A vigorous, sometimes predictable defense for reality TV that could use more of the genre’s surprises.
For reality TV fans looking for high-minded, scholarly reasons to defend what many consider “guilty pleasure” viewing, here is a book filled with them.
Lindemann, an associate professor of sociology at Lehigh University, crafts a thorough, well-plotted argument that shows how MTV’s Real World franchise, reality competitions like the Survivor series, and the universe of Real Housewives stars both influence popular culture and are shaped by it. Though the narrative is constructed like a doctoral thesis—the first half moves from an examination of reality TV’s impact on the self, couples, groups, and families to tackling big issues like race, gender, and sexuality in the second half—the author drops in enough quirky tidbits about Cardi B or various Kardashians, especially at the beginning, to keep things moving. She walks the line between entertaining and educational as she discusses how unscripted TV is “a fun-house mirror of our dominant, heteronormative culture, and even as it deals in sexual archetypes, the genre also shows us some possibilities for transcending our deeply entrenched roles and expectations.” But given the ever growing cavalcade of fascinating personalities to write about—e.g., the megarich Kardashian and Jenner families, battling Real Housewives, and groundbreaking activists like Pedro from The Real World: San Francisco—Lindemann’s discourse usually ends up toward the academic side. “We’ve seen how it has popped from its documentary roots,” she writes, “thrusting zanier and zanier cast members into increasingly convoluted and provocative scenarios.” However, we see little of that zaniness or the escapist interest that attract people to the format in the first place. When the author does indulge—as she does with a fascinating look at how “real” “Countess” LuAnn de Lesseps is on the Real Housewives of New York City—it just makes you want more.
A vigorous, sometimes predictable defense for reality TV that could use more of the genre’s surprises.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-374-27902-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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