Interview with Jennifer Pozner

8/8/2019 Interview with Jennifer Pozner

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Jennifer Pozner is a media critic. She is the author of Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty

Pleasure TV ( www.realitybitesbackbook.com ) and Founder and Executive Director of Women In Media &

News. I spoke with Jennifer, by phone, on December 15, 2010. A transcript of our conversation follows…

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Brian: If you look at unscripted television as it’s evolved over the last decade, since it’s inception in a lot of

ways, the trend seems to have been anti-women, to objectify women in the context of a competition show or

to artificially create a catfight situation on something like Real Housewives, for example. Are there good

examples of either shows in their entirety or are there characters that represent good, strong role models of

women in unscripted TV?

Jennifer: Well, I think you hit the nail on the head when you talk about the last decade of reality television

and gender. The representation of women in unscripted television has been, overall, extremely problematic.

Whether it’s relationship shows, competition shows, lifestyle shows or modeling/makeover shows, you have

extremely regressive ideas of what it means to be a woman in America at the turn of the century. And you

have, going even further, a false vision of what America actually believes where gender is concerned.

Reality TV has promoted the idea that to be valuable the only thing that women need to have is extreme

beauty and, if they don’t have that, they can’t accomplish anything important in life. They can’t be loved,

they can’t be successful, so they need to do everything in their power, even regardless of health risks, to getto that perfect 10 status. That’s why we have plastic surgery shows like The Swan, Extreme Makeover and

Bridalplasty. You have the idea that women are, in general, shallow, greedy gold diggers who can only be

successful as arm candy to rich husbands. You have the idea that women are, generally, dumber than a pile

of rocks, from the beginning of the genre where you had the Anna Nicole Show, Paris Hilton’s and Nicole

Ritchie’s Simple Life and all the way to Beauty and the Geek . Shows that portray women as so incredibly

stupid that they don’t know the difference between tuna and chicken. They don’t know, basically, how to tie

their own shoes. Then you have shows like Wife Swap that bring the “mommy wars” (that have been

trumped up and are actually inaccurate, but consistent in news media for over a decade) into the

entertainment format. And that’s just the beginning. You have the idea that, like you said, women are catty

and always manipulative and are ready to fight with one another and they can’t be trusted. It goes on and on.

Brian: How much of this would you say is a construct of reality television as opposed to an almost brilliant

understanding of what’s wrong with society that’s being exploited by people who are creating

entertainment?

Jennifer: I think those two things are one and the same. I think it’s all a construct. It’s all an extreme

construct based on the reality genre being produced in such a way as to tweak deep-seated notions, deep-

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http://www.realitybitesbackbook.com/





seated biases, around race and class and gender in America. But the genre started with gender bias. When I

say it’s a construct, I mean that this is a genre that is extremely crafted. The tern “unscripted” is accurate in

that there’s no 40 page script with specific lines of dialogue that every specific actor has to memorize and

repeat on cue, but it is to some degree a misnomer in that there is a lot of scripting that goes on. It just goes

on in ways that people don’t understand in the general public. It goes on through very canny casting choices,

it goes on through major editing. It goes on through production tricks behind the scenes. It also goes on

through practices such as “Frankenbiting,” which is the industry term for cobbling together bits and pieces f

a person’s quotes, sometimes from various conversations on different days, often to alter the context, impact

and meaning of a person’s words.

So all of those practices are taking place within the context of producers who say things like “It’s really fun

to watch girls cry; never underestimate the value of that.” That’s Mike Fleiss who produces ABC’s The

Bachelor. It goes on through producers who say things like “All of the most successful reality shows ever

done have been built around social ideas.” That’s Mike Darnell who is the muckety-muck at Fox who

brought us Who Wants To Marry a Millionaire and Joe Millionaire and The Littlest Groom, etc.

