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From Making Do to Making‐Over: Reality TV and the Reinvention of Britishness
Author(s) -
JENNINGS RACHEL
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
the journal of popular culture
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.238
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1540-5931
pISSN - 0022-3840
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5931.2011.00832.x
Subject(s) - britishness , making of , citation , media studies , art history , history , sociology , library science , law , advertising , political science , computer science , politics , business
big bum? Do not despair—you can still go to the ball. If you are brave enough to face those scary godmothers Trinny and Susannah, they will tell you in no uncertain terms What Not to Wear. Do you suspect your garden may have inspired T. S. Eliot to write The Wasteland? No fear. The matey experts from Ground Force can transform it into a pastoral idyll in two days. Has your pokey, gloomy British house been stagnating on the market? Perhaps you need the infamous House Doctor to breeze through and eradicate both your personal history and personality with a few cans of magnolia. A significant proportion of British reality TV is in the makeover line, involving the rapid transformation of some facet of a person’s lifestyle through a process that blends fairytale themes with religious ritual. The subject (or victim) on each episode is a Cinderella character (hereafter referred to collectively as ‘‘Cindy,’’ whether an individual, couple, or family unit) who relinquishes existential responsibility and personal power to one or more authority figures. These fairy godmothers (of both sexes) navigate Cindy through a battle to give up the past leading to her rebirth, frequently on the third or seventh day. It is easy to comprehend why makeover shows are a hit in the United States—they slot neatly into the American dream of constant reinvention of the self, played out on a moving frontier. Examples such as Style Court, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Pimp My Ride, and The Swan ‘‘connect to myths of American immigration, evangelicalism, and expansionism’’ (Heller 347). In contrast, Britons are known for making do, rather than making-over. And yet the current wave of these shows originated in