Christopher Schroeder

Category: reviews

  • Reality TV and Me

    I recently finished Emily Nussbaum’s (2024) second book — Cue the Sun! — for a book club.

    Others have considered this book to be an accessible account of the “fusion of authenticity and contrivance” in reality television (Stowell 2024) and the narrativizing and gamifying of its starts (Cunningham 2024). As such, this oral history both challenges negative assumptions and exposes its “seaming underbelly” (Bell 2024).

    I also liked this eminently readable book, which seems to be Nussbaum’s style. I also appreciated its extensive research, including its use of insider observations of those, such as participants and crews, who might otherwise be overlooked in more conventional accounts.

    For these and other reasons, I was more intrigued than I expected. For example, I wanted to know more about the messiness behind the glossy services or the choices to imitate and the willingness to fail, which according to Nussbaum are central to this genre.

    At the same time, I wanted more consistent context, which others have noted (e.g., Bell 2024). I found such perspective useful early in the book for instance in her discussion of An American Family (i.e., chapter three), but I wondered on more than one occasion about moments when it seemed supplanted by personal dramas within programs or behind the scene.

    I also was hoping for more synthesis in its conclusion, especially after the detailed and documented analysis throughout most of this book. I was actually disappointed by the final pages that almost seemed perfunctory, and not quite worth the effort I had made to get to these.

    Both can be seen in The Apprentice chapter (i.e., chapter thirteen). I hadn’t realized how much this program had rehabilitated Donald Trump’s image, and in so doing repackaged him for his initial presidential run. At least some of his second term is obviously indebted to his first, but that might not have been possible without his makeover from this reality show.

    However, I was reminded of, and grateful for, her thoughtful approach to pop culture that I had encountered in her first book I Like to Watch.

    Its title was a declaration and a challenge. Its content was even more so.

    I was raised in a home where television for religious reasons had been banned. As perhaps a result, I never developed an informed perspective on it, a condition that was reinforced in graduate school. Television as a child was evil and after grad school also insubstantial and thus inferior.

    Not until I read Nussbaum’s first book did I recognize how misinformed I was. Her accounts of The Sopranos for example and other programs fascinated me. Her populist, and personal, aesthetics, and her intellectual ethics, resonated with me, and reinforced instincts that until this book had been overwhelmed and lost in the din and noise.

    In this and other ways, she reminds me to be more tolerant and thoughtful, and honest. She also suggests a significance for anyone who is willing to meet the public where it is, and to use tools and training to think more critically and carefully about the cultural content we’re consuming and the concomitant worlds we’re envisioning.

    What more could I expect?

  • Seductive Sirens

    I wanted to like Chris Hayes’s (2025) new book. Instead, I found myself wanting more from it.

    Hayes compares the commodification of labor in the nineteenth century to the commodification of attention today. In doing so, he distinguishes among voluntary, involuntary, and social attention (27ff) and contrasts boredom and idleness (59ff) before considering the deep human desire for social attention as a remedy for loneliness, which he differentiates from solitude (81ff).

    Hayes compares the commodification of labor in the nineteenth century to the commodification of attention today. In doing so, he distinguishes among voluntary, involuntary, and social attention (27ff) and contrasts boredom and idleness (59ff) before considering the deep human desire for social attention as a remedy for loneliness, which he differentiates from solitude (81ff).

    Then he describes the attention age alienation as the unwitting extraction of human inner life, which has been transformed into a commodity (132ff). From there, he explains that information has become almost infinite while attention is finite (155ff), and that on a public scale leads to some of the worst aspects of digital life, such as trolling and conspiracies (195ff).

    As a remedy, he invokes commitment mechanisms, such as the wax and ties that enable Odysseus and his crew to sail safely past the sirens. Such remedies could be vinyl records for some or print newspapers, Reddit, or group chats for others (251ff).

    This analysis is useful as far as it goes. The historical context is invaluable, and the commodification analogy could prove to be productive despite the obvious differences between labor and attention. Both features and others increase our understanding of these issues, and the possibilities of productive responses.

    At the same time, this book relies too much on personal experience, which doesn’t necessarily invalidate any insights but does leave these underdeveloped and as a result underwhelming. It also seems in its relatively fragmented form a product of the very attention economy that he is critiquing, and that represents a discomforting lack of awareness that could challenge its credibility.

    Another draft or two could have increased the depth and synthesis of his analysis as well as enabled more developed, and useful, application. For example, it would benefit from demonstrating how his model can account for what is happening to both individual users and social spaces.

    It also needs to offer more than some strategies he has been trying. I too for example have found print to be useful, and have incorporated more of it into my daily routines. At the same time, I expect more for my efforts, especially when such involve book-length projects.

    Regardless, I think this book will be successful if it at least enables additional conversations about what these digital devices are doing to our communities and ourselves. Even if half-baked, it could be satisfying enough to make at least some reach for more.

  • A Need to Read?

    Gloria Edim’s (2024) new memoir is a project in search of a problem.

    The book is a series of thematic chapters loosely organized in chronological order. These offer clusters of experiences, and the ways that reading helped her think through and about these.

    Edim’s claim to fame is the the Well-Read Black Girl organization, which began with a birthday t-shirt from her ex- that enabled her to escape her social isolation and connect with others. She used these casual conversations to launch a book club with friends, which she has developed into an organization that uses storytelling to advocate for social change.

    An account of its origins, and a justification for such a life, might make for relevant reading. The latter could be especially engaging in this era of digital culture, and its attendant challenges to previous justifications for reading, and the humanities.

    The problem is that it never quite gets there. Instead, it focuses more on who Edim has become and how she got there, which is obviously important to her but not necessarily at least as the way these are treated in this book to others.

    A second problem, which emerged after I finished it, is missing information. The timeline is somewhat unclear although I had attributed that to artistic choice. However, it omits details that if included could create challenges at least to the story as presented and promoted in it.

    A good example is her missing father, and he and their subsequent reconnection in Nigeria play prominent parts. However, the book is somewhat unclear that he had previously left for Nigeria, and that her mother and she had reportedly accompanied him when she was younger and frequently visited him, which suggests a somewhat different perspective on for example the house he built there, and left after his death for her brother and her.

    This issue, which is more a challenge for the genre, has little impact on the central limitation. That for me is how books justify their existence, and made this one less satisfying than I expected and hoped.