Celesta Atkins:
Talk shows are a highly contested media genre. According to Joshua Gamson:
The interesting thing here is not just that talk shows are seen as a threat to norms and normality—as we will see, they are indeed just that, and the fight is often between those who think this is a good thing and those who think it is not—but just who threatens whom here, who is “us” and who is “them” (pp. 11—12).
After reading this text, one is left with a feeling of ambivalence about the positive effects of talk shows upon society and society's views of sex/gender nonconformists.
At the heart of this book, where sexual meaning-making, sexual politics, and the redrawing of key social boundaries meet up, are the paradoxes of visibility that talk shows dramatize with such fury: democratization through exploitation, truths wrapped in lies, normalization through freak show. There is in fact no choice here between manipulative spectacle and democratic forum, only the puzzle of a situation in which one cannot exist without the other, and the challenge of seeing clearly what this means for a society at war with its own sexual diversity. (p. 19)
One of the aspects I appreciated most about Gamson's approach was his honesty about his social position and his repeated inclusions of himself when discussing sexual nonconformity. Gamson never professes “scientific objectivity;” instead he is quite honest about the struggles and conflicts between one's scientific and personal rationales.
As host, it seems only fair to start by telling you, in a nutshell, what I really think of talk shows. As gayman, I think they're a wretched little place, emptied of so much wisdom and filled, thank God, with inadvertent camp, but they're the place most enthusiastically afforded us—a measure of our cultural value. We are taking, and are being given, much more public media space now, but because talk shows forged a path in there, and we had best understand what we can from the wretched little space where we were once honored guests. As scholarman, I think they're rich and interesting, like a funny, lively, slightly frightening room in a museum, dwell in them for a bit, think about their significance from a bunch of different angles, and you come out knowing more about the world, this current one, in which so much of how people see and feel themselves oozes into shape inside the sticky, narrow walls of commerce. Scholarman and gayman meet, for sure, in their common desire for a collective life in which, on a good day, people really take care of one another, and laugh; but it is really the restless coexistence of the two, one measured and the other lacking in the luxury of distance, one concerned with culture in general and the other just trying to survive intact within in, that juices up this book. (pp. 25—26)
Gamson explores the many inconsistencies inherent in the talk show genre, created, in part, by the very structure of the shows which are driven by ratings. He argues that on the shows that directly focus on gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered persons, the shows themselves, as well as the hosts, are usually supportive and rarely express moral condemnation (p. 113). However, he points out that this finding is contingent on the reinforcement of other social norms:
The treatment of same-sex relationships as morally acceptable in fact takes place on the condition that two other norms remain conserved and supported: of gender conformity (men should look and act like “men” and women like “women”) and monogamy (people should only couple in exclusive pairs). (p. 132)Therefore the positive aspects of talk shows are not the same for all queer persons. Bisexuals and transgendered persons may actually “pay the price for daytime television's progay moral cheerleading” (p. 135).
It is quickly clear. . . that on talk shows the exploitation is typically mutual . . . The struggle for self-representation is not one in which talk show guests are simple victims. They do not control the outcome, but they have a strong hand in creating it” (pp. 214-215).
That being said however, there are a few points that I found problematic in this work. Gamson does a good job at examining issues of sexuality, gender, and class identity and the oppressions that are unique and common to them all. In glaring contrast, I found his treatment of race to be superficial, and that is a significant omission.
Gamson does address race in certain areas, such as his argument that:
Mainstreaming activists are rightly concerned that talk shows provide a distorted image of gay life—but then again, the image, although more socially acceptable, was no less distorted when it was only white, middle-class, gay movement movers and shakers. Lurking underneath the concern encouraged by the class dynamics of TV talk, are hints of class, racial, and regional superiority. (p. 191)
Finally, a minor critique I had of Gamson's writing is his occasional patronizing and disparaging tone in his descriptions of certain talk show guests, hosts, and panelists. The most offensive example of this is when he is listing talk show hosts who appeared after the popularity of the Ricki Lake show and describes “schmaltz-pop singer and aptly named Carnie Wilson, who looked to me like a drag queen doing Ricki Lake before the weight loss” (p. 59). This type of witticism at the expense of others is not only unnecessary, it reeks of weight bias. I would expect a researcher who has spent so much time exploring oppression based upon sex/gender nonconformity would be less apt to buy into society's norms of beauty and femininity, much less to use the term “drag queen” as a put down.
Although the critiques mentioned above are important, I believe that this book will be seen as a major text in media studies and gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender studies as well. Gamson combines several methodologies to create a very full, rich analysis of the positive and negative affects of representations of sex/gender nonconformists on talk shows. This text was assigned in my graduate class on Media Representations of Social Problems and provoked much fruitful discussion. In closing, I believe Barry Glassner, quoted on the book cover, sums it up best when he states: “Gamson presents some of the best evidence I have seen in support of the proposition that trash can have redeeming social value.”
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