“Get Rich or Die Buying:” The Travails of the Working‐Class Auction Bidder

Even You can Turn Trash Into Treasure: Reality TV and Secondhand Markets at the Jersey Shore

“…Scholarship has largely focused on individual programs and online fan discussion board posts. Analyzing Storage Wars , Mark Rademacher (2015) argues that the show’s narratives upheld the hegemony of capitalist ideology, class hierarchies, and the latter’s connections to cultural capital. Revisiting Storage Wars , Mark Rademacher and Casey Kelly (2016) discuss how the program addressed the crisis in American masculinity by representing traditionally feminized labor/retail markets as spaces for men and masculinized performances of competition, self-reliance, and individuality while displacing or erasing feminine consumption, collaboration, and thrift.…”

“…As with American Pickers , Storage Wars depicts men investing in feminine forms of labor and consumption that have been traditionally marginalized, and converting them into activities considered valuable to society and the economy (Rademacher & Kelly, 2016). The masculinized performance of the secondary market on Storage Wars turns on the acquisition of goods (to sell or keep) and/or money (the title of the theme song is “Money Owns This Town”) and takes place in a context that is unconcerned with the actual economic conditions or their significance to the lived experiences and quality of life of others (Rademacher, 2015; Rademacher & Kelly, 2016).…”

“…In regard to gender representation, Storage Wars cast members, including Brandi Passante, the lone woman among the competitors, perform in the secondhand market within the context of contemporary masculinities in crisis (Rademacher, 2015; Rademacher & Kelly, 2016). Selling their winnings on the secondary market, the cast members work in traditionally feminine consumer and labor markets and apply masculine capitalist logics of individualism, aggressive competition, and accumulation.…”

“I’m Here to Do Business. I’m Not Here to Play Games.” Work, Consumption, and Masculinity in Storage Wars

“…In critical analyses of masculinity on television, RTV in particular, many scholars have approached consumptive practices as predominantly leisure-based activities that express men's individual lifestyles (Carroll, 2008;Clarkson, 2005;Moisio, Arnould, & Gentry, 2013). Yet, the emergence of thrift-based reality programming depicts male consumption as a form of wage-earning labor in an individualized professional context (Rademacher, 2015). To attend to this changing dynamic, we analyze how representations of consumption as work augment conceptions of hegemonic masculinity through valorized portrayals of men's labor in the postmanufacturing knowledge and service economy.…”

“…In this way, Jarrod embodies the neoliberal ideology embedded in the program-while his current lack of subcultural capital may put him at risk of losing potential profits, he can overcome it through a combination of autodidactic learning through experience and risk-taking. All bidders possess their respective areas of expertise and weakness, but the most experienced bidders exhibit a more developed level of subcultural capital expressed as working-class omnivorousness (Rademacher, 2015) that creates yet another competitive advantage in this marketplace.…”