Reality TV invites new considerations for theorizing celebrity as a cultural commodity whose economic value is based on potential exchange. In this article, I argue that reality TV's construction of a new stratum of celebrity value—ordinary people performing “the real”—supports claims that the industry is moving toward a “flexible” model of economic organization. The production of reality TV expands the labor stock to include nonunionized, nonpaid or low-paid contestants playing themselves, while also displacing unionized actors from production opportunities. Moreover, reality TV's D-level celebrity generates novelty out of audience self-reflexivity with minimal risk and temporal flexibility. Celebrity value, as a mechanism to gather audiences, undergoes a new form of dispensable synergy that shelters the larger system of celebrity valorization from the dual problems of scarcity and clutter.
Albiniak, Paige.2002. Get Ready for a New, Heavy Dose of Reality: Once a Fad, Unscripted Shows Have Become a Schedule Staple. Broadcasting and Cable, December 16.
2.
Anderson, Carla.2004. “Depressed,” “Angry” Yippies Rally in Protest. Philadelphia Daily News, March18, 6.
3.
Andrejevic, Mark.2003. Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched, Critical Media Studies. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
4.
Aronson, Steven M. L.1983. Hype. 1st ed. New York: Morrow.
5.
Benjamin, Walter.1969. Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In Illuminations, ed. H. Arendt.New York: Schocken Books.
6.
Bloom, David.2002. The Money Issue: Showbiz Economy, Employment and Paycheck Levels are Still Searching for Solid GroundDaily Variety , July 24, A1.
7.
Boorstin, Daniel J.1987. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America . 25th anniversary ed. New York : Atheneum.
8.
Braudy, Leo.1986. The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and its History. New York: Oxford University Press.
9.
Brenton, Sam, and Reuben Cohen.2003. Shooting People: Adventures in Reality TV. New York: Verso.
10.
Brodesser, Claude.2004. Roles Rolling Away. Daily Variety, October7, 5.
11.
Carter, Bill.2003. Reality Shows Alter the Way TV Does Business. New York Times, January25, A1, C14.
12.
Caves, Richard E.2000. Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
13.
Christopherson, Susan.1996. Flexibility and Adaptation in Industrial Relations: The Exceptional Case of the U.S. Media Entertainment Industries. In Under the Stars: Essays on Labor Relations in Arts and Entertainment , ed. L. S. Gray and R. L. Seeber.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
14.
Christopherson, Susan, and Michael Storper.1989. The Effects of Flexible Specialization on Industrial Politics and the Labor Market: The Motion Picture Industry. Industrial and Labor Relations Review42 (3): 331—47.
15.
Couldry, Nick.2002. Playing for Celebrity: Big Brother as Ritual Event . Television & New Media3 (3): 283—93.
16.
Cowell, Simon.2003. All Together Now! Publics and Participation in American IdolInvisible Culture6. http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/Issue_6/cowell/cowell.html .
17.
deCordova, Richard.1990. Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
18.
Dovey, Jon.2000. Freakshow: First Person Media and Factual Television . London: Pluto Press.
19.
Dyer, Richard.1979. Stars. London: Educational Advisory Service British Film Institute.
20.
———. 1986. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. New York: St. Martin's Press.
21.
———. [1977] 1991. Four Films of Lana Turner. In Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television, ed. J. Butler.Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
22.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L.1979. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Ewen, Stuart.1988. All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture. New York: Basic Books.
25.
Gabler, Neal.1998. Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality . 1st ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
26.
Gaines, Jane M.1991. Contested Culture: The Image, the Voice, and the Law. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
27.
Gamson, Joshua.1994. Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America . Berkeley: University of California Press.
28.
Garnham, Nicholas.1990. Capitalism and Communication: Global Culture and the Economics of Information. Newbury Park: Sage Publications.
29.
Gitlin, Todd.1983. Inside Prime Time. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books .
30.
Gray, Lois S., and Ronald Leroy Seeber .1996. Under the Stars: Essays on Labor Relations in Arts and Entertainment. Ithaca, NY : ILR Press.
31.
Groves, Christopher.2003. Reality Sets In. Daily Variety , April 28, A2.
32.
Halbert, Debora.2003. Who Owns Your Personality: Reality Television and Publicity Rights. In Survivor Lessons: Essays on Communication and Reality Televsion, ed. M. J. Smith and A. F. Wood.Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers .
33.
Hesmondhalgh, David.2002. The Cultural Industries. London : Sage Publications.
34.
Hill, Annette.2002. Big Brother: The Real Audience. Television & New Media3 (3): 323—40.
35.
Holmes, Su.2004. “Reality goes Pop!” Reality TV, Popular Music, and Narratives of Stardom in Pop IdolTelevision & New Media5 (2): 147—72.
36.
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno . [1944] 1997. Dialectic of Enlightenment, Verso Classics: 15. New York: Verso.
37.
Horton, Donald, and R. Richard Wohl .1956. Mass Communication and Para-social Interaction. Psychiatry19:215—29.
38.
Internet Movie Database.2005a. The Amazing Race (2001 TV Series Documentary): Release Info. http://pro.imdb.com/title/tt0285335/releaseinfo.
39.
