Cue the Sun!

提示太阳!

99% Invisible

艺术

2024-09-24

35 分钟
PDF

单集简介 ...

The decades-long creation of possibly the most controversial form of entertainment: reality television. How does it shape our world and why–love it or hate it–you should probably understand it.

单集文稿 ...

  • This is 99% invisible.

  • I'm Roman Mars.

  • Back in 2003, Emily Nussbaum developed a covert guilty pleasure.

  • I had a bad habit of watching the streaming 24 hour feeds of the first season of Big Brother in the US which is something that I was doing pretty much every day and talking to nobody about because it was extremely embarrassing.

  • Big Brother is a reality television show that debuted in the US in the year 2000.

  • If you've never seen it, the show is basically about a group of people who are isolated in a house that's under constant surveillance, and one contestant gets voted out each week.

  • For Emily, it was a sort of comfort watch.

  • They just showed the people in this house in California 24 7.

  • And so I would put them in the corner of my screen.

  • I would wake up in New York and I'd watch them sleeping out in California.

  • In the early 2000s, reality shows like Big Brother and Survivor were beginning to conquer network and cable television.

  • Emily was one of millions of Americans submitting to the the unscripted TV takeover.

  • It's interesting to see regular people, it's interesting to see authentic behavior by real people put under pressure.

  • I think this is a universal appeal of all of these shows, however you define them.

  • And people can criticize that and say that that's cruel and voyeuristic to want to watch regular people under pressure.

  • But I also think it is human nature.

  • At the time, Emily was a freelance writer in search of a book idea.

  • And she had the thought that maybe she could turn her slightly cringey habit into a book about reality tv.

  • And I said this to this friend of mine, and he said, well, you better write that fast.

  • And his idea was, this is a gimmick, this is a trend, and it's gonna die within a very short time.