Princeton UP Ideas Podcast · New Books Network

The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy

·48 min·2 clips

Thomas Piketty's 'Capital in the 21st Century' was 2014's best-selling book and its most unread, with readers stopping at page 10.

1. The Princeton UP Ideas Podcast episode, an Academic Life interview on the New Books Network, covers 'American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy' and the claim that entertainment media shapes political attitudes. 2. Host Dr. Christina Gessler interviews Dr. N.G. Kim, an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University who also studies cop shows like NCIS, Blue Bloods and Chicago PD and online restaurant reviews as a window on racism. 3. Kim's thesis is that popular reality shows including American Idol, MasterChef and Shark Tank repeat a rags-to-riches story, so that "it didn't matter which reality TV show" viewers watched, and the story sustains belief in the American dream. 4. Kim describes growing up on a small island near the 38th parallel and learning about America from the Korean drama 'Love Story at Harvard', which was actually filmed at UCLA, and she recalls a senior colleague telling her to "fix my accent" and someone saying she would never get a job in political science. 5. In chapter one, she contrasts survey self-reports with behavioral data, using Kindle readers who stopped Thomas Piketty's 'Capital in the 21st Century' around page 10 in 2014, and she reports that web-tracking data puts news at less than 4% of web traffic. 6. Chapter three identifies three markers of rags-to-riches shows (an ordinary protagonist, a tangible financial game and a belief in meritocracy), and Kim notes that people who believe anyone can climb the ladder are less likely to support social safety nets. 7. In chapter four, Kim compares similar towns where only one produced a top American Idol contestant, using this 'hometown effect' as a natural experiment on belief in upward mobility, and she describes driving a truck to rural Pennsylvania blueberry festivals and farmers' markets. 8. She says she emailed 300 retirement houses in New York and New Jersey to reach older viewers of cop shows, and that during a year of subway rides she saw only two people reading news on their phones. 9. Chapter six frames the 'meritocratic dilemma': Kim cites evidence that watching Shark Tank makes people more likely to apply for a patent, while the same stories may reduce support for redistribution, and she says she avoids a normative verdict because "we do not know what is the right level of optimism." 10. Suited to listeners interested in political science, media effects and inequality.

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