Veteran TV critic Emily Nussbaum takes us on a journey through the often disturbing evolution of reality television.
Fair or not, “ reality television ” is still that grungy catch-all term, television’s version of Circus Circus compared to “Prestige TV’s” Bellagio. Circus Circus survives in Las Vegas by serving a specific audience, and the hustling, striving, lying, scheming stars and creators of reality programming do the same.
“If you watch these shows, you should value the people who create them,” Nussbaum says of her many interviewees, who are well aware of the sometimes deserved reputation of their industry. “Some are disgusted, some are proud, but I wanted for them to tell their stories in their own voices.” “It was invented as a budget gambit to produce inexpensive content,” without strong labor protections, Nussbaum said. “Whether the 1940s, ’70s, or ’90s, that’s the basis of the whole thing.”to the reality genre: Come and play, but exposure is the only reward. Viewers don’t sympathize when it’s regular people like themselves suffering misadventures, rooting instead for the three-card-monte dealer against a mark, appreciating the sinister production.
“You’re fucking with reality,” one crewmember warned about the strategy, which creator Jon Murray called “throwing pebbles in a pond.”, which featured a photo of cast-member Eric Nies “full-frontal naked, as he took a cautious step through a forest, like some hunky innocent in Eden,” Nussbaum writes. The goal was to “ignite a flirtation or maybe a fight—either one was fine,” with production.
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