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Abstract
Depictions of white working-class people are steadily on the rise in reality television. To understand this phenomenon, and the ways in which it articulates white working-class people in the United States today, I analyze Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, a popular reality series on TLC featuring a self-described “redneck” family. I argue that this series highlights the family's inability—because of their working-class status—to conform to “ideal whiteness,” a whiteness that displays dominant cultural standards bolstered by neoliberalism, such as wealth, rationality, personal responsibility, and self-control. The family members consequently become exemplars of “inappropriate whiteness,” a marginal identity presented as humorous and, through the use of surveillance and spectacle, authentic.
Notes
[1] Adam Kepler, “‘Honey Boo Boo’ Has the Ratings, if Not the Critics”, The New York Times Online, September 8, 2012, http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/honey-boo-boo-has-the-ratings-if-not-the-critics/ (accessed December 15, 2013).
[2] Michelle Tauber, “TLC Cancels Here Comes Honey Boo Boo Amid Sex Offender Scandal,” People, October 14, 2014, http://www.people.com/article/honey-boo-boo-canceled-tlc (accessed December 21, 2014).
[3] Jennifer Kizer, “Redneckognize! Why Honey Boo Boo Captivated Us This Year”, iVillage, December 12, 2012, http://www.ivillage.com/why-honey-boo-boo-captivated-us-year/1-a-508171 (accessed December 15, 2013).
[4] For more information about this term, see David Shipler, The Working Poor: Invisible in America (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2004); and Michael Zweig, The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 86. Shipler explains that the working-class, also known as the working poor, consists of people who work for wages, especially low wages, including unskilled and semiskilled laborers. Zweig adds that the working-class is not immune to poverty. In fact, more than half of this population experiences poverty at least once over a ten-year period, meaning they are forced to rely on public assistance to survive. Throughout this essay, whenever I mention the working-class, I am referring to those who, whether they are experiencing poverty or not, engage in intensive labor and still struggle to make ends meet.
[5] Mark Andrejevic, Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004); Rachel E. Dubrofsky, “The Bachelor: Whiteness in the Harem,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 23, issue 1 (2006): 39–56; Richard Kilborn, Staging the Real: Factual Programming in the Age of Big Brother (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2003)
[6] Jon Kraszewski, “Country Hicks and Urban Cliques: Mediating Race, Reality, and Liberalism on MTV's The Real World,” in Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, ed. Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 179–96.
[7] Mark Andrejevic and Dean Colby, “Racism and Reality TV: The Case of MTV's Road Rules,” in How Real is Reality TV? Essays on Representation and Truth, ed. David S. Escoffery (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006), 195–211.
[8] Dubrofsky, “Whiteness in the Harem,” 41.
[9] John Reed, Southern Folk, Plain and Fancy: Native White Social Types (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988).
[10] See Laura Grindstaff, The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002); Diana Kendall, Framing Class: Media Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); Gael Sweeney, “The Trashing of White Trash: Natural Born Killers and the Appropriation of the White Trash Aesthetic,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 18, issue 2 (2001): 143–55.
[11] See Angela Cooke-Jackson and Elizabeth K. Hansen, “Appalachian Culture and Reality TV: The Ethical Dilemma of Stereotyping Others”, Journal of Mass Media Ethics 23 (2008): 183–200; Julie Haynes, “Gators, Beavers, and Roaches: Whiteness and Regional Identity in Reality Television,” in Images of Whiteness, ed. Clarissa Behar and Anastasia Chung (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2013), 79–88.
[12] Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn, Reality TV: Realism and Television (London: Wallflower Press, 2005).
[13] Julie Haynes, ‘“I See Swamp People’: Swamp People, Southern Horrors, and Reality Television,” in Reality Television: Oddities of Culture, ed. Allison F. Slade and Burton P. Buchanan (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 249–62.
[14] David Harvey, “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction,” The Annals of the American Academic of Political and Social Science 610, issue 1 (2007): 21–44.
