Grindstaff, Laura

views updated

GRINDSTAFF, Laura

PERSONAL: Female. Education: University of Western Ontario, B.A. (sociology, English; with honors), 1987, M.A. (journalism), 1988; University of California, Santa Barbara, Ph.D. (sociology, women's studies), 1996.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Department of Sociology, University of California, Davis, One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616; fax: 530-752-0783. E-mail— [email protected].

CAREER: Sociologist. University of California, Santa Barbara, instructor, 1991-96; Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, assistant professor, 1997-99; University of California, Davis, assistant professor of sociology, 1999—.

WRITINGS:

The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TVTalk Shows, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2002.

Reviewer; producer and editor of documentary videos; contributor to books, including No Angels: Women Who Commit Violence, edited by Alice Meyers and Sarah Wight, HarperCollins, 1996; The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture, edited by Gary McDonough and Robert Gregg, Taylor & Francis, 2000; Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies, edited by Martha McCaughey and Neal King, Texas University Press, 2001; Dead Ringers: The Remake in Theory and Practice, edited by Jennifer Forrest and Leonard Koos, SUNY Press, 2001; and Image Ethics in the Digital Age, edited by Larry Gross, John Katz, and Jay Ruby, University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Contributor to journals and periodicals, including Camera Obscura, Men and Masculinities, and Cultural Critique.

WORK IN PROGRESS: (With Emily West) Gender, Sport, and Spectacle: Cheerleading in American Culture (working title).

SIDELIGHTS: Laura Grindstaff is a sociologist whose research and teaching interests include cultural studies, feminist studies, and theory—including film, feminist, queer, and social theory.

Grindstaff's fieldwork for her doctorate in sociology was carried out while she worked as an intern for two daytime television shows, and her book, The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows, is a detailed account of how this type of programming is produced. The "money shot" of the title is a term borrowed from film pornography, and in this context, it is the moment when a guest loses control and expresses extreme emotion on camera. In writing the volume, Grindstaff interviewed guests and producers and sat in for dozens of live tapings across the country. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that Grindstaff's use of academic language "occasionally makes for dry reading," but added that this "keeps the book from being a titillating exposé akin to the very shows she's describing."

According to Grindstaff, although these shows do provide ordinary people with a voice, they can speak only under certain rules and conditions. Grindstaff notes that guests are coached, some are liars, and a few are aspiring actors, but nearly all are long-time viewers of talk shows and know exactly what producers want and how to give it to them. Guests may be ordinary people, but they have extraordinary stories to tell, what Grindstaff says one producer describes as "the nasty cat-fight screaming-match trailer-trash stuff," and what another calls the "nuts and sluts formula."

Salon.com critic Damien Cave pointed out that "the assumption that guests appear on talk shows simply because they selfishly enjoy the attention, or because they are manipulated into appearing, seems to be without merit." Some want to bring their issue before the public, whether it is spousal abuse or other relationship problems with which they are painfully familiar.

"Experts are shunted to the side," wrote Cave, "or added as an afterthought, like square intellectual croutons, while guests regularly leave the studios disappointed. Some even end up with emotional, legal, or physical scars. . . . The result, according to Grindstaff, is a solidification of class stereotypes. Each show, in varying degrees, reinforces preconceptions of class, encouraging us to think that the poor blather on about their problems, lie, fight, cheat, and do drugs, while those in the middle and upper classes know better. Grindstaff seems most bothered (and surprised) by the fact that the producers are unaware 'of the role that the genre itself plays in constructing the lower class as something for which it is difficult to feel anything but disdain.'"

The book shows that producers are not interested in ordinary people, but only those who fit their stereotype. Cave wrote that "the thoughtful, the articulate, the calm—all those members of the lower classes are jettisoned for their hopped-up counterparts. Ratings, not reality, rule. What Grindstaff tries to emphasize, however, is that talk shows simply reflect societal prejudices. . . . In other words, talk shows amplify our problems, but they're not nearly as bad as the problems themselves."

Carl Sessions Stepp, who reviewed the volume in American Journalism Review, said that "though Grindstaff offers the rejoinder that 'there are serious problems with talk shows, but there are serious problems with the "respectable" media, too,' it seems lame and half-hearted. In the end, trash is trash. Still, there are important lessons here. If it is true, as she writes, that more people watch TV talk shows than vote, then mainstream media need to find acceptable ways to better represent ordinary people and their concerns and to show how these matters fit into a larger social context."

Variety reviewer Timothy M. Gray wrote that Grindstaff "says the media distinguish between 'classy' shows (e.g., Oprah) and 'trashy' ones (Jerry Springer), but she finds little difference, pointing out they all have much in common with TV news in general. Grindstaff persuasively argues that all 'reality' programs manipulate facts and sound bites, and tap into a limited demographic for guests."

Allen D. Boyer commented in the New York Times Book Review that Grindstaff is sympathetic toward guests "who feel betrayed when programs highlight only the lurid moments of their personal stories. With a welcome, unexpected irony, this book reflects the resilience of common people."