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Nearly every night on every major network,”unscripted” (but carefully crafted) “reality” TV shows routinely glorify retrograde stereotypes that most people would assume got left behind 35 years ago.
In Reality Bites Back, media critic Jennifer L. Pozner aims a critical, analytical lens at a trend most people dismiss as harmless fluff. She deconstructs reality TV’s twisted fairytales to demonstrate that far from being simple “guilty pleasures,” these programs are actually guilty of fomenting gender-war ideology and significantly affecting the intellectual and political development of this generation’s young viewers. She lays out the cultural biases promoted by reality TV about gender, race, class, sexuality, and consumerism, and explores how those biases shape and reflect our cultural perceptions of who we are, what we’re valued for, and what we should view as “our place” in society.
Smart and informative, Reality Bites Back arms readers with the tools they need to understand and challenge the stereotypes reality TV reinforces and, ultimately, to demand accountability from the corporations responsible for this contemporary cultural attack on three decades of feminist progress.
Publisher : Seal Press; Illustrated edition (October 19, 2010)
Language : English
Paperback : 392 pages
ISBN-10 : 1580052657
ISBN-13 : 978-1580052658
Item Weight : 13.6 ounces
Dimensions : 5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches
4
Reviewer: Andrew Bongiorno
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Reality TV – Even Worse for You Than You Think
Review: In an attempt to shut out the worries of the world with a little mindless entertainment, my wife and I have watched the last few cycles of America’s Next Top Model. A few cycles back, there was a contestant named London, a pretty girl and a capable model who happened to gain a few pounds as the season progressed. At no time did we consider her fat, but we also had no reason to doubt the show’s conclusion regarding this contestant, that she was unable for whatever reason to discipline her eating as well as her competitors. London was eliminated from the show mid-season.In Reality Bites Back, Jennifer L. Pozner fills in certain details about London – she had suffered from eating disorders throughout her life, which had become increasingly severe right before she was cast on ANTM. When her eating habits became somewhat normal during the show, her body reacted normally and she gained a few pounds. London had spoken frankly to fellow contestants about this issue, but the footage never made it to air. The show’s producers knew about her issues, but allowed the judges to knowingly portray her as unprofessional due to overeating during the season.I focus on this example because it shows perfectly how Pozner is true to the subtitle of this book – this is The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV. There is a wealth of new information about shows we’ve all either watched or experienced as cultural wallpaper, such as The Bachelor, Flavor of Love, and Wife Swap. And not just backstage details and descriptions of editing tricks either; the book fires sharp arrows at the networks, sleazy producers, and sponsors of these shows and explains why they are uniquely damaging to our culture and our image of ourselves and others. Readers will appreciate Pozner’s “Happy Warrior” writing style and her tips for fighting back, which include tips from a wide range of media experts.This book belongs on the bookshelf, not next to the dense cultural studies tomes, although it would stand out well there. Instead, I would classify it with Food, Inc., Fast Food Nation, and Maxed Out, readable, engaging books about things we all knew were bad for us, (factory farming! Debt! Reality Television!) but didn’t realize what cesspools they really were until we got the whole story. I can’t wait for the movie…
Reviewer: Evan Brettell
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: worth reading– may surprise you
Review: I enjoyed Reality Bites Back, though at times it felt overwritten and Pozner’s snark became tiresome. The amount of research she put into this is staggering, and she lays out the sexism, racism and classism rampant in reality TV in a way that surprised me– and I didn’t exactly have a high opinion of reality TV to begin with. A major focus of the book is product placement: it’s not just that product placement exists within the shows, but that episodes and even entire series are built around products. Many shows are basically long, sneaky commercials. I had never watched Real Housewives or Jersey Shore, but didn’t see any harm in What Not to Wear. Pozner points out the distorted views that such shows push.Pozner doesn’t shame people who like reality TV, but rather asks that we all become more media-literate, savvy, critical viewers. That we become aware of things like product placement, manipulative editing, and stereotypical casting.The book came out a few years ago and the TV landscape has changed in that time. Scripted television shows are doing extremely well now– better than ever, some might say. It no longer feels like television is rushing towards an inevitable future as a reality-show wasteland. However, many of the harmful practices outlined in this book are still going on.Definitely worth a read.