[15] Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose, eds., Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Rationalities of Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
[16] Laurie Ouellette, “‘Take Responsibility for Yourself.’ Judge Judy and the Neoliberal Citizen,” in Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, ed. Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 231–50; Helen Wood and Beverley Skeggs, “Notes on Ethical Scenarios of Self on British Reality TV,” Feminist Media Studies 4 (2004): 205–8.
[17] Nick Couldry, “Reality TV, Or The Secret Theater of Neoliberalism”, Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 30, issue 1 (2008): 3–13; Amy Adele Hasinoff, “Fashioning Race for the Free Market on America's Next Top Model,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 25, issue 3 (2008): 324–43; John McMurria, “Desperate Citizens and Good Samaritans: Neoliberalism and Makeover Reality TV,” Television & New Media 9, issue 4 (2008): 305–32; Laurie Ouellette and James Hay, Better Living Through Reality TV (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008); Katherine Sender, “Queens for a Day: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and the Neoliberal Project,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 23, issue 2 (2006): 131–51.
[18] See Pepi Leistyna, “Social Class and Entertainment Television: What's So Real and New About Reality TV?” in Media/Cultural Studies: Critical Approaches, ed. Rhonda Hammer and Douglas Kellner (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 339–59.
[19] Rachel E. Dubrofsky, The Surveillance of Women on Reality Television: Watching The Bachelor and The Bachelorette (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011).
[20] Suzanna Danuta Walters, Material Girls: Making Sense of Feminist Cultural Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
[21] Christine Brennan, “Tonya, Nancy Reflect on The Whack Heard ‘Round the World,” USA TODAY, January 3, 2014, http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2014/01/02/christine-brennan-tonya-harding-nancy-kerrigan/4294753/ (accessed August 18, 2013).
[22] Bonnie J. Dow, Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women's Movement Since 1970 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), xix.
[23] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin, 1977).
[24] Jeffrey A. Brown, “Class and Feminine Excess: The Strange Case of Anna Nicole Smith,” Feminist Review 81 (2005): 74–94; John S. Turner, “Collapsing the Interior/Exterior Distinction: Surveillance, Spectacle, and Suspense in Popular Cinema,” Wide Angle 20 (1998): 93–123.
[25] Harvey, “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction.”
[26] Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
[27] Mark Andrejevic, Reality TV; Nick Couldry, “Playing for Celebrity: Big Brother as Ritual Event”, Television & New Media 3, issue 3 (2002) 284–91; Rachel E. Dubrofsky and Emily D. Ryalls, “The Hunger Games: Performing Not-performing to Authenticate Femininity and Whiteness,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 31, issue 5 (2014): 395–409.
[28] Hereafter, I will not put “inappropriate whiteness” or “ideal whiteness” in quotation marks, but they should be understood as such, since they are not “real” concepts; they are constructed and made to seem authentic in the context of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. My use of the term “inappropriate whiteness” is inspired by Robyn Wiegman's conceptualization of “counterwhiteness,” which is defined by its disaffiliation from white supremacist practices [see Robyn Wiegman, “Whiteness Studies and the Paradox of Particularity,” Boundary 2 26, issue 3 (1999): 115–50]. I favor the term “inappropriate whiteness,” since “counterwhiteness” suggests that someone who can easily claim a white physical identity can choose to disconnect themselves from the privilege whiteness affords—a choice that white working-class people may never have because their socioeconomic status automatically disconnects them from such privilege.
[29] Richard Dyer, White: Essays on Race and Culture (London: Routledge, 1997); Thomas K. Nakayama and Robert L. Krizek, “Whiteness: A Strategic Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 81, issue 3 (1995): 291–309; Matt Wray, White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
[30] Thomas K. Nakayama and Judith N. Martin, Whiteness: The Communication of Social Identity (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999).
[31] Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz, White Trash: Race and Class in America (New York: Routledge, 1997), 3.
[32] George Yancy, Look, a White!: Philosophical Essays on Whiteness (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012).
[33] Brent M. Heavner, “Liminality and Normative Whiteness: A Critical Reading of Poor White Trash”, Ohio Communication Journal 45 (2007): 65–80.
