Learning modernity: lifestyle advice television in Australia, Taiwan and Singapore

Abstract

This article examines the role of lifestyle advice television programming in Australia, Taiwan and Singapore. Lifestyle television in the Asia-Pacific region includes a range of ‘popular factual’ formats from cooking and health shows to reality-style make-over shows and consumer advice programmes. What unites these shows, from Singapore’s highly popular Home De´cor Survivor to Taiwan’s Lifestyle Experts and Australia’s Better Homes and Gardens is their concern with instructing their audiences in everyday life skills while showcasing the latest consumer products and services. In this article we argue that, in inducting ordinary viewers into the ‘art of living’ these increasingly ubiquitous forms of advice television are playing a significant role in shaping social identities, consumer practices and personal lifestyles in the region. The lifestyle format takes on particular significance in Asia with the emergence of ‘new’ formations of consumer-oriented middle classes characterised by lifestyle aspirations that are shaped in complex ways by national, regional and global influences. Drawing upon a ‘multiple modernities’ approach, this article examines the pedagogical role of lifestyle TV in three different cultural contexts, foregrounding the way in which it negotiates varied global and local formations of lifestyle culture and consumption.