Week Six [Seminar Notes]

Lifestyle Television

Three types:
- Cooking
- Property
- Fashion

First introduced via Radio broadcasts

Local business for food, soap and other domestic products sponsored early educational programmes and radio shows. Many were sponsored by kitchenware manufacturers.

Broadcast channels and magazines are now dedicated to these areas of consumerism.

Lifestyle programmes were linked to the reproduction of the heterosexual post-war nuclear family.

Lifestyle formats have become more closely associated with the expression of consumer difference, the aesthetication of everyday life.

Examples [On Hand-Out]
Take Care of the Refridgerator' [Korean Cooking/Interview show] 
- It is a host-lead programme with celebrity guests.

How to Look Good Naked [Women's Lifestyle program]
- Idea of the 'Male Gaze' comes into play with this show, with women being insecure about their body image. The influence of a 'queer' host reinforces the debate of this lifestyle in a women's genre of TV.
- Gok Wan - openly gay in the public eye. He's the 'gay best-friend'.

Location, Location, Location
- Male and female hosts, mainly the female host with a separate narrator.
- The male is seen as the dominating sales element, the women is involved in the design.
- Male = Practical, Female = Picky


Theoretical Relations
These shows seems spontaneous and natural [un-scripted], representing a true image of the participants with their opinions.





Textual Analysis of the Genre:

Fanny Cradock v Nigella Lawson

Direct Gaze - Breaking the fourth wall
Simple domestic appliances in a plain colour kitchen [Fanny]

Nigella has an upbeat melody in comparison to Cradock.
There are a vast amount of cuts and a huge variety of colours represented in the show.

Nigella's kitchen has a lot more appliances, cooking more internationally renown dishes.
A much more extravagant yet homely feel to the show.
Nigella uses a lot more immersive language.

They had similar costumes and a strong representation of femininity.

Cradock's is a much more traditionally British show with her food.

Aimed at a middle-class audience [Nigella] and the other aimed at the working class [Fanny]

Nigella has a male gaze essence to it, with her costumes, make-up and overall appearance.