What one of TV’s longest-running reality shows says about race and our relationship with the police.
reality tv
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
We Watch HGTV for the Destruction, Not the Makeovers
Drywall, meet sledgehammer.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Beware the Open-Plan Kitchen
Almost a decade after the speculation-driven financial crisis of 2008, the success of HGTV’s aspirational real-estate programming proves that house-flipping culture is alive, well, and potentially dangerous.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
In Makeover Culture, Authenticity Doesn’t Come Cheap
If the “real” self is inside us, why do we constantly seek to transform our outer surfaces?
Posted inEditor's Pick
Fiction Confidential
Before he became the patron saint of every tattooed-chef-in-a-gentrifying-neighborhood, Anthony Bourdain wrote novels. What can they tell us about the man behind the bad-boy persona?
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
A Profile for #BachelorNation
Revisiting Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s 2014 GQ profile of Chris Harrison, the longtime host of ‘The Bachelor.’
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Starring in Japanese Reality TV
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 — […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Inside the Kris Jenner Playbook
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 […]