Word: americanization
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...first thing you notice on MTV's Jersey Shore is the nicknames. Well, that and the hair, and the thongs, and the leathery tans, and the tattoos, and the hair gel, and the hot-tub sex, and the bar brawls, and the lustily embraced Italian-American stereotypes. But then: those nicknames. There's Nicole (Snooki) Polizzi. Mike (The Situation) Sorrentino. And most spectacularly, Jenni (Jwoww) Farley. For future copy editors of academic histories of mass media, that's two syllables, hyphen optional, and three...
...content mill for the cable-tabloid-blog machine, employing human punch lines like Rod Blagojevich, the disgraced governor turned contestant on Celebrity Apprentice. It's everywhere. When Scott Brown won an upset Senate victory in Massachusetts, he was joined onstage by his daughter Ayla, an American Idol semifinalist from Season...
...success would lead to "Let's try a public execution. Let's try a snuff film." We're still waiting for those. But Survivor is still on - considered, together with the likes of Idol and The Amazing Race, to be relatively tame, even family-oriented entertainment. (See pictures of American Idol winners...
...time, there were a handful of reality shows on TV. Since then, we've seen 20 Survivors, 16 Amazing Races and 14 The Bachelors. We've seen Chains of Love, Rock of Love, Flavor of Love and Conveyor Belt of Love. American Candidate, American Gladiators and American Inventor. Anna Nicole, Kathy Griffin and Britney & Kevin. Design Star, Rock Star, Nashville Star and Dancing with the Stars. Joe Millionaire, Average Joe and The Joe Schmo Show. Shark Tank and Whale Wars, The Mole and The Swan. Fear Factor, The It Factor and The Benefactor. (Coming in 2011: Simon Cowell...
...these factors together, and reality TV's endless stream of candidates seems inevitable. Every winter, American Idol's audition rounds attract a deluge of self-created characters, who have the formula for getting on national TV down to a science. "I'm the crazy accordion lady/ This is my song," yowls a blue-haired young woman cradling a squeeze-box. The advanced descendants of the costumed screwballs who tried to get Monty Hall's attention on Let's Make a Deal, today's reality performance artists put on virtual costumes - the Bitch, the Horndog, the Drama Queen - to get noticed...