ABSTRACT
Whilst the hit NBC reality television show Fear Factor (2001–2006) resembles other examples of the genre, combining a series of tasks (or ‘stunts’) within a game-show-oriented format, the extent to which it works to generate specific kinds of contestant and spectatorial responses as a result of these stunts offers a point of departure. The show’s most notorious stunts are those involving the consumption of a variety of, to Western stomachs, disgusting foodstuffs (mammal entrails and offal, dried insects, raw animal products and so forth), wherein contestants are rewarded for the ingestion of such material, and penalized for vomiting it up again. This article considers the motivations for Fear Factor’s use of abjection and examines the ways in which the use of abject material functions both as a way of punishing or humiliating the contestants and, crucially, of delighting the audience. This disciplinary activity would seem to offer another way to consider the role that abjection plays in constituting the subject; a situation in which abjection, a place where ‘meaning collapses’, functions also as a disciplinary activity committed to the generation of knowledge. Thus, this article considers the function of abjection in reality programming in relation to discipline, to spectatorial pleasure and therefore to broader hegemonic structures.
