Cue the Sun!
The Invention of Reality TV
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The rollicking saga of reality television, a “sweeping” (The Washington Post) cultural history of America’s most influential, most divisive artistic phenomenon, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning New Yorker writer—“a must-read for anyone interested in television or popular culture” (NPR)
“Passionate, exquisitely told . . . With muscular prose and an exacting eye for detail . . . [Nussbaum] knits her talents for sharp analysis and telling reportage well.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)
Who invented reality television, the world’s most dangerous pop-culture genre? And why can’t we look away? In this revelatory, deeply reported account of the rise of “dirty documentary”—from its contentious roots in radio to the ascent of Donald Trump—Emily Nussbaum unearths the origin story of the genre that ate the world, as told through the lively voices of the people who built it. At once gimlet-eyed and empathetic, Cue the Sun! explores the morally charged, funny, and sometimes tragic consequences of the hunt for something real inside something fake.
In sharp, absorbing prose, Nussbaum traces the jagged fuses of experimentation that exploded with Survivor at the turn of the millennium. She introduces the genre’s trickster pioneers, from the icy Allen Funt to the shambolic Chuck Barris; Cops auteur John Langley; cynical Bachelor ringmaster Mike Fleiss; and Jon Murray and Mary-Ellis Bunim, the visionaries behind The Real World—along with dozens of stars from An American Family, The Real World, Big Brother, Survivor, and The Bachelor. We learn about the tools of the trade—like the Frankenbite, a deceptive editor’s best friend—and ugly tales of exploitation. But Cue the Sun! also celebrates reality’s peculiar power: a jolt of emotion that could never have come from a script.
What happened to the first reality stars, the Louds—and why won’t they speak to the couple who filmed them? Which serial killer won on The Dating Game? Nussbaum explores reality TV as a strike-breaker, the queer roots of Bravo, the dark truth behind The Apprentice, and more. A shrewd observer who adores television, Nussbaum is the ideal voice for the first substantive history of the genre that, for better or worse, made America what it is today.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Reality TV started long before Survivor, and New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum takes us along for the ride as she unspools that history. Her in-depth detailing of reality TV’s early years is fascinating, not least because it covers unforgettable characters like Chuck Barris, creator of goofy yet cruel series like The Dating Game and The Gong Show, and Lance Loud, the witty, Warhol-obsessed gay teenager who was the breakout star of PBS’s hugely controversial documentary series, An American Family. But it’s in the 2000s that the story turns explosive, from the first season of Big Brother (when online fans hired airplanes to send messages to the contestants!) to the endless controversies of The Bachelor and other dating competitions. Behind-the-scenes interviews reveal how manipulative filming and editing practices shape the finished product and the toll it all takes on the often underpaid and overworked crews. Like a reality TV show itself, Cue the Sun! is simultaneously enjoyable, unsettling, and so fascinating that you can’t bring yourself to look away.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this boisterous chronicle, television critic Nussbaum (I Like to Watch) charts unscripted television's evolution from Candid Camera's 1948 premier through the first season of The Apprentice in 2003. Shedding light on the genre's progenitors, Nussbaum argues that the cinema verité PBS documentary series An American Family (1973), which chronicled the foibles of an affluent California family of seven, established the reality soap opera format that MTV's The Real World (1992–present) later popularized. Nussbaum profiles the "amateur sociologists, gleeful manipulators and shameless voyeurs" who pioneered the genre, describing The Newlywed Game creator Chuck Barris as a braggadocious P.T. Barnum–esque figure with a tenuous allegiance to truth (one of his memoirs implausibly claimed he'd been an assassin for the CIA). Detailed interviews with cast, crew, and producers provide juicy behind-the-scenes tidbits about the making of such shows as Big Brother, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and Survivor, whose inaugural season almost collapsed amid allegations that a camera operator attempted to tip the competition by dropping a Clif Bar for a contestant to find. The most shocking stories reveal the ethically dubious strategies producers use to gin up drama. For instance, one Bachelor producer recalls needling a bachelorette about her eating disorder until she cried, and then editing the footage to "make her look like a hysterical stalker." It's a rowdy and unsettling look at how reality conquered television.