Each episode of Supernanny followed the same pattern as
frustrated parents, driven to the brink of insanity with the struggles of raising
their children, reached out for help from Nanny Jo, a former nanny and child raising
expert, who entered the home and provided wise and practical advice on how to re-engineer
the home. The interactions appear
spontaneous (not scripted) as the knowledgeable nanny first viewed the family interacting,
later providing an evaluation on how to improve
the household. Portrayed as distressing to
parents, especially to super-stressed and overwrought mothers, the evaluation sessions
were frequently filled with crying women – overwhelmed by their role and obviously distressed with their childrearing failures. See images below.
Because they focus on men
and women in domestic situations, reality parenting shows such as Supernanny can scrutinize and expose gender
roles. However, the majority of the nanny’s advice focused on changing the practices
of the primary caregiver – an incompetent, lenient mother – so that the father,
who could pitch-in somewhat after work, would not come home to chaos. The camera spotlighted the moms as upset and
humiliated as the nanny doled out ridicule for their lack of domestic control, while
the solemn dads cautiously listened and comforted inept wives. This patriarchal reinforcement of gender roles
was subtle, portraying women as responsible for nurturing, unable to cope
without outbursts of emotion while men were to calmly look on as their focus
remained on the family’s financial support.
Supernanny was guilty of
proliferating traditional gender roles, frequently providing day planners to structure
how women needed to take charge of the job of domestic manager.
The allure of the show
was that audiences thought they were getting genuine parenting advice about
genuine people’s problems from a genuine expert. But the most genuine aspect lied in
attracting a specific audience demographic:
a breeding ground for advertising.
In his article “Marketing Reality to the World”, author Chris Jordan
asserted that “Advertisers readily sponsored Survivor because of its design as a virtual commercial for their
products” (Dines 518). The same argument
could be made for the success of Supernanny
in attracting a captive audience of parents of young families who were
concerned with raising those children.
Jordan also pointed to the
low production costs make reality TV shows attractive since the
number of television channels “competing for funding and audiences advertising
is that broadcasters must spend greater and greater sums on marketing to get
their shows noticed…” (Dines 521).
Without a large cast (only Nanny Jo) or production sets (only the family’s
homes), the cost of producing Supernanny
would have been far below popular scripted sitcoms, like The Big Bang Theory, where the lead actors are paid $1 million per
episode, and the producer, Warner Brothers TV, “is expected to clear $1 billion
in profits, with some projecting that Big Bang could contribute to Time Warner’s
bottom line twice that over its lifespan” (Andreeva). Obviously, television is big business.
Reality parenting
shows, like Supernanny, which allow
women to be shown as inept caregivers who berate themselves for not living-up
to the standards of motherhood, reinforce the patriarchy of our culture while
also attracting women to products that support their caregiver role. This show, like other reality TV programs,
was designed to make money by selling products to women using the backdrop of improving
their parenting expertise.
Works Cited
Andreeva, Nellie. “Big Bang Theory’ Stars Jim
Parsons, Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco Close Big New Deals.” Huffington Post. 4 August 2014. Web. 10
April 2015.
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