Talking Trash: the Cultural Politics of Daytime TV Talk Shows

Talking Trash The Cultural Politics of Daytime TV Talk Shows Talking Trash Julie Engel Manga a New York University Press • New York and London NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London © 2003 by New York University All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Manga, Julie Engel, 1953– Talking trash : the cultural politics of daytime TV talk shows / Julie Engel Manga. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8147-5683-2 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8147-5684-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1.Talk shows—United States. I. Title. PN1992.8.T3 M36 2002 791.45'6—dc21 2002010094 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 987654321 For Manuel and Gabi— My partners in curiosity and wonder Contents Acknowledgments ix 1 Talk Shows, Public Discourse, and Cultural Politics i 2 The Business of Talk 23 3 Talk Shows and Everyday Life 58 4 Making Sense of the Shows: Discerning “Legitimate” Discourse 94 5 The Lure of the Show: Talk Shows as Entertainment 157 6 Utopian Hauntings? 196 Appendix A: Methodology 205 Appendix B: The Women Who Participated in the Study 209 Notes 219 Bibliography 227 Index 241 About the Author 255 vii Acknowledgments This book marks the completion of a transition that began in the summer of 1987. That summer, while I was an organization development consultant, I took my first sociology course, “Intro- duction to Sociology,” at Northeastern University summer school. I remember driving back from my family’s vacation on Cape Cod with my stepson Pablo in order to take the final exam. Pablo quizzed me in preparation. Given that I had not attended college for many years, and that, even at that, I had attended art school as an undergraduate, this was new for me. This start, followed by a five-year hiatus as I focused on work and parenting and finally a full-time reentry into graduate study has culminated in the work of this book, which began as my doctoral dissertation. Without the support of my husband, Manuel, this process would not have been possible. His support has taken many forms. Most concretely, his willingness to be the main source of income for our family facilitated my being able to move through my graduate study smoothly and relatively quickly. In addition, while I still accuse him (too often without enough compassion) of being a “recovering sexist,” he has made great strides in assuming equal responsibility for parenting our son, Gabi. For example, he has become an official “hockey dad,” brining Gabi to the cold, cold hockey rink for practice and games each week of the (long) ix x Acknowledgments hockey season so that I could finish up my work on this project. No small accomplishment for a cold-averse person from the Caribbean! This material support was supplemented by his un- ending moral, emotional, and intellectual support during my ca- reer transition more generally. The heart of our relationship is our shared passion for learning, something which imbues us both with curiosity, a sustained sense of wonder, and a willingness to challenge taken-for-granted commonsense both intellectually and in everyday life. My now thirteen-year-old son Gabi has become the youngest social theorist I know. Being his mother keeps me grounded in the grittiness and immediacy of the everyday. Having conversations with Gabi about what I was studying and writing made me think about explaining my work in a nontechnical, understand- able way. It has been satisfying to see his own curiosity, wonder, and critical sensibilities emerge over the several years I have been working on this project. One of my greatest pleasures has been to sit in my office with Gabi playing outside in the parking lot be- hind our apartment, rollerblading, shooting on his hockey net, or riding his bike. Sometimes he would call up to me with a ques- tion, asking for something to drink, or wanting me to see a new trick or skill he was working on. I’d open the window, stick my head out, and we’d talk. I characterize my work as embodying the transition Dorothy Smith speaks of between the local, immedi- ate, and particular and the abstract and conceptual. While it’s often frustrating to move between these modes of thinking and understanding, I think that having to transition has kept me grounded in the “real world” as a sociologist. It has also facilitated a critical reflexivity about the most mundane routines of everyday life. Doing chapter revisions in the warming hut next to the hockey rink as Gabi’s team practice kept this all alive and well. My cadre of fellow graduate students in the Department of So- ciology at Boston College, where this project began as my disser- Acknowledgments xi tation, provided crucial moral and intellectual encouragement and support. Ongoing phone conversations and e-mail corre- spondence with Karen McCormack were instrumental in my moving through the early stages of proposal writing, interview- ing, and analysis. My many conversations with Steve Farough, Heidi Bachman, Julie Boettcher, and Danielle Egan have em- powered me to trust myself as a researcher and writer. As this study took form, David Karp consistently provided me with encouragement. His feedback helped me work harder at try- ing to effectively explain complex ideas in a relatively straight- forward manner, though I fear I am not always successful. His re- spect for my work, even those parts of it that are not “his thing,” has been much appreciated. I am also intellectually indebted to Stephen Pfohl. Through my numerous conversations with him, I have tapped into most of the theoretical orientations informing this work. I have learned from him the importance of having a healthy disrespect for orthodox disciplinary boundaries, includ- ing the view that social science and art are not necessarily so far apart. Furthermore, he has always made it clear to me that this is my work. Thanks to Sadie Fischesser for preparing my bibliography, a task that allowed me to stay focused on the substantive work of the project. Finally, I thank the women who participated in this study as interview subjects. Their openness and willingness to give their time to a stranger never ceased to amaze me. This study would not have been possible without the generous sharing of these women. 1. Talk Shows, Public Discourse, and Cultural Politics Television Talk Shows as Contentious Culture The objects of our criticism are not close calls. They are shows that typically cross way over the line. We have described their contents as cultural rot. How else could one describe shows whose typical subjects include a 17-year-old girl boasting of having slept with more than 100 men, a 13- year-old girl talking about sexual experiences that began when she was 10, or “Women Who Marry Their Rapists”? (Bennett 1996: B9) The talk show can be seen as a terrain of struggle of discursive practice . because of the nature of the format . What is con- ceived as confrontational devices become an opening for the empowerment of an alternative discursive practice. These dis- courses do not have to conform to the dictates of civility or the general interest. They can be expressed for what they are: particular, regional, one-sided, and for that reason politically alive. Few other shows on television today can make that claim. (Carpignano et al. 1993: 116) “Alternative discursive practice,” “cultural rot,” something else entirely, or many things at once? Why is it that certain television talk shows are so controversial? Why do those who criticize these shows consistently seem to have such strongly felt, often morally tinged opinions about them? Why, on the other hand, do millions of people watch these shows daily?1 And, who, if anyone, 1 2Talk Shows, Public Discourse, and Cultural Politics takes these shows seriously? This genre has become so pervasive that the Bush campaign lobbied for a talk show format for one of the three debates sponsored by the U.S. Presidential Debate Commission during the 2000 presidential elections. In the previ- ous election, Elizabeth Dole used a talk show format in introduc- ing her husband, Bob Dole, as a Republican presidential candi- date at the Republican National Convention. Microphone in hand, she moved around the audience, soliciting testimonials of personal experiences with Bob (all attesting to his exemplary character) from selected individuals in the audience. Further- more, as various congressional representatives confessed to their own past infidelities during the unfolding of the Clinton/Lewin- sky affair leading to President Clinton’s impeachment in Decem- ber 1998,aBoston Globe article cited a University of Virginia po- litical scientist as commenting, “I’m worried that we’re going to have an interminable national Jerry Springer Show” (Fick 1998: A21). On his late-night show Vibe, Sinbad did a talk show spoof of the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, featuring actors playing Bill and Hillary Clinton and Monica Lewinsky as guests. These examples provide evidence that the talk show form has entered mainstream cultural sensibility as a paradigm for making sense of things: the privileging of the personal experience or testimonial of ordinary people over professional expertise as a way of framing issues. At its extreme, this sensibility emphasizes the outrageous, bizarre, unbelievable, and sensational: sex, sordid relationships, adultery, and other assorted betrayals. Like other popular cultural forms such as soap operas, for example, talk shows are trivialized and devalued and, in some cases, considered damaging.

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