This article explores the performance of shame in the context of the public visualizing of abject families on reality television from a psychocultural perspective. The relevance of a recently popular “governmentality perspective” is gestured towards, alongside an emphasis on the importance of taking television’s psychosocial dimensions seriously. The essay attempts to provide a nuanced, psychocultural account of televisual “looking,” which engages with both its ideological and affective elements. Parents are represented as in need of help, but the “help” offered by House of Tiny Tearaways, Supernanny, and Honey We’re Killing the Kids is laden with shames and horrors that are as ideological as they are affective.
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