Producing Precarity

The Costs of Making TV in Poor Places

The hidden cost of TV production for communities of color
Producing Precarity is a long-overdue examination of the television industry's practice of "offshoring" production to impoverished sites within the US. The author, Curtis Marez, focuses on state efforts to attract film and TV producers to poor places with tax incentives, discounted public lands, and subsidized infrastructures. He argues that these efforts result in the redistribution of wealth from poor people of color, Indigenous people, and other taxpayers to Los Angeles-based media makers, while also diverting money that could be used for education and health care to the wealthy.
The popular series produced in these places, such as Breaking Bad, The Watchmen, Lovecraft Country, The Walking Dead, and Vida, are praised by critics and awards organizations and highlighted by streaming services for challenging genre, casting, and narrative conventions. However, many of these shows rely on racialized and gendered low-wage labor for production, and diversity, equity, and inclusion representations can sometimes perpetuate repression, such as depicting police as diversity champions.
Producing Precarity examines how contemporary streaming shows from these areas promote racial inequality in ideology and content, as well as materially through their local production methods, and perceptually through streaming distribution modes that discourage viewers from understanding how TV is made. Marez also provides examples of local resistance, including movements against a police training center and a film studio in Atlanta, as well as anti-gentrification movements in Latinx neighborhoods of LA.

UK Delivery:

• Free delivery on all orders of £10 or more.
• £1.49 delivery fee on orders below £10.
• UK orders are shipped via Royal Mail 2nd Class.

International Delivery:

• Flat rate delivery charges vary by country.

Dispatch and Delivery Times:

• All orders are shipped from our warehouse in Northampton, UK within 48 hours of receipt during working hours.
• UK mainland orders typically arrive within 3-5 working days via Royal Mail 2nd Class.
• International estimated delivery times:
• Europe & Channel Islands: 7 to 10 working days
• USA: 7 to 15 working days
• Rest of the World: 9 to 21 working days

View our full delivery infomation here.