power as he likes. Broadly, he is looking for a good corporate leader, but in the end he can justify the decision however he wants, or not at all. Those at risk for being fired gather in the “boardroom” where they sit on one side of a long table, all facing Donald Trump who sits with a consultant on either side of him. They engage in a conversation about the week’s events, led by Trump, who often demands to know reasons for contestants’ actions and where they believe the blame should fall. He often corrects them if he disagrees. At any moment in this conversation, Trump may decide to let the ax fall, or he may ask some to leave and only a few to remain, from which he will choose, at his leisure, who is fired. Once a name is spoken, Trump’s decision is final and the conversation is over. The contestants exit the boardroom with the fired individual heading immediately to an elevator to leave alone. In both shows, the departing participant enters a taxi where he or she performs eulogy work on camera for an imagined audience at a later air-date.
Allegory: Opportunity = Life
Within this category, the exit ritual is an allegory for a specific loss, be it job, career, or love. These shows offer the contestants an opportunity to compete for a socially meaningful achievement other than a cash reward: a heart, a job, a lifestyle. These achievements are real both in the context of the show and in the context of post-show reality, as eliminated contestants proceed to pursue a (less dramatized) job or relationship in their real, everyday lives.
One theme that constantly emerges, in the eulogy work and in the preceding exit ritual, is the glorification of the shows’ socially relevant achievements, which in turn exalts the opportunity before the contestant. Like the glorification of the structure of Internal Vote shows, this framing allows contestants to perform emotion work in a comforting and meaningful framework. In the Bachelor/ette, the contestants and the seeking man or woman idealize the romantic relationship. We can see this idealization when Chantal bemoans her loss, “I’ve never been, um, treated like that in a relationship and this is how a woman should be treated” [emphasis added] (B, 15, 8). Chantal conceptualizes the perfect romantic relationship and expects that it exists, or has potential to exist, within the show. Brad, in the same episode, reflects on his decision, saying, “I didn’t feel the way a man should feel after you [Chantal] tell him you love him” (B, 15, 8). He, too, displays a glorified expectation about romantic love. Madison similarly states, “It’s not so easy as walking into a fairy tale and walking out with Prince Charming” (B, 15, 3). She clearly articulates idealized romantic expectations for her experience in the show, although they are shattered as she exits the stage.
On The Apprentice, however, it is Donald Trump himself who is deified; on the show, he has ultimate power and control over the fate of contestants. Like the fickle gods of the Greeks, if a contestant errs in the boardroom or rubs him the wrong way, Trump can and will fire him or her instantly. Hope, giving her eulogy in the taxi-ride away from Trump Towers, shakes her head and says, “It’s something cool to be fired by Trump” (A, 11, 9). Even in a contestant’s death, Trump’s status is glorified.
Each of these shows emphasizes the relevant death (opportunity loss) symbolism. In The Apprentice, doors are forever opening and closing. As a contestant is fired, he or she leaves the boardroom, with the door shown closing behind him or her. In The Bachelor/ette, flowers are the dominant symbol. Flowers are used extensively on the show, even beyond the rose ceremony. Both the doors and the flowers are symbols of continued opportunity with the dyadic others: the bachelor, bachelorette, or Trump.
The Blame Game: Evaluation of the Dyad
Reflecting on the importance of the romantic liaison in The Bachelor/ette, and the power of Trump in The Apprentice, we were not surprised to see the choosing individual or deity often reflecting on the performance of the contestant within the dyad when making decisions. Donald Trump is particularly vocal in his reflection process, using contestants’ performances and “problems” as justification for eliminations.
You have an anger problem. Not an effective communicator. Hot temper. (Trump) (A, 3, 9) Total lack of judgment, arrogant, not smart, total waste of our time. (Trump) (A, 3, 2)
Here, Trump identifies and evaluates personal failings on the part of contestants, and this evaluative process is justifiable and expected. The central bachelors and bachelorettes similarly reflect on the dyad to justify their choices. Brad exemplifies this kind of reflection when he articulates his thoughts on his latest cut, “It was extremely bittersweet for me . . . that would have become a volatile relationship” (B, 15, 7). Brad’s evaluation may seem less harsh than Trump’s, but, as the deciders of the shows, both are justified in articulating these evaluations.
Eulogy Work: Themes and Strategies
The contestants also evaluate their own performance in the dyad as part of their eulogy work when they are making sense of and attempting to frame their death as a good one. Some are more successful at cooling themselves out than others. In The Bachelor/ette, contestants sometimes express indignation, but more often than not they reflect on their performance as part of the dyad with sadness or confusion.
I think he was intimidated by me. (Kimberly) (B, 15, 3) It doesn’t make sense. . . . I really felt like Brad and I had that thing that we were to be together. My heart just really hurts me right now. I just feel really stupid. How could I have been so convinced . . . ? (Chantal) (B, 15, 10) You question yourself, like, “What am I doing wrong? What’s wrong with me?” (Jon) (Bt, 7, 1)
Contestants in The Bachelor/ette express self-doubt and, to some degree, self-deprecation, and are more uncertain about their sense of self relative to contestants on The Apprentice.
