Social Distances through Scopic Practices: How Czech Reality Television Audiences Negotiate Social Inequalities
2021
Abstract
An objective of this study was to investigate how the viewers of the Czech Reality Television (RTV) programme Výměna manželek (Wife Swap) make sense of the televisual images of poverty and low status of the show's participants. The concept of 'classed scopic practices' was introduced to address a relational style of watching television.
The study proposes that the key pleasure the RTV viewers obtain is not the experience of joy at the misfortune of others ('Schadenfreude'), as perpetuated by previous research, but rather relief and reduction of anxiety connected to their self-worth.