Reality TV Sociology (‘TRASH’ TV) with Danielle Lindemann
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What is Reality TV Sociology?
Oh, hey, it's the new leaf on your what you thought was a dying houseplant. Allie Ward, this is Ologies. We're going to get real about sociology. It's everywhere humans are, including in your television. And by that, I mean probably your laptop in bed or your phone on the toilet. Now, reality TV sociology, it's a real thing. And as proof, we're going to meet a professor of sociology at Lehigh University, who is part of the core faculty of women, gender and sexuality studies, who's also an author of the books, Dominatrix, Gender, Eroticism and Control in the Dungeon. and her highly lauded 2022 release, True Story, What Reality TV Says About Us. And she studied creative writing at Princeton and then got a PhD in sociology from Columbia and has spent her career analyzing and writing about non-normative or deviant behaviors and how they shed light on how we relate to each other. Now, months back, a tweet of hers went viral, and it was a snapshot of the list of presentations some of her students were giving.
And among them were the sociology of body image and self-worth in The Biggest Loser, the sociology of work and inequality in Below Deck, the sociology of lesbian relationships in The Ultimatum, Queer Love, the sociology of perfectionism in Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. So we will dive into a lot of that and more in a sec. But first, thank you to patrons at patreon.com slash ologies for supporting the show for a dollar a month or more. and submitting questions before we record. Thanks to everyone out there in Ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com. Thank you to everyone who leaves reviews, which help the show so much. I read them all and I read you one. So thank you to Sarsi Gray who wrote, in the world of severance, Allie Ward is the Audi Helly R deserves. Swarzy Gray, thank you for that. I hope I wouldn't do that to myself. You know what? Either way, cut banks. Don't sever your crush. Also, thank you Teaspoon32 for saying all the right things. Okay, so reality TV sociology, off we go. Stay tuned for queer culture, making it to the mainstream.
What is real in reality TV? Who signs up to be on reality TV? What effect could it have on young brains? Primetime catfights, class warfare, passive aggression. what reality can teach us about ourselves, eating hamburgers with a camera in your face, good examples, bad examples, race, wealth, and so much more with sociologist, author, professor, and straight-up professional reality TV sociologist, Dr. Danielle Lineman. So many people were like, get her on now. And I was like, I didn't know this was an ology. My name is Danielle Lindeman. She, her, hers. Great. Reality TV. Did you start off watching it or did you start out so interested in sociology that you realized this was like the perfect cauldron of places to find interesting things about humanity?
Oh, that's such a good question. I sometimes say that my love of sociology actually stems from my early love of reality TV. So I was definitely a fan of reality TV even before I knew what sociology was, you know, watching episodes of The Real World back in high school. And I was just hooked, you know.
The year was 1992 and the network was MTV. A camera crew composed the first shots of a media revolution.
This is the true story. True story. Seven strangers. Picked to live in a loft. And have their lives taped. To find out what happens. What? When people stop being polite. Could you get the phone? And start getting real. The real world.
And I think the same kinds of social dynamics that I saw on those shows are the same things that excite me about sociology. So then when I became a sociologist, I was like, well, I obviously have to teach a class on sociology of reality TV because there's so much there. So it was just an amazing dovetail of my two loves, sociology and reality TV.
Are there a lot of sociologists and sociology professors that work with reality TV? Or did you find that this was like a hard sell for the education board?
That's a good question. I would not say there are a lot of sociologists who work on reality TV. And I do think there's a lot of stigma around studying something that people see as frivolous. like reality TV. But at the same time, a lot of sociologists have sort of come out of the woodwork or come out to me as people who love reality TV because of what I study. And so that's really exciting to see.
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