6. Other Bodies Within Us: Shock, Affect and Reality Television Audiences

This chapter analyses qualitative interview data from a research project on audiences of Embarrassing Bodies (Channel 4, UK), paying particular attention to narratives from interviewees in which they spoke of or alluded to feeling offended and shocked. Drawing on psychoanalysis, the chapter argues that offence and specifically its articulation may in some instances function as a defence mechanism in order not to engage with functions or aspects of the body. And yet, viewers also took pleasure in what they saw. Thus, the interviewees in the sample were at once drawn to the bodies and rejected them through their narratives that spoke of offence and shock. Many such narratives were coupled with moments of joy, excitement and entertainment. In speaking of their excitement, viewers embraced the offensive material they had split off at the same time.