In The Apprentice, contestants were much more indignant. They reflect on their success, or lack thereof, by listing their skills, values, and qualities: I’m very confident you lost a great negotiator tonight. (Brian) (A, 3, 2) I showed honor, I showed integrity, I stepped up to the plate. (Kristen) (A, 3, 4) I’m not intimidated by people. I take vision and I will fight for what I want and I want to work for you. I’m a born leader. (Alex) (A, 3, 14)
These reflections result from Trump’s direct critiques during the elimination, comments that the contestant must refute to make his or her death acceptable. Reflections on performance in the dyad occupy much of the eulogy work of the newly deceased. They may allow contestants to imagine potential success in a future, post-show reality, as their sense of self evolves to incorporate this visibly emotional death. The future possibilities, however, for romantic relationship successes seem more ambivalent than employment successes, given contestants’ self-evaluative comments.
Another theme that appears in the contestants’ eulogy work is future-talk. We have seen future-talk in other spheres, but in the Choosing Individual/Deity sphere, future-talk is closely linked with affirmations of the connection between the allegory and post-show reality. Contestants on The Bachelor seek romance that will continue into time not bracketed by the show. One fan site which tracks the success of couples formed on these shows informs us that only 4 of 23 couples are still together, two of which are from the two most recent seasons of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette.
6
Despite these relationship failures, contestants strive to assure themselves that their experiences on the show will carry over into the real world outside of the show. By conceptualizing the time after or outside of the show as what is real, contestants reaffirm the bracketed time and space of the show while simultaneously deconstructing the bracketing: When I say this is real for me, I’m looking for the rest of my life. (Brad) (B, 15, 9) We’re going to have a great journey together. (Ashley) (Bt, 7, 1) Every single thing that we have, we always will have, is real. Very, very real. (Brad) (B, 15, 10)
Framing experiences within the show as “real,” integrated into “the rest of my life,” allow contestants to manage their performance in the context of the show as elements of a longer-term process of self-understanding. Indeed, sociologists know that time, although bracketed, still happens (that even “fake” reality is “really” happening). Their experiences will undoubtedly follow them, although not necessarily in the ways that they hoped or planned.
On The Apprentice, future-talk, particularly in the moment of eulogy work, as opposed to talk during the exit ritual, grounds itself in the “real” world, external to the show. Contestants reaffirm for their imagined audience that they exist in the world external to the show, that they will be successful in the future: I feel like I was released, completely released. I feel like I can go forward and start a new life. (Alex) (A, 3, 14) Anybody out there who’s looking to hire, I think I could be a great asset. (Todd) (A, 3, 1) Mr. Trump, thanks for the opportunity. It was great to meet you. . . . I hope our paths cross in the future. (Brian) (A, 3, 2)
Despite their frustrations with being “fired,” contestants here frame their departure as a lost opportunity from which they can successfully move forward. They remind their imagined audience that they have the skills to carry on in the business world, minimizing and cooling out their presumably temporary loss of status. In some sense, these expressions are parallel to the idea of fame capital we introduced in the External Vote category. Most of the contestants on The Apprentice (outside of celebrity seasons) are extremely successful business people plucked from the height of their success to compete, while those on The Bachelor/ette are not plucked from the height of relationship success, or out of pristine marriages. Those on The Apprentice have what we might call, tongue-in-cheek, success capital. This resource gives contestants the means to minimize the impact of their death in a way The Bachelor/ette contestants cannot. By using future-talk, The Apprentice contestants reassure themselves to an imagined audience, that they can now continue on in life, as successfully as before, if not more successfully.
Conclusion
Competitive reality television has become a mainstay of contemporary American culture. One may even argue that reality television has become a field of cultural production (Bourdieu 1993; Suhr 2012). Transitions involving loss on these shows provide a way for Americans to think about, and play with, ideas of symbolic death and loss in a public and safe way. It may be the case that these shows indicate America’s discomfort with finality or closure and that American culture is more comfortable treating even death as potentially open-ended, as is evidenced in the various ways contestants engage in future-talk. As contestants are eliminated, they perform eulogy work, a form of emotion work as well as a reputation management tool for cooling oneself out. Eulogy work takes different forms across reality television, shaped by the structure of the show (Table 1).
Summary Table.
An external voting audience presents symbolic death that is an allegory for loss of fame. Contestants arrive in various shows with different levels of fame capital. Here, eulogy work takes the form of future-talk and fame bridging, where contestants try to access some fame capital from outside the show. Where such capital is absent or hard to access, contestants try to project forward a potential for fame outside the show.
When the vote is internal, the contestants idealize the game, understanding the structure as an all-powerful justification for behavior. The blame is alternately thrust on the game, justifying voting off both friend and foe. Relationships with other contestants are central to this category and highly dramatized. Interactions, however, exist in bracketed space and time where contestants draw power from their ability to manipulate others, considered the ultimate game-skill. Symbolic death represents excommunication and social isolation. Eulogy work takes the form of reassurance of social skills and reification of the game as contestants grapple with their expulsion from the community.
