Transcript
Speaker: Okay, real talk. I've never really watched The Real Housewives, not of any municipality. So when Beatrice Bradley and Brandon Truitt, my guest for today's episode of Some Marvelous Experience, told me that they wanted to talk about the way that The Real Housewives franchise had been an important touchstone for their friendship, I went out and I did some research.
Speaker: I didn't even know, were The Housewives even really real? Turns out the answer is complicated. People have brought a lot of different kinds of aesthetic experiences onto the show already. Books, movies, conceptual art.
Speaker: A lot of this material has been new to me, which is great and really a big reason of why I wanted to do this project in the first place. But I think it's kind of funny that The Real Housewives was the first thing that someone suggested that I actually felt a little embarrassed about not having seen.
Speaker: From time to time, I'll be talking with people and the conversation will somehow swing around in such a way that someone will make an anguished confession about some novel that they haven't read, even though it's in their field, maybe, or is just generally something that is considered essential.
Speaker: People bring this up like it really is mildly scandalous in some way, like people will be aghast to find out. I actually attended a symposium of English professors that began with a kind of trust-building exercise that was premised on this transgression.
Speaker: Everyone was supposed to submit beforehand the first sentence of a book that they hadn't read, which then became the object of an icebreaker-style game. I think the idea was that starting the day with a confession of this sort would encourage a sort of vulnerability and that that would lead to bonding.
Speaker: Anyway, the game was fun because the people involved were funny and smart, but the premise of the whole thing didn't exactly work. For the most part, I don't think that not having read something is the source of shame the way it maybe it used to be.
Speaker: I realize that this is partially just my own privilege speaking. A lot of good fortune had to shine on my head for me to be cavalier about the fact that I don't know which letter is the scarlet one. No spoilers, please.
Speaker: But beyond my own nonchalance about the things that I haven't gotten around to yet, I think this also points to a shift in the way people relate to culture in general. It's not just that there's less of a sense of a shared canon of artifacts that people are expected to be familiar with if they're to be considered educated or whatever.
Speaker: Obviously, the whole notion of such a canon is suspect in lots of ways, a matter of cultural capital and a record of exclusion, inevitably a statement about whose experiences count as culturally representative and whose don't.
Speaker: But even apart from the normativity of such a canon, I think that even the possibility of imagining a set of shared texts feels harder for us to grasp, just because of the way that our current media ecology has splintered audiences into algorithmic microcategories.
Speaker: I feel this in a profound way when I teach. It used to be possible to think of what I was doing when I asked students to read a modernist novel, say, or a poem. it used to be possible to imagine that we were all participating in some kind of coherent intellectual tradition that made sense, even if we also wanted to be skeptical of that tradition.
Speaker: But now teaching texts like this feels more like I'm a hobbyist introducing students to some niche interest of my own, like I'm showing them my record collection or my stamps, talking about how cool things were when I was in grad school.
Speaker: But still, I often find myself a little embarrassed by the whole thing. Like, embarrassed that I care so deeply about surrealism or iambic pentameter or whatever. And my sense is that it's not just esoteric high-cultural texts that have shaken loose in this way.
Speaker: Even trying to invoke pop culture inevitably feels slightly embarrassing in a new way. Not only in the hello fellow kids manner, which is to say not only because it's always low-key cringe for a middle-aged person to even try to speak the language of a young person, but also because popular culture doesn't function to cement a kind of relatability in the way it once did either.
Speaker: Anyway, I'm saying all of this just to note that it's actually kind of surprising to me that I really do feel a sort of inadequacy about having never really watched The Real Housewives. So many of the smartest people in my life have a profound attachment to these shows, and I feel like I'm constantly watching blank-faced as memes float back and forth over my head.
Speaker: I'm not saying that I'm crushed by this feeling or anything, but there is a real way in which the way I relate to this show is through an experience of feeling left out of a conversation. i might be thinking about this too hard, but it occurs to me that there is a way in which my FOMO about R-H-O-N-Y is a bit like the experience of hearing gossip that you're not privy to.
Speaker: And that that's interesting because that kind of gossip is really the engine that drives this franchise. Talking with Beatrice and Brandon made me think that the pleasure offered by shows like these is the pleasure of gossiping about other people gossiping.
Speaker: In a way, the bad, outrageous, over-the-top, completely fake sociality of the housewives becomes fodder for a kind of therapeutic sociality for people following along at home. I think there is a particular kind of aesthetic experience that we could locate in the scene of deepening a friendship based on the representation of other people yelling at each other at a dinner table, a kind of comedy that we can build out of other people's drama.
Speaker: But I also think these shows are another instance of the complex elasticity of friendship as a category. Obviously, in some way, the casts of any of these shows are real friends, only to the same extent that they are real housewives. But in a way, I think that's beside the point.
Speaker: People bitching about one another, fighting, smiling through a conversation while clearly seething with disdain, disliking one another, being jealous of one another. Part of what is interesting about friendship is the fact that none of this decides one way or another whether it makes sense to talk about any two people as friends or not.
Speaker: Anyway, I'm just waxing philosophical about an archive that I don't really know. And it's possible that what I'm saying is profoundly stupid for reasons that I don't even realize. There is, of course, a growing archive of smart, academic, and critical work on reality television, which Beatrice and Brandon know well, and I'm probably betraying how stupid I am every time I open my mouth.
