American Remakes of British Television by Carlen Lavigne & Heather Marcovitch

American Remakes of British Television by Carlen Lavigne & Heather Marcovitch

Author:Carlen Lavigne & Heather Marcovitch [Lavigne, Carlen & Marcovitch, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2011-07-18T04:00:00+00:00


CONCLUSION

Whatever the outcome of each individual transformation may be, the sum total of personal makeover journeys “narrativized” and “mediatized” by both versions of WNTW works to construct a master narrative that equates personal happiness and success with consumption and adherence to rigid, homogenizing feminine beauty standards. Each nation has its own idiosyncratic approach to making over a woman’s body—Trinny and Susannah aim to “make do” with the average woman’s body, disguising or detracting attention from all of a woman’s “problem areas,” while Stacy and Clinton repeatedly sing the praises of an empire waistline and its ability to re-sculpt the body, giving any woman the “bombshell” figure she never thought she could have. Moreover each version of the series has developed out of a televisual context with specific codes and conventions deeply familiar to the home audience—the U.K. version draws the audience in with class-based, domestic voyeurism, while the U.S. version appeals to celebrity culture and the spendthrift fantasy of the American dream. However, both series rely on calculated consumption that follows strict “rules,” thus fostering a “self-policing, narcissistic gaze”33 among the participants, not to mention the viewers at home. Ultimately, the authoritarian, consumer-oriented approach to personal improvement, espoused by both versions of the series, indicates that neither version truly upholds the ideals of empowerment, liberation and individual expression—the ideals that supposedly form the backbone of a postfeminist sensibility.



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