Politics of Makeover: Initiating Organisational Change and Positioning the Unemployed in a Swedish Reality TV Series

Abstract

This article reports on a reality TV series, Sweden’s best employment service, broadcast on Swedish public service television in 2018. The purpose was to investigate ongoing political transformations in the Swedish welfare model. The series focuses not only on unemployment, the unemployed and their life situation but more specifically on the organisation of the Swedish Public Employment Service (PES) as reflected at a local PES office. Informed by a cultural studies approach to the politics of popular culture, the aim of this article is to examine how the makeover is staged in the series. The article focuses on how the unemployed are positioned in the series in a setting of organisational change initiated at the local PES office. The analysis provides insights into how the makeover is staged and initiated in reality TV and illustrates how the unemployed are positioned as willing and able to work and to actively seek opportunities. The unemployed are not the primary target for the makeover in the series. The makeover is primarily directed at the organisation of the PES and its managers. Consequently, unemployment is presented in the series as not only a concern for the individual citizen but also for society.Nine o’clock on channel sixGet the beer and get the chipsDeath is live upon the screenIt’s reality TV!Tankard, R.T.V., 1994