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waffel113 's review for:
Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV
by Emily Nussbaum
adventurous
informative
reflective
medium-paced
These were vulgar programs, created by vulgar people, for vulgar people, about vulgar people. Worst of all, they were insanely popular.
There's a good argument to be made that, among America's contributions to global culture, reality TV - even moreso than musical theater or jazz - is the most American of them all. Though some of its most enduring creations (including Big Brother and Survivor) originated overseas and were turned into phenomena in the States by people like the English Mark Burnett and the Dutch John de Mol Jr., there's something about the idea that we're seeing people as they truly are in unguarded moments, that a common man or woman on the street can achieve something great if given the chance, that feels reflective of a national ethos, indeed the whole idea of the "American dream." Throughout Cue the Sun!, a rollicking history of reality TV from the early days of Candid Camera to the present, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Emily Nussbaum uses the art form as a metonym for the nation, telling a shadow history of America through the evolution of the genre. Always informative, sometimes harrowing, and often wildly entertaining, her book turns out to be perfectly matched to its subject.
A major reason for this is that, with reality TV, the people with their hands on the controls are often as big personalities - or even bigger - than the ones on the screen. It's a tradition that stretches back to Allen Funt of Candid Camera and Chuck Farris of The Dating Game and The Gong Show, and Nussbaum's extensive research helps bring these raconteurs to vivid life. It's in these early chapters that the book pulses with the vibrant energy that its subjects surely felt, the thrill of creating something entirely new and out of the bounds of good taste. In its metamorphosis from featherlight entertainment (Queen for a Day) to groundbreaking documentary (An American Family, the focus of the book's strongest chapter) and mainstreaming - and, the book convincingly argues, gentrification - of LGBTQ+ perspectives (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, RuPaul's Drag Race), Nussbaum makes a compelling case for reality TV as a force for good in the American zeitgeist; after all, there may be no Richard Hatch or Pedro Zamora if Lance Loud doesn't blaze the trail for "out" gay characters on TV through An American Family. It's here that Nussbaum's affection for the medium shines through most clearly, and it makes for wildly captivating reading.
But, if reality TV is the most American of arts, that also means it reflects its underbelly, and Nussbaum doesn't shy away from that either. The questions of ethics (Frankenbites, anyone?) and consent hang over the book like a shroud, even in the seemingly-innocent prank shows the genre sprouted from, and that's before we get into the exploitation of editors and cameramen, the blatantly false creations of Fox in the '90s, and, of course, the small matter of the American people electing a game show pitchman to the highest office in the land not once but twice. Cue the Sun! spares no details when delving into the darkness - the unique darkness - of the genre, reaching its apex/nadir in the chapter dedicated to The Bachelor & The Bachelorette, which can truly turn the stomach in its grappling with the inherent misogyny, onscreen and off, of the dating show. Not for nothing, Nussbaum suggests, is it called reality TV: time and again, when we look at the small screen, what we see is not a simulacrum of life as much as a reflection, even when it's compromised and gussied up for the cameras. Cue the Sun! understands this down to the bone, and that's what makes it a smashing success as a work of both cultural and national history.