Synopses & Reviews
With the explosion of reality television onto screens and schedules worldwide, this timely and original book explores makeover tv, the ubiquitous reality format that has received little critical attention to date. Top writers and scholars take discussion of reality tv to the next level with lively examination of a wide range of contemporary makeover shows, such as Extreme Makeover, The Swan, Faking It, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and The Apprentice, that ultimately speak to television's own enduring ability to reinvent itself. The book is organized around the overarching argument that contemporary makeover programming provides the paradigmatic example of reality television's far-reaching prominence and mass appeal, an appeal that lies in "powers of transformation" or televisual performance that tries not only to capture reality but to intervene in it, with the ultimate aim of remodelling reality. They examine how makeover programming annexes the private space of the home, transforms the body through surgery and rigorous discipline, recreates aspects of social identity and consumer lifestyle, and changes ordinary persons into celebrities and celebrities into ordinary persons.
Review
"This is an interesting collection providing thought-provoking insights into what is actually being made over by the television makeover…a worthy and worthwhile collection." - Elaine Beale, Feminist Review
About the Author
Dana Heller is Professor of English and Director of the Humanities Institute at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. She is the author of Family Plots: The De-Oedipalization of Popular Culture (1995), The Feminization of Quest-Romance: Radical Departures (1990), and the editor of Cross Purposes: Lesbians, Feminists, and the Limits of Alliance (1997), The Selling of 9/11: How a National Tragedy Became a Commodity (2005), and The Great American Makeover: Television, History, Nation (2006).
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements * Contributors * Introduction: Reading the Makeover -- Dana Heller * Part 1 - Remaking Desire: Defining Makeover Television * Programming Reality: Control Societies, New Subjects, and the Powers of Transformation -- Jack Z. Bratich * Mapping Genres: Broadcaster and Audience Perceptions of Makeover Television -- Caroline Dover and Annette Hill * 'Old, New, Borrowed, Blue': Makeover Television in British Primetime -- Nigel Morris * Part 2 - The Celebrity Makeover * 'As seen on TV': Celebrity as Lifestyle Advisor -- Helen Powell and Sylvie Prasad * Reinvent Me as a Celebrity! -- Vanessa Russell * Dressing Down: The Chaotic Camcorder Makeover of a Pop Star and Popular Genre -- Jennifer Gillan * Part 3 - Remodelling Identities: Gender, Sexuality, and Lifestyle * Faking It and the Transformation of Identity -- Joanne Morreale * Self-Made Women: Cosmetic Surgery Shows and the Construction of Female Psychopathology -- Elizabeth Gailey * A Perfect Lie: Visual (Dis)Pleasures and Policing Femininity in Nip/Tuck -- Kim Akass and Janet McCabe * The Gentle Art of Manscaping: Lessons in Hetero-Masculinity From the Queer Eye Guys -- Joanna L. DiMattea *
*Part 4 - The Traffic in Transformations * Makeover Morality and Consumer Culture -- Guy Redden * Extreme Makeover: Home Edition - An American Fairytale -- Gareth Palmer * 'Now I am ready to tell how bodies are changed into different bodies...' Ovid, The Metamorphoses -- Kathryn Fraser * Makeover Madness: The Designable Body and Cosmetic Surgery in Steven Meisel's Fashion Photography -- Anne Jerslev * Bibliography* * Index*