Shaming the working class in post-socialist Reality Television

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which working class participants are shamed in Czech Reality TV programmes. Previous research demonstrates that everyday Reality TV is an exercise in neoliberal governmentality and respective technology of the self, which advances the idea of the entrepreneurial self as a capital investment project and a brand. The article seeks to illuminate the process of stigmatisation of those who do not comply with these norms in the cultural setting of post-socialist neoliberalism. It builds on the arguments contending that neoliberal capitalism was implemented in the post-socialist part of Europe with higher momentum and stronger hegemonic power than in the West. The research looks at the acts of shaming working classes in three different Reality TV programmes as the dynamics through which class positions are moulded in a culture with a yet emerging class structure. The qualitative analysis of shaming interactions reveals that a working class position in the post-socialist cultural setting is articulated predominantly to excessive preservation of habits dating back to the period of socialism or, however, insufficient employment of the innovations and opportunities brought about by capitalism. Qualitative clustering of the targets of shaming resulted in four different types of self – marketised self, depaternalised self, unclassed self and (desperately) inegalitarian self – which the analysed Reality TV programmes endorse as the ideal facets of post-socialist personhood. The master homology between the genre of makeover reality show and post-socialism is detected as both systems are entrenched in the values of a complete overhaul of an individual or society.