The Reality Shows

tina — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Described by Ben Brantley of the New York Times as someone with the “power to disturb,” Karen Finley is a woman with her finger on the pulse of America.

Renowned for her performance art, she is an underground favorite and a feminist idol. Her ability to tie satire, sex, and snappy political commentary into every aspect of her work is a brilliant, modern-day re-vamp of the “personal is political” mantra.

Finley’s most recent book, The Reality Shows, is a collection of transcripts from performances spanning the last decade. “Make Love” is an intimate recollection of the September 11 attacks and “The Passion of Teri Schiavo” is a biting and brilliant essay on America’s almost hysterical infatuation with the “victimized woman.”

Finley’s fictional portrayal of political and pop culture figureheads is challenging and at times, absurd. In “George & Martha” she describes, in great detail, a fictional affair between Martha Stewart and George W. Bush. Later on, the reader ventures inside the mind of Silda Spitzer in the days following the prostitution scandal that forced her husband Eliot to resign as the Governor of New York.

Finley’s plays, complex in nature, daunting, and a hotbed of controversy and debate, are simplistic at their core. Each essay, performance piece, and poem invites the audience to take an introspective look at the passions and insecurities that govern most actions. Finley has an incredible ability to peel back the layers of the world’s most powerful figureheads and reveal the fragility underneath. In a world driven by hysteria, misinformation, bias, and greed, this is a truly refreshing take on the American political landscape.

The Reality Shows is not a book that a large audience will appreciate, but that’s never been Finley’s style. It is a thought-provoking, laugh-producing read that will leave the reader wanting to see more of the world filtered through Finley’s eyes.

Written by: Cheryl Santa Maria, April 11th 2011

Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World

admin — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:35:00 +0000

By Lynne Spears, Lorilee Craker

Thomas Nelson Publishing

When the news first hit that Lynne Spears, mother of Britney & Jamie Lynn Spears, was planning on writing a book, everyone seemed to have an opinion. Rumor had it that she was writing a book of parenting advice. Everyone scoffed. Parenting advice from a woman with a pregnant 16-year-old and a pop star whose fall from grace was playing out in the tabloids day by day? Yeah, right. Given the media storm going on around her daughters at that time of the books planned publishing date (remember Britney's hospitalizations? The vagina-flashing? The shaved head?), the book was postponed and released quietly a few months later.

As usual, the rumors were wrong. In reality, the book turned out to be a simple story of Lynne Spears' life. She does not linger on the portions of her story that involve fame and fortune—in fact, the majority of the book is about her youth, her extended family, and the years when her children were young and unknown. A reader gets the impression that Spears is trying to clear her name. She has obviously been hurt by the things that have been written about her and assumptions that have been made about her parenting, and she works hard to portray herself as a simple, sweet Southern woman. For this reader, it worked. Lynne seems like a genuinely nice, humble person. She garners your sympathy by spilling her guts about her crumbled marriage and her dying sister, but she warms your heart with stories about happy times and simple pleasures from her past. The book is chock full of colorful Southern-isms, which give some charming credence to her characterization as a rural Louisiana girl.

It's sad though—no matter what Spears does, she can't escape the tabloid machine. Even though this book is her life story, in all its simple and sometimes mundane detail, the publishers still wanted to sensationalize it. The book has pull quotes posted on every few pages, and the publishers never failed to pull something out of context that made the book appear to be more about the fame of her daughters than it really is.

From a feminist perspective, the book doesn't stack up to much. I doubt if Lynne Spears would call herself a feminist, but I think anyone could justly criticize the hyper-sexualization of a teenage Britney Spears, especially her mother. She touches on that topic only briefly, and never really takes it to a feminist place or criticizes it in any depth. However, in other areas, Lynne is very woman-centered. Her core strength comes from her religious faith and the women in her life—her daughters, her sister, her best friends. All of the rocks Lynne has, besides God, are women who she admires and draws strength and inspiration from. Lynne's strong sense of sisterhood is feminist in its own small way.

Written by: Jess Brock, March 24th 2009

tabloid media

The Reality Shows

Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World