What does he mean when he says “built around social ideas”? He means what you just said, it’s a tweak on

what you just said, about reinforcing regressive ideas, tweaking our most problematic, old-school ideas

about gender and then race and class that most people have moved beyond, at this point in 2010. Things that

we have seen in our culture as challenges that have been almost nostalgic: the idea that women belong in the

home, that people of color exist to be buffoons and laughed at. These are things that many people assume

we have moved past and, in a great many ways, we have moved past since the 60’s and 70’s. But in realty

TV there’s this active attempt to portray America as if we have not moved beyond that, as if we have never

rebelled against these biases or even problematized them at all, but that they are still part of our day-to-day

life. And we rarely see anything in “reality” television to give the impression that there are other, more

enlightened, more egalitarian ways to live, or that we have made social progress in our society, and in our

day-to-day life.

But you asked about whether there are any good shows or good role models. I don’t want to ignore thatquestion. It’s rare, unfortunately, in relationship, competition, lifestyle and beauty shows to find positive

role models for women or positive character types for women. There are occasionally moments. There was a

brilliant, really funny, reality show that the comedienne Margaret Cho had on VH1. Do you remember that

show at all?

Brian: I do and I think that Margaret Cho is one of those few people, as comedians even, who actually keep

the social commentary within their comedy as opposed to using the social commentary as a set up for

something that is going to be funny either way. She doesn’t redact the important part by trying to present it

in a way that people might consume more broadly.

Jennifer: I absolutely agree. I’m glad that you remember that she had that show and that she did exactly

what you’re saying with social commentary. The show was really funny, it was engaging. It was compelling

and it used concepts around race, gender and class, and aging, beauty and sexuality right on the surface, in

ways that added to the storytelling but were not exploitative. It was the first show of its kind that made race

and gender and beauty and sex the story in a positive way, rather than most reality shows that portray these

identities and issues as, basically, Mad Men without the cool clothes.

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Margaret Cho’s series showed that you could actually have a reality show, or unscripted show, that deals

effectively, authentically and in an engaging way with social issues without exploitation. What that proves is

that the problem is not the reality format. The problem is what certain outlets and certain producers choose

to do with that format. Most people don’t remember that Margaret Cho even had a show because VH1 gave

it seven episodes, a half-hour each and didn’t promote it at all. Nobody even knew it was on the air when it

was on the air - and then VH1 never repeats it. Now, compare and contrast that with Flavor of Love, which

they gave numerous seasons to. Each season had its own spin-off, each spin-off had a spin-off, and they

have repeated those series pretty much constantly for years afterwards. So, the one show that they had that

offered a really strong, funny, interesting, intelligent model for a woman, starring a woman -- it was off the

radar.

Brian: So, obviously, the argument that somebody who is in television would make is that the audience

rewards this type of behavior by tuning in to watch, by buzzing online, etc. So, if people didn’t want to

watch it, they could tune out and we would get the message. If you put on something that is both

entertaining and, if you will, substantive or real without sensationalizing, you don’t have confidence that it

will be watchable., that it will be marketable, that it will be sustainably interesting to the audience.

Is that fair? Do we have to accept either a produced, unscripted television show with a social mission or a

positive message and recognize that it may not perform the same way as something more sensationalistic?

Or, do you think or are there examples of unscripted television that was actually both entertaining and

offered a fair representation of women or characters in general but women in particular?

Jennifer: There are a lot of questions in that. I want to talk first about what you said related to the

justification on the part of the network that we’re only getting the TV that we want; that if we didn’t tune in

then they would get the message and give us something else. I devote a huge section in the introduction to

my book, “Reality Bites Back,” to that question. I call shenanigans on that. It’s one of the biggest myths

promoted by networks: that the only reason reality TV has become so prevalent is because this is “what the

public wants.” That’s not true. The only reason reality TV has become so prevalent is because it is extremelycheap to produce and comes with a huge product placement revenue stream. It can cost between 50 and 75%

less to make a reality show than a scripted show. And then, in addition to the lower production cost, you

have an almost endless potential for embedded marketing money. It can generate hundreds of thousands of

dollars….sometimes millions of dollars per season-- sometimes millions of dollars per episode as in the case

of The Apprentice-- from advertisers who want to integrate their brand into dialog, scenery, plot arcs,

character development, and everything about a show.

