{"id":1131,"date":"2009-03-27T16:11:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-27T16:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1131"},"modified":"2009-03-27T16:11:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-27T16:11:00","slug":"performance-studies-and-reality-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1131","title":{"rendered":"Performance Studies and Reality Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

Living a cable channel-free life, I never saw Mad Mad House<\/span><\/a>, but if you did and you want to read a performance studies-based analysis, I direct you to Jason Winslade’s “You\u2019ve Got to Grow or Go”: Initiation, Performance, and Reality Television”<\/a> (PDF file).<\/p>\n

At the center of his analysis are the reality show’s “alternate” characters, including the prominent Australian Witch Fiona Horne<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The five Alts were Fiona the Witch, Ta\u2019Shia the Voodoo Priestess, Don the Vampire, Art the Modern Primitive and Avocado the Naturist. The use of just the first names and their \u201cAlt\u201d title was prominent in the show\u2019s promotional materials and title sequence, in which their heads were placed paper doll-like (in South Park fashion) on small drawn bodies in cartoonish settings accompanied by equally cartoonish sound effects. For instance, a bubbling cauldron sound and a witch cackle accompanied Fiona\u2019s brief scene. Further, these constructed characters exist as iconic figures in such settings as the Deliberation Room, where their gaudily painted portraits also feature prominently in the title sequence. These touches unapologetically fetishize and exoticize these characters and their \u201calternative\u201d beliefs, perhaps to present them as more of a challenge to the mainstream contestants, who were predominantly young, white, upper middle class, and, if they had any religious affiliation, Christian.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Living a cable channel-free life, I never saw Mad Mad House, but if you did and you want to read a performance studies-based analysis, I direct you to Jason Winslade’s “You\u2019ve Got to Grow or Go”: Initiation, Performance, and Reality Television” (PDF file). At the center of his analysis are the reality show’s “alternate” characters, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[26,9,6],"class_list":["post-1131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-culture","tag-voudoun","tag-wicca"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-if","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":811,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=811","url_meta":{"origin":1131,"position":0},"title":"You Sexy Witch – 2","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 7, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"No, it's not a porn site but a light-hearted collection of pop-culture witch images.Here is some World War II bomber \"nose art,\" for instance.Some of the images, such as those of Fiona Horne, are not work-safe, however.I want to see the Halloween party hats mentioned in the upcoming book on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"sexuality\"","block_context":{"text":"sexuality","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=sexuality"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11709,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11709","url_meta":{"origin":1131,"position":1},"title":"Witchcraft: You’re Not Making It Strange Enough","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The final article in the \"Paganism, art, and fashion\" issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies argues that books and television series based on historical witchcraft make it too safe and fail to portray \"the genuine strangeness of witches and magic users in all periods and cultures.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"history\"","block_context":{"text":"history","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=history"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/discovery2-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4345,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4345","url_meta":{"origin":1131,"position":2},"title":"“Season of the Witch”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"On Peg Aloi's recommendation, I recently watched\u00a0Season of the Witch, also known as\u00a0Hungry Wives.\u00a0 As Peg mentioned, part of it is witchcraft-meets-Second Wave feminism, and part of it acknowledges the whole \"occult explosion\" of the late 1960s-early 1970s. Maybe it it is what the old Bewitched series would have been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9439,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9439","url_meta":{"origin":1131,"position":3},"title":"Salem, Arkham, and H. P. Lovecraft","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 1, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"What Bourbon Street is to New Orleans' French Quarter, Essex Street is to Salem, Mass. When it's party time (October), this is where the party happens. Otherwise, it is the chief tourist-commercial street, whether you want the Peabody Essex Museum, Christian Day's witch shop,\u00a0or The Witch House, which was actually\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Massachusetts\"","block_context":{"text":"Massachusetts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=massachusetts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/essex-st-west-vertical.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10167,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10167","url_meta":{"origin":1131,"position":4},"title":"“A Texas Witch on Trial” Now Published","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 17, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"In August 2016, I mused about having a Contemporary Pagan Studies on \"Paganism and Violence\" at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting, inspired by a recent gift of multiple cartons of archival material related to the murder trial of a prominent Wiccan figure in 1980. The universe was listening,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Former home of Loy and Louise Stone near Hereford, Texas","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/stones_farm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/stones_farm.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/stones_farm.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10074,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10074","url_meta":{"origin":1131,"position":5},"title":"Call for Papers: Pagan Art & Fashion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"CFP for a special issue of The Pomegranate on Pagan Art and Fashion\u00a0 \u00a0A beautiful young woman drapes her long auburn hair over a human skull, pressing it close to her face like a lover. Another, clad in black and holding a wooden staff, poses like a model in a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}