Speaker: Maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better, but I kind of think that that's just what it means to be a human being. Then again, what do I know? I've never even read The Scarlet Letter.
Speaker: Yeah, no, i was I was thinking about this leading up, obviously, to the call. ah So Brandon and I met in 2014 when we started grad school together. And I remember our first time spending was really in this Joyce class that was like the worst grad school experience. I mean, it was amazing. The class was great. But it was also like the most performative grad school experience I've ever had in my life. part That's intense to start off with a a Joyce class. That's like...
Speaker: It was Joyce and Beckett. It was a double, a double header. yeah um Yeah. It was intense. But I don't feel like we became close until COVID, which is when we, like really close, which is when we started watching all these shows, I would say together. I mean, we'd already been watching, but it became a shared experience. Would you say that's right, Brendan?
Speaker: Yeah, totally. I was thinking, yeah like how much we were sharing about our watching, which I don't, it's funny to me that like in the early environment of meeting at joy the Joyce and Beckett class, I don't,
Speaker: think it was the environment where our shared interest in these shows was like maybe allowed to be a discussion topic. Although i think maybe Beckett and reality TV have some shared affinities. um But yeah it was during grad school. Oh no, sorry, during um COVID. I remember...
Speaker: that one experience when we were watching, ah fake friends is internet play that was like zoomed, um, and like, uh, streamed online. And that was all about like real housewives. And it was kind of like an aesthetic, uh, contemplation of these artists thinking about their relationship to these shows. And then I think also us thinking about our relationship to these shows. And so it was kind of like a beautiful experience. Um,
Speaker: I was this watching so much reality TV during COVID. like I watch a lot of it, but like I was watching twenty four seven It felt like reality TV. Yes. And were you um like quarantined at this point? and like watching and then like just Were you watching at the same time? Or or what was the what was the the watch experience like?
Speaker: we Yeah, we were quarantined. but Early Chicago was locked down almost immediately, I think. So we were in our apartments in Chicago, which I find was very different from other other folks who had different quarantine experiences. And I think we were just, had also, I remember, this is probably from my side, i had just gone through like a big professional failure. I hadn't gotten a job. So I was like,
Speaker: through COVID and yeah all I wanted was to basically tune my brain out. And Brandon had been really supportive from my perspective through this experience. um And so that I think you to distract ourselves, we turned and we were watching separately, but we were check-in and I think we were delighted and this probably gets into the sort of aesthetics of it all is that we do both view them as aesthetic objects and that's not necessarily the norm, even for people who study reality TV.
Speaker: So I think we were both delighted to have our encounters with reality to be reaffirmed through each other. Yeah, I think that's totally right. And I was thinking, um yeah, the like isolation within the connection across um apartments because we didn't see each other.
Speaker: I mean, like some people there, cause you were in the loop and I had like some friends I could go like walk to on the North side. Um, and I was not walking to the loop. Um, but I mean, we were talking so much and like, uh, yeah, connecting across space, even though we're in the same city And then like,
Speaker: I think I was like watching Housewives of New York from the first time from the beginning, maybe. And I hadn't ever watched that whole, and um we were, because that was one of your favorites, I think. And it was just like live texting during that being like, oh my God, this is like the most amazing experience to have for the first time. but I think you were like, oh, but i've been there already. But like to read they re to restage it Yeah. Yeah, I think like to push away all the like trauma of that period, but also, yeah, the like all the also trauma of grad school. Well, I was about to say, I think it's important. We both defended our dissertation in 2020, in summer of 2020. So then we also had all this time to some extent, both due to COVID and for having like the first break in our respective projects in six years.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. So I have two questions. One, this is like a dumb question. I just don't know. Was the experience of like the historical reality of COVID reflected in any way in any of the Real Housewives franchises? Like how did um like how did that ah interrupt the the Real Housewives experience?
Speaker: Yeah. So when we were watching, everything was normal on the shows, which I think was also a pleasure, right? You're watching people live their lives normally. But eventually COVID catches up with filming and it creates problems in filming, of course, because they can't be around each other. They get COVID. And the one I always think about in terms of also, you know, Brandon's very interested in the remediation and sort of self-referentiality of reality television. So what I think about is there's also like reunions where some people...
Speaker: And some people don't. So some people are showing up on these giant screens that they bring out and some people are there in person. um And the interaction between that is really unsettling and also sort of like can't be and delightful. um And so, yeah, so that's just to say it creates a lot of sort of logistical problems as well as sort of charting their own experiences. But because so many of these, yeah,
Speaker: individuals have very different political understandings of what's going on. They perhaps are not ah quarantining the way that ah i as a viewer I felt myself ah in that moment.
Speaker: Yeah, and there were when there were unions where there were all there was one particular, i think it was Beverly Hills, where they were all, like, zooming into the reunion. And somehow they had already, they had, so this was, like, the Russia reality that also is an unreality because, of course, they're all quarantined.
Speaker: Presumably, they can't film on a set, but they still have this like amazing glam squads coming to their homes and producing the environments and different squares. And so then the cumulative like they're in a Zoom, but also it's like a reunion Zoom. And it's like...
