You are hereHome › Department & College Collections › Performance and Spirituality: 2010-2015 (Archive) › "You’ve Got to Grow or Go" Style American Medical Association (JAMA)APAChicago 16 - author-dateChicago 17IEEEModern Language Association (MLA)National Library of Medicine Choose the citation style. Search for this publication on Google Scholar Winslade, J. L. (2009). " You’ve Got to Grow or Go": Initiation, Performance, and Reality Television. Performance and Spirituality, 1(1). You’ve Got to Grow or Go" Details Type journal article Title "You’ve Got to Grow or Go": Initiation, Performance, and Reality Television Contributor(s) Winslade, Jason (author)(editor)(translator) Located In Performance and Spirituality ISSN 2157-4049 Volume 1 Issue 1 Date 2009 Use/Reproduction In Copyright Abstract This article explores initiation in the Western Mystery Tradition as a performance practice in which individuals engage with their communities through esoteric tradition. Primarily, I examine how initiation is a defining metaphor in performance studies and how ethnographies conducted in Pagan communities construct an initiation paradigm, thus engaging performance as a category for understanding relations between self and other. Performance itself as a critical mode is a hotly contested topic between both Pagan practitioners and Pagan Studies scholars. With that in mind, I directly apply this notion of initiation as performance to the 2004 reality television program, Mad Mad House, in which contestants had to undergo various rites of passage for a cash prize. The show was mostly predicated on collisions between contestants constructed as "normal" people and the so-called "Alts," larger than life individuals who represented various "alternative lifestyles" and spiritual paths, such as witchcraft, voodoo, vampirism, naturism and modern primitivism. Thus, the contestants were called upon to navigate in a foreign spiritual environment and "perform" as successful initiates. Within the world of reality TV, we vicariously experience individuals’ initiations into celebrity. This essay further suggests the performative implications of televised initiations.