For example, The Apprentice is a great example of the idea that no, in fact, reality TV exists NOT because

of public demand but because of network and advertiser demand. When The Apprentice first came on air on

NBC it was a big hit. It was promoted to high heaven; most reality shows that are promoted to high heaven become hits. When it first aired, 20 million people watched. Every season of that show drew vastly reduced

viewership. They kept it on the air despite the fact that it lost viewers season after season after season. They

finally cancelled it when it only had seven million viewers. NBC finally just felt like they were putting all

this emphasis on the show and it was taking up so much of their prime time real estate and very few people

were watching it anymore, so they cancelled it. All the newspapers headlines said “NBC says ‘You’re

Fired’ to Donald Trump.” The easiest headline to write, ever, using his catchphrase against him.

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But then NBC they hired Ben Silverman a co-Chairman of their entertainment division. Silverman came

from a product placement marketing and production background. He came from a company that helped to

produce reality television specifically for advertising clients. Now, The Apprentice was a huge product

placement revenue generator, as I said. Every single episode of The Apprentice is built around sales

challenges or marketing challenges or some sort of form of business challenges, around a certain company

or a certain product, usually a Fortune 500. So, these Fortune 500 companies have paid up to 2 million

dollars per episode to turn The Apprentice into an infomercial for their brands. Every episode of The

Apprentice, for years, has basically been an infomercial for a different advertiser. So when Silverman came

in, he looked at the line up and basically said this show is way too lucrative on the back end to cancel it. It

doesn’t matter that it doesn’t have a lot of viewers anymore. It matters that we get two million dollars from

advertisers to integrate and then we get to sell TV ads between the “content” even though people don’t

recognize that the content of the show is not traditional content, it’s an infomercial. So he brought it back. It

became the Celebrity Apprentice.

The fact is the public was not demanding that show. The public was saying from the first season “okay we

tuned in, we think it’s interesting…the second season we’re tuning in with much lower numbers” and then

they just bailed. Nobody wanted that show anymore and it’s still on the air ‘til this day because it was cheap

to produce and it is a huge boon for embedded marketing, and the networks who benefit from embedded

marketing.

The idea that reality TV is created strictly to meet public demand is predicated on the notion that TV exists

to give viewers what they want and need – unfortunately, that is just a lie today. TV exists, just like any

other media product today exists, to create shareholder value for the conglomerates that own those outlets.

That’s a real problem in terms of what viewers get to see, and it’s just the reality of a media-merged climate.

We have been sold the myth that our needs govern program decisions when, in fact, our needs are about the

last thing that are taken into consideration.

So, some reality shows get huge viewership. American Idol is the most popular show of the decade. Butmost reality shows don’t get the high numbers that shows like Idol does or shows like Dancing with the

Stars does. Some reality shows get terrible ratings, really very low, and stay on the air season after season

because they’re cheap, even when scripted shows with higher ratings get canceled more quickly. It all goes

back to the big myth, that we want reality TV no matter what. Some people really want reality TV, and in

particular, they want certain shows. I’m not saying nobody wants it. What I’m saying is the genre itself is

prevalent because of economics, not because of viewer demand.

Brian: So now we have this show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, which is a mixture of a number of different things.

Mark Burnett, the godfather of reality television, is behind this and he knows a tremendous amount about

how to make a show watchable. We have Sarah Palin who, even before she joined the show, was widelyknown and widely discussed. And that’s not the case with most unscripted stars. Donald Trump is analogous

in a little ways but most of the people who appeared on The Apprentice were never known prior to coming

on the show and yet they became sort of stars in their own right and an extension to that. Does Sarah Palin’s

Alaska in the history of unscripted television shows show an evolution of understanding of what it takes to

present not only watchable television, but a good female character?

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Jennifer: I don’t think it presents an evolution in that sense. I think that some people do find the show very

compelling, particularly around the nature aspect, and around the parenting aspect. I think there’s a similar

draw for Sarah Palin’s Alaska as for the early seasons of Jon and Kate Plus 8 where the segment of reality

fans who like to watch parenting shows, who they like to see the dynamics that go on within families and

between children and their moms and dads, those viewers could easily be drawn to Sarah Palin’s Alaska.

