for media researchChapter 4 - "The Clip"
About America's Funniest Home Videos and Cops
"seemingly in a flash, television had started cleaning up its act. It got safe, it got wholesome, and for nearly a decade, it got boring....The few shows that broke fresh ground--like Roseanne, Moonlighting, and A Different World --felt like outliers, exceptions in an industry that was ad-driven and mass, suburban, and white." [p.85]
70's tv = funk of a stained shag carpet after a basement orgy
80's tv = a plastic slipcovered sofa in the living room, ready for company
"In 1989, the plastic cover slipped off the sofa. The thirst for reality...reasserted itself in two hit prime-time formats" (AFV and Cops)
> both of these were "clip" shows
they relied on viewer faith that what they saw was real
they were the first draft of internet culture
OTHER STUFF
NBC's 1985 limited docu-series OceanQuest which documented the true-life adventures of a Miss Universe winer as she traveled the globe and got into adventures
> The People's Court also started around this time (first tv show to feature binding arbitration)
The "reality impulse" for tv "welled up in the late 80s" and went into public access cable TV, and also into professional wrestling > it also surged in daytime talk shows
Bob Saget was the original host for AFV!
Cops:
- forerunners in Dragnet and The Police Tapes (first TV program to show real police ride-alongs, made by the Raymonds! who did American family)
- like Jake Webb for Dragnet, Langley intended to tell real stories--"But the Cops approach to realism--its dark verve, its spikes of voyeuristic comedy, and its utter shamelessness as both copaganda and entertainment--would cut a wild new path" [p.100] (the show acted as great PR for the LAPD and cops, who were previously in media portrayed as corrupt, bad guys, or bumbling idiots (a la Keystone Kops)
Cops was at its heart--a prank show. An ambush show
Bertram Van Munster, a Dutch Filmmaker, started as a crew member on Cops and would go on to create The Amazing Race
FURTHER RESEARCH
- Rain Man -- has a running joke in this movie, about Joseph Wapner, the judge picked for The People's Court cuz they decided to go with a more "serious" choice for the judge, and he was transformed into a household name
- Cocaine Blues: The Myth and Reality of Cocaine (1983); movie made by John Langley, the co-creator of Cops , (he had an interest in drugs)
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