Speaker: papering over so much that is happening, but also trying to remind, like bring us back to like a before, ah ah a trauma, like a global pandemic to be like, Oh, but they're still like together. And they're also in glam and it's like, nice.
Speaker: Um, so that kind of, is I mean, that's part of why people were watching so much of it. That's something I'm also like, ah Beatrice said that the, the remediation, but also the escapism of a show, like,
Speaker: I feel like reality TV, why it's so prominent right now in a moment is because of people have so much time to watch it and also not feel like it was a guilty pleasure. Like they were able to indulge it and so much more like does there's nothing else to do.
Speaker: COVID specific was like ah the perfect context for the style proliferation of these shows. So I can see that um that there would be a powerful kind of escapism that comes from watching them at that moment in particular and and just in general. But could you say more about why this particular franchise, ah like this? presumably it offers a different kind of escapism than other kinds of television shows and maybe even like other reality shows. Like what is it you know that made ah these programs particularly um useful for that kind of escapist experience or you know an attachment to them to be something that you could bond over? Yeah, I think there's...
Speaker: Yeah, this is like where I think there's a um a frustration on my part when talking about shows. Like they can be both like something you can do while you're folding laundry or even like writing a dissertation, frankly. um But they also can like have these moments of like absorption that you would another like aesthetic experience. Yeah. mean, they're not mid, which is like the um right the aesthetic ah category that I associate with a lot of the like laundry folding television. Right. ah But these are like, you know I don't know, extra in a way that um like doesn't even aspire to to midness.
Speaker: No. and Yeah. I was thinking with your question, often people think about the escapism because these are affluent people living glamorous lives. But I think for those of us who watch the shows intensely and continuously, that's really not where the escapism lies um because you...
Speaker: Obviously, the entire sort of premise of the show is to break apart the sort of desirability of these lives. So for me, it's exactly what Brandon was saying. It's how engrossing, simultaneously engrossing, and yet in some way, I don't even want to say mindless. It's a different sort of orientation of mind than obviously our work is. um So that sort of pleasure. And I think there's also this sort of, um and Brandon and I were texting about this recently. On the one hand, it's a very alienating, completely different life that these women are like leading ah But there's always this sort of fear or edge or sort of anticipatory power that like, that could be my life. And it's not a good thing. It's not like, oh, I want one day to done. It's like some calamity could happen to me or I could turn 60 and that could happen, right? Because these are often people on the stages of life a little bit above us. um
Speaker: So that is also feels like this weird line between being escapist because it's so different, but also like, is that something that's waiting for me? So is there like a is there a kind of relatability factor in the aesthetic experience or a kind of like, I don't know, a sort of like a hazy identification, disidentification kind of choreography? Yeah.
Speaker: I think, yeah, what Beatrice is saying, like the relatability. So even to historicize Real Housewives for just a moment, like, because we are right at the moment of a 20th season of Real Housewives of Orange County. um Of course, it's been, I think, more years since it aired. i can't remember the exact year, but the i like when it when it aired, it was like behind the gates. It was like how it was initially described. Yeah. And it was like totally unrelatable. Like it wasn't meant to be relatable. It was supposed to give you access to a kind of lifestyle that very few people enjoy.
Speaker: But I think as they were filming, they started to realize, and I think they changed the title to Real Housewives because of the relatability of their identities as characters.
Speaker: women with means, but also women with leisure and like an aspirational identity early on. um and that's like the double, the double bind of like, it's both like, it wouldn't be successful if it wasn't relatable.
Speaker: Like there's something relatable in these women's experiences. It also crosses like gender and sexual identity, which is super fascinating for me, especially. um but like,
Speaker: I mean, I don't go on private jets. I mean, so like, there's also that, like the, the yeah reality, like the actual, like, um, if you were to do like a Marxist analysis of reality, of Real Housewives, no. And we probably shouldn't be enjoying these shows in these ways.
Speaker: Um, but there's something about like, yeah, an experience, like, I don't know, like a breakup and the women coming together are around a dinner and talking about it. Like that's a relatable experience. Um, or like someone cheating on a spouse and then sharing it over like a martini. Like these are relatable, like experiences that we have, but then they're punctuated by so much high drama that like,
Speaker: Yeah, it brings it into another... Well, it does, and not to to harp on the relatability angle, um ah but there's it seems like there's actually a way in which the shows... ah What you just described, it's not just, um you know, there are a psychic of or social events that people can identify with that happen. but that the show is really structured around then getting together and talking about those events, which is to say it's like, yes it's about like relating. It's not it's just, it's not a show about getting cheated on. It's a show about like relating, getting cheated on and how that act of relating then, you know, has ramifications ah for how other people relate to you and to your experience and like how that affects social dynamics
Speaker: Um, but you know, so it's connected to gossip and, uh, and you know, whatever, bitching and like, other, other modes of, other modes of relating.
Speaker: Yeah. I want i want to hear a bright Beatrice thing. So the one thing I'm thinking of, like when you said Beatrice, like the absorb, like, when you're fully absorbed into, I want to know your thought on it. Like when I'm fully, I feel fully absorbed in the medium of reality TV is the quintessential dinner.
