By Alex, Zoe & KlaudijaWeek 4. 03/01/11
“THANK GOD MY LIFE IS NORMAL”
TOPICS• Looking at the role of stereotypes, class and
gender as hegemonic views, and how these are reinforced throughout an episode of Jeremy Kyle
• Critique of this week’s reading• Addressing the following questions:• How does the dominant ideology get
maintained within this programme?• Who or what is to ‘blame’ for the
contestants problems – according to Kyle?
Origins of The Jeremy Kyle Show
• The Jeremy Kyle Show began on ITV in July 2005
• The programme attracts more than 1.5 million viewers each morning at 9:25 - 10:30. (who’s watching?)
• Over half the guests that come onto The Jeremy Kyle Show want a Lie Detector test.
• “Jeremy Kyle presents a confrontational talk show in which guests thrash out their conflicts, dilemmas & relationship issues in front of a studio audience”
IDEOLOGY
• Jeremy Kyle’s view is represented as the dominant one, his reading is taken as the consensus view.
• Patriarchal domination .• “The ideas of the ruling class are, in every
age, the ruling ideas” Marx & Engels (1974)
• Ideologies – The importance of honesty, family and recognising responsibility.
“Beautiful women have easier, more fulfilled lives than other people”
Gilda Carle, All Talk
• Feminist Ideology• www.femalefirst.co.uk• “It is not the guests but the viewers who are
morally questionable”• Who is to blame for these shows? • “Self-made freaks”• “Choice is offered, but the choices are not
ones of substance, and the hope is that we will not notice that the offered choices are no choices at all.”
“Television often succeeds at making real people vanish into stereotypes, at positing real audiences as demographics at best,
mindless consumers at worst”
Elizabeth Birmingham, Fearing
the Freak
• “…not fitting cultural definitions of attractive, which diminish a speakers credibility, particularly when the alternative ‘sanctioned’ story is narrated by an attractive ‘expert’ in a suit…”
• “stereotypes…are consistently rearticulated from 9-5 everyday”
• Gramsci and ‘Lived cultures’• The ‘chav’, the ‘binge drinking teen’, the ‘single
mum’ etc• Articulated value system
FINAL NOTE
• What are your personal thoughts of watching trash TV talk shows? Does it impact your life in anyway?
• Who is more morally questionable, the guests, the viewers or the producers? Or is it simply good entertainment?
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