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The Show for Those Who Owe: Normalization of Credit on Lifetime's Debt

1998; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0196859998022001003

1552-4612

Debra Merskin,

Gender, Feminism, and Media

Week nights on Lifetime Television, Wink Martindale (the self-appointed “King of Credit”) introduces what he calls “the game show for the '90s— Debt.” Here, contestants do not vie for products; rather, they compete to have their debts paid off. A content analysis suggests that Debt normalizes owing. Hall's theories of ideology and articulation are supported in this work. The findings are important to researchers exploring the foundations of consumer society and to individual experiences of everyday life in terms of the normalization of debt through the traditional game-show genre.