Culture Study Podcast - The Complicated Future of Reality TV

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, it's Anne. Melody and I are deep in planning mode for episodes for the rest of the

00:00:05.020 year and we've got our own list of subjects that we want to cover and guess we want to book.

00:00:10.360 Like, I don't know, could we do an episode about why Paul Mescal is so hot featuring Paul Mescal?

00:00:16.720 Can you make that happen, Melody? I'll try. Melody has Paul Mescal's email.

00:00:22.200 I do have access to IMDb Pro. One time he hearted a tweet that I did

00:00:28.140 with a link to a piece that I wrote about normal people that was about how he was so hot. So maybe

00:00:35.320 he knows. He knows that I think that he's hot. So maybe he would come on the show.

00:00:40.980 What episodes are you still dying to hear? We can do more celebrity image deep dives,

00:00:45.760 or we can go more highbrow like we did with the episodes on infrastructure or student loans.

00:00:52.020 Whatever you want to do, head to the Google forum at tinyurl.com slash culture study pod

00:00:57.860 and join in on our wild and totally undirected brainstorming. And of course, we always need your

00:01:05.160 questions for the ask and anything part of the show. Those can go in the same form,

00:01:09.660 tinyurl.com slash culturestudypod. Okay, thanks. On with the show.

00:01:15.420 I think reality TV often gets lumped into this category of being like a guilty pleasure.

00:01:21.260 Yeah. And I've had to really force myself to stop thinking about it that way, that it's okay

00:01:26.680 for me as a person who I like to think I have relatively highbrow taste in TV and I watch a lot

00:01:33.360 of prestige TV and, you know, Oscar movies and things for my job, but that it's okay for me to

00:01:39.200 also love these shows. And I think when you talk about it as only a guilty pleasure, you take away

00:01:44.060 that importance and what it means to the industry. It also is a really interesting moment to talk

00:01:49.620 about it because Hollywood is going through a lot of changes right now. And you can go back to last

00:01:55.280 summer and fall when the writers and actors were on strike in Hollywood. And this kind of moment

00:02:02.980 that we saw around people in Hollywood understanding the power of collective action

00:02:10.860 and the power of demanding change in an industry that can be really slow to change. And reality

00:02:18.920 kind of got wrapped up in that conversation in a really interesting way. And then lastly,

00:02:24.620 I think Hollywood is also going through this moment of change as a business. Every company

00:02:31.420 kind of chased Netflix down the rabbit hole of streaming and has found that it's a lot harder

00:02:37.060 to make money in that world than they maybe initially anticipated. And reality is really

00:02:43.040 interesting when you talk about it in that capacity, because it is a genre that is cheaper

00:02:47.220 to make. It also is an incredible backbone to so much of TV. It's just part of the like nightly

00:02:55.520 programming schedule on many broadcast TV networks. And it's part of the programming mix on every

00:03:01.400 major streaming service. And so when you think about what these services are trying to evolve

00:03:06.800 to become and how they can evolve to be moneymakers and be long lasting and sustainable,

00:03:13.680 reality is a really important piece of that.

00:03:17.220 This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.

00:03:25.480 I'm Natalie Jarvie. I'm an entertainment reporter who's written about the business

00:03:29.480 of Hollywood for places like Vanity Fair and The Hollywood Reporter.

00:03:32.100 Do you feel like there is a reality TV show on the air right now, or like in the atmosphere

00:03:41.000 right now that exemplifies our current whole television industry moment like that has you

00:03:48.320 know like if you were gonna use it to talk about like everything that is happening right now like

00:03:53.100 this would be the show probably Vanderpump Rules uh which recently completed its most recent season

00:03:59.500 it's going through a real evolution right now as a show and I think it speaks to a lot of

00:04:06.200 the challenges and opportunities for reality TV right now. And I just I haven't been able to get

00:04:12.920 it out of my head. So this is a great opportunity to to out myself as someone who selectively

00:04:19.160 watches some reality television, reads a lot of discourse around reality television, but doesn't

00:04:26.440 watch a ton. So like, I know a ton about Vanderpump Rules, because I have read a lot about

00:04:31.540 Vanderpump Rules, like I read the famous like profile in New York Times, like, I know the plot

00:04:38.780 and know ostensibly what the primary stakes are. But I've never watched an episode. So can you

00:04:48.220 explain for our other listeners who have not seen Vanderpump Rules what the premise is and why it

00:04:53.720 feels like a perfect show for this moment? Yeah, I will actually out myself as well as someone who

00:04:58.860 watches a lot of reality TV, but didn't get into Vanderpump until Scandaval. And then I couldn't

00:05:06.480 look away. It just became such a pop culture moment that I had to consume everything about it

00:05:11.340 and was really curious how the show would come back from that. But it's a show that started out

00:05:16.880 ostensibly following the people who worked in these LA area restaurants owned by Lisa Vanderpump,

00:05:23.980 a former housewife. And, you know, they were struggling, trying to make it in life and in

00:05:30.800 their careers and, you know, became friends and engaged in romantic relationships. And over time

00:05:39.200 became very famous because of the show. And it all kind of came to a head last year where right

00:05:47.300 As the season was wrapping, the news broke on gossip sites like TMZ that one of the main characters of the show, Tom Sandoval, was caught cheating on his partner, Ariana Maddox, with another cast member, Raquel.

00:06:05.840 And it was not caught on tape, but they were still just wrapping up production in a way that Bravo could get cameras back in the room with all these characters to kind of unpack it all in real time.

00:06:18.640 And they had this very emotional finale episode where all of the characters on the show were kind of airing their grievances about this affair and about how they felt about it and about how they felt about being deceived by friends of theirs.

00:06:35.100 And it was really fascinating because it did kind of pull the curtain back from the show.

00:06:41.660 And, you know, the discourse around Vanderpump for a while had been that, you know, how can

00:06:45.940 you really keep up with the charade that these people all work in a bar or, you know, at

00:06:50.900 a restaurant when they're super famous and they're, you know, on podcasts and they're

00:06:55.080 launching merchandise lines and, you know, all these other things.

