Brand new you : makeover television and the American dream / produced and directed by Katherine Sender.

Format:

Video

Author/Creator:

Sender, Katherine, director.

Contributor:

Sender, Katherine.

Peterson, Alex.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mass media--Social aspects.

Mass media.

Mass media policy.

Consumption (Economics).

Advertising.

Mass media policy--Social aspects.

Genre:

Internet videos.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 video file (52 minutes)) : color

Contained In:

Media Education Foundation Collection.

Place of Publication:

Northampton, MA : Media Education Foundation, 2014.

Language Note:

In English with English subtitles.

Summary:

What do popular television makeover programs like What Not to Wear, The Biggest Loser, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and The Swan tell us about how to look and feel? What do they tell us about what a good life looks like in contemporary America? This new film based on Katherine Sender's book The Makeover explores these questions against the backdrop of American ideals of self-invention and upward mobility. Asking what it means to be an authentic self in an increasingly mediated world -- to be both ordinary and special, to be happy with who we are while always wanting something better -- Brand New You shows how the interventions featured in makeover shows, from weight loss to cosmetic surgery, reproduce conventional norms of physical attractiveness and success. Taking a wider social and cultural view, it also shows how these programs have become models of self-transformation at precisely the same time jobs have become harder to find and keep, and women and men have been forced to remake themselves to compete in a rapidly changing labor marketplace.

Credits:

Produced, directed and written by Katherine Sender ; Edited by Katherine Sender ; Narrated by Alex Peterson ; Camera by Brendan Keegan ; Sound by Andy Turrett ; Music: Robyn permission from Universal Music Group ; Color and sound mix: Rikk Desgres/Pinehurst Pictures & Sound ; Interviews with Dana Heller, Misha Kavka, Susan Murray, Kathy Peiss, Katherine Sender, and Brenda Weber.

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from title screen (viewed on March 28, 2023).

Originally produced by Media Education Foundation in 2014.

OCLC:

956904226

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.