"The Money Shot" by Laura Grindstaff

If that kind of statement seems strange to us, Grindstaff suggests, it's only because we refuse to admit that media exposure of any kind can bring rewards. For some guests, like Nancy, talk shows offer the chance to "get the word out" on an issue like abusive relationships. For others, an episode of afternoon schlock provides a free vacation to wherever the show is filmed or the chance to confront a relative or friend in an environment where the person can't or won't run away from The Painful Truth.

For every guest who winds up suing a talk show, or worse (in 1996, Warner Bros. was sued for negligence after a gay man on "The Jenny Jones Show" revealed his crush on a co-worker and was later shot by the other man), there are hundreds who say they got what they wanted out of the experience. Some, like Charlotte, who had been duped by a bigamist, even appear on several shows in a row "as a way to turn a bad situation to her advantage," Grindstaff writes.

This is not to say that freaks have been banished from the airwaves. People with serious problems -- such as Casey, a crack-addicted bisexual male prostitute and pimp who appeared on "The Jerry Springer Show" to confront his wayward niece, a prostitute herself -- can always be found on afternoon television on one show or another. And, yes, just as you suspected, some of those guests are faking it. Many of those charlatans, including one who brags to Grindstaff about his ability to get on "all the 3 o'clock shows," manipulate producers whenever they can.

But for the most part "guests who desire television exposure want to leave a mark on the world, however small or fleeting or disdained," Grindstaff writes. And who are we to condemn them for that? When "the desire to leave a mark is surely common to all classes and strata of society," she argues, guests don't deserve to be criticized for living out their dream on daytime TV.

And yet, Grindstaff argues, even if guests deserve more respect, even if the average producer can't be labeled a contemporary Mephistopheles, talk shows shouldn't be declared harmless. Claims that viewers imitate the shows' violence and dysfunction have been greatly exaggerated, Grindstaff writes, but ultimately, "there are serious problems with talk shows." She feels that they simplify and distort reality while taking advantage of society's ills.

As the final third of "The Money Shot" demonstrates, every talk show, from "Oprah" to "Jerry Springer," elevates emotion over information, confrontation over rational debate. Experts are shunted to the side 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. Vince, the bigamist who took advantage of Charlotte and several other wives, for example, suffered a string of obscene phone calls from people who saw him on TV, and he remains convinced that he received harsher treatment in court because of his appearance on the show.

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."

It's a matter of bias. Talk-show staffers associate dramatic confrontation and extreme social problems with their guests, who are described by one producer as "white trash, black trash, Hispanic -- any kind of, like, low-caliber people." And rather than let ordinary people's stories define whether this is in fact the case, they simply reject those who don't fit the stereotype. 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. The shows are not the root cause of the dramas played out on their stages. So, while talk shows are imperfect, "there are serious problems with the 'respectable' media too, and even more serious problems with society at large," Grindstaff writes. "It is therefore important not to scapegoat talk shows for the activities and practices common to the media more generally or to use talk shows (or the media more generally) as a way of not talking about society's most pressing social problems."

In other words, talk shows amplify our problems, but they're not nearly as bad as the problems themselves. That may in fact be true; Barbara Ehrenreich and others have also argued that talk shows are not our culture's most egregious evil. Nonetheless, I still think I'd rather be a newspaper reporter than TV talk-show producer. And when faced with the possibility of working in a job that depends on getting people to fight, scream and bare all before the cameras, I might even prefer to be underground -- digging out coal.

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