Speaker: Like if almost 40 minute, mean, there are course like pans and cuts between cameras and whatnot, but like that set piece I am doing nothing else but absorbed into watching this. It's more like when they're moving through their daily lives and like, I don't know, you get like one woman kind of moving through um like something she's doing in her day. Like that for me, I kind of like can then like text or whatever. But when they're at a dinner, it's like you've got me hooked. And it's about the, I think it's like what Brian mentioned, like it's the conversation around a topic.
Speaker: Yeah, no, what I was thinking about both with that and with what Brian was just saying was sort of the shows, at least ostensibly, are about these women's friendships. So it's about the relationships between the women. And then also what the viewers are often asking for, like a common critique of the show is, well, they're not real friends. And this would be um better experience if they were. So that the real pleasures of the show come when that they are in relation and when they're in conversation with each other. And I agree with Brandon. It's sort of the the group ensemble scene is when things get so exciting. Because I was thinking what's engrossing for me is when they go on a cast trip, right? Because right they're displaced. And the the dinner that's always sort of famous for me is there's a real housewives dinner.
Speaker: of New York in Cartagena. And there's one fight taking place in the foreground. And there's a second fight. They're all at a long dinner table. There's a second fight in the background. And they're constantly switching um between the two sources of conflict. And then there's a conversation happening in the middle. And there you you have to be watching every single second of it because you'll miss some key key shift of the camera and key shift of the conversation.
Speaker: That's so right. I was thinking of moments when I've found myself double-tasking, texting, and I miss something. i have to like I'm rewinding. did that get to Okay, why is she yelling at her about that? and like You're trying to track like like all of this like conversation. and i think it's something about the 360-ness of it.
Speaker: the way i mean Something I'm super interested in is also the production and like just the way you get a whole 360 view of a dinner. ah You can imagine yourself... I mean, I'm not at many dinners where people are talking to each other, but um if you've ever been at dinner room where maybe it's a long table, you don't know what's happening at the very far end. And that's this kind of... like um especially if like I'm a little hard of hearing sometimes and I'm like, I don't even know what the person next to me is sometimes. i And then right to be able to, like as a viewer, to be so keyed in, and Beatrice is a great point, like even in that dinner at Cartagena, where you need the mediation of the camera to provide all of that like spectacle might be the word, but also just the reality.
Speaker: like The camera is the apparatus to provide that. um Otherwise, it wouldn't exist. Do you know what i mean? exists in the way that it's being produced or like being like um manifested.
Speaker: Right. It's like a a kind of... um ah like omniscient access to a dinner, which is, you know, not our normal experience of reality. i mean, I always have that feeling of being like completely overwhelmed with anxiety about what's happening at the other end of the table. Like, especially if you're sitting sort of in the middle and there are like, you know, you're on the the Venn diagram of two different conversations. It's like, that's like agonizing. Yeah. Obviously, we don't need to um like ah compare Real Housewives to like great works of modernist literature in order to like understand that thing. Oh, no, please. I hadn't really processed the centrality of the dinner situation.
Speaker: scene as being the kind of like, you know, narrative core of these shows. And it makes me think right now I'm reading um Anthony Pohl's A Dance to the Music of Time, which is a sort of mid-century British attempt to write Proust, I guess, in a way. um And the thing that's, I think, most Proustian about it is um You know, it's it's narrating decades worth of history and relates related to a particular narrator and protagonist.
Speaker: But it leaves out um all of the sort of normal things that would be the plot points in a novel. And instead, the narrative arc is really organized around um a progression of of dinner parties, which is, you know, the same with Proust. It's like, you know, you have like 200 pages devoted to To some like party where people are sitting around gossiping and like that's the um like that's the heart of the of the novel in some way.
Speaker: And like that particular choice to, organize narration around those kinds of micro social scenes where all of these different, um, conflicts are coming into, uh, coming together. And particularly in a scenario where people are like presumably supposed to be nice, uh, and behave, uh, is, it's just a really powerful way to, um, to tell a story. And I hadn't really connected,
Speaker: um That the real housewives might be the apotheosis of that of that particular kind of modernism. It's also like one of the last vestiges of domesticity in the real housewives right now. um So as they get further and further away from being actual housewives, it seems like the dinner party is the one thing that sort of remains there. Well, can we talk about the, like, is there a sense of how they settled? So initially the Real Housewives of Orange County was called Behind the Gates.
Speaker: um Do we have a sense of how they settled on the particular um term housewife? Was in 2006? around the financial crisis. it was Was the housewife a like um ah kind of identity category that ah had a, you know, a kind of gravity to it? where Were people thinking of themselves as housewives in a public way? It's such a, it's such a um I don't know, like obviously I'm thinking of it now in terms of its relationship to trad wives and, um you know, there's a lot of aesthetic categories organized around whiffery.
Speaker: but um But what's the deal with housewives? Yeah. Yeah, so The Real Housewives of O.C. is an amalgamation of two very popular television shows in 2006. So Desperate Housewives is where the Housewives part of it comes right, right. I forgot about that.
Speaker: Which was a scripted show. Scripted show. Itself very campy, sort of soap opera, but also with a lot of comedy. and so I sort of wonder what the sort of lasting reverberations of comedy sort of have to do with the genre of reality TV, which is at its best so funny.
