Building the Real: Soundalikes, Reproductions, and Assimilation in Reality Television

This paper is an examination of the structure of reality television. Through it, I will look at the forces at play within the genre, and what they reveal about the nature of mediated reality as reflected not only in entertainment products but also in daily life. I begin with a look into my 14-year career within the reality television space. I uncover how as a composer, I built musical cues. My analysis looks at how the music’s formal, stylistic, and affective properties produce an erasure of individuality and how this effacement is reflected in other aspects of the production process as well as the external effects of this on my lived experience. From here, my analysis will turn to a specific reality program, HGTV’s hit show, Fixer Upper, to explore examples of how the formal mechanisms above materialize to create and expand a reductive phenomenological orientation for the characters and the viewer. I’m interested in how this central normative position surrounding gender, race, and class closes off the possibility of other bodies entering the spaces with any sense of agency. Finally, the essay will explore how assimilation functions both interpersonally, as in the case of Joanna Gaines, one of the main characters in the show, and in her approach to the materials she utilizes within her designs. I will use this as a framework to reflect on my position as a white adjacent American of Jewish descent. In conclusion, the essay will look at the various ways in which I, as an artist, work to examine the structural, formal, and orientational powers I discuss within the essay. By considering my personal history, I will propose an artistic practicethat can expand my critical discourses and reify these ideas into speculative works that draw upon the constructed realities of social interactions while simultaneously disrupting them.