Reality Matters_ 19 Writers Come Clean About the Shows We Can't Stop Watching - Anna David [0]
Reality Matters
Edited by Anna David
Foreword by James Frey
For reality show fans—and its harshest critics
Contents
Foreword James Frey
Introduction Anna David
1 Poverty in the Time of The Real Housewives of New York City (The Real Housewives of New York City)
Stacey Grenrock Woods
2 Faketastic (The Hills)
Melissa De La Cruz
3 Billie Jeanne Is Not My Lover (Married by America)
Neal Pollack
4 The Cutting Crew (Project Runway)
Jancee Dunn
5 Show Boat (The Other Boat Race)
Toby Young
6 The Biting Hand (Dog Whisperer)
Will Leitch
7 Honest, Honey, I’m Not Gay, I Just Like Watching Half-Naked Buff Guys with Full-Body Ink (Lockup)
Jerry Stahl
8 Becoming a Lady (Ladette to Lady)
Amelie Gillette
9 Shelly (Big Brother)
Ben Mandelker
10 Joining the Real World (The Real World)
Anna David
11 Gameboy (Survivor)
Austin Bunn
12 The After-Party (Sober House)
John Albert
13 I Dream of Stacy (What Not to Wear)
Helaine Olen
14 Idolatry (American Idol)
Richard Rushfield
15 How to Survive a Bachelor Party (The Bachelor)
Wendy Merrill
16 Gym, Tan, Laundry (Jersey Shore)
Mark Lisanti
17 Corrupted Reality (Storm Watch)
Rex Sorgatz
18 Dog the Bounty Hunter Hunter (Dog the Bounty Hunter)
Neil Strauss
Contributors
Acknowledgments
About the Editor
Other Books by Anna David
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
FOREWORD
James Frey
YOU CANNOT ESCAPE IT. You will never escape it. Try as you may, you will never get away. Hope as you might, it will never go away. It’s on twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five motherfucking days a year. It’s drunk screaming wives flipping tables. It’s brave men on creaky boats complaining about the weather and praying for fish. It’s policemen making arrest after arrest after arrest after arrest. It’s idiotic and banal and makes you hate yourself for watching it. Teenagers spinning out over a first kiss. Parents with too many children who hate each other. It’s mindless, mind-numbing, and it kills your brain. Hipsters in their early twenties pretending to live normal lives, men auditioning wives whom they will never marry. It’s a complete, utter, and absolute waste of time. Contestants on an island, in the jungle, in the wilds of China, in the depths of Africa, whoever wins gets a million dollars! It makes you feel like a fool. Cougars, MILFs, wife swapping, speed dating!!! It’s on from dawn to dusk, and into the depths of the night. You can’t get enough of it, and you can’t live without it. It’s reality television. You will never fucking escape it.
I love reality television. I watch some form of it almost every day. Today, this minute, as this file sits open before me, my computer on my lap, my feet up on a table, my ass on a couch (where it often is and feels very comfortable), a remote next to me, there are, according to the digital channel guide provided by my digital cable provider (Time Warner Cable of New York City), eighty-eight reality shows available to me. I define a reality show as something constructed to resemble reality, where a camera crew follows people around while they do something. That something can be, and at this point has been just about anything, though the producers (move the fuck over, Einstein) keep coming up with new things (Board Breaker—about a Norwegian kung fu master, also a widower and a single father to two adorable blond girls, who has devoted his life to breaking boards with his hands, feet, head, and every other part of his body and is trying to set a board breaking world record). The best of the shows are entertaining, informative, moving, and heartbreaking, and inspire us to become better people (The Biggest Loser). The worst of them, which are often the most fun to watch, are evil, cynical, nasty, mean, and ugly, and inspire long, hard laughter (The Biggest Loser Reunion: One Year Later). The shows, more of which appear on my digital channel guide every day, have all but taken over television. They’re cheap to make (all