Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Producing Precarity: The Costs of Making TV in Poor Places

Producing Precarity: The Costs of Making TV in Poor Places

Marez, Curtis

Paperback

Series: Postmillennial Pop, Book 35

Technology & EngineeringGeneral Racism & Ethnic StudiesGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 1479836729
ISBN13: 9781479836727
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: Aug 26 2025
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.90
Height: 1.00 Width: 5.90 Depth: 8.90
Language: English

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.

1 different editions

Also available

Also from

Marez, Curtis

View All

Also in

General Sociology

View All