Brand New You

Synopsis

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 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.

Intended for courses in communication, gender studies, critical race theory, history, and sociology.

Featuring interviews with Dana Heller, Misha Kavka, Susan Murray, Kathy Peiss, Katherine Sender & Brenda Weber.

Release Date:2014

Duration:53 min.

ISBN:1-932869-93-X

Subtitles:English

Trailers

Watch the trailer

Filmmaker Credits

Producer / Director:

Katherine Sender

Editor and Graphics:

Katherine Sender

Narrator:

Alex Peterson

Camera:

Brendan Keegan

Sound:

Andy Turrett

Color and Sound Mix:

Rikk Desires, Pinehurst Pictures & Sound

Resources: Downloads and Related Links

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Transcript

Praise

"One of MEF's best, this is a wonderfully expansive video, about media and identity, beauty, class, race, happiness, gender, representation, sexuality, and more. Full of thoughtful analysis, historical context, and critique."

- Jonathan Gray
Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison
Author of Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts

"Brand New You gives makeover shows their very own makeover. Filled with brilliant commentary and lively footage, it explains the origins and workings of 'reality' media across history."

- Toby Miller
Professor of Media & Cultural Studies at the University of Cardiff
Author of Makeover Nation: The United States of Reinvention

"Brand New You is a brilliant film that is a must-see for students who want a comprehensive historical and cultural understanding of reality makeover television. Katherine Sender provides a critical analysis of how the 'authentic self' is created through the guise of hair, clothing and sometimes surgical enhancements. A must-have for classroom discussions!"

- Lisa Pecot-Hebert
Assistant Professor of Journalism at DePaul University

"Brand New You, directed by media scholar Katherine Sender, takes a critical scalpel to the face of primetime entertainment TV. Leading us on a journey through the trashy but fascinating world of makeover shows and reality confessionals, this entertaining documentary explores the popular appeal and the ideological workings underpinning the transformational claims of consumer capitalism."

- Tania Lewis
Associate Professor of Media and Communication at RMIT University
Editor of TV Transformations: Revealing the Makeover Show

"Katherine Sender's Brand New You: Makeover Television and the American Dream cuts into the core of what makes this sub-genre of reality television so compelling and so disturbing. The documentary cannily examines the social, industrial, and cultural motivations and implications for series like The Biggest Loser and What Not to Wear following well-honed methods of critical analysis. Viewers will come away from this film understanding how the sub-genre appeals to its audience and what that appeal says about American values of the self."

- Matthew J. Smith
Professor of Communication at Wittenberg University
Co-editor of Survivor Lessons: Essays on Communication and Reality Television

"A compelling look at the makeover industry, which sells the concept that there can be a 'brand new you' if you're lucky enough to win a slot on one of the makeover shows -- a privilege reserved only for the few. Issues of class, race and gender are clearly addressed in this concise, expertly edited documentary -- a real contribution to the field of body studies in the 21st century."

- Wheeler Winston Dixon
Professor of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln

"Brand New You is a fantastic educational resource that reveals how makeovers represent what's apparently wrong with people's lives and then provide solutions that promise personal improvement. In doing so it raises a range of important critical questions about gender, identities, and updated versions of the American Dream that depict consumerism as the route to the good life."

- Guy Redden
Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney

"Katherine Sender's Brand New You makes deft use of contemporary and historical television footage along with expert interviews to tell the fascinating story of how image and consumerism have been central to the so-called American Dream. While weaving in the crucial issues of race, gender, sexuality, and class, Sender helpfully unpacks how surveillance, self-reflexivity, and emotional labor operate in the makeover genre and indeed in contemporary American life itself. The film also touches on the reception of makeover television by audiences in the United States and across the globe. Brand New You is essential viewing for teachers and students of media and consumer culture."

- Laura Portwood-Stacer
Visiting Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU

"From Queen for a Day to The Swan, Brand New You offers a series of compelling insights into makeover TV. The genre is situated within both a history of televisual and other media precursors and within the cultural contexts of a shifting but enduringly beguiling notion of 'The American Dream', predicated from its inception on the aspirational potential to achieve 'transformation'. Makeover TV's endorsement of and investment in troubling ideologies of consumerism, heteronormative femininity and 'ethnic anonymity' where white subjects predominate are all illuminated, while the film points also to how audiences simultaneously critique and embrace different aspects of these series. Through all this, a succession of striking extracts unfold against the critical commentary, neatly elucidating how the promise and the difficulty of attaining greater self-realisation, and personal and physical reinvention -- captured in the moment of 'the reveal' -- can make for such absorbing and problematic programming."

- Deborah Jermyn
Reader in Film and Television at the University of Roehampton, London

"Lively, engaging and thoroughly critical -- a perfect storm to hold makeover shows to critical account. There'll be no passive viewing of makeover TV shows after watching Brand New You!"

- Jayne Raisborough
Principal Lecturer at the University of Brighton

"Brand New You is a smart, reflective, entertaining look at a genre of television new to the 21st century -- makeover reality television. It calls on the viewer to question the value of physical self-transformation in a consumer-driven culture and consider the deeper psychological meaning of our appearance and our desire for self improvement."

- Charlotte N. Markey
Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University