TRUE STORY

For reality TV fans looking for high-minded, scholarly reasons to defend what many consider “guilty pleasure” viewing, here is a book filled with them.

Lindemann, an associate professor of sociology at Lehigh University, crafts a thorough, well-plotted argument that shows how MTV’s Real World franchise, reality competitions like the Survivor series, and the universe of Real Housewives stars both influence popular culture and are shaped by it. Though the narrative is constructed like a doctoral thesis—the first half moves from an examination of reality TV’s impact on the self, couples, groups, and families to tackling big issues like race, gender, and sexuality in the second half—the author drops in enough quirky tidbits about Cardi B or various Kardashians, especially at the beginning, to keep things moving. She walks the line between entertaining and educational as she discusses how unscripted TV is “a fun-house mirror of our dominant, heteronormative culture, and even as it deals in sexual archetypes, the genre also shows us some possibilities for transcending our deeply entrenched roles and expectations.” But given the ever growing cavalcade of fascinating personalities to write about—e.g., the megarich Kardashian and Jenner families, battling Real Housewives, and groundbreaking activists like Pedro from The Real World: San Francisco—Lindemann’s discourse usually ends up toward the academic side. “We’ve seen how it has popped from its documentary roots,” she writes, “thrusting zanier and zanier cast members into increasingly convoluted and provocative scenarios.” However, we see little of that zaniness or the escapist interest that attract people to the format in the first place. When the author does indulge—as she does with a fascinating look at how “real” “Countess” LuAnn de Lesseps is on the Real Housewives of New York City—it just makes you want more.

A vigorous, sometimes predictable defense for reality TV that could use more of the genre’s surprises.