Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV

by Emily Nussbaum

By February 2002, a new set of pundits chimed in. Rather than predicting the death of reality TV, they made a more alarming argument, that instead of being snuffed out by 9/11, the genre had been strengthened by the tragedy, which had given it a fresh purpose—as a numbing agent. “Reality TV didn’t emerge as compensation for a reality shortage, but as a buffer against the real,” argued media scholar Mark Andrejevic in a column called “Reality TV May Be Down but It’s Not Out.” “The genre offers a reality substitute that has the same flavor as the real thing, but without the disconcerting aftertaste of a call to action—political, social, or otherwise. You don’t have to do anything about the reality offered up by reality TV because, as any fan or critic will tell you, it’s not really real.”