Synopses & Reviews
Survivor.
The Bachelor.
Extreme Makeover.
Big Brother.
Joe Millionaire.
American Idol.
The Osbournes. 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, Cops, and The Real World to the most recent crop of reality programs, Reality TV is the first book to address the economic, visual, cultural, and audience dimensions of reality television. 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 construction of televisual "reality" to the changing face of criminal violence on TV, to issues of surveillance, taste, and social control.
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.
Contributors include: Nick Couldry, Mary Beth Haralovich, John Hartley, Chuck Kleinhans, Derek Kompare, Jon Kraszewski, Kathleen LeBesco, Justin Lewis, Ted Magder, Jennifer Maher, Anna McCarthy, Rick Morris, Chad Raphael, Elayne Rapping, Jeffrey Sconce, Michael W. Trosset, Pamela Wilson.
Review
"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,
Review
"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 and New Media
Review
"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,
Review
“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,
Synopsis
What is it that makes language powerful? This book uses the psychoanalytic concepts of narcissism and libidinal investment to explain how rhetoric compels us and how it can effect change.
The works of Joseph Conrad, James Baldwin, Michael Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Arthur Miller, D.H. Lawrence, Ben Jonson, George Orwell, and others are the basis of this thoughtful exploration of the relationship between language and subject. Bringing together ideas from Freudian, post- Freudian, Lacanian, and post-structuralist schools, Alcorn investigates the power of the text that underlies the reader response approach to literature in a strikingly new way. He shows how the production of literary texts begins and ends with narcissistic self-love, and also shows how the reader's interest in these texts is directed by libidinal investment.
Psychoanalysts, psychologists, and lovers of literature will enjoy Alcorn's diverse and far-reaching insights into classic and contemporary writers and thinkers.
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 in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities. She is author (with James Hay) of Better Living through Reality TV and of Viewers Like You? How Public TV Failed the People.