00:06:59.120 And this moment, they call it Scandaval, you know, became kind of the perfect opportunity for the producers of the show to pull back that curtain and investigate like what was really going on in the real lives of these characters.

00:07:14.360 And so this most recent season followed the aftermath of that moment. And in the final episode, they do it in a really interesting way, where the whole episode, you've got Ariana, the scorned former girlfriend of Tom Sandoval.

00:07:33.940 She's trying to move on with her life.

00:07:36.300 And they're all put back together in a room for this event.

00:07:39.460 And Tom is there and Ariana is there and all the characters are there.

00:07:42.900 And everyone's trying to get her to have a conversation with him.

00:07:47.360 And she doesn't want to.

00:07:48.840 And she doesn't want to engage with him in that way.

00:07:52.380 And she ultimately walks off the show.

00:07:54.560 She leaves.

00:07:56.080 And a lot of her fellow cast members call her out for it.

00:08:01.040 they they think she's not upholding her end of the reality tv contract that you know when you

00:08:07.920 sign up to do a show like this you agree to put your whole life on camera and that you know she's

00:08:13.560 setting boundaries for herself which is completely valid but they feel like she shouldn't be doing

00:08:18.980 that because she's on a reality tv show and then in the last moment as she's leaving they catch

00:08:25.860 Tom on a hot mic where he says, this is actually great for me. I love it. And it kind of validates

00:08:33.660 what she's been saying all along, which is that he didn't want to actually apologize to her or

00:08:39.100 have a conversation with her. He wanted to look good for the cameras and he wanted to have a

00:08:43.320 redemption arc. It just poses a lot of really interesting questions about what you owe

00:08:47.480 fans and viewers of a reality TV show when you are putting your life on display in that way.

00:08:53.680 So just listening to you talk, there's a few things that stick out to me as exemplary. One is that the show itself started as a spinoff of a character who was on a different reality show, right?

00:09:09.580 So Lisa Vanderpump was a character on Real Housewives, and then they were like, oh, she's interesting.

00:09:16.600 Like, what if we follow all of these people in her orbit?

00:09:20.060 Like, they're nobodies, but maybe also interesting, right?

00:09:24.120 So you have that part.

00:09:25.660 Then you have the part that you kept referring to them, and I think people do this all the time, you kept referring to them as characters.

00:09:32.440 Because they are.

00:09:33.040 They're characters who are playing a role, and sometimes that role is determined for them by the edit.

00:09:39.580 how the editors choose to take the footage that they have the raw footage and then edit it but

00:09:45.760 then sometimes and this I think we're going to get a lot more into this over the course of the

00:09:50.020 episode sometimes characters decide before because they have watched so much reality television

00:09:56.180 this is the character that I'm going to be right like they take an archetype and they're like this

00:10:01.320 is my role in the show or the producers tell them explicitly this is your role in the show

00:10:06.480 and give them questions that prompt them to behave in certain ways or don't tell them at all

00:10:11.140 and and manipulate them into becoming a character that they never thought they were going to play

00:10:15.480 right and then the third thing is when you reference this like implicit reality television

00:10:22.000 agreement and I love how you said you know they had agreed to have all of their lives on camera

00:10:27.980 but they don't agree to have all of their lives on camera they agree to like have the parts of

00:10:32.760 their lives that they know the cameras are going to be there for on camera. And then there becomes

00:10:38.980 this larger expectation that their entire personal lives should also be fair game to then be

00:10:46.140 talked about on camera, right? So it's like this very fuzzy line, which is how I think we get some

00:10:52.280 of this drama. And then the very last thing, like as a celebrity gossip person that strikes me is

00:10:57.600 Like the fact that TMZ is reporting on them, like this to me is the current iteration.

00:11:03.160 And it's been this way, I would say, since like the late 2000s, actually, when the stars of like The Hills were all over the cover of Us Weekly.

00:11:13.080 Like this is our this is our celebrity now.

00:11:15.620 And it complicates things that there is no explicit division between who they play in their role as a reality star and who they are in their personal lives.

00:11:24.700 So that's just some of like, I think that that is a great way to point us to like where we are

00:11:29.940 in this moment. Yeah, it's a it's a really interesting moment, I think, for reality TV

00:11:34.500 as a genre for Vanderpump Rules as a show. And yeah, I think you're getting into all of the kind

00:11:38.480 of thorny things that I feel and think about as someone who loves reality TV and loves to talk

00:11:45.300 about it and loves to text all my friends about it when I'm watching a show, but then later feel

00:11:50.300 this kind of guilt or angst around some of these kind of thornier issues that get brought up when

00:11:55.900 you really start to dig into it so this is such a great way to tee up our first question especially

00:12:01.300 thinking about the ways in which viewership of reality tv has actually declined over the last

00:12:06.960 decade which is interesting um and then also thinking about show budgets just generally

00:12:11.580 shrinking so talking about the future of reality tv our first question comes from liz and we'll

00:12:17.300 help set the scene for the rest of the episode. It seems to me that making reality TV is just a

00:12:23.000 way for studios to avoid the labor protections that would be involved in hiring unionized

00:12:28.080 professionals. It feels like in response to the increasing strength of the guilds of actors and

00:12:35.120 writers, the studios latched onto reality TV as a way to use cheaper talent who will complain less.

00:12:42.360 It's disturbing.

00:12:44.240 It seems so clear that cast should be protected.

00:12:47.240 They're acting.

00:12:48.700 We long ago stopped pretending that their behavior isn't highly managed and produced.

00:12:53.380 The filming days are long and so on.

00:12:56.440 The casts are willing participants, I guess, but it seems like a coercive environment.

00:13:02.700 Is this being discussed in the industry?

00:13:05.120 Is progress possible?

