Wanna Be on Top? Labor Pedagogies and Neoliberal Ethics in Greece’s Next Top Model (GNTM)

This chapter aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion regarding reality TV competitions as a socio-cultural platform for “learning to labor”. Previous research has adeptly covered the ways that reality television reproduces capitalist hegemony by naturalizing the neoliberal agenda, perpetuating the myth of meritocracy and social mobility, and normalizing the precarity of labor conditions. By (i) expanding on the notion of the “pedagogical invitation” of reality television and, specifically, its role in training both the contestants and the viewers as workers within the broader neoliberal labor landscape and (ii) drawing from critical perspectives on competition as an ultimate good and intelligence, talent, and effort as the path to achieve success, this essay aims to critically dissect the labor politics and pedagogies embedded in contemporary reality television, with an empirical grounding on Greek reality competitions and, in particular, Greece’s Next Top Model. More specifically, the essay centers on three critical moments that define the competition format, namely the challenges, the coaching, and the weekly judgment, and focuses on the discursive and visual strategies through which reality TV negotiates commercially informed aesthetics, self-enterprise, and flexible labor.