News Reporter: Act Four: The end of 'Duck Dynasty' and the fate of reality television in the Trump era

Friday, 18 November 2016

Act Four: The end of 'Duck Dynasty' and the fate of reality television in the Trump era

Alyssa Rosenberg on culture and politics

“Duck Dynasty” star Willie Robertson addresses the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 17. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)

The New York Times reported on Thursday that “Duck Dynasty,” a reality show about a Louisiana family and their hunting business, will come to an end in 2017. “Ducky Dynasty” was, of course, more than a reality show: Family patriarch Phil Robertson’s remarks about gay people and African Americans got him suspended from the show in 2013, and the Robertsons were among the few celebrities to show support for Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, even appearing at the Republican National Convention this summer.

The ascendance of the Robertson family, as well as their chosen candidate, raises an interesting question: What will the fate of reality shows, especially those about the sorts of Americans who voted for Trump, be in an era when the staged, slightly surreal “reality” of the genre has become the hugely consequential stuff of national politics?

As Nancy Isenberg writes in “White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America,” reality shows such as “Duck Dynasty” and “Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo” fit into a long tradition of treating a certain category of white people as entertainment.

“Like the people who visited Hoovervilles during the Depression, eyeing the homeless as if they were at the zoo, television brought the circus sideshow into American living rooms,” Isenberg argues. “One commentator remarked of the highly successful ‘Duck Dynasty,’ set in Louisiana, ‘All the men look like they stepped out of the Hatfield-McCoy conflict to smoke a corncob pipe.’ … Though her young daughter Honey Boo Boo was the headliner, June was the real star of the show, the new face of white trash. No longer emaciated and parchment colored, as white trash past was imagined, she was a grossly overweight woman. … June claimed to have had four daughters by three different men, one whose name she claimed she could not remember.”

Of course, Isenberg may be underestimating the extent to which people who watch reality shows like “Duck Dynasty” recognize themselves in those series, rather than consuming them as an act of class and cultural tourism. But whatever the reason audiences watch, it’s harder to position a reality show as a trip to the margins if the people who star in it are suddenly at the center of the political conversation.