Speaker: um And then also ah the OC, which was sort of about that's a teen Sophie drama, right, about set and set in Orange County. So the com the combined popularity of those two in the early 2000s is what generated, at least from my understanding, right, Brandon? Yes, so that's totally right.
Speaker: The Real Housewives of OC. And then the popularity of OC, of course, led it to proliferate across other cities, first being New York, I believe. Yeah, I think it was also ah ah a period of time because of, like, you could also get into, like, there's definitely those, like, those scripted shows, those dramas, um and then the, like, era, of like, early aughts, like, paparazzi culture.
Speaker: So you can think of like Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, like so much happening in the press, like celebrity gossip press. I've talked a lot about like people like Paris Hilton, like all this stuff that's like producing culture um in a way that like,
Speaker: is all like usually a print media and then like something like how to move it into television. And I think like that's also in there. And also a fascination with like Southern California, Hollywood.
Speaker: So that's particularly why i think Orange County was the first thing. Yeah. And what I think sets apart the genre of Bravo Housewives from other shows that now have come up, like the more real ah the ah secret lives of Mormon wives on Hulu, so a different channel, obviously, ah is that it was born out of this satire. um So there's a different sort of... ah aesthetic, orientation, mode, genre to it than, say, Mormon Wives, which really does come out of this child wife moment. And it's supposed to be sort of a rebuttal or seeing behind the curtains of child wives, like, oh, actually, they have these rich rich in our lives. But i would say tonally, it's a different construction of the wife that now is, of course, intermingling and right now, but sort of, I would say, from the get-go, it's a different construction thereof.
Speaker: ah Maybe we could go back and is there more that we might say about um both about your individual, um ah how you would characterize your relationship to these shows and how you would characterize your relationship to one another via them, if that makes sense.
Speaker: Yeah, I think, i mean, Beatrice and i were talking and I was like, we were kind of texting and I was like, I think, Many people watch reality TV and I can talk about it with literally anyone who like turns on these shows, but the spark, I think of our like friendship deepening through a conversation with one another and around these shows was a shared, um, understanding that they're more than, um trash quote unquote guilty pleasures. Like I think for us, we were always so annoyed by that designation,
Speaker: And that they somehow, i think, to also historicize maybe a moment of like cultural criticism, and especially like like academic scholarship. There was not much writing or thinking around reality TV. It has since then exploded, both in the press, like popular press, cultural criticism. The New Yorker runs...
Speaker: pieces on the own houses on reality TV constantly. They were not doing that, I don't think, as much before COVID. um And I think, like, for me, I'm interested in taking these shows seriously as aesthetic objects. And that's why I was, like, saying earlier about the camera.
Speaker: um And then also to think about longer histories of aesthetic um experimentation. You could think about these shows alongside Cinema Verite or even Documentary. But yeah, it was very interesting. I think that's where we initially were just so like, yeah, take these shows seriously as like aesthetic.
Speaker: Yeah, no, just to agree with that. And I would say even now when there's so much more scholarship on it, the scholarship tends to focus on sort of what does this tell us about our current political moment? um So sociopolitical engagement with these shows, which is valuable. Or how is how are these shows constructing race, gender, sexuality, which Brynn and I, of course, are interested in thinking about. Yeah.
Speaker: um But I would say our shared attention to close reading, which is a pleasure we have across across this different disciplines, but that we like to bring that to the show and think about so how is this frame being constructed? Because they have so much material that they're drawing from. So the amount of sort of ah intention that goes into craft crafting these objects is demonstrative or demonstrative. So we're both interested in sort tracking that across the shows. And I think um there's a real pleasure in finding someone who's also going to say, did you see how that hand came in from from the right corner? You see how the dog was positioned in the background of that shot. um or what choices they made with sound here or the musicality that they're playing playing and how they're sort of shaping your emotional experience. That's rarer. And the other thing I was thinking about before we came on this was how much like pleasure there is. um
Speaker: You know, I think at the end of the day, I'm still kind of a snob about it, which is which is ridiculous, right? It's this sort of common ground guilty pleasure thing, but I'm still like, there's a right way to read this. you that's right Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The right way. So there's nothing as affirming as when Brandon and i are agreement with each other on something or on some particular, very specific detail of a show we're engaging in.
Speaker: Is there like a basic, uh, like example of what the two of you get right that everyone else gets wrong? Do you think? We were just texting about a show yesterday.
Speaker: Um, I don't know. Do you have an example, Beatrice? I have a kind of example, but... You go, and then I'll go. I think, so, there's also a literacy of reality TV that, this is back to Beatrice's point about being a reality TV snob, which I kind of love, because it's like a it's ah' a it's an archive that really shouldn't cater to snobbery, but I kind of think it's interesting to think about it, like, how do you master or, like, have...
Speaker: um domain over this like almost possibly unwieldy archive. And for Beatrice and I, we were mostly thinking about Bravo, um but then we drilled down into like the Housewives. But then like shows that on the peripherals, like spinoff shows, like the current Next Gen, which is a show of like ah composed of real housewives children and like other really kind of like influencer people, but also people who are just like rich who live in and New York City and are kind of moving through their 20s.