00:13:06.220 so the first thing i'll say is that it just reminds me of the fact that like

00:13:10.640 our current boom i think can be like the current fashion or the explosion of reality television

00:13:17.780 at least the way that we studied it when i was a film historian media historian is so much of it

00:13:24.620 goes back to the writer's strike in 2007 when so much of the the narrative programming was replaced

00:13:31.640 by reality television because of that strike reality television was absolutely all over the

00:13:36.120 place before that but like it just kind of changed the the paradigm so how do you what's your current

00:13:43.380 thinking on this in reality television and unions is there any movement to unionize within reality

00:13:48.200 television how do union workers feel about the fact that like i think you can make the argument

00:13:54.380 that people working on reality shows are in some way scabbing like yeah where do we go yeah so i

00:14:00.200 think it's a really common assumption that you can trace the reality TV boom to the writer's

00:14:04.460 strike. And you're not wrong. But I will push back on that just a little bit to say that,

00:14:08.580 like, for starters, reality TV is just hugely popular. And Hollywood has been making reality

00:14:15.080 TV because it's popular. And because Hollywood has always tried to make as much money as they

00:14:21.940 can by spending as little money as possible. So that predates the strike. And it's actually

00:14:28.400 interesting you can trace this even farther back to uh the 1988 writer's strike uh is when cops

00:14:36.340 became really popular uh so this goes back even farther than can you tell can you tell listeners

00:14:43.820 what cops is i feel like we have some younger listeners who might not have had it on at 7 30

00:14:48.880 at night every single night on fox like me it was in syndication yeah yeah it's a reality kind

00:14:53.940 of documentary series that follows cops around as they go to you know uh house calls and you know

00:15:03.480 arrest people and it's it's very problematic as a tv show so oh my god side note it's just like

00:15:09.320 yeah absolutely like the way that like representation of who are the criminals right

00:15:15.300 and how the cops behave and all sorts of things yeah it positions the cops as heroes right and

00:15:20.160 you know, just hardworking guys doing their job. And, you know, obviously, could probably be

00:15:26.780 considered propaganda a little bit now.

00:15:29.040 Literal copaganda. Literal cops. 0.99

00:15:32.440 Yes. But it was one of those things, you know, people are just fascinated by watching what they

00:15:36.660 believe is like a real slice of life. And, you know, it was incredibly popular. So, you know,

00:15:43.640 and then the real boom we saw began in the early 2000s with shows like Survivor and The Bachelor

00:15:49.280 and Big Brother. I mean, I remember being like a teen preteen at home, watching these shows with

00:15:56.480 my parents, like it was appointment television to come sit down and watch Survivor. Season one

00:16:01.720 of Survivor will like forever be burned into my brain. So then you flash forward to the writer's

00:16:08.360 strike that started in 2007. And a lot of those shows were already on the air and already very

00:16:14.060 popular. And the TV networks leaned into them because they didn't have a lot of other programming

00:16:18.720 to lean into. So it didn't necessarily birth new shows as much as just kind of reinforce the

00:16:24.920 indelible nature of some of these reality shows. The one that I will point out, you've probably

00:16:32.540 heard the story of like, you can trace a direct line from Donald Trump's presidency back to the

00:16:38.520 2007 writer's strike and The Apprentice. What's interesting there is that The Apprentice had been

00:16:44.840 on the air for several years when the writer's strike hit. What happened was it hadn't been

00:16:50.820 doing that well. It had been flagging and ratings. And it was around that time that they reconceived

00:16:55.220 it as Celebrity Apprentice. Celebrity Apprentice, right. And it aired during this otherwise very

00:17:02.220 thin time for programming because of the writer's strike, because the networks hadn't been able to

00:17:09.180 get a lot on the air and celebrity apprentice became much bigger than the apprentice oh that's

00:17:15.380 such a good point right yeah yeah basically like took advantage of the vacuum in in other programming

00:17:22.800 and added some like b-list celebrities in there exactly so it's all really interesting to think

00:17:28.280 about you know would would people in hollywood say that they are doing more reality tv you know

00:17:34.520 directly because they can take advantage of reality TV workers and participants. Like,

00:17:39.600 of course, they would not say that. But the correlation is there to some degree that yes,

00:17:44.620 these labor movements spurred, you know, kind of increased popularity in these shows.

00:17:50.220 It is also true, you can make reality TV for very cheap, which means that everyone involved

00:17:56.940 is being taken advantage of to some degree, you know, they're not earning the same wages as

00:18:03.260 someone working on a big budget, prestigy HBO show. And certainly the contestants, the participants

00:18:09.980 in these shows, you know, are often not getting paid very much money if they're getting paid at

00:18:15.800 all. Right. So that is kind of the problem implicit in the creation of reality TV.

00:18:24.640 Well, and it reminds me just sometimes of like, the dynamic that you see in writing for the

00:18:30.400 internet or other creative work that's like we're not going to pay you very much money or we're not

00:18:34.840 going to pay you at all but you'll get paid in exposure right like the idea that you are becoming

00:18:39.600 celebritized and thus can use that fame to to pay yourself that's very problematic now in so many

00:18:47.400 different ways yeah and just as you know writers on the internet have realized that and probably

00:18:53.240 already always known it to some degree but but in recent years you know you saw a lot of digital

00:18:57.680 media companies unionize and, and try to fight back against that, you know, we have started to

00:19:03.160 see that with reality TV workers, too. So, you know, there's kind of two different sides to this

00:19:09.020 fight. The first is that there are a number of reality TV, you know, workers, people behind the

00:19:15.720 scenes who are crafting the show who have tried to unionize over the years. The Writers Guild of

00:19:21.540 America has attempted to unionize some of these employees in the past. And you might be thinking

00:19:27.060 writers you know for a reality show um there are writers there are a lot of people who are you know

00:19:32.380 story editors and yes um yes they might not be writing dialogue the way that you write dialogue

00:19:38.100 for a you know Grey's Anatomy or something but they are absolutely molding and shaping the show

00:19:43.020 and those efforts have largely fallen flat uh they just haven't really haven't worked

00:19:48.140 there's been a number of different cases in one instance uh a group tried to unionize and they

00:19:54.800 were just fired from the show and new new workers were found to take their job um in that illegal

00:20:00.840 good question no i know there's it's very like because of the weakening of national labor laws

00:20:09.480 it's a lot easier to like hide behind other reasons why you're firing that crew yeah but

