Human Capital

While reading the Oulette article the first thing that came to mind were all of the reality shows whose main goal is to give someone a physical makeover with the promise that it will change their lives. This is what Oulette refers to as life intervention, which dominates the reality tv sphere. These shows exploit people who have deemed themselves as having a problem that needs to fixed in order to make a profit. The market in these types of reality shows reflects how much people care about the self and “fixing” it, in other words, when you have humans as capital the work is never done.

The first thing I thought of during these readings was a show I used to watch religiously, The Biggest Loser. That show is a perfect example of the idea that a physical problem is hindering the rest of your life. When looking for the audio to find I immediately searched for one from the show. The audio I found is a promitional video from The Biggest loser Australia and when you listen you can hear how much it includes the life coach and the idea of life intervention to diagnose and makeover the human subject all while the audience observes. The photo I picked was from a different reality show with the same goal of making over someones physical appearance. To find this I searched “Reality show then and now” and millions of photos popped up but this one shows the extreme physical change most contestants go through being human capital. The photo, quote, and audio really illustrate how much we actually care about not just physical qualities but also the idea that everything can be fixed.