Reality TV

From early first-wave programs such as Candid Camera, An American Family, and The Real World to the shows on our television screens and portable devices today, reality television consistently takes us to cities-such as New York, Los Angeles, and Boston-to imagine the place of urbanity in American culture and society. Jon Kraszewski offers the first extended account of this phenomenon, as he makes the politics of urban space the center of his history and theory of reality television.

Kraszewski situates reality television in a larger economic transformation that started in the 1980s when America went from an industrial economy, when cities were home to all classes, to its post-industrial economy as cities became key points in a web of global financing, expelling all economic classes except the elite and the poor. Reality television in the industrial era reworked social relationships based on class, race, and gender for liberatory purposes, which resulted in an egalitarian ethos in the genre. However, reality television of the post-industrial era attempts to convince viewers that cities still serve their interests, even though most viewers find city life today economically untenable. Each chapter uses a key theoretical concept from spatial theory-such as power geometries, diasporic nostalgia, orientalism, the imagination of social expulsions, and the relationship between the country and the city-to illuminate the way reality television engages this larger transformation of urban space in America.

"Kraszewski's careful attention to the spatial intersections of class, taste, race, ethnicity, and gender is a highly fruitful method of examining space as "the geographic coordinates of social power within a given place" in the context of reality TV." Molly A. Schneider, from Film Criticism, Vol. 42, Issue 3

Autorentext

Jon Kraszewski is Associate Professor and Program Coordinator of Visual and Sound Media at Seton Hall University. He is author of the book The New Entrepreneurs: An Institutional History of Television Anthology Writers (Wesleyan, 2010), as well numerous articles on television and film.

Klappentext

From early first-wave programs such as Candid Camera, An American Family, and The Real World to the shows on our television screens and portable devices today, reality television consistently takes us to cities-such as New York, Los Angeles, and Boston-to imagine the place of urbanity in American culture and society. Jon Kraszewski offers the first extended account of this phenomenon, as he makes the politics of urban space the center of his history and theory of reality television. Kraszewski situates reality television in a larger economic transformation that started in the 1980s when America went from an industrial economy, when cities were home to all classes, to its post-industrial economy as cities became key points in a web of global financing, expelling all economic classes except the elite and the poor. Reality television in the industrial era reworked social relationships based on class, race, and gender for liberatory purposes, which resulted in an egalitarian ethos in the genre. However, reality television of the post-industrial era attempts to convince viewers that cities still serve their interests, even though most viewers find city life today economically untenable. Each chapter uses a key theoretical concept from spatial theory-such as power geometries, diasporic nostalgia, orientalism, the imagination of social expulsions, and the relationship between the country and the city-to illuminate the way reality television engages this larger transformation of urban space in America.

Zusammenfassung

From early first-wave programs such as Candid Camera, An American Family, and The Real World to the shows on our television screens and portable devices today, reality television consistently takes us to citiessuch as New York, Los Angeles, and Bostonto imagine the place of urbanity in American culture and society. Jon Kraszewski offers the first extended account of this phenomenon, as he makes the politics of urban space the center of his history and theory of reality television.

Kraszewski situates reality television in a larger economic transformation that started in the 1980s when America went from an industrial economy, when cities were home to all classes, to its post-industrial economy as cities became key points in a web of global financing, expelling all economic classes except the elite and the poor. Reality television in the industrial era reworked social relationships based on class, race, and gender for liberatory purposes, which resulted in an egalitarian ethos in the genre. However, reality television of the post-industrial era attempts to convince viewers that cities still serve their interests, even though most viewers find city life today economically untenable. Each chapter uses a key theoretical concept from spatial theorysuch as power geometries, diasporic nostalgia, orientalism, the imagination of social expulsions, and the relationship between the country and the cityto illuminate the way reality television engages this larger transformation of urban space in America.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: The Openness of Space on Twentieth-Century Reality Television

Chapter 2: Diasporic Nostalgia and the Fractured Geographies of Twenty-First Century Urban Reality Television

Chapter 3: Bravo and the Geographies of Urban Servitude

Chapter 4: Nostalgia Versus Historical ContinuityBoston Rob, New York, and Imagining Vulnerable Urban Identities

Chapter 5: Golden Ages and Fool's GoldRural Reality Television During the Era of Urban Expulsions

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