A. S. Hamrah in Bookforum:
EMILY NUSSBAUM, THE PULITZER-WINNING television critic and New Yorker staff writer, ends her well-researched, somewhat grueling book on the history of reality television, Cue the Sun!, with a reminder that critics have historically dismissed reality TV as a fad. Yet reality TV has not gone away. It’s more than just a fad, she writes, because “in the end, all our faces got stuck that way.”
It’s a strange phrase to insert out of nowhere. Parents say it when their kids make funny faces—keep it up and your face will get stuck that way. The idea here, I guess, is that we-the-audience, all of us, including those critics who dismissed it, wear the childish face of reality TV because we participate in it as a matter of course, whether we want to or not.
More here.