Speaker: And they also, there are scenes that are kind of like aesthetically very similar to the dinner party scenes where they're kind of like have it out of or something. And so we were talking about like what, like to be able to like have that literacy of like, you need to kind of be able to trace connections across the Bravoverse to really understand what's happening in next gen.
Speaker: Like, I think like that's where... it gets really interesting. And I guess it's a close reading practice to like then both have like a formalist understanding of what you're looking at, watching, slow down, think about it, contemplate all the choices, but then to also step back and have a contextualization within a more like world worldly or like global sense of where it fits.
Speaker: um Yeah, that's my like initial thought. So do Maybe this sounds harsh, but um do you think then that your aesthetic experience of these shows or the ah the particular pleasure that comes from these shows, like, is it, is that like fundamentally rooted through an experience of snobbery? Like, is it like, like is the pleasure that you take ah from these shows, the pleasure of being a Real Housewives intellectual? Yeah.
Speaker: In a way that maybe is different from us. That's not the only available way to and now of course to experience these shows. When do you think we get it? Now I want hear Beatrice's thought. When do you think we agree on a reading of a show?
Speaker: Yeah. And so yeah. So, I mean, I guess, yeah, two thoughts. One, um so I think we, yeah, we have an attention, as Brendan was saying, to how things move across different different seasons and different ah franchises. So, for example, I'm very interested in, like, when does the cigarette come out? When do they start smoking a cigarette? Yeah.
Speaker: You know, they've lost sort of control of a moment and they're no longer concerned with how they're presenting to an audience when they start when they start smoking. ah We're also very interested. Like, when do can you feel that the production and the editing has turned against a housewife and they're showing us something that they might be constructing a different narrative? ah So being able to track that. narrative I mean, I think that it's not necessarily snob of being intellectual about. no. Because there are plenty of quote unquote intellectual takes or readings that we don't necessarily agree with. i do think it's our sort of, I think it's a sensibility, right? We feel like we have a shared sensibility.
Speaker: um that allows us to engage with this art firm, but also I think other, like we have, you know, other form, other media, other forms of pleasure objects that we also should sort of bring this sensibility to it would be what i what I would say there.
Speaker: Yeah, now I'm kind of thinking, i'm trying to remember like what Virginia Woolf says in her essay about snobbery, because I think it's a kind of defense of it as an aesthetic um ah disposition. And I guess I'm playing on the word because it's just so, it feels so antithetical to this particular um archive.
Speaker: So like something feels a little radical to be like, what does it mean to be a Real Housewives snob? um Because it's like, there's so much writing. i mean, I think what Beatrice is saying, like often I will read like an intellectual take on reality TV, especially The Real Housewives. And there's a kind of sense, and this is sensibility that Beatrice and I will text about, where you can tell they don't fucking enjoy it yeah Like, they just don't like it.
Speaker: And you're just like, well, then why are you writing about it? I get, like, it's having, like, the suspicions of reading kind of approach. um Sure, and that is very valid. But it does feel sometimes where, no, I want to read and I want to think with people who are enjoying this with me.
Speaker: yeah And, like, that's, like, to the aesthetic experience. Yeah. Yeah, Beatrice, what are you... No, I just agree. We're not snobs about the form itself or the medium itself. Yeah. We're deeply... I don't know. We enjoy these shows and we also, i don't think... yeah Again, you can sort of read when they're not enjoying them or when they're looking down on the the folks who are participating in these shows. And that's a very different orientation towards the object than I think we we experience.
Speaker: That makes sense. I do, I sort of am now invested in that being its own kind of snobbery in a way, and it being a kind of, you know, maybe even queer way of relating to this text um by, you know, the theno the snobbery comes from recognizing the fact that these other approaches to this text are,
Speaker: um you know, don't get it on some level. ah And I think there is something really powerful with any kind of genre that comes from being fluent and experiencing your fluency in the, um you know, in the specific features of a genre and like recognizing that something is going on when the cigarettes come out, yeah you know, a pleasure, not only from the thing itself, but also from that experience of being,
Speaker: being in the know um about, and maybe being in the know in a way, and these shows in particular, being in the know in a way that maybe the the particular housewives in question aren't at that moment.
Speaker: um You know, that there's a kind of triangulation about um recognizing ah how they're presenting and how they're thinking about how they're presenting and then how the apparatus of the show is cutting across that or, or you know, a thwarted in different ways.
Speaker: I mean, I was thinking, mean, maybe we could eventually move away from snobbery. It's always is going to have like this negative connotation, which I would love to queer it in a essential kind of certain way. um But I was thinking like some of the knowledge holders or whatever you might call it, like best readers of reality TV are not academics. And they're not people who have like a learned training or something. Like, I feel like there's sometimes lenses that are brought to the show that like, again, don't,
Speaker: they don't animate from the the media. like For Beatrice to to pick up on the cigarette, it's because Beatrice has watched a lot of reality TV and also like has salt have found something that emanates from it.
Speaker: um But I'm thinking of like, there's some amazing like takes you can find on like Reddit forums of like people talking about these shows and just sharing about them. um And I think like, that's something I found like really, maybe back like when Beatrice and I really bonded over these shows and developed a friendship was like, that like gossip element. That's so important. I mean, when I teach reality TV, I'm like, there's so much that's going to happen in our conversation about the shows that you really need to be talking in this class. Yeah.
