Title: We're playing<i>Jeremy Kyle'</i>! Television talk shows in the playground
Abstract: AbstractThis paper focuses on an episode of play in a primary school playground in England, which featured a group of children re-enacting elements of the television talk show The Jeremy Kyle Show. The episode is analysed in the light of work that has identified the key elements of the talk show genre and the children's play is examined in relation to conceptualisations of talk shows as cruelty-verité, carnivalesque spectacle and vehicles of social class anxiety. The paper explores the children's playful re-enactment not only as a parody of adult worlds, but also as a confirmation of the 'ordinariness' of everyday life. It is argued that in episodes such as these, the functions of play are multiple and complex, but include a desire to construct collective moral sensibilities and reinforce normative discourses relating to sexuality and what it means to be a 'good citizen'. The paper identifies spaces of continuity and discontinuity in such traditions and suggests that in play which draws from contemporary media we see the reconstruction of traditional play themes, but can also trace newer elements that are closely related to the generic conventions of reality television.Keywords: playreality televisionplaygroundsmedia culturesocial class AcknowledgementsThe study reported in this paper, 'Children's playground games and songs in the new media age', was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Beyond Text Programme (Grant Number AH/G013640/1).Notes1. This and similar numbers related to excerpts from transcripts refers to the file name of the original data, which are stored at the British Library for researchers to access.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-11-23
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 16
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