00:20:14.940 and that sucks and the writers guild also has at various points kind of dropped the efforts to

00:20:19.540 unionize some of those workers uh because they've had to you know they've had bigger fish to fry 0.81

00:20:24.720 so to speak, and kind of fighting for other demands and issues that are relevant to their

00:20:30.640 core membership base. So they've had to kind of not pursue that as much as they would have liked

00:20:36.200 in the past. But then there also in the last year or so has been a greater effort on the part of

00:20:45.640 reality TV participants to unionize or use collective action to their benefit. And I think

00:20:52.540 this has been really interesting. I do think this was largely an outgrowth of the strikes this last

00:20:57.420 year. Bethany Frankel, one of the Real Housewives of New York, one of the original, she came out 0.99

00:21:04.620 and called out the industry-wide practice of not paying residuals to people who appear on reality 0.75

00:21:13.780 TV shows. She very specifically said she only got paid like $7,000 per episode for her first season

00:21:21.460 of Real Housewives, and that those shows, you know, live in perpetuity today on Peacock, NBC's

00:21:29.640 streaming service, and are monetized, and she's never seen any of that money, and she really

00:21:35.260 pushed back against that. She also pushed back against hardline NDAs and contracts that reality

00:21:41.700 TV participants have to sign, and she did kind of launch a union effort, and she had a lot of

00:21:47.520 She had a lot of supporters. She had a lot of supporters, you know, some of her fellow housewives. There were also some people in the industry like Lisa Vanderpump who kind of pushed back and said, you know, this isn't feasible. SAG-AFTRA, which is the union that represents actors, said that they would support her and support this effort.

00:22:08.700 but not a lot has come of it and it's hard and it's tricky because someone like bethany frankel

00:22:16.720 who appeared on many seasons of housewives that was her job and you know and she should be able

00:22:23.900 to have the same protections that you know any actor working in hollywood has but a lot of reality

00:22:29.880 tv participants are everyday people plucked off the street who have full-time jobs elsewhere who

00:22:36.040 might go do a season of Survivor and then go back to their day job and not look back. And so it does

00:22:41.560 kind of make it complicated to figure out how to define who would be able to be a member of that

00:22:46.520 union and how that would work. Right. Like if you're featured on a reality, like a renovation

00:22:54.300 show, do you get residuals from that episode? Are you like, is that a secondary star? Is that a

00:22:59.100 guest star? Like how do you differentiate between those two lines? I do think it's possible, right?

00:23:03.200 Like I think, and different individuals probably are negotiating, maybe not for residuals, but for different parts of their contracts.

00:23:11.860 So like, I don't know, like the Napiers who have an HGTV show, like they are pushing for compensation that reflects their work, but it's all in the individual level.

00:23:22.220 And this is where I think, I mean, this is a larger conversation about where collective action can get you.

00:23:26.660 like sure maybe you can negotiate for something but what happens when you're not on that reality

00:23:32.300 television show anymore like what is your retirement plan these are all things that

00:23:36.300 unions like are accounting for and that if you are only relying on what can I get for this one

00:23:42.240 season it's it's a short-term strategy absolutely I mean health care is another big one you know

00:23:48.600 unions are super important to providing health care to actors and writers um so yeah I think

00:23:54.980 you're right that it is doable. I mean, it's just like in SAG, you know, you don't get your SAG card

00:24:00.500 the minute you appear on a TV show, you have to kind of work up to that. And there are certain

00:24:04.300 boundaries and guidelines, you know, the same could be, you know, applied to reality TV stars.

00:24:11.000 It just requires a real effort and willingness on the part of a lot of different parties to

00:24:15.980 engage in that. And it also requires the studios to agree to this. And that will be a hard fight.

00:24:24.080 Absolutely. So I also want to mention one other kind of instance of reality participants pushing

00:24:30.800 back in a slightly different way, because I think this works around some of the issues you get into

00:24:35.640 when you start thinking about unionizing. And that is that a couple of participants on Love

00:24:40.940 is Blind, the Netflix show, have spoken out against their treatment on the show and what

00:24:47.220 they felt like were bad experiences. And two of them have started an advocacy group specifically

00:24:53.360 to provide mental and legal support to reality TV participants. And I think that's really

00:24:58.160 interesting that, you know, there are kind of other ways, you know, going the nonprofit route,

00:25:03.900 going the advocacy route, that you can provide resources and support to people who've been

00:25:11.320 involved in these shows who, you know, feel like when they are leaving the show that they need

00:25:16.180 that, whether it's because of online bullying or because of their experience. And that's really

00:25:22.780 cool that people are doing that. So this tees up our next question, which is about fandom,

00:25:28.420 what it's like to be a person who enjoys reality TV, and how all of this has changed over the last

00:25:33.400 couple of decades. This question comes from Hannah. I love joining the online communities

00:25:38.540 for my favorite reality shows. But one consequence of that is that there's often a lot of hate

00:25:44.820 directed towards the less favored or villainous contestants. To what extent is this the producer's

00:25:51.140 responsibility? Or is it just an occupational hazard of being a reality star? And is the

00:25:58.000 reticence to cast or edit villains these days part of why reality TV feels like it's not as good as

00:26:03.300 it used to be? Okay, so first, can you outline some examples of how this animus, for lack of a

00:26:11.260 better word, has been wielded online? Yeah, I mean, as someone who's watched The Bachelor for a long

00:26:17.300 time, that's the first thing that comes to mind for me, is that, you know, there's almost always

00:26:22.640 a contestant on every season of The Bachelor or The Bachelorette who becomes the villain.