Speaker: and like really sharing what you're experiencing. um feel like that kind of conversation, and not to l and not to think about like you're going to have like this take about like the camera work, which is great if we get there, but like I just want to know, like as we move through a conversation, like something that might come to the surface,
Speaker: um Well, they do seem like shows, unlike other, a lot of other shows anyway, they they seem like shows that necessitate talking about them. You know, like like it's sort of hard to imagine...
Speaker: watching these shows and, you know, not saying anything about it or not discussing it. Like, it seems like the pleasure of the show is, is connected to, you know, texting your friend, um, in disbelief or, you know, uh, or like, and that I think must have something to do with its connection to gossip, that it's like, you know, a show about gossip in a way that is gossip in a way that then, um you know, ah generates more gossip. Um,
Speaker: And that that's part of what the um the sort of the like artwork of it is. and Yeah, no, I think that's entirely right. um And it's interesting how it recirculates in like multiple ways, both. And memes. Yeah. Yeah, that's what exactly what I was going to say. Both recirculates as a form of gossip, where did you hear about this particular scandal?
Speaker: Let's break down every detail. Let's go on Reddit, find it out. Let's go on TMZ. Let's share all these articles, but also just the sort of the joy of sharing a quip with a friend. or It then becomes part of your vocabulary. And so you're either sharing a meme or you're just texting them a single sentence.
Speaker: ah But because you both watch the show, particularly even if it's just like the night before, there's such a pleasure in doing that. I was thinking that that's so good because I was thinking about, the again, this remediation of some of the shows and how...
Speaker: It's such a visual medium, of course, but like when there's some really great theater artists that I've like recently been following who create these really experimental plays where they're doing table readings of the shows.
Speaker: um like There was one called the Bethany Monologues, and it was kind of this amazing amalgamation of everything that's happening from Bethany Frankel. It was, as we all know, one of the most iconic artists.
Speaker: Real Housewives from New York City. um But like, and that's like in everyday life, like when I'm around people, especially other queer gay people, but also just people who are affinity with these shows, like to just start quoting things from show and like have that. i mean, it's also happens on drag, people in the drag race world too do this a lot. But I think there's something really interesting about, like for me to say white refrigerator and there's something about that that you immediately are like transported Not a white refrigerator. Not a white refrigerator. And like, it's like, if you then start piecing it apart, it's like, oh, you lose some of the... right But then I was thinking like the the ways like queer people in code and like this like kind of like co the code coding that happens in language um to like transmit some kind of like affinity. um
Speaker: don't know. And it's like, it's almost inexpressible. Even though it's in language, it's like something happens when you start sharing that language. And I was going to say, part of in thinking about sort of also the history of The Real Housewives, part of its aesthetic is indebted, obviously, to drag culture, um both in sort of the right and how the women sort of perform this construction femininity, but also in the fact that often the makeup artists who are constructing these women, as Brandon was saying over the Zoom, There's a lot of controversy, right, with Nini Leakes even, in that her makeup artist said sort of some of her taglines were things that he came up with and were sort of part of his lived experience and his subculture in Atlanta that she then was sort of putting out as her own into this, and into the public sphere, right?
Speaker: And now it's, of course, recirculating back into jay culture where you have Jai queens who are ah turning around and performing these women themselves. Oh yeah. Performing, doing whole like, yeah, drag shows based on housewives.
Speaker: Um, there's some interesting, super fascinating about that. And I think like for me, I, some of the, like some interesting moments for our like shared vocabulary or talking about these shows is when artists come into the fold. Like, I think when we were really galvanized around these, like, okay, who are our like people?
Speaker: It was Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley who are like these theater artists who created a show called, um, this American wife. Um, and it was this amazing,
Speaker: I can't even like encapsulate it in a sentence, but like this amazing like understanding of an affinity and sharing of like the love of real housewives amongst like queer gay men. like what And did i understand that and to do it through this like really innovative like internet play. um And that was like...
Speaker: It blew up the whole thing for me in a certain way. It was like, okay, there is a whole world of like even like artistry that's happening that really is taking the aesthetic super seriously and then having that inspire like other production, aesthetic production.
Speaker: um So we immediately got in touch with him um to like talk about the shows, but also to like think about how they could like think with us on a project we were doing a few years ago.
Speaker: To come back to – or to bring the idea of remediation back to your own relating about the show, from what you've said ah multiple times, you've sort of referred to your text messages to one another. so do you feel like your – is your friendship in general text-heavy friendship? Yeah.
Speaker: And would you say that the um the relationship to the show that you're, are you most often texting about the show? Is that the way that that you communicate back and forth about it?
Speaker: No, I don't think so. I think, yeah I think we have, we text about a million different things. And at this point, I would say there was definitely a phase in our friendship where that's sort of where we both were. And I think it was because Brandon was going through every single episode of Housewives of New York and needed an outlet of someone who had seen every single episode. Right. But now I'd say we talk about a lot of different things, but we both know we're both watching it. So like yesterday when Brandon said, are you keeping up with NextGen? I was like, of course. How can you even ask me? Stupid the question. Yes, I am keeping up with it. What are your thoughts? um So even if we're not texting about it, I know that if I want to say something, Brandon's the person to go to. And then we also send to each other a lot of memes, as you can imagine. So when I have those academic moments of wanting to get off Instagram, I'm like, but well how would I send Brandon this 30 seconds of the best house I've seen I've ever seen in my life?
