slides from class

1. Politics and Class in Benefits Street
#mac201
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2. Overview
 Social inequality
 Realty TV participants
 Ethical treatment
 Benefits Street
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3. Social inequality
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The US has ‘become the least socially mobile advanced Western economy’
- Miller, 2007: 5

4. Social inequality
 Thanks to a gigantic clumping of wealth at the apex of the
nation, there is now a poor, unskilled, and ill base: forty-six million
residents are indigent, fifty-two million are functionally
analphabetic, and forty-four million lack health insurance. By
contrast with European welfare systems, the capacity to exit
poverty for good has diminished over the last two decades of
neoliberalism, and the proportion of national income held by the
extremely rich is two to three times the level in France or Britain.
Race and gender massively stratify access to money and net
worth, and the gaps are widening.
 (Miller, 2007: 5)
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5. Social inequality [UK]
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6. Debt
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UK's budget deficit has fluctuated as a % of the
country's economic output (GDP)

7. Promises betrayed
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8. 8
© AAV, 2014
http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/tory-contract-kick-us-out-in-5-years.html

9. Promises betrayed
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10. Promises betrayed
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11. ‘We’re paying down Britain’s debts’
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12. Andrew Dilnot, Chair of UKSA
 National debt has risen from
 £811.3bn, or 55.3 % of GDP, to
 £1,111.4bn, or 70.7 % of GDP
 since the coalition entered office in 2010
 http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/02/cameron-rebuked-uk-statistics-
authority-over-debt-lies
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13. Black Friday punch-ups…
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14. Televised welfare
 The Scheme (BBC 1, May 2010-11)
 People Like Us (BBC 3, Feb 2013)
 Skint (Channel 4, May 2013)
 Nick and Margaret: We All Pay For Your Benefits (BBC 1, Jul
2013)
 How To Get A Council House (Channel 4, Aug 2013)*
 On Benefits and Proud (Channel 5, Oct 2013)
 Christmas on Benefits (BBC3, Dec 2013)
 Benefits Street (Channel 4, Jan 2014)
 Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole (Channel 5, Jun 2014)
 The Housing Enforcers (BBC 2, Sep 2014)
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15. Public participation
 The shift in television production
practices since the late 1980s has seen
increased reliance on non-actors and
non-professionals in popular reality
formats
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16. Ethics
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17. The ‘undeserving poor’
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18. Fair treatment?
 Audiences expect those genres they
associate with public service broadcasting
to treat people better than those genres
with a more populist agenda
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19. Fair treatment?
 ‘Similarly, audiences expect members of
the public to deserve better treatment than
public figures and celebrities’
 Hill, 2007: p173
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20. Conflicted opinions
 A right to be treated fairly…
 But people in reality shows know what they
are getting into?
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21. 21
Conflicted opinions
If reality performers are shamed and humiliated,
then viewers also feel ashamed by their pleasure in
watching. Their personal interest in seeing people
put in emotionally difficult situations, in watching
how shameless reality performers can be in their
pursuit of fame, makes reality TV both attractive
and repulsive to viewers
- Hill, 2007: 173-4

22. 22
Conflicted opinions
In some ways, viewers adopt a shallow ethical
position, placing self-interest first, seeing reality TV
participants as a resource to be managed for
entertainment. In other ways, viewers adopt a deep
ethical position, feeling guilty about the treatment of
participants, and moving towards a more universal
position on the rights of participants.
- Hill, 2007: 173-4

23. Informed consent
 The public’s ‘right to know’
 The participant's ‘informed consent’
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24. Informed consent
 ‘programme makers should both inform participants about
what is involved in making the programme and advise them
about the possible consequences of transmission’
 Hibbard et al, 2000: 7
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25. Benefits Street (2014, Channel 4)
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26. Benefits myths
 [T]here are two pervasive myths about welfare in the UK which
are routinely retailed by politicians and the media. The first is
the myth of the family where 'nobody has worked for
generations'. The second is the myth of the area where
'nobody works around here'
 Declan Gaffney, 2014.
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27. 27

28. Ideology
 ‘implicit and sometimes explicitly stated theories of
contemporary worklessness in the UK’ which, consequently,
can be employed to ‘justify the ramping up of more punitive
policy measures (e.g. increased benefit conditionality or cuts in
benefit levels).’
 Macdonald et al, 2014: 1
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29. Show’s trailer
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30. The community responds
 [W]e couldn’t believe what we were watching. We went mad.
People growing drugs, smoking drugs, shoplifting. That is not
what our street is about. Half the people they showed don’t
even live in our street.
 Deidre Kelly in Aitkenehad, 2014
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31. 31

32. 32

33. Reality TV?
 Focussing just on the non-retired, non-student population, 52
per cent in both areas were in employment. About a third
were ‘other inactive’, meaning they were neither working nor
seeking work, and 16/15 per cent were unemployed.
 Gaffney, 2014
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34. Meet White Dee
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35. ‘Judgement shots’
 ‘Reality television relies […] also on
documentary techniques which require the
participant to report direct to camera. It is
this blending of melodrama with
documentary that structures how
participants are called to account for their
actions that are ultimately beyond their
control. These moments – which we call
judgement shots – also prove to be
significant for engaging audiences’
 Skeggs & Wood, 2012: p95
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36. Summary
 Widening of macro level social inequality over past 40 years of
neoliberalisation
 Politicians evoking tough measures on the poorest
 Media echoing these sentiments, fostering environment in
which viewers judge the poor
 Political classes use such depictions to reinforce their policies
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37. Sources
 Aitkenhead, D. (2014, March 7). Deirdre Kelly, AKA White Dee: ‘I would never watch a show called Benefits Street’. The Guardian. Retrieved from
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/mar/07/deirdre-kelly-white-dee-never-watch-benefits-street
 Mark Doughty, Shaun Lawson, Conor Linehan, Duncan Rowland, Lucy Bennett (2014) ‘Disinhibited Abuse of Othered Communities by Second-Screening
Audiences’
 Hibbard, M., Kilborn, R., McNair, B., Marriott, S. and Schlesinger, P. (2000)
 Consenting Adults?, London: Broadcasting Standards Commission.
 Hill, A (2007) Restyling Factual TV: Audiences and news, documentary and reality genres, Abingdon: Routledge
 Robert MacDonald, Tracy Shildrick and Andy Furlong (2014) 'Benefits Street' and the Myth of Workless Communities, Sociological Research Online, 19 (3),
1, http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/3/1.html
 Miller, T (2007) Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age, Philadelphia: Temple University Press
 Osborne, G. (2010) in Wintour, G. 'George Osborne to cut £4bn more from benefits', The Guardian, 9 September. Available at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/09/george-osborne-cut-4bn- benefits-welfare/
 Skeggs, B & Wood, H (2012) Reacting to Reality Television: Performance, Audience and Value, Abingdon: Routledge
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