And I think that folks who really love nature shows would also find the show very watchable. I think that

Alaska is its own character in the show and I think that that can’t be underestimated.

But the main aspect of the show is the fascination that the country has with Sarah Palin and I think that

you’re right to draw an analogy between Burnett’s work with Palin and his work with Trump. Because,

unlike Survivor , which is Burnett’s other, major reality program , Survivor is all unknowns, right? All the

cast members are anonymous people before they show up on the show. With The Apprentice and with Sarah

Palin’s Alaska, it’s a show that is built around a powerful, public persona. In both cases, with both Donald

Trump and Sarah Palin, these are people who’ve done a lot in their careers to try and control the way the

public understands their personas and I think the real evolution with Sarah Palin’s Alaska is that this is the

first time a politician has been able to use the reality TV genre in a way that furthers their own ability to

control how the public relates to their persona.

And, in that sense, it is an evolution. I actually think it’s problematic. I would have the same concerns

whether it was Sarah Palin or whether it was Bernie Sanders or whether it was any Democrat, Republican,

or Independent. I think that there is something to be concerned about when politicians get to control their

image pretty much in every way and use the reality genre to create what may be a truthful depiction of their

family and their values and their daily lives, or what may be a completely fabricated version. We just don’t

know because that’s what the reality genre is about: it’s about convincing the public that what we’re seeing,

which is usually just one percent of everything that’s been filmed, is real, when in fact we know from ten

years of other shows that what we see is not very real at all. So, I think that’s a concern.

Brian: So, regardless of how people come to the show and what they think of Sarah Palin personally or

politically, would you say it’s fair to suggest that the representation of Sarah Palin as a woman, as a mom, asa professional -- in this case a political professional -- is a good one, is fair or constructive? Is it helpful to

the cause of suggesting that you can make watchable television and represent women well at the same time?

She’s not wearing ridiculous outfits, she’s not over-sexualizing herself for the purpose of driving ratings. In

fact, even in the first episode, she put herself in a very vulnerable position and seemed, at least, as most

people would argue, to have done so in a way that was very honest and showed that she was vulnerable --

scared but not helpless which is the opposite in a lot of ways of what you see on other shows. Do you think

that the presentation of Sarah Palin as a woman on the show is a good one in that specific gender context?

Jennifer: I think it’s interesting, actually. I think that the reason that Sarah is not being hyper-sexualized or mocked or set up for rejection or any of the particularly damaging shows we’ve seen about women and

femininity and gender in reality TV is because A) she’s Sarah Palin, she is the former vice presidential

nominee and former governor of the state that the show is set in, she wouldn’t allow that to happen. It’s

almost impossible to compare the depiction of anonymous women in reality TV -- and when I say

anonymous I mean people who aren’t stars and then show up on reality shows -- with the depiction of Sarah.

And B) she has an executive producer credit for the show. She isn’t treated in a misogynistic way in the

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show because she is one of the producers, or at least, she has the ability to veto anything she felt portrayed

her in a negative light.

Most reality show participants, female or male, have zero control over how they are edited, how they are

manipulated behind the scenes. In contrast, Sarah is involved behind the scenes on this show. Are there

other unscripted shows that will happen in the future that could figure out a way to depict women based on

how Sarah is depicted in the show? Unfortunately, I don’t think it will carry over to future portrayals of

other women in reality TV because she’s such a unique figure and, more importantly, because of her

executive producer credit.

So, of course she’s not going to be exploited: she has control over her image in the show and that’s one of

the reasons why we see Sarah in a position of power in the show. We see her as competent and confident in

her day-to-day life. We see her as having give and take with her husband, we see her as a dynamic mom. We

wouldn’t see any of those things if she didn’t have control over her image. The problem with most reality

shows and gender is that most women who show up in reality TV are deeply exploited because they sign all

their rights away to producers who have the idea that it is very fun to watch them crying, or that, you know,

they can only be successful in life if they have a multi-millionaire husband or etc. I think that the positives

about Sarah’s portrayal are rooted in the fact that she is a partner in the production of the show and that is

extremely unique in the genre.

