A Matter of Feeling

Abstract

Elements of reality television that have “flown under the radar” of critical attention make palpable a specific, materialized, and yet mediated affective terrain. This chapter has a dual purpose: it interrogates, in materialistic terms, the operations of affect in reality television and critiques the Deleuzian-inspired appropriation of materiality by the “new affect theorists”, for whom corporeal matter quickly vaporizes into the vagaries of becoming. In terms of its visual content, WipeOut is literally about awkward materialities. The hyperconfident competitors quickly turn into physical bodies struggling with their awkward mass as they throw themselves at obstacles. In keeping with the focus on bodies and the materiality of affective transmission, the chapter addresses the interleaving of affect and intimacy through a handful of moments in the reality television corpus whose only significance arises from the quiver of intense attachment they generate.

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