Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV by Emily Nussbaum (Random House).
In the introduction to Cue the Sun!, Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic Emily Nussbaum reveals that in 2003 she told a friend that she wanted to write a book about this new genre called ‘reality TV’. After all, Survivor was a smash hit. The Bachelor had 25 women competing for one man. A “voyeuristic hotbox” called Big Brother was turning nobodies into stars. Her friend, however, was skeptical.
“You better write that one fast,” said the friend, convinced reality TV was a fad, a bubble that would pop before the book was published. Nussbaum put the idea on the backburner for about 20 years.
As we know, reality TV has been no flash in the pan. Almost 25 years since the first season of Survivor rocked the TV world, the unreal world of reality TV is everywhere.
In Cue the Sun! Nussbaum takes a comprehensive (400+ pages!) look at the lowest rung of the TV universe, reality TV. One might think, as Nussbaum did, that reality TV only dates back to the early ‘90s with MTVs The Real World. What the author discovered was that reality TV began in the mid-‘50s (and even earlier on radio) with a show called Queen for a Day. On the daytime series, unsuspecting women would be crowned queen for a day (well, an hour, anyway) and showered with gifts.
Then there was the innocent hidden camera show Candid Camera, where host Allen Funt played tricks on unsuspecting folks with the camera hidden away. The show had a catchy theme song (“Smile! You’re on Candid Camera …”) and was a major hit. (The format has staying power; Just for Laughs Gags pops up on CBC when it has nothing else to show, which is often.) Critics turned up their collective noses, which would be a theme for the entire reality show era.
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Post Candid Camera, the emerging genre took a crass turn during the Chuck Barris era. Barris created game shows (which Nussbaum equates to reality TV) like The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game. He also created and hosted the execrable The Gong Show, where a panel of C-level celebs judged D-level talent.
Reality TV hit its cultural high point before it was even recognized as a genre with An American Family (1973). Nussbaum sees it as a “real life soap opera” and “the most divisive, explosive, endlessly debated pop culture sensation” of the era. Ther cinema verité documentary focused on the lives of one American family, the Louds. The series, which aired on PBS (!) followed the well-off Santa Barbara clan as it disintegrated. Nussbaum devotes almost 40 pages to the show, which is fascinating reading even for someone who has never seen it, like me.
Things get a lot less serious after An American Family, especially with America’s Funniest Home Videos (which, incredibly, is still on the air), and Cops (which, incredibly, is still on the air). But the reality era really kicked off from 1990-2000 with the MTV series The Real World, which featured hot young people stuck in a house. That was followed by the most important and successful reality series of them all, Survivor, in 2000. I vividly recall watching Survivor with my sons, and yelling at the TV when villainous Richard Hatch won that first season.
Survivor led to Big Brother and The Bachelor and The Apprentice, which made Donald Trump a star and can truly be said to have changed history. Of the major reality shows, only The Amazing Race is barely mentioned, which leads me to believe it is a scandal-free production. This makes me happy, because The Amazing Race is my only reality show habit, the only such show I can watch without feeling dirty.
Nussbaum talked to more than 300 people for this opus, from underpaid and overworked behind-the-scenes people to former stars, many of whom were traumatized by the experience. The behind-the-curtain stuff about reality TV is fascinating, with producers shamelessly manipulating its (mostly) willing stars. She cites examples of rampant fraud, like stitched-together audio clips, called Frankenbites, that make participants say things they didn’t really say. There is a lot of dirt in Cue the Sun!
If you’re a fan of reality TV, you should read Cue the Sun! Or, if you love Big Brother or Survivor or The Bachelor, maybe you shouldn’t. Reality might be too depressing.
