The Late-Night Infomercial as an Electronic Site of Ritual Self-Transformation: The Case of “Personal Power”

Abstract

AbstractThis article argues that a late-night television infomercial displays the structure of a ritual rite of passage. It tracks how the infomercial creates a state of ideological liminality that is redressed by a series of poetic (linguistic) parallelisms. This culminates in a trope of incorporation that transforms the social identity of the viewer from “unsuccessful” to “successful.” Ritual in form yet electronic in medium, the conclusion relates the ritual merging of consumer and new product type in processes of commodification to the ways in which cultural analogy, ideological and otherwise, moves certain kinds of social meanings into new arenas of practice.