A choosing individual or deified personage makes the elimination choice in our last category. Contestants’ ability to succeed relies on their skill in adjusting their behavior to match the expectations of the choosing individual. The self in relation to the dyad is a potential source of strength and a source of blame. In this context, eulogy work consists of self-reassurance about the contestant’s performance within the dyad, as well as future-talk and reality bridging, where the contestant seeks to connect his or her experiences to a reality outside of the TV show. As contestants perform eulogy work, the nation watches, caught in the unfolding drama.
Reality television possesses unique characteristics. The specific forms in which emotion work takes place when a contestant is eliminated—managing blame for one’s elimination and references to “real,” “fake,” and liminal realities—are likely ways in which reality TV departs from other social phenomena. Death-talk and future-talk are mechanisms by which reality TV contestants frame their life-course in bracketed time-space to manage their reputation in the face of a journey cut short on a highly public stage. Thus, reality TV can be imagined as creating unique sets of norms, which produce particular types of emotion work, self-management strategies, and collective action.
While it is important not to lose sight of the distinctions between reality television and other cultural objects, we can extrapolate core aspects of our observations to myriad ethnographically investigable phenomena. Prior scholarship on emotion work (Hochschild [1979] 2003) can be applied to a plethora of emotion-laden contexts; eulogy work, on the other hand, denotes the specific kind of emotion work that occurs during the presentation of self in the context of personal loss. Cooling the mark out can be an important emotional, social, and cognitive strategy in a variety of social circumstances to which saving face is integral.
For example, reality TV contests with an external audience, like American Idol and Survivor, mimic competitive spaces involving loss in the face of an external audience like democratic elections and sports matches. Presidential debates and speeches are often sites wherein candidates frame their life’s work in the context of their participation in the race (McLeod 1999). Candidates construct such personal and public narratives to have not only cognitive, but also emotional, appeal to various segments of the voting masses—a performative strategy McLeod and others have termed “sociodrama” (Kertzer 1987; McLeod 1999; Turner 1974). Similar to Survivor, sports teams attempting to make sense of wins and losses against other teams will often rely on the feeling rules (Hochschild [1979] 2003; Zurcher 1982, 14) established by the team, the coach, and the game writ large to relate to one and another and cope with loss. Teams ascribe blame for loss or the reasons for a win to many possible entities: individual teammates, the team itself, the coach, or the referee.
These shows may also help individuals manage responses to smaller-scale public performances like on-the-job talks, students’ evaluations of their professors, wedding toasts, and karaoke. Eulogy work in shows featuring choosing individuals, like The Apprentice and The Bachelor/ette, might help viewers manage losses around jobs and relationships (break-ups and divorces, for example). Finally, shows involving internal votes may provide tools for managing ongoing small-group dynamics like navigating friendships and work relationships. In this vein, insights from our project may be generalized to various contexts where personal loss is experienced, and where individuals feel the need to justify it to themselves and to a broader audience. Whether “America votes” to choose its “Next Top Leader,” or teammates rally to explain the missed penalty that cost them the game—whether a person one meets through an online dating site makes it to the second date, or whether you are not chosen to get a promotion from among a team of managers vying for the spot—conducting forms of emotion work to manage one’s public sense of self in the face of failure often becomes a vital part of performance.
One limitation of our study is that we have not surveyed audiences’ reactions to these shows, and our data do not include the experience of TV audiences. Studying audiences’ responses would specify how eulogy work is culturally co-constructed, as reactions shape future performances and future contestants’ eulogy work. Furthermore, we have not evaluated the effectiveness of eulogy work, in terms of contestants’ ongoing constructions of selves and audiences’ responses. The variable persistence of eulogy work across these few reality TV genres, however, suggests a cultural pattern that requires further exploration and evaluation.
Finally, ECA helps investigate new sociodramatic spaces where people engage in the presentation of self, like television, digital spaces and the Internet, and social media (like Facebook and Twitter). Conceptualizing human interaction as mediated by technology advances contemporary studies of the dramaturgical self by capturing the researchers’ own affective and technologically mediated engagement with text in the absence of co-presence. Doing so sheds light on empirical and theoretical voids in the ethnographic study of human interaction. Emergent work in “technoself studies” (Luppicini 2013; Fornaciari 2013) and science and technology studies (STS) are addressing these voids: here, technology is seen as constitutive of how people dramaturgically present themselves to audiences, and how we, as researchers, affectively engage with our observations. Although our study does not explicitly draw on these literatures, future research can explore these ethnographic frontiers to analyze how people perform emotion work in various technologically mediated, sociodramatic settings (Brissett and Edgley 1990). As television becomes an increasingly viable medium for showcasing ordinary people’s competing for extraordinary prizes, the publicness of spectacle renders the management of self in the context of “generalized others” (Mead 1934) a necessary and important part of one’s everyday performances.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Wendy Griswold as well as the reviewers for their insightful and considered suggestions that greatly strengthened this article. We are also grateful for the support of doctoral fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Northwestern University.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
*
In citations, the season is listed first and the episode second (season, episode).
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