On Monday, to celebrate the official publication of Reality Bites Back, I blogged the launch of Reality Rehab with Dr. Jenn, a book trailer and satirical web series spoofing — and then liberating — reality TV’s stock characters through media literacy therapy.

Today, in Reality Rehab Webisode 2, “The Angry Black Woman” starts out as a screaming, cursing, threatening mess, just as so many women of color have been framed on Flavor of Love, The Apprentice, and America’s Next Top Model. But after intensive media literacy therapy, she explains how producers manipulated her persona–turns out, she’s actually a compassionate hospice nurse who never wanted Flav in the first place!

Watch the brilliant Allison Jones unpack one of reality TV’s most insidious forms of racial typecasting:

Close to 700 people have watched the trailer in the first day and a half, and it was picked up by the Vancouver Sun and half a dozen other Canadian news outlets. Blog it, tweet it, share it

on Facebook, Tumblr… let’s spread the laughs around:

KANSAS EVENT: Tonight is my first talk on reality TV for the fall semester (calendar here), and I’m happy to kick of WIMN’s multimedia lecture tour to Kansas State.

WHAT: Project Brainwash!: Why Reality TV Is Bad for Women (…and men, people of color, the economy, love, sex, <em>and sheer damn common sense!)

WHERE: Kansas State University, Forum Hall

WHEN: Tonight, Sept 21, 7pm

I’m excited to bring a critical conversation about gender, race and advertising in reality television to a campus that seems extremely engaged in ongoing discussions about other aspects of reality TV based on their “common read” book, The Hunger Games, a dystopian young adult novel about a world in which one powerful Capital city forces all its districts to send two of its children to a televised death match where only one makes it out alive. Picture Survivor, but with every 12-18 -year-old contestant out to slit your throat. And where Jeff Probst is secretly hoping you won’t starve to death… but only because getting viciously slaughtered by one of your peers would play better on TV.
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Tonight’s talk offers a brief glimpse at the issues I delve into in Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV (now available for pre-order).

Welcome to Reality Bites Blog, which picks up where Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV leaves off.

I’ll be posting regularly with news and analysis of current reality shows, stars, and producers, with my usual recipe of 2-parts-critique, 1-part-snark. Want to dish about your love/hate relationship with Jersey Shore’s Snooki, the latest American Idol judge or contestant, or that reality scandal Joel McHale snarked about on The Soup? Come back soon — this’s all on tap.

Upcoming topics include the despicable planned reality show (and potential snuff-film-of-the-week) about US troops working to diffuse bombs in Afghanistan, the danger and exploitation inherent in this misguided domestic violence reality show pitch, and, on a lighter note… which NBC, FOX and MTV series did ABC cannibalize to make their new low-rent Bachelor knockoff show, Bachelor Pad?

Reality Bites Blog will also take on whatever ridiculous controversy is in the headlines at the moment. If any network is inane enough to buy Levi Johnston’s made-for-reality-TV Wasilla mayoral campaign show, trust me, I’m on it. (On the critique, I mean. Not the show. Can you imagine?) The next time some misogynist dad pretends his kid floated away in a balloon when he was really hidden in an attic (yet nearly every news outlet in the country rushes to report the hoax as fact), this blog will be firmly tethered to sanity. You’re welcome.