The Reality Reality Show
21
nearly twice as crazy. So a show such as “Cops” edits out the boredom of law
enforcement, the social context of crime, and makes the police officers look a lot
better than they “truly are.”17 In the end, you’re never going to believe me when
I tell you this. But it’s true. Every single word. Let he who is without real
simulated reality cast the first stone.18
DePaul University
H. Peter Steeves
Notes
'For an account of Grierson and the controversy, see Sam Brenton and Reuben Cohen,
Shooting People: Adventures in Reality TV (London: Verso, 2003) 14-15.
2“New truTV makes appeal for ‘actuality’,” David Bauder, The Seattle Times, 1 Januaty
2008.
’See Mark Andrejevic, Reality TV: The Work o f Being Watched (NY: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004), 33.
“Ibid, 11.
’Ibid, 76.
“ Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime, trans. Chris Turner (London: Verso, 2002), 40.
7Andrejevic, 23.
‘Jennifer Bowering Delisle, “Surviving American Cultural Imperialism: Survivor and
Traditions of Nineteenth-Century Colonial Fiction,” The Journal o f American Culture (v.
26, n. 1) March 2003:46.
’Andrejevic, 25.
'“Ferris, 504.
"Brenton and Cohen, 130.
l2The fall 2007 season of The Bachelor ended with the bachelor refusing to continue
seeing either of the final two girls, thus breaking the mold for the first time. Interestingly,
the same tropes of “I love them all and can’t choose!” were there in the episodes leading
up to the finale, with the bachelor claiming he had equally deep feelings for each of the
final girls. The fact that he then rejected them both equally, turning off those supposed
“romantic feelings” so instantly, helps to make the point being developed above even
stronger.
"Andrejevic, 131.
"Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?” in Paul Rabinow, ed. The Foucault Reader
(NY: Pantheon, 1984): 119.
15 Baudrillard, 28.
'“Andrejevic, 16.
"Especially given that statistics tell us that the police solve only 18% of crimes brought
to their attention in the United States, but on the show Cops they solve 62% of all the
crimes. See Robin Andersen, “‘Reality’ TV and Criminal Injustice,” The Humanist
(Sept/Oct 1004), 8; and Brenton and Cohen, 42.
l8My sincere thanks and endless gratitude to Felicia Campbell for the honor of presenting
a version of this paper as a performance piece for the keynote address at the Far West
Popular Culture and American Culture Association’s 20,h annual meeting in Las Vegas,
NV in January 2008. And my thanks, as well, to the cast and volunteers who made that
show—complete with singing, dancing, music, and theatre—possible.