Reality TV

by Murray, Susan

• ISBN13: 9780814757345
• ISBN10: 0814757340
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-12-01
• Publisher: New York Univ Pr

Summary

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 likeCandid Cameraand wending its way throughAn American FamilyandThe Real Worldto 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 labour 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 TVdemonstrates both the tenacity of the format and its enduring ability to speak to our changing political and social desires and anxieties.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Genre
"Stanley Milgram, Allen Funt and Me": Postwar Social Science and the "First Wave" of Reality TV	p. 23
Performing the Real: Documentary Diversions (with Afterword)	p. 44
"I Think We Need a New Name for It": The Meeting of Documentary and Reality TV	p. 65
Teaching Us to Fake It: The Ritualized Norms of Television's "Reality" Games	p. 82
Extraordinarily Ordinary: The Osbournes as "An American Family"	p. 100
Industry
The Political Economic Origins of Reali-TV	p. 123
Television 2.0: The Business of American Television in Transition	p. 141
Hoaxing the "Real": On the Metanarrative of Reality Television	p. 165
Global TV Realities: International Markets, Geopolitics, and the Transcultural Contexts of Reality TV	p. 179
Culture and Power
Country Hicks and Urban Cliques: Mediating Race, Reality, and Liberalism on MTV's The Real World	p. 205
"Take Responsibility for Yourself": Judge Judy and the Neoliberal Citizen	p. 223
Belabored Reality: Making It Work on The Simple Life and Project Runway	p. 243
Cinderella Burps: Gender, Performativity, and the Dating Show	p. 260
The Comedic Treatment of Reality: Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, Fat Actress, and the Comeback	p. 278
Interactivity
Melancholy, Merit, and Merchandise: The Postwar Audience Participation Show	p. 301
Visceral Literacy: Reality TV, Savvy Viewers, and Auto-Spies	p. 321
Buying into American Idol: How We Are Being Sold on Reality Television	p. 343
About the Contributors	p. 363
Index	p. 367
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