Brian: I think one of the interesting discussions around the show is, regardless what we say [at

SPAlaska.com], regardless what we reveal about how things were put together in production, there is this

built-in skepticism about what people see on the show. Now certainly part of that comes from politics and

the lack of trust that people have in political leaders today and a lot has been heaped in that context around

the show. Do you think, from an unscripted television standpoint, have we reached the point where,

regardless of where people see it on television, they are going to assume it is essentially scripted in a

way….that you’re not seeing reality at all, but we’ve grown so accustomed to quote/unquote reality

television so that we know that it’s not really an accurate reflection of reality?

Jennifer: I honestly wish that we were as fully skeptical as you’re saying. I think that there is a surface

level cynicism about reality TV where people say “Oh yeah, we know it’s manipulative”, but that rarely

goes beyond the surface. The fundamental manipulation of the unscripted genre, the fact that most reality

shows will only use one percent or less of what has been filmed is not generally known.

If you ask people: “Do you think reality TV is real?” Kids actually do believe a lot of the time that what

they’re seeing is real, but you ask the average adult viewer of television if reality TV is real and they’ll say

“Oh no…of course I know it’s all fake.” But then if you ask them specific questions about a character on a

show, “What do you think of The Situation on Jersey Shore? What do you think of Jake, The Bachelor ?

They’ll generally say in their next breath, right after saying “Oh, it’s manipulative; oh it’s fake” they’ll say“Oh that bitch needed to be eliminated!” of “that guy is such a tool!” or “so and so is…. [fill in the blank

judgment about a reality star]…” and it sort of trails off.

Deep, profound opinions about the individuals that they see on the shows and about what should happen in

all of the shows. If you believe that you know anything about somebody you’ve seen on a reality show, then

you don’t know the genre isn’t real. You don’t know about Frankenbite editing that can splice together

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different pieces of conversation from a Monday and a Wednesday and a Sunday, change the context and the

content and the meaning and the impact of what somebody said or did. They don’t know that crushes, that

love, anger and fright, all of those things can be manipulated and fabricated almost out of whole cloth,

within the reality genre. So, the surface-level skepticism “Oh, you know, I know it’s not real” usually

doesn’t go deep into the actual viewership process. When people view reality shows, they often end up

buying into the premises of the shows. So I think that we need more skepticism.

I think that where Sarah Palin’s Alaska is concerned, the challenge for Burnett and for you guys [at

SPAlaska.com] is that you’ve got the two genres that are the most manipulative and have the least amount of

forthright truth in the country: politics and unscripted television.

You’ve got politics in the sense of the person in the center of the show is a politician. I don’t mean that

every episode of the show is framed around a particular political issue, although some are, the N.R.A.

episode was certainly, the hunting episode. But even if you hadn’t had the hunting episode, even if the show

was just built around a politician in general, it would be inherently political, especially when the politician

has a production credit. You know that politicians, their main goal is to get their message out even if their

message isn’t necessarily accurate, that’s just the nature of what politics has become in the country at this

point.

And then you have the unscripted genre that we know is very carefully crafted. So it’s almost inevitable for

Sarah Palin to end up in reality TV or for some other politician to do so. But I think that the challenge is

people are going to be a bit skeptical of a genre that we know always gives us a heightened surreality

version of whatever is actually going on, and only ever shows us one percent of what has taken place. And

in this case stars someone who’s been on the national political stage. I think that you would have that

skepticism; at least I hope you would have that skepticism even if the star of the show…if it wasn’t Sarah

Palin’s Alaska, if it were Bernie Sanders’ Vermont , I would hope you would have the same skepticism.

Brian: So if you can suspend the political bias as a viewer, as a reviewer, as an expert, critic, whatever… is

there interesting stuff on the show Alaska as a character, Sarah Palin as the representation of a matriarch andhow she runs her family, how she interacts with Todd, that we could or should be focusing on, that might,

outside of the context of politics in the way that politics operates these days actually be useful in terms of a

discussion of whether or not there is good television that represents women, families or that represents

places in a non-exploitative or similar way? Are there things that you have seen on the show that are

actually substantive or constructive….that we might not get in any other show than this family living in

Alaska with this woman and stuff like that?

