Reality Bites Back
The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV
October 2010
Trade Paperback · 392 Pages
$18.00 U.S.
ISBN 9781580052658
Seal Press
Trade Paperback · 392 Pages
$18.00 U.S.
ISBN 9781580052658
Seal Press
Recommended for These Courses
- Journalism and Mass Communication: History and Criticism of Television
- Journalism and Mass Communication: Television
- Philosophy: Feminism and Feminist Theory
- Philosophy: General
- Sociology: Gender Studies
- Sociology: General
- Sociology: Popular Culture
- Women's and Gender Studies: Feminism and Feminist Theory
- Women's and Gender Studies: General
Description
Nearly every night on every major network, unscripted (but carefully crafted) reality TV shows routinely glorify retrograde stereotypes that most people would assume got left behind 35 years ago. In Reality Bites Back, media critic Jennifer L. Pozner aims a critical, analytical lens at a trend most people dismiss as harmless fluff. She deconstructs reality TV's twisted fairytales to demonstrate that far from being simple guilty pleasures, these programs are actually guilty of fomenting gender-war ideology and significantly affecting the intellectual and political development of this generation's young viewers. She lays out the cultural biases promoted by reality TV about gender, race, class, sexuality, and consumerism, and explores how those biases shape and reflect our cultural perceptions of who we are, what we're valued for, and what we should view as our place in society. Smart and informative, Reality Bites Back arms readers with the tools they need to understand and challenge the stereotypes reality TV reinforces and, ultimately, to demand accountability from the corporations responsible for this contemporary cultural attack on three decades of feminist progress.