“It’s Do or Die”: Cultural Labor, Competitive Reality TV, and the Reproduction of Neoliberal Capitalism
Keywords:
creative competition reality television, cultural labor, attention economy, neoliberal capitalism, meritocracy, Marxist critique, Making the Cut, Amazon StudiosAbstract
This article argues that creative competition reality television, a distinct genre within the reality TV format, reproduces capitalist hegemony by naturalizing neoliberal values, the myth of meritocracy, and the precarity of cultural labor. Drawing from a case study of Amazon Studios’ 2020 fashion design competition Making the Cut, I examine the pedagogical role of creative competition shows as they shape the labor conditions of the cultural workforce.
