Pacifying Class Anxiety: The Ideology of Polish Role Swap Reality Television

The article analyses class ideology in three popular reality TV formats broadcast in Polish television ( Broke Rich Kids , Dames and Hicks , Rich House Poor House ). Following Fredric Jameson, we understand ideology as a cultural narrative, which offers an answer to predicaments posed by the actual workings of the social structure. Social problems – in this case growing class inequalities – are presented with imaginary answers, both arousing and pacifying the public’s curiosity and anxieties. We examine the vision of class hierarchies present in ‘role-swap’ shows and their rationalisations, as well as cultural scripts of possible transformations. We trace the ideological underpinnings of this broad narrative, including the moral dimension and nature of hierarchies present in narratives of a middle-class ‘good life’ and respectability, rationalisation of success and failure in individualistic terms, possibility of cross-class mobility, dimensions of class pedagogy and ways of explaining social differences in presentations of ‘ordinary’ life.