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Filled under: media coverage | Saturday, October 30th, 2010 |
Tags: Bachelor, body image, class, Denver Post, embedded advertising, Flavor of Love, gender, Jenn Pozner, Jennifer L. Pozner, Jennifer Pozner, Joanne Ostrow, media, media literacy, pop culture, racism, Reality Bites Back, reality television, reality TV, sexism, stealth advertising, television, The Bachelor, unscripted programming, women in media
In a review today titled “Reality TV’s messages get a smackdown from feminist critic’s book,” the Denver Post’s Joanne Ostrow calls Reality Bites Back “an entertaining and sharp-eyed takedown” of reality television that “unpacks the political and commercial agendas behind the genre.” In this, the first review in a major U.S. newspaper, Ostrow writes, “Pozner has delivered a savvy, not-too-academic analysis of a form that’s not a just fad — and one that’s eating up more and more of the TV schedule”:
What do you see when women volunteer to be made over, dressed, styled or surgically enhanced to be “hot” on TV?
What do you see when a bevy of single women fight over a bachelor they’ve never met, competing in front of multiple cameras for a ring from the handsome prince?
When Jennifer Pozner eyes reality TV, she doesn’t see simple time-wasters or guilty pleasures. She sees a retrograde political force, “a pop-cultural backlash against women’s rights and social progress.”
Pozner, a feminist media critic and founder/director of Women in Media and News, has written an entertaining and sharp-eyed takedown of the form, titled “Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV” (Seal Press, $16.95).
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