Jennifer: I think it’s a real mistake to say we should suspend our political awareness when we view a show

about a politician; the last question was all about how we need more healthy skepticism. Critical thinking,

and in this case political awareness is part of critical thinking, is important in a healthy democracy. Thatsaid, I think that Alaska as a place, and nature as a focus of the show, is unique and compelling. That is

something that I haven’t seen a lot of in other shows. Usually the shows that make place and nature a

character are like “The Deadliest Catch” where nature is scary and going to kill you. So in the context of

Sarah Palin’s Alaska I like the idea of a reality show that really looks at the environment in a healthy way. I

think that it would be very difficult to look at nature and the way that nature is portrayed on the show and

not want to preserve it. I think that’s a good element.

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I’d want to see more episodes of the show before I really fully decide what I think about gender and how it’s

portrayed on the show. So far, the way that Sarah has portrayed herself in certain contexts on the show has

been surprising to me, in that we know that this is an incredibly savvy, competent woman who’s run a state

and then ran for vice-president, she’s also billed herself before the show as a great hunter. One of the things

that everybody thought they knew about her, was how she was this really proficient hunter, a proud member

of the NRA, etc. But we’ve seen her have to ask a series of men to tutor her in hunting-related activities. So,

certain times she portrays herself as very competent and in charge on the show -- usually when she’s in a

scene alone she is portrayed as knowing what she’s doing and in charge, whether it’s about a parenting

situation or organizing an outing for the family or doing Fox News interviews. But when she’s in a scene

with a bunch of other people, usually a bunch of other men, I’ve been surprised at how many scenes we’ve

seen of Sarah needing to be instructed by male authority figures. Especially in the two episodes in a row

related to hunting.

I wonder if that has to do again with Sarah trying to -- forgive me, I know you don’t want to talk politics --

but trying to negotiate her image in a way that plays well to her fan base. She goes hunting and she has to

have her father help her line up shots and tell her what gun to use and how to do various things that need to

be done in order to keep guns safe. The next episode, the one where she and Kate are about to go with all the

kids to the Great Wild; there’s the whole scene where she is going to the gun shop and she has to find out

from all the guys in the gun shop what rifle to use and what supplies you need and what kind of way you

would have to hold it. Then there’s the scene where the gun experts are teaching her what she needs to know

how to keep people safe and then how to use guns against charging bears; the way it was filmed reminded

me of all old cheesy 80s movies where the golf pro instructs the girl in how to hit the golf ball because the

girl is cute and giggly and might not know how to actually put.

I wonder those scenes where one man after another instructs Sarah on guns and hunting, whether that isn’t

all just a “put on,” because I can’t imagine that Sarah Palin doesn’t know which gun to use for protection on

a camping trip, or how to shoot a deer. I can’t imagine Sarah Palin, the big, life-long N.R.A. supporter who’s

made hunting a main selling point of her competence; I can’t imagine she wouldn’t know how to use a gun.I wonder if there’s not actually a dumbing-down of that set of skills in order for her to placate the idea that,

yeah she’s competent, but not too much in charge because we know that a lot of the base of people who

support Sarah, that conservative base is sometimes uncomfortable with women in power. So I think that it’s

a really interesting set of dynamics that we have around portrayals of Sarah and around her competence in

general. In trying to negotiate the way that her power is portrayed, is she attempting to make sure she

doesn’t come of as too powerful, but rather just powerful enough that we don’t question her competence?

It’s an interesting balance.

Brian: I would suggest a different analysis; not to say that that one may not be valid.

Jennifer: Okay. I’m interested.

Brian: The origin of the show, the idea that has been presented, the showing and introducing the part of

Sarah that few people has direct access to, to the rest of the nation and there’s obvious limitations of what

you can do in an hour’s worth of television.

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Jennifer: Right, of course.

Brian: Even if someone had spent their entire life hunting and spent, you know, their career in, whatever

these things are, explaining and demonstrating those experiences to other people is very, very challenging

and I can speak to this personally because one of things that we have been trying to do is to take the

activities that go on in this show and try to demonstrate what they really are like. And not only are those

activities that they are going on, many of them not at all available outside of Alaska, or easily in most places

– I live in New York City, granted, but it should be frankly more easy to find a halibut as an example than it

has proven to be. When we were trying to find a halibut

Jennifer: We don’t have a whole lot of halibut on the F train.