00:26:28.720 You know, whether that's because, you know, maybe she's only prioritizing her relationship with The

00:26:33.700 Bachelor and not her relationship with the other girls in the house, or, you know, something like

00:26:40.380 that. And that's enough, you know, in this context to make her the villain. And bullying

00:26:46.840 an online hate has become a real problem. And I think it's not being said by this listener,

00:26:54.300 but should be pointed out as well, that it's disproportionately affecting people of color or

00:26:59.480 people who are LGBTQ. And part of what's so interesting is social media has really changed

00:27:08.280 the whole landscape for reality TV. When The Bachelor first started, there was no social

00:27:13.400 media, not in this way, at least, you know, when Survivor first began Big Brother, the contract

00:27:18.680 that again, that going back to that social contract of being on a show like this changes a lot when

00:27:23.820 you realize that anyone can be in your DMs or comment on a post or a video. And, you know,

00:27:33.040 can say some really awful, horrible things. Well, and I think that like some people would say,

00:27:38.740 oh well if you're on this show just don't be on social media or don't look on the internet right

00:27:44.280 and like first of all to not be on the internet at all and to shield yourself from this sort of

00:27:48.640 thing is very difficult you also probably will get it in real life and that's much more difficult

00:27:52.420 to avoid as well secondly if as we were talking about before part of the way that these people

00:27:59.740 are conceiving of their their compensation is through other opportunities to monetize their

00:28:05.600 celebrity right through brand deals that sort of thing they don't have the option to not be on

00:28:10.440 social media and like you might say oh that's not a deal I would make for myself but that is the deal

00:28:15.700 that they have made and it just makes it really hard you know as someone who's received even just 0.98

00:28:22.060 mild harassment uh it feels like shit like people just telling you you're a bad person 0.90

00:28:29.100 based on things that are probably not true of who you are as a person right like they're it's based 0.97

00:28:34.880 on an understanding for me it was like something that i wrote about army hammer for them it's like

00:28:39.740 how they were edited right um and it is i think it especially feels like shit when the things that 0.86

00:28:46.260 they're saying are also bigoted slurs like who wants to be exposed to that like have you seen 0.93

00:28:51.940 or heard about production companies or networks or like netflix taking any sort of steps to insulate

00:29:00.880 stars from this sort of harassment like whether that's making sure that their online profiles

00:29:06.060 are scrubbed like through something like delete me right so that people can't go to their homes

00:29:09.980 or setting up filters like doing social media training all that sort of thing you know it's

00:29:15.920 hard it feels like a lot of these companies can't keep pace with changing technology and social

00:29:21.040 media in a lot of ways uh oftentimes it's after uh abc has released the cast list for the bachelor

00:29:29.620 or The Bachelorette, that it's online sleuths who find things about these people and bring them

00:29:36.460 forward. And, you know, to some extent that can be good, you know, like sometimes they will find

00:29:42.200 things that are inappropriate or disclose things about someone that maybe someone should know

00:29:47.640 before going on a date with this person. What's hard about that is oftentimes this is being done

00:29:51.720 after the show has already filmed. Exactly. It has no bearing. It has no bearing. But clearly,

00:29:56.960 you know, these companies are not necessarily doing that legwork, if this is something that,

00:30:01.640 you know, Redditors can track down in, you know, a matter of days. And, and that becomes a problem

00:30:08.120 too, because then, you know, sometimes these people get called out for things in their past

00:30:12.380 that rightfully are problematic or, or insensitive, you know, but the level of hate just

00:30:17.840 churns up to this place where it's hard to have a nuanced conversation and a discourse about it.

00:30:23.340 And, and that is, that is, you know, hugely problematic. So, you know, the only thing I've

00:30:30.220 seen is that, you know, around The Bachelor, there, there have been calls by like the hosts

00:30:36.580 of The Bachelor to, you know, hey, guys, you're our fans, you shouldn't be bullying people for

00:30:42.580 what they do on TV. And you need, you know, that kind of thing. But that only goes so far. And

00:30:49.040 yeah if someone wants to call someone like a bigoted slur they're not going to listen to the

00:30:54.580 host of the bachelor telling them not to do that exactly uh so there's two things that i think are

00:31:00.400 going on here and one one is like this is a symptom of our larger internet culture and like

00:31:07.660 reality television just is one of many things that makes people feel like they need to voice

00:31:14.940 their opinion online. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's not like this is the same as how people

00:31:18.820 talk about or wield political speech or like leave comments on politicians, Facebook pages, like,

00:31:26.060 what what purpose does this serve? And that's a larger interrogation that I think is and is not

00:31:31.260 about reality culture. And I'm sensitive to this listener's question that's like, it has become

00:31:36.760 bigger than just watching a narrative on television, right? It has become this whole

00:31:40.900 entire universe that also includes the online discourse and I think people who I don't know

00:31:46.600 are fans of like DC Comics have to make those same considerations now right like do I want to

00:31:52.560 be a fan of DC Comics because like the fans of DC Comics strike me as pretty fascist so I like

00:32:00.080 just in general like this is a characterization that has been made of the way that many DC Comics

00:32:04.240 fans behave online like can you or can you not separate yourself from that larger behavior and

00:32:10.360 I think that's something to think about. But then the other thing that it makes me think about

00:32:14.540 is this idea with reality stars that there is a greater truth. And this goes into like the fact

00:32:22.900 that they're acting, they're acting a role when they're in the show, that there is more information

00:32:28.600 to be discovered about them, right? That there is always some sort of revelation that contrasts with

00:32:36.020 what they are trying to be in their reality TV performance. And so that disconnect between who

00:32:43.380 they are on screen and the understanding that there is a real them is what fuels these Redditors

00:32:51.000 or sleuths, online sleuths, to figure out, okay, where is the scandal? Let me find what that

00:32:57.740 disconnect is. And it's a form of celebrity gossip, right? It's trying to unearth scandal,

00:33:04.540 but then it also like I if I were if I were a producer if I were an evil producer I would be

00:33:13.000 like oh the greater distance that we create between who this person is in their offline persona and

00:33:19.640 who they are in the show creates opportunity for scandal for more people to want to watch the show

00:33:25.480 if I were a not evil producer I would say oh well let's just like let's see let's make sure

00:33:31.920 that we try to mirror those two things so there isn't that space to generate scandal does that

00:33:36.640 make sense yeah absolutely and also you know it's really hard to separate these things and i think

00:33:40.860 it's it's not an easy conversation to have because you know anyone who goes on a reality tv show

00:33:45.980 today has to understand that social media is going to play a role and you should be clear-eyed about

