This paper will continue my exploration of how white privilege is performed and glorified in reality paranormal television. The focus will be more on how performers such as Josh Gates and the cast of Ghost Hunters perform the expected role of privileged white males, and therefore paranormal skeptics, with some contrast with shows that feature gendered and racial minorities more prominently as cast members. I will consider production aspects that allow Josh Gates to behave badly when experiencing other cultures — particularly by mocking those cultures — for the sake of the entertainment of his base audience and Jason Hawes’s stoic investigatory techniques as functions of white privilege.
About the presenterAntares Russell Leask
Antares Leask, PhD, NBCT (she/her) is an academic moving into the tech world and excited to find ways for these communities to successfully interact! She also teaches English for Northern Virginia Community College and is a National Board Certified Teacher. Her dissertation focused on the impact of white privilege on paranormal reality television, and other research interests include Disney, popular culture, horror, and cryptozoology.
She has also trained, implemented, and trained others on equitable grading, trauma informed teaching, culturally responsive teaching, transparent assignment design, assessment contracts, project based learning, personalized learning, and differentiation.
She presents at several pop culture conferences each year and is the Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association co-chair for the newly created Disney Studies area. She is on the editorial boards for the International Journal for Disney Studies, the Journal of American Culture, and the Popular Culture Review.
She published the chapter “‘Don’t Stand Out When You’re Fittin’ In’: Segregationists, Assimilationists, and Antiracists in Disney’s Zombies 2” in The Undead in the 21st Century: A Companion (2022), edited by Simon Bacon.
She has recently published the chapter, “Che Guevara and Debussy to a Disco Beat: Intellectualism and the Pet Shop Boys” in the collection The Pet Shop Boys and the Political: Queerness, Culture, Identity, and Society edited by Bodie Ashton.