Dr. Danielle Lindemann

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124 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2025 last heard Mar 2025

Dr. Danielle Lindemann’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Ologies with Alie Ward · Reality TV Sociology (‘TRASH’ TV) with Danielle Lindemann · 5 Mar 2025 podcast

Well, actually, I had the syllabus before I started writing my book, but it was basically like the sub areas of sociology. So we would have sociology of gender and we would read

a classical sociology piece about gender, and then we would watch RuPaul's Drag Race, and we would talk about how those principles were being played out on RuPaul's Drag Race, like performing gender, the difference between biological sex and gender, those types of things. So it's basically kind of a tour of sociology through the lens of reality TV. So like sociology of gender, sexuality...

We have the sociology of work, sociology of race and intersectionality. And then for their final projects, what the students have to do, which is the thing that I posted on Twitter that probably led you to me that went viral, was then I have the students say, I tell them, pick a realm of sociology that we have not talked about in this class and write about that in a particular TV show.

Someone did the sociology of work hierarchies in Below Deck. So that was something we hadn't covered in class and we hadn't looked at that show in class. So we had a lot of angry people who were like, why didn't you do this show or this topic? It's because we had already done those. We had already done, for instance, Real Housewives. I love Real Housewives.

I'd love to see a presentation on Real Housewives, but We had already covered Real Housewives in class.

That's interesting. Do they pick topics that are relevant to their own life? I mean, some of them pick topics about kind of young 20-somethings partying. There was a great presentation on Floribama Shore this semester.

Which was super interesting.

Yeah, like Southern, yeah, Southern etiquette. or lack thereof. So that was interesting. And this person actually was from that area too. So I could see that there is that resonance there.

Oh, that's a really good point. There's a reason why so many social media influencers are reality TV personalities. I think they paved the way for us kind of making these, we call parasocial connections, right? We feel like we know the people that

on our screens and it's that's heightened right when it's people who are behaving as themselves ostensibly versus playing characters and so those connections that we feel online right like on Instagram or whatever with celebrities are

What do I love about it? Well, Real Housewives definitely has a special place in my heart. I first encountered by accident Real Housewives of Orange County in like 2010 or something. And I just remember I had broken up with my boyfriend and moved out of our apartment. And I was like in my new apartment and this show comes on and Vicki Gumbelson gets beamed in the head by football.

And I was like, yes. Yes. And I was like, this is what I need in my life right now. And this is also one of the draws of reality TV. And she was fine, right? It wasn't, right? Otherwise I would not be, yeah, acting this way about it. But this is one of the draws of reality TV too, right? Is that the stakes are pretty low.

And in so much of scripted TV now and so much of life, obviously the stakes are so high and you can just tune into Real Housewives and the biggest conflict is like, will Bethany invite Ramona to her barbecue on Labor Day? And there's something soothing about watching something that's so low stakes.

And it's interesting because when things get high stakes on Real Housewives shows, you'll see the fans react negatively to it. Like, this is too real. This is not what I want to be seeing. I want to see like silly rich ladies hitting each other with their Gucci bags and fighting over stupid stuff.

I think on an individual level, I definitely experienced that, right? Where I just want to tune into something that I can just let wash over me. Although, of course, it's paradoxical because I can't just let it wash over me because I'm analyzing all of the sociological dimensions of it, right?

All the like microdynamics and gender, race, class, because it's such a rich text that can teach us so much about ourselves sociologically. So I'm kind of watching it on these dual levels where on the one level, it's like, okay, Ramona's barbecue, right? That can wash over me in an aesthetic way of

On the other hand, I'm like, oh, but like, what does that say about, you know, their interactions as a dyad and gender and race, right?

I think actually it might be the reverse. I think sometimes, I mean, reality TV is potent, right? Because we're watching so much of it. And there is some research that shows that people who watch reality TV tend to think relationships are more conflict driven than they actually are.

And I kind of was like, oh, that's interesting. And then recently I spent a lot of time marathoning the traitors. which is a very like conflict-driven show, I feel like be in faculty meetings, department meetings and be like, feel like a level of tension that was not there.

And so I can see, right, like how reality TV can really affect us, maybe sometimes in a negative way if we're thinking that things involve more conflict than they actually do.

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