Moral reactions to reality TV: Television viewers’ endogenous and exogenous loci of morality

Abstract

Drawing upon a survey and 41 semi-structured interviews with television consumers, we examine the negative moral reactions that some people have to contemporary reality television. We explore the relationship between cultural preferences and moral condemnation. Television consumers who have a moral reaction to reality TV are more likely to be from a higher socioeconomic position and are less likely to consume the genre. To more fully understand some viewers' negative moral reactions to reality television, we examine the moral reasoning of television consumers. Moral reactions to reality TV can be classified as endogenous and exogenous. An endogenous focus is concerned with the immorality of consumption. An exogenous focus locates morality in cultural production. These moral positions are also socially patterned; television consumers with an exogenous locus of morality possess higher levels of cultural capital, greater education and are less likely to consume reality TV. Theoretically, we contend that cultural taste is being turned into moral condemnation. In other words, when cultural consumption is linked to moral position then a strong symbolic boundary can be formed that reinforces real-world boundaries amongst social groups. This condemnation serves to harden cultural, symbolic boundaries rooted in classed consumption practices.

A model who looks like me: Communicating and consuming representations of disability

“…Of course, not all consumers are so inclined. As culture scholars point out, consumer evaluations of cultural content can vary considerably (Childress and Friedkin, 2012; Radway, 1991; Scarborough and McCoy, 2014; Shively, 1992). Some consumers are, for example, more critical than others, inveighing their thoughts and feelings against brands and businesses, while others are somewhat more passive or less driven to take action on or against content they admire or dislike (see for example, Foster, 2021).…”

Defusing moral panic: Legitimizing binge-watching as manageable, high-quality, middle-class hedonism

“…Non-fiction, news, and current affairs programs are usually classified as more legitimate than entertainment forms such as reality TV or soap operas. In addition, even within narrative genres there are distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow forms (Alasuutari, 1992; Kuipers, 2006; Scarborough and McCoy, 2016). The boundary between television and active cultural forms, and that between different forms of TV, both mark a class division that can be re-established in moral panics.…”

The role of the visual in the restoration of social order

“…Our ability to move comfortably between cultural forms: "…only acquires value when it is set up against categories defined as permanent and immobile. 'Other' people are not only 'allowed to carve out special niches' for themselves, they are actively constituted as homogeneous and unchanging" (Ollivier 2008:144) In the readings that we produce of the looter images, in the lives that we imagine exist behind the behaviours that we witness in the image, we produce a range of normative cultural and moral readings that echo those identified by Scarborough and McCoy (2016) in audience readings of representations of socially marginal groups in reality TV. Our stereotypical construction of the 'Chav' (Jones, 2011), our ridicule of the marginalised subjects of reality TV and our contempt for the Poundland looters, are all manifestations of the fact that as a source of social status and differentiation, our cultural omnivourousness is dependent on the continued existence of the cultural univore (Kearon, 2012).…”