Speaker: Yeah, totally. So, I mean, I guess it happens through like texts and also like Instagram DMs, like sharing posts and things that are happening or like what Dumas might say about something and sharing that. um But like,
Speaker: I think it's also like Beatrice and I haven't lived in the same city for a long time. like And even like when we were in the same city, we were in cape like and impossible to get together. um So yeah a lot of it's also mediated just because we're like um quite far in distance. But I do think there was one moment I called you on my, like I have a long drive like on my commute and I was like, I'm going to call Beatrice and I just want to hear what's happening and talk about reality TV for a while. Yeah.
Speaker: and I mean, catch up on other things, but also, like, I really want to know talk about Housewives or something together. And I will say that might be one of the reasons why ah our friendship, I mean, a million reasons why our friendship endures, but I think there's also a way in which, like, having this shared um enjoyment of the Housewives is also a safety net, right? Like, we will never have a moment, or, you know, bravo, God's willing. We will never have a moment. Yeah.
Speaker: in which our conversation grows stale because we can always, you know, you have a moment, you have an awkward pause, you aren't fully looped into what's going on in that person's life, but we can always turn to this one, this one object and have a shared encounter with it and talk about it.
Speaker: God bless the Real Housewives. herele Yeah, no, that is yes, they shall never leave us. That's amazing. um Just to to conclude, I wonder if, um do you all, do you both agree about, if you had to choose one ah one um location of the show to rescue from obscurity, ah which one would it be? Beatrice.
Speaker: okay ah so new To have a new housewives. No, no, I'm sorry. So what's the best season? Like if, if, if only, you know, if we're, if you're, if we're fleeing the planet, uh, right. I was like, Oh, that's a tough one. Um, no, I mean, I think I'm very much New York, but I would guess that Brandon is Beverly Hills. Uh, and I would say our greatest disagreement that I feel is how Brandon engages with Beverly Hills because,
Speaker: around particular housewives. Uh, so yeah, that would be my guess. Do you have any, do either of you have, are there litmus tests, uh, for, uh, uh, friends that, uh, uh, about which, uh, I mean, I mean, on a serious note, if they're not watching Atlanta or Potomac, that's a problem, right? Because one of the, uh, sort of, uh, modern horrors of,
Speaker: Bravo is that the shows are almost entirely segregated. It's of the fan base that will not watch Potomac or Atlanta, ah which is obviously has so many great pleasures. That would be one sort of a base li litmus test. ah What do you think, Brandon?
Speaker: Yeah, I was just thinking in this conversation, we didn't talk about where we disagree on reality. um also um or like That's so funny. um But yeah, no, I would totally agree. I think there's something when I talk to someone who's like maybe new to the Housewives ah universe or even Bravo, and there's certain shows they're watching and those shows they're not watching. And it is a kind of like, it keys me into something reality.
Speaker: yeah their consumption of media. That also might inflect on maybe their understanding of identity or even their modern identity. um But I think, um yeah, Beverly Hills, of course, I do think, and it's also like,
Speaker: There's like different moments where I think like it's like you can kind of get a sense of when someone says a show, like when how soon they've started watching. and So like if they say they're watching Salt Lake City, and I'm like, yes, amazing.
Speaker: But it is a newer city. To really enjoy Salt Lake City, you need to have been watching... the the earlier like cities and Atlanta being one. if Honestly, if you're not watching Atlanta, then I think you're not really enjoying Mouse Wives universe.
Speaker: and guess Yeah. There's also this ah ah resistance towards these older shows because they were created obviously for a different audience and also created before you could just be on your phone watching TV. So I think a lot of people like, Oh, I don't like old reality TV. It's too boring. It requires a different kind of attention.
Speaker: But I firmly agree with Brandon that to really fully enjoy the now of reality TV, which I think is much you know less good than it was once upon a time. But to fully enjoy it you have to you have to be watching from from the beginning.
Speaker: And now we're back to snobbery. No, it's a point because the shows were just figuring themselves out. And like, I mean, part of the joy of reality, I mean, part of like historicizing it again is how much it's been invested with more like funding and money. It used to be a cheaply made show. that was the whole point. i mean, also there's the whole like early where they were all trying to skirt around like the writer's strikes. Yeah. So there was something, like, they didn't really know what were doing. And, like, also, it wasn't really clear they knew why they were on camera in the first place. So, like, there's also the literacy of, like, then you kind of know housewives are coming on because they want to be over a real housewife. Right. That wasn't happening um like, because there was no real housewife. Like, that wasn't a thing yet.
Speaker: But now, but it's also the fun, too, to be like, okay, I know why this woman's on the show. Like, she's trying to be a real housewife. Right. Like what archetype is she fulfilling? Right. Right. what's archetype is sheepaau laja Which is back to the snobbery. Right. Right.
Speaker: All right. Well, I think we can maybe leave it, leave it there with snobbery. um ah But, ah but I really am so grateful to both of you for joining me for this conversation, which has been really fun and illuminating.
Speaker: Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you so much, Ryan. So fun.