Brian: I think there is also, one of the things that I see is misrepresented is that there is an awkwardness in

trying to take something that you know about very well but want to explain it, have other people find it

interesting and want to experience it on their own and communicate it in a way that comes across on

television as both genuinely showing your knowledge and experience.

I think the reason I say this is both Sarah Palin’s father and her brother, Chuck Sr. and Chuck Jr., are

teachers and when you look at Chuck Sr. on the show in particular since he has had more of a role than any

one else, He actually, and there are limits and there is some awkwardness in the father-daughter thing and

there is always going to be in any relationship, he talks like a teacher. He doesn’t talk down to you, he

doesn’t talk over you, he doesn’t throw in examples or references or stories just for the sake of throwing

them in, which I think would be, and I could speak to this personally, the natural reaction that someone

would have, when you explain something like this.

I think it is hard to look at this show obviously, without the bias that people bring in for or against Sarah

Palin and her political views. I also think its hard for people to look at the show with their bias for or against

unscripted television and not resist the need to over analyze some of those things. I think this raises a very

important question, but I also think its possible to come to different conclusions.

Jennifer: Oh sure. It always is.

Brian: Which is to say, I think it is one of the great opportunities that this show presents, both from a

political stand point but also from an entertainment standpoint is that there is so much to discuss about the

show and to figure out that kind of reductive perspective that a lot of media and bloggers and a lot of other

people will have tried to apply to the show to satisfy their preconceived notions for or against is not fair

potentially to the show or to those who want more than what they have seen in previous shows. Its not like

other unscripted television in a lot of ways. Its not like the access to positioning that we typically see

political figures in. Alaska is not like any other place.

There are all of these things that we are essentially coming to this show assuming and then having to spend

all this time trying to find ways to align what we see with what is actually happening there and try to make

sense of it. I think it takes an extended conversation and potentially other conversations to start to unpack

and make sense of that, and that’s what I think is so interesting.

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Jennifer: I’m interested in what you just said about how the show has both benefits and challenges on the

production side. There are benefits and challenges to working with a known political figure and to working

in an environment like Alaska which has both really unique stories to tell, but also it’s difficult to find ways

to tell those stories if such stories are not the easy, reductive ones we’ve seen them a hundred times. Those

stories are going to be a little bit more difficult to tell. We haven’t seen a hundred shows about Alaska so it’s

not like you can do a procedural crime drama about Alaska the way you would do one about New York.

We’ve seen a hundred and fifty of those, right? There are going to be challenges and benefits.

But that what I was saying is that I think that Sarah has been doing a really odd little dance around trying to

portray herself as powerful, but not too powerful, a strong woman, but not too strong, so as to not rock the

apple cart. I don’t think it’s a problem of Alaska. I think that the fact that her dad and her brother are

teachers doesn’t change the fact that she has dumbed herself down in some instances, or maybe she’s just

not as good of a hunter as I expected. I really though that of everything I knew about Sarah was that she

wouldn’t need those endless sets of instructions. I think that she probably is actually a good hunter and

probably didn’t need all of that.

Just because you have people who are teachers and she’s not a teacher by trade, that hardly matters – anyone

who is knowledgeable about something can be filmed passing that knowledge on to another person or

people. She was the one to teach Kate about some aspects of the tundra, and the woods, and some aspects of

the guns, even, right? So when she was alone in a scene with another woman, she was the one portrayed as

more competent. But in scenes with men, it was all a series of men doing the teaching.

I think that that has to do with a bit of gender balance stuff because we know who Palin’s general fan base is

and of course you would tailor any show, like Tool Academy on VH1, you are going to tailor your context to

your audience. I think we know who Sarah’s favorite fans are, and we know that generally they tend to have

some clear ideas about what is appropriate for women and what isn’t. I think it’s a little reductionist to say

that it’s difficult to tell the story of Alaska and that’s why some of that dumbing-down might have happened.

