Shame, Class, and Embodiment in the Catfish Universe

Abstract

This article examines the film Catfish and the corresponding television program Catfish: The TV Show to articulate how genres of the real create entertainment paradigms built on shame and derision as acceptable modes of programming particularly focused on bodies. Understanding these texts as visual culture narratives grounded in shame produced through “failed” classed, fat, and gendered bodies, I argue that when genres of the real focus on shame as entertainment they implicate individuals, rather than systemically enforced normative identity positions, as wholly complicit in their own sociocultural failure.