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A review by hannahstohelit
Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV by Emily Nussbaum
4.25
I'd thought, at first, that I'd find nothing interesting in this book because I don't really watch reality TV, then I was like "well ANYTHING can be interesting if written about well and reality TV is kind of inherently interesting" and so I reserved it from the library.
Second conjecture was correct- this was fascinating. I'd seen basically none of the shows mentioned in the book at basically any point but it didn't matter- as someone fascinated by the history of TV broadcasting I thought that the opening chapters were actually possibly my favorites (and only augmented by my parents, when I mentioned it to them, breaking into the theme song of Candid Camera). The later chapters about specific later reality shows and genres were also incredibly interesting, but more as sources of interesting anecdotes, which they definitely were. (I will note that I skipped the Apprentice chapter because I kept feeling like I already read stuff about that and had zero desire to continue. It also bugged me that it was placed at the end due to the Trump presidency factor despite chronological order seeming to place it several chapters earlier.)
If there's one criticism I had, it's that it made it hard to know what the book thought of as reality TV and what it didn't. My parents kept asking "so did they count game shows" and in the old-TV section, in a sense yes they did- Queen For A Day, The Newlywed Game, and The Dating Game were fundamentally game shows, they were just personality based rather than trivia based, but then they weren't really contextualized with the general game show trends of the era. And there was a whole chapter on Bravo shows that included Queer Eye but then completely left off, say, HGTV despite it being a full channel of that kind of show as well. It's not what people think of when they think "reality TV" while Bravo is, but I couldn't quite figure out why. The Food Network didn't get a mention as such either, but some of its shows were mentioned based on shared production figures/reality-style formats. In general, it was just quite confusing what "counted" as reality TV and what didn't. I would have also appreciated a bit of commentary about reality TV in the age of streaming, with shows like Queer Eye and The Kardashians moving fully to streaming and such. The thread from early TV to modern reality TV was compellingly laid out, but I couldn't completely tell where the lines were drawn.
But while I'm not sure if I can now say that I "understand reality TV"- especially as, again, someone who's seen so little of it- but I absolutely got a great peek into the history of the development of television and a lot of great anecdotes engagingly written, which was basically what I wanted for my afternoon.
Second conjecture was correct- this was fascinating. I'd seen basically none of the shows mentioned in the book at basically any point but it didn't matter- as someone fascinated by the history of TV broadcasting I thought that the opening chapters were actually possibly my favorites (and only augmented by my parents, when I mentioned it to them, breaking into the theme song of Candid Camera). The later chapters about specific later reality shows and genres were also incredibly interesting, but more as sources of interesting anecdotes, which they definitely were. (I will note that I skipped the Apprentice chapter because I kept feeling like I already read stuff about that and had zero desire to continue. It also bugged me that it was placed at the end due to the Trump presidency factor despite chronological order seeming to place it several chapters earlier.)
If there's one criticism I had, it's that it made it hard to know what the book thought of as reality TV and what it didn't. My parents kept asking "so did they count game shows" and in the old-TV section, in a sense yes they did- Queen For A Day, The Newlywed Game, and The Dating Game were fundamentally game shows, they were just personality based rather than trivia based, but then they weren't really contextualized with the general game show trends of the era. And there was a whole chapter on Bravo shows that included Queer Eye but then completely left off, say, HGTV despite it being a full channel of that kind of show as well. It's not what people think of when they think "reality TV" while Bravo is, but I couldn't quite figure out why. The Food Network didn't get a mention as such either, but some of its shows were mentioned based on shared production figures/reality-style formats. In general, it was just quite confusing what "counted" as reality TV and what didn't. I would have also appreciated a bit of commentary about reality TV in the age of streaming, with shows like Queer Eye and The Kardashians moving fully to streaming and such. The thread from early TV to modern reality TV was compellingly laid out, but I couldn't completely tell where the lines were drawn.
But while I'm not sure if I can now say that I "understand reality TV"- especially as, again, someone who's seen so little of it- but I absolutely got a great peek into the history of the development of television and a lot of great anecdotes engagingly written, which was basically what I wanted for my afternoon.