I think Sarah could have been the one to tell the story of Alaska in a teaching mode. She certainly tells the

story of nature quite a bit. She talks a lot about the environment, she talks a lot about how beautiful theanimals are and the scenery. She also talks a lot about family and the ways families live in Alaska, so there

are places where she takes the role of the giver of information. She’s the giver of information related to the

family and discussions about nature.

But when it comes to actual skills being distributed, she’s not the giver of the skills, and I just wonder about

that. I wonder if that’s an intentional choice. I think that’s the underlying, unconscious message that comes

across, and I think it’s an interesting dynamic. I don’t know the answer to it. I’m not used to not having the

answer. Usually with reality television, after ten years of intensive monitoring and research, I'm pretty solid

in the answers about these sorts of questions. In this case, I have just as many questions as answers, because

we haven’t seen enough episodes yet to see how gender is portrayed through the entirety of the series, andwe also don’t know enough about Palin’s role as a producer, either.

I think it goes back to one of the things you said at the very beginning, which is if we can suspend our ideas

about politics either way and just look at the show as apolitical. I just don’t think we can. I think that we

can’t suspend that because you have a show that is produced by a politician and any time you have anything,

whether it’s a campaign ad or a stop in Iowa, or a reality show that is co-produced by a politician and stars

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that politician, it doesn’t do viewers a benefit to say “suspend your political critique.” Let me be clear: I

don’t mean critique in the sense of left wing/right-wing critique, or Republican/Democrat critique. I’m

talking about structurally, you cannot not look at how the show is functioning within the larger media and

politics landscape because its just inherently part of that political process.

Brian: That brings me to the last thing that I want to talk about. On the last episode we had Kate Gosselin

and Sarah Palin. On the last episode we had Kate Gosselin and Sarah Palin, two very well known, highly

discussed and oft criticized television personalities together, being compared, etc. I’m wondering what you

thought of that as a moment in television and what you thought of that specifically in context of women

being represented on TV. and whether or not it was a good thing or a bad thing or a non-thing?

Jennifer: I didn’t really think it was all that big of thing either way. I suppose everybody expected me to

think it was a really big thing because I am the one who looks at women in reality TV but that’s all just not

really interesting to me. What’s more instructive to me was how the show reinforced a little bit of that

classic “women don’t get along, women are catty, there is a good girl and there is a bad girl” theme that we

have seen about women in reality TV in general where Sarah is the one who is smart and knows what she is

doing and is down home and somebody who we are suppose to identify with, while Kate is the crazy,

whining shrew.

Basically, by coming into Sarah Palin’ s Alaska, where Alaska is the other main character, in addition to the

family, and basically badmouthing that main character, Kate was pretty much giving a lot of material to the

producers to allow them to put her in the role of the shrew. Because from the very beginning of that

camping excursion she was saying things like “I don’t understand why you would pretend to be homeless,”

and whining and crying and acting more like a kid than any of the kids there. And look, I don’t want to

judge. Maybe there was a lot of stuff that we didn’t see off camera because of course, when you only see

one percent, who knows what else is going on.

Let’s hypothesize: if we give her a lot of benefit of the doubt, maybe she was sick and we didn’t know. Who

knows? But it was certainly edited to conform to traditionally sexist media tropes about female characters:where there’s a woman you root for and a woman you hate. Mike Fleiss, the producer of The Bachelor, was

recently asked about why his shows are so successful. H said early on they realized on The Bachelor that the

audience has “to hate the girls.” He said “We have to create villains” because the audience has to hate the

girls. Then he follows up by saying, well, “they don’t have to hate all the girls,” they do have to hate some

of the girls. I think that it’s interesting that even on Sarah Palin’s Alaska that, again as you say, is a show

where we’re supposed to really identify with the strengths of the main female character – still, when we

bring on another matriarch figure in reality TV, we have to sort of cut her down in order to maintain that

first character’s dominance.

Brian: I could keep this conversation going for hours, but we’ll have to wrap it up there. Thank you verymuch!

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Interview with Jennifer Pozner

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Transcript of Interview with Jennifer Pozner