ABSTRACT
Boston Rob Mariano and Tiffany 'New York' Pollard mark a unique phenomenon where reality contestants marry urban identities to ethnic or racial stereotypes to become successful reality gamers and lasting station personalities. Boston Rob offers a cultural nostalgia for older ways of urban life through a process that I term the imagination of expulsions. Boston Rob is a product of the imagination of expulsions through the way he is able to reduce Italian American identity to one trait, shifty gaming, in order to make it seem like this ethnicity still occupies a crucial role in Boston. The residual Italian American identities that Boston Rob embodied offered CBS a useful reservoir of ethnic images for its quality brand. Boston Rob Mariano and Tiffany 'New York' Pollard show another complex aspect of representing urban life on reality television in the age of social expulsions.