00:33:52.140 that and and i would hope that producers are being honest with them about the response that they

00:33:59.600 could have by being on the show. But at the same time, no one expects to go on a show and then

00:34:04.440 receive tons of online hate and bullying. And when that happens, there absolutely should be

00:34:10.100 resources for them and protection for them so that they can go back to living their lives when this

00:34:16.640 is all over. If that's what they want to do. The only thing I'll say is that if I was having my

00:34:22.960 hair and makeup done every single day, I'd be like, I'm a brand new person. Like I have a whole

00:34:27.680 new personality so i get it i know i know same although i will say the bachelor ladies have to 1.00

00:34:33.720 do all their own hair and makeup for most of the season so they are just like they're in full glam 1.00

00:34:38.640 though like they look amazing so if i did if i curled my hair every day yes if i took two hours

00:34:44.400 to get ready every day yeah i know um it is amazing just this is such a tangent but to to

00:34:50.340 look at old seasons of shows like the bachelor or love island is another one that i love when you

00:34:55.020 see how their appearances have changed and evolved over time um and and how much more effort they do

00:35:02.100 put into their looks now than than they used to thanks to youtube and tutorials and things there

00:35:08.060 you know there's a lot more information available on on how to curl your hair and how to do your

00:35:11.680 makeup and it's fascinating everyone has to be a makeup artist okay so our next question is about

00:35:18.320 the business model of reality tv and and this comes from a different listener who is also named

00:35:23.040 hannah why does netflix seem to be building their own cinematic universe of reality tv stars

00:35:29.980 i'm thinking love is blind the ultimatum the circle too hot to handle and how they're now

00:35:36.580 feeder shows for newer ones like perfect match it feels very traditional considering the mtv playbook

00:35:43.980 where real world and big brother began feeding into the challenge with newer feeder shows like

00:35:50.180 survivor and x on the beach coming in from other channels also all the events and parties that mtv

00:35:56.960 threw to generate gossip and fan the tabloid flames which netflix is now hosting for their

00:36:02.680 reality stars so i ask does this playbook stand the test of time do we still want 40 plus seasons

00:36:10.240 of the same show are these shows even good enough to warrant that is this the carrot of someone i

00:36:16.800 vaguely remember from that other show enough to make me watch this new one? And how much does it

00:36:22.600 have to do with keeping the entertainment on demand subscription model alive? All right. So

00:36:28.700 to me, the basic answer is just like franchising and IP, right? Like that's what makes this easier.

00:36:35.320 But I would love to hear your thoughts on this question. Yeah. I mean, I love this question

00:36:38.820 because I got so into Love is Blind during the pandemic. And so I've been very fascinated by

00:36:45.900 watching uh kind of what netflix has done um and so we can use them and then we can extrapolate

00:36:52.460 out a little bit but you know netflix has basically since it started making you know tv shows

00:36:59.120 mimicked the strategy of the legacy entertainment companies that came before it yeah but the thing

00:37:05.360 about netflix that is different is they have this huge budget and they're not trying to program a

00:37:11.360 you know, Thursday night lineup. So they also have kind of unlimited space where if something

00:37:16.460 like reality TV hits with their viewers, they can just double down on it. So they're not just

00:37:22.600 making Love is Blind, but they're also making The Circle and Too Hot to Handle and The Ultimatum.

00:37:28.880 And, you know, they can just go, go, go. And then on top of that, they're now producing

00:37:33.360 international versions of these shows, which has always been part of the model of reality TV. But

00:37:39.780 typically American audiences didn't see the Swedish version of Survivor or whatever the show

00:37:46.120 was. Now, and usually it was backwards too, right? Like weren't many of these shows, not real world,

00:37:51.620 but many of these shows actually global hits before they were American hits. Yes, yes. Oftentimes

00:37:56.760 that's the case. And yeah, we didn't know about that or didn't have exposure to those shows.

00:38:02.700 And now on Netflix, if you love Love is Blind and you watch all the seasons available, you can go

00:38:07.840 watch Love is Blind Sweden and Love is Blind UK and all these other versions of the show. And it

00:38:16.240 kind of keeps feeding the beast. So it doesn't surprise me at all that then the next step of that

00:38:21.380 is to get as many of the contestants from those shows as possible and put them on a show like

00:38:26.320 Perfect Match, which is Netflix's version of like a reality dating contest competition show.

00:38:31.940 it's fun and it's silly

00:38:33.800 I will say for me personally

00:38:36.060 I don't watch all of those shows

00:38:38.660 and it doesn't bother me I can still get into

00:38:40.580 a show like that because they do a good job of

00:38:42.420 story building about these characters even if

00:38:44.440 again I'm calling them characters about these people

00:38:46.660 and the characters that they're playing

00:38:48.360 keeps people in their orbit

00:38:50.600 and keeps people talking about their shows

00:38:52.660 and not turning

00:38:54.660 off Netflix and going to Peacock

00:38:56.580 or HBO Max or you know

00:38:58.620 any of these other platforms so

00:39:00.120 that's why they're doing it you know this makes me think of how melody and i sometimes think about

00:39:06.720 podcast guests right like we love having new people on the show but then we also sometimes

00:39:12.180 are like oh yeah let's have this previous guest on the show because we have already had them on

00:39:17.700 the show they know our setup they we know they're a good talker they are a known quantity and i feel

00:39:24.760 like if i were a producer sure you always have to have new people coming on but having some

00:39:30.060 known quantity that you know are good talkers on camera know like how to pretend like the cameras

00:39:35.780 aren't on you when they are on you like basically that they're good reality stars it's like known

00:39:40.580 it's a known quantity yeah essentially um and then the other thing that I think about is how

00:39:46.280 a lot of people I know use these shows much the way that like traditionally housewives doing

00:39:55.100 tasks at home would use soap operas, right? Like it's not, they're not using it as a primary

00:40:01.680 viewing experience. They're using it as background. And that could be while they're doing laundry or

00:40:06.620 while they're on their phone, right? So using it as a second screen. And so I think that that

00:40:12.020 creates a perceived hunger, right? So like the question says, does anyone want 40 seasons of

