Tag: reality television

Longreads editors discuss stories in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Kotaku, and The Globe and Mail.

By Trying on the Role of Reality TV Villain, Logan Scherer Confronts His Gay Shame

How a hard-not-to-love show glosses over the powers that produced its makeover subjects.

The true story of the exact moment in the mid-Nineties when reality television morphed from its best self to its worst.

“When the safety crew came to retrieve him, Brandon was adamant he’d been underground for two full days. In reality, he’d only been below for twelve hours.”

RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Sasha Velour responds to a divisive political climate by celebrating beauty, brains, and belonging.

How the chaotic ’70s shaped the food writer’s literary trajectory.

Sometimes it seems like everyone’s selling something. They’re selling their jewelry. They’re selling their book, selling their snack line, their natural cosmetics, their Etsy shop and blog and, ultimately, themselves. In The New Yorker‘s 2015 Style Issue, Lizzie Widdicombe writes about Bethenny Frankel, who turned her slot on The Real Housewives of New York City into […]

Nagging questions and doubts remain. Have we somehow prostituted ourselves for the vicarious entertainment of television viewers? Has the private language, the intimate currency of our happy household, been debased by making it public? I had thought it would be ‘fun.’ I was wrong. But somehow it has felt like an education of sorts — […]

Kris and her children didn’t do much press for Season 10, unheard-of for this family or anyone promoting a TV show, really. Call it an educated guess to say that perhaps they didn’t want to be asked about Bruce’s transition. But not because they were shielding Bruce, whom they love. It was not because he […]

Dawson suggests these shows are more closely related to sporting events than scripted dramas. In the case of Survivor, viewers get an experience similar to televised sports, Papacharissi explains: “You can root for your favorite castaway like you do for your favorite team, and vicariously experience her triumphs and setbacks from episode to episode.”