Friday Night In: A Little Reality
This week the 48th (48th!!) season of Survivor started. I can still remember the first one in 2000, which makes me feel old, and the way it rocked what we thought of as TV. I watched the show for many years with my husband. We met in 1999, so Survivor feels inextricably tied to being an “us” show.
We lost track of it for a few years when parenthood took up more of our time, but during the pandemic, we chose it as our family binge-watch and worked our way through all the seasons we’d missed, introducing the kidlet to it and reality TV.
We’re now dedicated viewers, and this show, along with Big Brother (my personal favorite) and The Amazing Race, are things we look forward to as a family each year. Reality TV, for all it’s pitfalls, really does hold a special place in my heart for the family time and the discussions it’s created.
So when I saw there was a book coming out about the history of reality TV, I knew I needed it in my life, especially when it was by Emily Nussbaum, who wrote I Like to Watch, a book of essays about TV that I really enjoyed.
Cue the Sun: The Invention of Reality TV
by Emily Nussbaum Buy the book: Libro.fm | Bookshop.org | Amazon
Depending on when you were born, you may have a different idea of when “reality TV” started. Before this book, if asked, I probably would’ve said The Real World on MTV. But I would’ve been wrong. The Real World did usher in a number of things that changed TV, but it was far from first.
Nussbaum goes way back, starting with Candid Microphone in 1947, which was a reality show on the radio that eventually led to Candid Camera once TVs were a thing. From there, she tracks reality TV in all its different forms through the decades—dating shows, game shows, An American Family in the 70s (the first to follow a real family), competition shows like American Idol and The Bachelor, celebrity shows like The Obsbournes, Cops, and all the way through today where reality TV has directly influenced our politics. She also gives the juicy behind-the-scenes stuff.
I listened to this on audio (I highly recommend it in that format) and gobbled it up. I found this all so fascinating! It’s hard to imagine the TV landscape without reality now, but it truly was a strange thing for most people to wrap their heads around when it started. Also, I felt Nussbaum did a great job of showing how it has shaped culture for better and worse.
So, if you are a fan of pop culture histories or reality TV or just want to reminisce about the shows you’ve watched over the years, this was a great listen. I gave it five stars.
And if you want to pair it with a movie to watch tonight…
The Truman Show (1998)Somehow, I had never seen this movie. So, after finishing Cue the Sun, which got its title from a line in this movie, I knew I had to watch it.
This movie came out in 1998, two years before Survivor and Big Brother premiered (and just as the internet was starting to become a thing), but it predicted where we were going.
Truman (Jim Carrey) has grown up his whole life in a town that he can’t leave (though he doesn’t realize that.) He has no idea that, since birth, he’s been on a 24/7 reality show and that the people in his world—his mother, his wife, his friends—are all actors. When his “father” whom he thought was dead shows up, Truman begins to question what’s going on and tries to escape. But the producers can’t lose their star and are going to do everything to stop him.
This movie has a sad tone despite it having Jim Carrey as the star. It’s labeled as a psychological comedy/drama, and I think that’s about as accurate a genre description as you’re going to get. But it’s a movie that makes you think. It made me think about kids who have grown up on their parents’ YouTube channel (like the memoir I reviewed here) and what it means that we’re drawn to watching other people’s lives on TV and the internet.
So, if you’re looking for an entertaining movie (I mean, it’s still Jim Carrey) that also has some substance to it, check it out. I watched it on The Criterion Channel app as part of their Surveillance Cinema collection, but it’s available to rent on the other services and is also on Hoopla.
Alirght, that’s all I have for you today. I hope you have a great weekend!
What have you been reading and watching this week? I’d love to hear!