Reviewer: Paige
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Really opened my eyes
Review: Also appears on The Screaming Nitpicker.I fancy myself a media critic, though I’m not always a good one. My focus is YA novels and though I can certainly sort out good subtext from bad and call out seriously problematic elements with ease, I’m nowhere near as sharp when it comes to movies and television. The premise of Pozner’s book interested me after I finished another nonfiction novel last year, so I put this on my to-read list and finally jumped for it a few months ago. Wow. Just wow. I did not expect this book to open my eyes like this.Though Pozner’s book focuses on reality television, the criticism she makes of overall devices and character/casting choices can be made of all media, including my beloved YA novels. Where a woman might be cast specifically to play The Bitch on a reality show, writers create a character whose specific purpose is to be The Bitch. Someone who shouldn’t be cast as a romantic interest in a reality show (like Rick Rockwell of Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, who had a history of abusing women before he was cast) is somehow cast; in YA novels, a guy who shouldn’t be a viable romantic interest because he’s a terrible person or a rapist somehow is.Most significantly, she makes a point that all media must have social responsibility for the messages it sends through the magic of editing and backstage trickery (like tricking a contestant into saying something off-camera and then splicing that bit in as a voiceover). This is what I beg for YA to have because it can push some very negative messages on people who are susceptible to them.Reality television (and most media, incidentally, including YA novels) rarely want to take responsibility for themselves and the messages they send. It’s all in the name of “giving people what they want” (aka “what’s most outrageous and/or will make us the most money”), “mindless entertainment” that is anything but mindless, and “reality” that is carefully scripted and edited. Heck, calling it reality is problematic in itself because people will think this kind of crock heavily edited for dramatic impact and full of anti-women, anti-POC, anti-LGBT messages is “reality.” Its subtextual messages about what makes men and women worthy, their roles in relationships and in society, and how they should act are close to insidious.Pozner never acts like people are mindless sheep who will be brainwashed by whatever they watch and I don’t believe they are either. I can watch The Bachelor or Say Yes to the Dress without coming to think being desperate for a husband and a fairytale wedding day is what I should do because it’s “normal” in even the smallest of ways. Her point is that while some people can let the subtext in reality TV shows slide right off them, some people are affected by them–like teenage girls who aspire to be on America’s Next Top Model (arguably one of the most toxic of reality shows), diet for that purpose, and see nothing wrong with the show.Not even its use of blackface multiple times, internalized racism by its producer Tyra Banks, romanticism of violence against women, and how it tears women apart, criticizing them for everything sounding too smart when they speak to looking too ethnic, are wrong in their eyes. Nope, nothing wrong there except everything.Though Reality Bites Back is a little lacking in its discussion of LGBT people on reality televison, there is good reason for that: it’s pretty hard to find any LGBT people on reality television. Why that is and the way reality TV seems to define “men” (hot, rich, white, straight) and “women” (skinny, insecure, white, straight, desperate, inept, evil… I really could go on; reality television by and large hates women) so narrowly is something she takes the time to discuss multiple times. The few significant LGBT people that made it onto reality television are examined very wellEventually, Pozner expands her point to include all media because the minds behind the reality shows have a hand in all our media. Disney, the owner of ABC, used its news programs and a special called Profiles from the Front Line to support going to war in Iraq and feed people’s fears as it supported their agenda. On an episode of Wife Swap, a pro-war, pro-Bush mom was touted as pro-American; the peace activist mother she switched with was decried as un-American (and falsely labeled an atheist; she was actually a Quaker). Shows like Say Yes to the Dress are series-long product placements. “Mindless entertainment” is anything but; through subtext and product placement both subtle and blatant, they are influencing how we think, feel, buy, and live.While I was in the middle of reading this book, I saw Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter with my two best friends and I found my attention more easily drawn to how it portrayed women and people of color. I couldn’t help but notice that all women of note were villains, victims, or love interests; late in the movie, the love interest and a large group of predominately black and female house servants are referred to by the title character as his “contingency plan.” That spells it out that they’re not characters; they’re a collective plot device used to make sure Lincoln’s plan doesn’t fail. That this movie takes place in an alternate history where vampires are real and Lincoln hunted them does not excuse lacking characterization for anyone that isn’t white and male.The above paragraph makes me feel incredibly proud of myself because before this book, I wouldn’t have made that kind of criticism of a movie, I don’t think. I wasn’t even done with the book and I paid that much attention to those elements! If anyone desires to become a discerning media critic/activist and they haven’t already read this book, they need to. I thought I knew a lot, but Reality Bites Back taught me even more.
Reviewer: Michael Lynch
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: fairly well written
Review: This book has an extremely small font, and it looks like it was prepared on a computer and then made from camera-ready printed pages. The publisher made a very bad decision in this regard. It’s just annoying to read on a physical level.The content is basically good, though the writer should have condensed her writing. She tends to go on with too much extraneous detail. The book should have been trimmed by a fourth.
Reviewer: RH
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Good book
Reviewer: Ksenia Maffey
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I bought this book for my Master Thesis and I ended up reading the whole thing. It is easy to read, I really appreciated the style. The book gives quite an inside into the harsh world of TV-production.The only thing that bothered me a bit – the author is not always objective, she is a bonafied feminist and she trashes all the good-looking females who spend a bit more time in front of the mirror.