[34] Robins DiAngelo, “My Class Didn’t Trump My Race: Using Oppression to Face Privilege”, Multicultural Perspectives 8, issue 1 (2006): 52–56.
[35] Grindstaff, The Money Shot; Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray, “What is ‘White Trash’? Stereotypes and Economic Conditions of Poor Whites in the United States,” in Whiteness: A Critical Reader, ed. Mike Hill (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 168–94; Wray, White Trash and Boundaries of Whiteness.
[36] Sarah Banet-Weiser, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999); Beverley Skeggs, Formations of Class and Gender (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997); Valerie Walkerdine, Daddy's Girl: Young Girls and Popular Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
[37] Stephanie Lawler, “Disgusted Subjects: the Making of Middle-Class Identities”, The Sociological Review 53, issue 3 (2005): 435–36.
[38] Ouellette and Hay, Better Living; Wood and Skeggs, “Notes on Ethical Scenarios.”
[39] Wood and Skeggs, “Notes on Ethical Scenarios.”
[40] Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (London: Methuen, 1986), 12.
[41] Mary Russo, The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess, and Modernity (New York: Routledge, 1995).
[42] Mariana Valverde, “Governing Out of Habit,” Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 18 (1998): 217–42.
[43] Nakayama and Krizek, “Whiteness: A Strategic Rhetoric.”
[44] Sarah Banet-Weiser and Laura Portwood-Stacer, “‘I just want to be me again!’ Beauty Pageants, Reality Television, and Post-Feminism,” Feminist Theory 7, issue 2 (2006): 255–72.
[45] Dyer, White, 87.
[46] Russo, The Female Grotesque.
[47] Laura Grindstaff and Emily West, “‘Hands on Hips, Smiles on Lips!’ Gender, Race, and the Performance of Spirit in Cheerleading,” Text and Performance Quarterly 30, issue 2 (2010): 143–62; Jennifer Fisher, “Ballet and Whiteness: Will Ballet Forever Be the Kingdom of the Pale?” in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity, ed. Anthony Shay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
[48] Joanna Bosse, “Whiteness and the Performance of Race in American Ballroom Dance,” Journal of American Folklore 120, issue 475 (2007): 19–37.
[49] Colleen Mack-Canty and Sue Wright, “Family Values as Practiced by Feminist Parents Bridging Third-Wave Feminism and Family Pluralism,” Journal of Family Issues 25, issue 7 (2004): 851–80.
[50] Rachel E. Dubrofsky, “‘Therapeutics of the Self’: Surveillance in the Service of the Therapeutic,” Television and New Media 8, issue 4 (2007): 130.
[51] Rachel E. Dubrofsky, “‘Therapeutics of the Self’: Surveillance in the Service of the Therapeutic,” Television and New Media 8, issue 4 (2007): 131.
[52] Gina Salamone, “‘Honey Boo Boo Family’ Gets at Least $10,000 Salary Bump Per Episode from TLC,” New York Daily News, October 1, 2012, http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/honey-boo-boo-big-raise-tlc-article-1.1172115 (accessed December 15, 2013). Salamone reports that the family made $5,000 to $7,000 per episode when the show first aired. Once ratings proved the show was a hit, the family's earnings increased to between $15,000 and $20,000 per episode.
[53] John Hartigan, “Who Are These White People? ‘Rednecks,’ ‘Hillbillies,’ and ‘White Trash’ as Marked Racial Subjects,” in White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism, ed. Ashley W. Doane and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (New York: Routledge, 2013), 95–112.
[54] Wray, White Trash and Boundaries of Whiteness.
[55] Janet Megan Jones, “Show Your Real Face,” New Media and Society 5, issue 3 (2003): 400–21.
[56] Sari Thomas and Brian P. Callahan, “Allocating Happiness: TV Families and Social Class,” Journal of Communication 32, issue 3 (1982): 184.
[57] Lawler, “Getting Out and Getting Away,” 19.
[58] Biressi and Nunn, Reality TV.