00:40:20.480 these shows and like I don't know but it's there right and so Netflix sees those viewing numbers

00:40:26.540 and it's like it's there so we can create more of it's there totally I mean a company like Netflix

00:40:32.480 is also you know in part trying to build up a library of shows and for a long time they licensed

00:40:39.040 shows from other companies and movies to have a kind of a back catalog of things for people to

00:40:45.000 watch but the goal over time is to drive more and more viewers to the thing that you own the show

00:40:50.240 that you own and produce versus the thing that you license from elsewhere so you know that's why

00:40:55.780 you know we don't see friends on netflix anymore because uh they didn't own it so it got pulled

00:41:00.360 back and so now they need to replace that with something else so absolutely having many many

00:41:05.460 many seasons of these shows uh works incredibly well for keeping people in that ecosystem um i

00:41:13.400 also uh i can't believe it's taken me this long to mention but when we're talking about this

00:41:17.760 ecosystem, the show that I just am so fascinated by right now and love is The Traitors on Peacock.

00:41:24.780 And I think is another really good example of this. It's a format that was started elsewhere

00:41:31.120 and came to the US. And what Peacock has done with it is they've cast pretty much in this most

00:41:37.760 recent season, entirely reality TV stars to appear on it. And it's a competition series where a group

00:41:44.760 of people go to a Scottish castle and Alan Cumming is the host and he's just I mean dressed

00:41:52.360 the most fabulously you could ever imagine and he's got a great Scottish brogue and they essentially

00:41:58.380 play like a game of mafia where a couple people get selected as as traitors and everyone else

00:42:06.520 are faithful and the traitors you know murder people at night and kick them off the show and

00:42:11.400 And the faithful have to try to figure out who the traitors are in their midst.

00:42:14.960 And there's silly games and competitions and things.

00:42:17.520 They can win money.

00:42:18.380 And it's so fun. 0.59

00:42:19.500 And part of the reason it's so fun is because there's a bunch of real housewives and other reality TV stars.

00:42:24.980 With established character tropes.

00:42:26.800 Exactly.

00:42:27.160 So you might not know all of them, but they're legible in terms of their character to a lot of people who are coming to this show.

00:42:35.760 100%.

00:42:36.240 There's Survivor contestants and Big Brother contestants.

00:42:39.140 And, you know, it's fun to watch them all try to bring their different styles of gameplay.

00:42:43.700 And it's been huge for Peacock, massive for Peacock.

00:42:47.560 And I'd argue it's probably like the biggest original TV show on Peacock at this point.

00:42:52.960 And it's low bar, but it's been so huge.

00:42:58.420 And it works so well because it drives people back to shows that NBC owns, like the Bravo

00:43:05.120 shows.

00:43:05.700 and keeps everyone in that orbit and it has incredible staying power for this platform i mean

00:43:11.160 i i've i've heard anecdotally from friends that like the reason to subscribe to peacock is if

00:43:16.720 you're a huge reality tv fan that's where you get all your bravo shows and um you know all that

00:43:23.420 reality tv and so it makes it even more of a must subscribe to then have this new thing that

00:43:28.480 everyone's talking about okay so this brings us full circle it's our last question and it's about

00:43:34.680 this is melody's choice of words the so-called plots of these shows and how they've changed

00:43:41.860 over time uh i love the plot of reality television show usually it's like we need to go somewhere

00:43:48.800 right or we have an appointment um this is from molly what happens when the reality show becomes

00:43:56.120 about the show instead of about the people's lives in it i'm specifically talking about

00:44:00.760 Vanderpump Rules and how after Scandaval, season 11 has been very meta and doesn't pretend to be

00:44:06.220 about anything else but filming slash the show. It's not really about these people trying to make

00:44:11.260 it because in so many ways they already have. Brian Moylan's recaps for New York Magazine

00:44:16.120 touch on this a lot. I mean, this is so fascinating from a celebrity studies perspective.

00:44:22.260 Like, it's like a movie that's about being a movie star. It's like Naughty and Hill.

00:44:26.880 It's I love it. I could watch it over and over again. Julia Roberts being Julia Roberts in is it Oceans 12 or Oceans 13? Like these are these moments where they're trying to reflect on the fact that they're creating a reality television show. And what does it mean to be a reality television show? That's way more interesting to me than like making it in a restaurant. What's your take?

00:44:51.340 Yeah, I think it's fascinating. And I also don't know where else Vanderpump Rules could have gone

00:44:56.160 at this point. I mean, it's just, they couldn't avoid it any longer. They had to acknowledge it.

00:45:02.840 And one of the characters, again, I keep saying characters, one of the people on the show,

00:45:07.960 you've got me really thinking about it now. Lala Kent made a really interesting point in the most

00:45:13.980 recent finale where she was talking about the fact that in the past she had not been honest

00:45:21.640 about parts of her life and herself on the show. She had been having an affair with a married man

00:45:28.680 and she denied it on camera and that she had learned to be more honest and truthful as part

00:45:35.060 of the show and that she felt a lot better being honest and upfront. I feel like she's probably not

00:45:41.360 being wholly honest in her confession of learning to be honest but I get it probably not probably

00:45:47.320 not but she was making the point that that Ariana and Tom the couple at the center of Scandaval

00:45:52.560 hadn't been honest to audiences about their relationship for a long time and that they

00:45:58.820 needed to be honest about their relationship and I just thought that was so interesting you know

00:46:04.540 that as much as we do see these shows as having plots and story arcs and things that are molded

00:46:11.760 by producers that the you know the people who really buy into being on reality tv do still at

00:46:17.880 the end of the day feel that there is a an honesty to what they're doing and to being vulnerable in

00:46:26.000 front of the whole world and um i don't know just left me with a lot of food for thought about you

00:46:32.020 know, assuming Vanderpump Rules comes back for another season, you know, what that would

00:46:37.060 look like.

00:46:37.640 And maybe it's time for a refresh.

