Only a true fan could have written Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV, and Emily Nussbaum is a true fan. The Pulitzer Prize winner and critic is the perfect scribe for the tale of unscripted television. We’re lucky that she’s given us a comprehensive history of the genre, all the way from its roots in radio through the present day.
An effortless read, the book brims with passion; it feels like taking your smartest friend’s crash course on their trashiest niche interest. Of course, at this point in time, reality TV is a multi-billion-dollar industry and could hardly be considered anything other than mainstream. Yet for some reason, it continues to be treated as marginalia by many academic and cultural circles, even as they light the candles on their Marshall McLuhan altars.
Nussbaum assesses reality television with the gravity it deserves in an upbeat, conversational tone that makes it clear that she herself revels in the “dirty documentary,” a term she coins in the introduction: “It’s cinéma vérité filmmaking that has been cut with commercial contaminants, like a street drug, in order to slash the price and intensify the effect.” It’s lines like these, along with the breathless reporting on corporate squabbles and cutthroat behavior by producers and cast members alike, that make Cue the Sun! not just edifying but a pleasure to read. A genre built on flippancy demands a critic who knows how to wink.
The book is at its strongest when presenting a history-through-the-ages of the form. Nussbaum has clearly done an immense amount of research, and she draws fascinating details from the past to bolster a page-turning narrative, such as Stephen Chao’s brief stint as president of Fox TV for a few wild weeks in 1992. He ended his tenure by offending Rupert Murdoch’s wife Anna with a presentation on moral outrage in American audiences that featured a male stripper. This was the final straw: At an earlier party, Chao had thrown Anna’s new puppy into a pool to see if it could swim. It sank.
While Cue the Sun! excels when dealing with the past, it falters as it approaches the present. After two thoroughly engrossing chapters on Survivor and Big Brother, two reality TV pillars that are still going strong at 47 and 26 seasons, respectively, the final quarter of the book struggles to contend with a formative time period that should be a riot: the aughts. Maybe we’re all a little too attached to the shows we grow up with, but I couldn’t help feeling personally aggrieved by the lackluster focus on what I consider some of the most iconic years of reality television history. The section on The Bachelor was just fine, as is befitting the franchise, but the chapters devoted to Bravo and The Apprentice, while informative, felt rushed. As an attendee of the second-ever BravoCon in 2022 (a lawless time), I maintain there is significantly more work to be done when it comes to examining the network’s impact on media. And the chapter on The Apprentice, a Donald Trump origin story featuring several jump scares from Survivor producer Mark Burnett, could easily be expanded into its own book. Perhaps we need a little more distance from this era of programming to truly understand what fresh hell it unleashed.
When Cue the Sun! delves into topics such as misogyny, racism, homophobia, late-stage capitalism, the surveillance state, and fascism, Nussbaum is able to pull nuggets of truth from the darkness that help illuminate what keeps viewers coming back for more. These insidious elements are as foundational to the genre as its more admirable characteristics, like its openness to formal innovation and willingness to platform marginalized voices. Reality TV’s mandate is to do whatever it takes to make a good story, and as disturbing as this approach can be, it still maintains a gruesome allure.
Contrary to what its critics say, however, reality television isn’t everything that’s wrong with culture. While Nussbaum never shies away from the dirtier aspects of the business, her meticulously factual telling of its history, enhanced by eye-opening interviews with primary sources, bends toward a cautious optimism. Perhaps what’s so uncomfortable — and so compelling — about reality TV is that it presents a reflection of society that’s hard to look at, yet impossible to deny. As technology speeds up while civil liberties erode and the real world becomes more artificial every day, perhaps the way to truth is through the pseudo-simulation this misunderstood, misjudged, and wholly human genre affords us.
Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV (2024) by Emily Nussbaum is published by Penguin Random House and is available online and through independent booksellers.
