Review: Horrible White People: Gender, Genre, and Television’s Precarious Whiteness, by Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey

Abstract

Book Review| June 01 2021 Review: Horrible White People: Gender, Genre, and Television’s Precarious Whiteness, by Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey Horrible White People: Gender, Genre, and Television’s Precarious Whiteness by Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey Eva Hageman Eva Hageman Eva Hageman is an assistant professor in the Department of American Studies and the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her book manuscript “‘Relatable Meets Remarkable’: Crafting Race in the Reality Television Industry,” examines reality television and the central role it plays in shaping articulations of race in the twenty-first century. Recently she screened her video essay shiplap at the Black Film Center Archive at Indiana University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA. Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey, Horrible White People: Gender, Genre, and Television’s Precarious Whiteness. New York: New York University Press, 2020. $89 cloth, $30 paper, $16.50 e-book. 272 pages. Film Quarterly (2021) 74 (4): 98–99. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2021.74.4.98 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Eva Hageman; Review: Horrible White People: Gender, Genre, and Television’s Precarious Whiteness, by Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey. Film Quarterly 1 June 2021; 74 (4): 98–99. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2021.74.4.98 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentFilm Quarterly Search BOOK DATA. Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey, Horrible White People: Gender, Genre, and Television’s Precarious Whiteness. New York: New York University Press, 2020. $89 cloth, $30 paper, $16.50 e-book. 272 pages. As someone who both loves and studies television, there is almost nothing I will not watch, with one exception: a particular group of shows about white people with problems. These shows center on mostly self-obsessed, middle-class, liberal white people stressed out by banal problems and out of touch with poor and working-class people and people of color. Thus, I was exceedingly delighted to read Horrible White People: Gender, Genre, and Television’s Precarious Whiteness. Horrible White People addresses an impressive archive of television shows released, roughly, between 2014 and now, with a focus on 2014–16 (as the authors note, the years leading up to the election of Donald Trump). The shows included in this study feature mostly white... You do not currently have access to this content.