The Oprah Phenomenon (review)

During the 1970s and 1980s, white talk show hosts Merv Griffin, Phil Donahue, Dinah Shore, Mike Douglas, and Johnny Carson dominated the television airwaves. Yet, for nearly two decades now, millions of television viewers, mostly white women, have made the Oprah Winfrey Show the most watched daytime television program. Well-published cultural critics, English professor Jennifer Harris and historian Elwood Watson, now bring their scholarly credibility to an insightful group of selected essays that examines the "Oprah phenomenon." In this provocative compilation, Winfrey's career is placed within an intellectual and historical context. Winfrey has indeed promoted intellectual thought by developing a feminized culture through a television show, a book club, and a magazine.

The Oprah Phenomenon examines an iconic figure using the vehicle of scholarly debate. Not since Cecilia Konchar Farr's Reading Oprah: How Oprah's Book Club Changed the Way America Reads, has there been such a solid book on this daytime diva. Harris and Watson accomplish this feat and much more. They are judicious editors who avoid trivializing Winfrey's career by wisely soliciting essays from a group of foremost scholars with expertise in social criticism and popular culture.

Other media personalities of color like Arsenio Hall, Ed Bradley, and Bryant Gumbel have also gained press notoriety; however, this volume brilliantly illustrates how Winfrey has managed to rise above all of her contemporaries. As a self help guru and media mogul, she has marketed a brand that has become a way of life, and as such, she is a television personality well worthy of more scholarly discourse.

Whether examining Winfrey's ability to connect one on one with her studio and television audience by sharing her childhood story of abandonment and sexual abuse and efforts with overcoming obesity and low self-esteem or her ability to encourage literacy, the editors of this volume carefully scrutinize the nature of Winfrey's stardom.

The diverse racial and academic backgrounds of the mostly women essayists is another strength of this book. The thirteen essays are divided into three sections: "Oprah Winfrey and Race"; "Oprah Winfrey on the Stage"; and "Oprah Winfrey on the Page." The first section examines how Winfrey is perceived by black and white women and also men. In the second section, the contributors analyze the diverse content of Winfrey's show. In the final section, essayists offer significant insight into the social influence of Winfrey's book club and her magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine. Since the essays do convey varied intellectual perspectives, the book will appeal to a broad audience. For example, Linda Kay candidly shares the reasons for Winfrey's appeal to white women like herself. Winfrey creates an unique intimacy with her audience that communicates how "the something-from-nothing legend that surrounds Oprah Winfrey resonates for white women …"

Winfrey is not without critics, however. She is viewed by some blacks as the quintessential Mammy because she often cries with her mostly white audience, shares "African American communal knowledge," and teaches white women black vernacular. The not-so-subtle difference between a slave mammy and Winfrey, according to essayist Tarshia L. Stanley, is that the talk show host is "paid handsomely for her milk and was clever enough to realize that she should be the distributor of her product as well …" Stanley and some of the other essayists share similar concerns over Winfrey's popular media image among whites.

On the heels of the recent racist and sexist verbal attack by radio and television personality Don Imus on the Rutgers women's basketball team, Valerie Palmer-Mehta's essay on race should resonate with readers. She carefully chronicles the now cancelled The Man Show. That program contained racist and sexist anti-Oprah skits where white male hosts attempted to control Oprah's mass appeal and recapture "white male hegemony." In a 1999 episode titled, "The Oprahization of America," host Jimmy Kimmel tells his audience that Winfrey "has half of America brainwashed." His co-host, Adam Carolla later responds to a...