\nUnpopular opinion: Pawn Stars is actually a really good popular history show; the bits explaining and contextualizing the artifacts \u201ccustomers\u201d \u201cbring in\u201d do a good job of exploring history through material culture in a non-academic register; the other stuff is a human interest/conflict hook but it works; if you (correctly) compare it to PBS kids shows it\u2019s got as much or more history per minute as 3-2-1 Contact had science, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego had geography, or Sesame Street had shapes/colors/numbers/letters
and since Trump won it\u2019s worth pointing out how the authorities on this show, the \u201clet me call my guy who\u2019s an expert on X\u201d are weighted towards collectors and semi-pro hobbyists and appraiser types qualified by experience not academia
the same time, a lot of \u201cblue collar\u201d reality stuff on the old guy channels, you realize - this, the chopper building/car restoring/aquarium designing stuff, Ice Road Truckers -\u00a0 is really about petit bourgies, small businessmen or the self-employed at least six-figure level who are \u201cnot white collar\u201d in the literal sense that they wear polo or t-shirts, and I guess the figurative one where they tell dirty jokes to the woman with the waitress curls who\u2019s basically their HR department
that and I guess there\u2019s that other subgenre from Lizard Lick Towing to great-granddaddy COPS, where empowered \u201cblue collar\u201d-identifiers discipline the underclass for public entertainment
and the stuff like Duck Dynasty and Bear Grillis and all the Alaska shit that are about white guys having an authentic/mystical/instinctive relationship to the land that reminds me of the way I\u2019m juuuuuust old enough to remember native americans being mythologized, like they\u2019re working up a narrative of white indigeneity
same channels running Vikings and that\u2026
some pretty interesting reactionary ideology going down on the minor cable channels these days, is what I\u2019m saying