When I got married, I started watching my sister’s favorite style: reality tv. I saw myself as a change to truth and saw myself as a new person. Chit- talk about pretentious television is often quite boring and perfunctory:” Oh yeah, that’s a excellent show”. Telling people that you too like “90 Time Fiancé” is an entirely different experience. The enthusiasm, determination, and lack of conceit real fans possess are stunning and beautiful. My cultural life has changed since joining this group.
So I approached Emily Nussbaum’s story of real TV, Cue the Sun!, with great courage, hoping to gain some insight on how the pork is made at TLC, Bravo, and other sites I’ve grown to love. As Nussbaum worked her way through the development of real development, it became clear that neither you nor your friend, who enjoys TLC, should read this book.
Unlike its subject matter, this text is not particularly entertaining. Instead, it’s a series of roughly independent chapters detailing the manufacturing process, artistic inventions, and work conditions of real programs ranging from 1940s television to” Survivor”. Flipping to the section of your favorite show is simple thanks to this style.
The book is intended for a democratic intelligentsia, who may view these programs as innocent pleasures but still wants to maintain an humorous or intellectual distance from them. Instead of discussing how a three-part tell-all is still not enough to cover a really good time, they want to talk about unionization efforts and the stylistic loan” The Office” owes real TV. This is not the dishy, behind- the- displays text aimed at” Bachelor Nation”.
What You Came For
Nevertheless, a few ( though genuinely, very few ) juicy scoops sneak through.
One of the best types is offered by Sarah Shapiro, an earlier maker on” The Bachelor”. As a Sarah Lawrence College graduate who was interested in “maximalist gay art that is equal parts hideous and gorgeous,” Shapiro became interested in the work. She ended up on” The Bachelor “‘s set, where she discovered her talent for being” the schlubby best friend that hot girls tell you to.” Nussbaum offers a democratic analysis of the “bone- strong sexism”,” The Bachelor”, and Shapiro’s scenario:” The series tapped a wellspring of absorbed misogyny, teaching her to target it at other women”.
Shapiro says,” I started getting paid for it and I started getting money for it,” and therefore I started feeling really f-cking pleasant. Like: Destroy these b- tches”. Insiders call deceptive suppliers posing as confidantes “preditors”, a puree- up of prey and editor. One of the best was Shapiro.
One season, Shapiro knew her contestant was n’t getting the final rose, but sensing an opportunity, she began pumping the bachelorette up:” Oh my God, I’m going to get fired for telling you this. Like: Oh my God, oh my God. It’s you“. She was excited and drank all the way through her wedding party. Shapiro received numerous hours of panic videos and glowing reviews from her bosses when she was rejected.
What Reality Has Wrought
The book’s title, Cue the Sun!, is a reference to” The Truman Show”, the 1998 Jim Carrey movie where he plays a man who does n’t realize he’s the star of a reality television show and all his “friends” are actually actors. The film looks persuasive in our present influence culture, nailing the pornography, the artifice, and the subjectivism that’s become predominant. Everyone is running his own company, starring in his own display, and the best at it getting paid.
Some business veterans are beginning to feel cynical about this growth. When Mike Fleiss first pitched” The Bachelor”, people did n’t understand why you would kiss someone on camera. Then, Fleiss said,” This new generation is just like,’ Why may I actually kiss somebody away camera?’ That’s where they’re at”. Typically, producers would use drinking or lack of sleep to stimulate foolish and entertaining behavior. Then narcissists need no pushing. They must be well-balanced and well-treated to give the screenwriters ‘ desires for antics.
Nussbaum just wrote a column asking if” Love Is Blind” is a” dangerous work”. This concept serves to bring real TV’s story to its conclusion in some ways. The subjects in” An American Family” were true when it first appeared in 1973 because they had no idea what it meant for devices to record them and for dramatizing their lives. Reality TV has smacked so deeply into popular culture today that cast members mistake themselves as “workers” who purposefully sell their existence. The difference between Instagramming your entire life and appearing on” The Bachelor” is one of degree, not kind.
What Should We Do Next?
These are the troubling issues that reality TV raises. How do you live a real life as opposed to a curated copy in a world influenced by” Keeping Up With the Kardashians” and social media? When does entertainment transition from being taboo and indecorous to being normal? What does it mean to live in a world where everyone willingly sacrifices everything for a small chance of C-list fame? And is it cruel to watch them go through this?
Nietzsche famously said,” If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you”. There is clearly a growing number of fans and cast members who do not view reality TV as a stylistic achievement ( like Nussbaum ) or as absurd entertainment ( like me and most people I know ) after nearly 100 years of reality programming and generations of critics who have labeled it a spectacle that degrades public morality.
To them,” Love is Blind” is a workplace, and Kim Kardashian is a hero. Her business success is based on selling every scrap of her integrity and privacy, not a moral failure or a morbid curiosity. Fifty- seven percent of Gen Zers, if given the choice, would choose to be social media influencers. Reality TV has become mainstream aspirational content as traditional norms and institutions lose their relevance.
While Nussbaum predictably goes after Trump, claiming that” The Apprentice” rebranded a “multiply- bankrupt ignoramus” who left a” stain on real estate, Twitter, and democracy”, the truth is that Trump, Kim Kardashian, and RuPaul are all rewriting the rules of what’s acceptable and praiseworthy. Donald Trump is indeed a “great businessman” if RuPaul and Kim Kardashian are both moguls. But on these sorts of issues, Nussbaum is silent, content with condemning Trump but looking no further.
Like” The Truman Show”, our world can feel surreal. People jump at the chance to sell their privacy, their integrity, and their souls for a shot at fame. It can be both intriguing and comical, but also depressing and depressing. A little prudence helps distinguish between the positive and the negative, and between the degrading and the entertaining. And to really enjoy the absurdity of it all, you need a good sense of humor, as all reality fans are aware of.