00:46:39.680 Maybe they need to bring on some new people with some new story arcs and who really are,

00:46:44.320 you know, toiling away working at one of at least a Vanderpump's restaurants, because

00:46:49.580 maybe it's too hard for these people who've been on TV for a decade now to be able to

00:46:54.980 kind of separate the TV show from the real life.

00:46:57.840 You know, I think about that with the Kardashians, because the show started out as a show about what it meant to be slightly famous, right? And then it became a show about what it meant to be very famous. And I thought in the midsection there, it was still really interesting.

00:47:16.500 I was telling Melody yesterday that I watched all of the seasons in which Kim was pregnant because it was really, really compelling to see how she grappled with the pressure to have like the right sort of pregnancy and how she internalized that criticism.

00:47:36.300 them and like I watched all of that for a chapter in one of my books but now it feels like they have

00:47:46.020 one day a month where they sit down and like are just made up and talk about being like doing their

00:47:52.520 glam and like slight things in their lives like it's not actually a real reflection on being

00:47:58.960 famous in the same way that it was it's like evolved past that and so evolve is probably not

00:48:05.320 the right word even there it's devolved and so I think there is a time limit on how long

00:48:12.380 a reality show can move forward with that sort of meta commentary absolutely especially when

00:48:18.200 it's a show that is made up of the same group of people as opposed to one of the shows where new

00:48:23.940 fresh contestants or participants come in every year you're right I mean I felt the same about

00:48:28.640 the Kardashians, you know, when it was really giving you a window into their manipulation of

00:48:35.720 the media, and I say manipulation, not in a negative way, but just, you know, they're very

00:48:39.860 savvy about how they use the media to project to the world who they are as a family and as

00:48:45.960 individuals. And when you could kind of watch it six months removed from the actual events that

00:48:52.140 they were portraying on screen and kind of see the backstory to that, or at least the backstory

00:48:56.640 that they wanted to tell us about it was fascinating I mean I remember like when Kim

00:49:01.880 had um been robbed in Paris and she talked about that on the show afterwards like how powerful and

00:49:09.100 interesting that was to hear her perspective and have her kind of you know disclose a little bit

00:49:16.300 more about that experience and she had been holding that back up until the show um and she

00:49:20.440 gave that kind of exclusively to her own show it was fascinating media commentary and but you're

00:49:26.260 right it's hard now they they have different interests to protect they're they're business

00:49:31.960 people and and they are maybe not as incentivized to disclose as much about their lives on camera

00:49:38.500 as they used to be okay this is a surprise question for us to end you have top three

00:49:45.100 pantheon of reality television shows that you're only allowed to access like you only can watch

00:49:50.760 these three shows for the rest of your life what three shows would they be oh my gosh that's hard

00:49:56.840 some of the shows i haven't even talked about uh but are near and dear to my heart i love top chef

00:50:03.280 and during the pandemic my husband and i went back and watched a lot of old seasons of top chef

00:50:08.880 and so i think that's one it would be hard for me to give up uh i also really love the great

00:50:14.360 Pottery Throwdown, which is a show that used to... It's a culture study fave. People love it. Yeah,

00:50:21.340 it's great. It's like, it's, it's so different from the kind of reality TV we've been talking

00:50:26.340 about today that, you know, didn't even bear mentioning, but it, you know, it's like, it's

00:50:30.640 comforting reality TV. Although if I had to choose, I think I'd probably choose The Great

00:50:37.900 british baking show um because that's another comfort fave and then oh gosh i guess we gotta

00:50:46.220 have one high drama i know one melodrama i you know i'm very partial to love is blind and i i do

00:50:52.780 love it and i eagerly await new seasons it's hard to pick it over love island which has become kind

00:50:59.440 of a newer fascination for me and the great thing about love island is that there are like so many

00:51:05.240 seasons and each season is like 50 or 60 episodes. So if I'm thinking about what I'm taking to my

00:51:12.300 desert island, like that would keep me entertained for years. So yeah, that's like when people are

00:51:18.060 like, oh, do you want to bring like the two seasons of the bear or all episodes of Grey's

00:51:24.960 Anatomy? All episodes of Grey's Anatomy. Exactly, exactly. I've been embarking on a Love Island,

00:51:31.120 not a rewatch, a first time watch. I've watched some of the more recent seasons,

00:51:34.480 but I've been going back and watching some of the older seasons.

00:51:36.660 And that's so fascinating to see how things have shifted over time.

00:51:41.280 And it's just been bringing me great joy to have that

00:51:44.420 like as something I can dial up when I need a break.

00:51:48.820 Natalie, this has been such a pleasure.

00:51:50.760 You have so much insight into this world.

00:51:53.360 And I think our listeners are just going to love it.

00:51:55.720 So if people want to find more from you, where can they find you on the internet?

00:51:59.280 Yeah, my writing about the entertainment industry is at VanityFair.com.

00:52:04.480 And I'm also on most social media platforms as at Nat Jarv.

00:52:09.980 Amazing.

00:52:10.760 Thank you so much.

00:52:12.040 Thank you.

00:52:16.380 Thank you so much for listening to the Culture Study Podcast.

00:52:19.400 Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

00:52:22.180 We have so many great episodes in the works and I promise you don't want to miss any of

00:52:26.000 them.

00:52:26.600 If you want to suggest a topic, ask a question about the culture that surrounds you or submit

00:52:31.680 a question for our subscriber-only advice time segment, check the show notes for a link to our

00:52:36.940 Substack. If you want to support the show and get bonus content, head to culturestudypod.substack.com.

00:52:43.600 It's five bucks a month or $50 a year, and you'll get ad-free episodes, an exclusive advice time

00:52:49.620 segment, weekly discussion threads for each episode, and a link to a special Google form

00:52:54.660 so that your questions go to the front of the line. The Culture Study Podcast is produced by me,

00:52:59.680 Anne Helen Peterson and Melody Rowell. Our music is by Poddington Bear. You can find me on Instagram

00:53:05.640 at Anne Helen Peterson, Melody at Melodious47, and the show at Culture Study Pod. Thank you so much

00:53:12.820 for your support.

Culture Study Podcast - August 28, 2024

The Complicated Future of Reality TV

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