Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture / Edition 2

by Susan Murray, Laurie Ouellette

Overview

A collection of eight essays that parse out the seemingly unprecedented rise of reality television

The Apprentice. Project Runway. The Bachelor. My Life on the D-list. Extreme Makeover. American Idol. It is virtually impossible to turn on a television without coming across some sort of reality programming. Yet, while this genre has rapidly moved from the fringes of television culture to its lucrative core, critical attention has not kept pace.

Beginning by unearthing its historical roots in early reality shows like Candid Camera and wending its way through An American Family and The Real World to the most recent crop of reality programs, Reality TV, now updated with eight new essays, is one of the first books to address the economic, visual, cultural, audience, and new media dimensions of reality television and has become the standard in the field. The essays provide a complex and comprehensive picture of how and why this genre emerged, what it means, how it differs from earlier television programming, and how it engages societies, industries, and individuals. Topics range from the blending of fact and fiction, to the uses of viewer labor and “interactivity,” to issues of surveillance, gender performativity, hyper-commercialism, and generic parody.

By spanning reality television’s origins in the late 1940s to its current overwhelming popularity, Reality TV demonstrates both the tenacity of the format and its enduring ability to speak to our changing political and social desires and anxieties.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814757345
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2008
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Susan Murray is Associate Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. She is the author of Hitch Your Antenna to the Stars: Early Television and Broadcast Stardom.

Laurie Ouellette is Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches media and cultural studies. She writes about television, media culture, social theory, and consumer culture, and is the co-author of Better Living Through Reality TV: Television and Post-Welfare Citizenship and editor of A Companion to Reality Television, among other books.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction Laurie Ouellette Susan Murray 1

Part I Genre

1 "Stanley Milgram, Allen Funt and Me": Postwar Social Science and the "First Wave" of Reality TV Anna McCarthy 23

2 Performing the Real: Documentary Diversions (with Afterword) John Corner 44

3 "I Think We Need a New Name for It": The Meeting of Documentary and Reality TV Susan Murray 65

4 Teaching Us to Fake It: The Ritualized Norms of Television's "Reality" Games Nick Couldry 82

5 Extraordinarily Ordinary: The Osbournes as "An American Family" Derek Kompare 100

Part II Industry

6 The Political Economic Origins of Reali-TV Chad Raphael 123

7 Television 2.0: The Business of American Television in Transition Ted Magder 141

8 Hoaxing the "Real": On the Metanarrative of Reality Television Alison Hearn 165

9 Global TV Realities: International Markets, Geopolitics, and the Transcultural Contexts of Reality TV John McMurria 179

Part III Culture and Power

10 Country Hicks and Urban Cliques: Mediating Race, Reality, and Liberalism on MTV's The Real World Jon Kraszewski 205

11 "Take Responsibility for Yourself": Judge Judy and the Neoliberal Citizen Laurie Ouellette 223

12 Belabored Reality: Making It Work on The Simple Life and Project Runway Heather Hendershot 243

13 Cinderella Burps: Gender, Performativity, and the Dating Show Jonathan Gray 260

14 The Comedic Treatment of Reality: Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, Fat Actress, and the Comeback Heather Osborne-Thompson 278

Part IV Interactivity

15 Melancholy, Merit, and Merchandise: The Postwar Audience Participation Show Amber Watts 301

16 Visceral Literacy:Reality TV, Savvy Viewers, and Auto-Spies Mark Andrejevic 321

17 Buying into American Idol: How We Are Being Sold on Reality Television Henry Jenkins 343

About the Contributors 363

Index 367

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Offers the most insightful and significant scholarly analysis to date of the changes taking place in the economic "globalization" of television production. A delight to read, laced with wit and humor."

-Choice,

"Since reality television began to flood TV screens, we've had to deal with another phenomenon: a renewed debate about what is 'fun' versus what is 'good for you.' The essays in this volume enlighten that discussion and take us beyond it. They provide both the record of a strange moment in history and a contribution to contemporary cultural politics."

-Toby Miller,editor of Television & New Media

"The book explores the genre's institutional and sociopolitical development, its place in the cultural landscape, and how it serves as a source of meaning and pleasure."

-NYU Today,

“Reality TV manages to cover a range of ideas and concepts about the genre . . . All watchers of reality TV—even those ashamed to admit it—would benefit from reading this text, if only to shake some of the preconceived ideas about the influence of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie's The Simple Life”
-M/C Reviews

Editorial Reviews

"Offers the most insightful and significant scholarly analysis to date of the changes taking place in the economic "globalization" of television production. A delight to read, laced with wit and humor."

Choice

"Reality TV manages to cover a range of ideas and concepts about the genre . . . All watchers of reality TVeven those ashamed to admit itwould benefit from reading this text, if only to shake some of the preconceived ideas about the influence of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie’s The Simple Life"

M/C Reviews

"Since reality television began to flood TV screens, we've had to deal with another phenomenon: a renewed debate about what is 'fun' versus what is 'good for you.' The essays in this volume enlighten that discussion and take us beyond it. They provide both the record of a strange moment in history and a contribution to contemporary cultural politics."

Toby Miller

"The book explores the genre's institutional and sociopolitical development, its place in the cultural landscape, and how it serves as a source of meaning and pleasure."

NYU Today

Provides both the record of a strange moment in history and a contribution to contemporary cultural politics. This second, revised edition brings the story right up to the present with a compelling blend of the ancient and the modern.”

-Toby Miller,editor of Television & New Media

From the Publisher