———. 2005b. The Bachelor (2002 TV Series Documentary): Release Info . http://pro.imdb.com/title/tt0313038/releaseinfo .
40.
Johnson-Woods, Toni.2002. Big Bother: Why Did that Reality-TV Show become Such a Phenomenon? St. Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press .
41.
Jones, Janet Megan.2003. Show Off Your Real Face: A Fan Study of the UK Big Brother Transmissions (2000, 2001, 2002). Investigating the Boundaries between Notions of Consumers and Producers of Factual Television. New Media & Society5 (3): 400—21.
42.
Kiefer, Peter.2002. SAG Report: Hollywood Roles Decrease in 2001. Hollywood Reporter, July2, 1—2.
43.
Kindem, Gorham.1985. Hollywood's Movie Star System during the Studio EraFilm Reader (6):13—26.
44.
King, Barry.1991. Articulating Stardom. In Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television, ed. J. G. Butler.Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
45.
Klaprat, Cathy.1985. The Star as Market Strategy: Bette Davis in Another Light . In The American Film Industry, ed. T. Balio.Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
46.
Klein, Michael.2004a. Carpenters Picket “Real World” Site . Philadelphia Inquirer, March 30, B2.
47.
———. 2004b. Philadelphia is Part of the “Real World” Again. Philadelphia Inquirer, March 24, B01.
48.
Litwak, Mark.1986. Reel Power: The Struggle for Influence and Success in the New Hollywood. New York: Morrow .
49.
Magder, Ted.2004. The End of TV 101: Reality Programs, Formats, and the New Business of Television. In Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, ed. S. Murray and L. Ouellette.New York: New York University Press.
50.
Marshall, P. David.1997. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
51.
McCarthy, Anna.2005. Crab People from the Center of the Earth. GLQ: AJournal of Lesbian and Gay Studies11 (1): 97—101.
52.
McDonald, Paul.2000. The Star System: Hollywood's Production of Popular Identities . London: Wallflower .
Meyrowitz, Joshua.1985. No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press.
55.
Miège, Bernard.1989. The Capitalization of Cultural Production. New York: International General.
56.
Moran, Joe.2000. Star Authors: Literary Celebrity in America. London: Pluto Press.
57.
Murray, Susan.2004. I Think We Need a New Name for It: The Meeting of Documentary and Reality TV. In Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture , ed. S. Murray and L. Ouellette.New York: New York University Press.
58.
Murray, Susan, and Laurie Ouellette.2004. Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture. New York: New York University Press.
59.
Ong, Walter J.1982. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen.
60.
Paul, Alan, and Archie Kleingartner.1994. Flexible Production and the Transformation of Industrial Relations in the Motion Picture and Television Industry. Industrial and Labor Relations Review47 (4): 663—78.
61.
Peters, Anne K, and Muriel G Cantor .1982. Screen Acting as Work. In Individuals in Mass Media Organisations: Creativity and Constraint , ed. J. S. Ettema and D. C. Whitney.Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
62.
Ponce de Leon, Charles L.2002. Self-Exposure: Human-Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890-1940. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press.
63.
Raphael, Chad.2004. The Political Economic Origins of Reali-TV. In Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, ed. S. Murray and L. Ouellette.New York: New York University Press.
64.
Rein, Irving J., Philip Kotler, and Martin R. Stoller .1997. High Visibility: The Making and Marketing of Professionals into Celebrities. 1st ed. New York: Dodd, Mead.
65.
Rendon, Jim.2004. Unions Aim to Share in Success of Reality TV. New York Times, January 25, C4.
Roscoe, Jane. 2001. Big Brother Australia: Performing the “Real” Twenty-Four Seven . International Journal of Cultural Studies4 (4): 473—88.
68.
Ryan, Bill.1992. Making Capital from Culture: The Corporate Form of Capitalist Cultural Production, De Gruyter Studies in Organization: 35 . Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
69.
Schickel, Richard.1985. Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
70.
Screen Actors Guild.2005a. Performers Bear Brunt of Reality TV and Runaway Production Trends, 2003 Casting Data Showshttp://www.sag.org/sagWebApp/Content/Public/castingdatareports.htm .
Spring, Greg.1998. Booking Wars: Talk Shows See Battle for Celebrity Guests . Electronic Media, February23, 1.
73.
Street, John.2003. The Celebrity Politicians: Political Style and Popular Culture. In Media and the Restyling of Politics: Consumerism, Celebrity and Cynicism, ed. J. Corner and D. Pels.London: Sage.
74.
Sudjic, Deyan.1990. Cult Heroes: How to be Famous for More than Fifteen Minutes . 1st American ed. New York: Norton.
75.
Thompson, John B.1990. Ideology and Modern Culture: Critical Social Theory in the Era of Mass Communication. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
76.
Tkacik, Maureen.2004. In Philadelphia, Trying to Keep it Real. New York Times, March21, 12.
77.
Turner, Graeme.2004. Understanding Celebrity. London : Sage.
78.
Turner, Graeme, Frances Bonner, and P. David Marshall .2000. Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in AustraliaCambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
79.
Wasko, Janet.2003. How Hollywood Works. London : Sage Publications.
80.
Wolk, Josh.2002. Fame Factor. Entertainment Weekly, August2, 32—37.
