Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0814756883 ISBN 13: 9780814756881

Publisher: NYU Press, 2004

Synopsis

A collection of essays that parse out the seemingly unprecedented rise of reality television

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.

About this title

About the Authors

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 at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches media and cultural studies. She writes about television, media culture, social theory, and consumer culture, and is the co-author of Better Living Through Reality TV: Television and Post-Welfare Citizenship and editor of A Companion to Reality Television, among other books.

Edition details

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814756883
• ISBN 13: 9780814756881
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 358
• Editor: Susan Murray, Laurie Ouellette