Video: WIMN’s reality TV analysis on PBS - advertiser-driven sexism is serious business
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Posted by Jennifer L Pozner April 18th, 2007 |
Do you consider humiliating, degrading, objectifying and infantilizing women for the profit of advertisers and corporate media owners quality entertainment?
Neither do I, as I explained this weekend on the PBS debate show To The Contrary, in a taped “Behind the Headlines” interview with host Bonnie Erbe:
The video above is about four minutes long, and includes only the interview (if anyone reading has a digital copy of the ensuing debate about sexism in reality TV among To The Contrary’s four guests and host, please let me know).
It was gratifying to be able to bring a progressive media critique of reality TV and the economic forces driving the genre to a serious public affairs program, because even though most people view shows like ABC’s The Bachelor and Extreme Makeover, CW’s America’s Next Top Model, Fox’s Joe Millionaire, NBC’s Who Wants to Marry My Dad? and VH1’s Flavor of Love as harmless fluff or, at worst, guilty pleasures, I really believe that these programs have deep and damaging significance for our society. The manufactured, manipulated “reality” of so-called “unscripted” dating, mating, makeover and modeling shows function as the cultural arm of the backlash against women, yet after about six years of increasingly disturbing programming, To The Contrary’s short interview and debate was (unfortunately) the most in-depth attention I’ve seen any nationally syndicated news program devote to this topic to date.
For the last six years, as part of the media analysis program of Women In Media & News, I’ve been doing my best to draw critical attention to the reality TV genre in multimedia presentations on college campuses (I’ll come to your school if you want - just be in touch), magazine articles and blog posts, and, sometimes, via commentary in media outlets.
My hope is that with increasing scrutiny to this topic on public affairs programs like To The Contrary (and op-eds and blog posts and letters to editors, advertisers and networks written by people like you), more of us will begin to think critically about — and reject — the images and the ideas that are being sold to us by reality TV producers, and the product placement advertisers who influence the content, sets, dialog and even plotlines of these programs.
PS: If you have tips about particularly vile representations of gender, race, class or sexuality issues in specific reality TV episodes, please send them my way — video tape/YouTube them if you can, but send your tips to info [at] wimnonline.org. They may become fodder for future blog posts — or material/research for the book I’m working on about reality TV as cultural backlash against women.
Thoughts about reality TV? Share them in the comments field below.
April 23rd, 2007 21:20
Speaking of particularly vile representations of gender, race, class and sexuality; how about all the Bleached Brunettes lurching around squealing Blonde, Blonder, Blondest! on Reality and Unreality shows alike.
These women do not represent Blondes they represent the lowest class of Brunette; the Bleached Brunettes.
For example; 70% of prostituted women are Bleached Brunettes. The pimp and ho culture is based on the Bleached Brunette using the image and name Blonde in order to sell the racial, class, and sexual degradation of the Blonde woman and the Blonde child.
Bleached Brunettes serve as the focus and the hook for degrading ALL women and children.
Among the wealthy, influential dead Bleached Brunettes there is Marilyn Theho; drugged/drunken murder/suicide hooker/actress and Anna Nicole Smith also d/d m/s h/a.
Then there are the equally wealthy and influential “blonde kinderwhores” represented by the Bleached Brunettes Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Courtney Love and others. Don’t forget Pamela Anderson; the standard implanted Bleached Brunette Paymate.
When are the normal women (Blonde, Brunette, Redhead, Black-haired or Gray-haired) going to wake up and take the power away from these women?
It’s easy, it’s simple, it’s fool-proof; just don’t let them use the name Blonde.
All the bleach in the world won’t save them when their Drivers Licence says Bleached Brunette and their big movies are Legally Bleached Brunette, Bleached and More Bleached and Gentlemen Prefer Bleached Brunettes.
All the money they make now would soon go back to where it belongs; to women with real talent and worth. Whatever else you got from my ridiculously long letter; get this - Bleached Brunettes are not ‘worth’ the name Blonde.
November 5th, 2007 15:10
[…] – scripted to appeal to the most base notions about women, people of color, LGBT people, low-income people, youth and more. […]
December 20th, 2007 21:59
[…] Produced hundreds of blog posts, articles, and action alerts skewering sexist double standards in reporting on female politicians; debunking biased science journalism, such as the New York Times column on how women are biologically programmed to desire rich men; highlighting the invisibility of women in war coverage, including rape as a war crime and the again-invisible plight of Afghan women; and offering astute insights on pop culture inanities from Britney Spears’ panties to the hookups of “The Bachelor” and supposedly-sexy corpses on “America’s Next Top Model.” Our analyses often changed media coverage: for example, after WIMN’s Voices blogger Jill Nelson challenged the invisibility of Black women’s voices in media debates over radio host Don Imus’s on-air slurs, her commentary was reprinted widely and Nelson–an award-winning African American journalist–did radio interviews and was quoted extensively in regional and national media, shifting the tone of the national discussion and broadening the whitewashed opinion lineup. […]
September 15th, 2008 13:52
[…] Regular readers of my corner of WIMN’s Voices know that I’ve conducted multimedia presentations on gender, race and class biases in reality TV for years, have written about the genre for Ms. magazine and Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture magazine, and am currently working on a book about reality TV as cultural backlash against women (to be published in Fall 2009 by Seal Press). […]