Eva Illouz. Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery: an Essay on Popular Culture

African American Review, Fall, 2004 by David Krasner

Eva Illouz. Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery: An Essay on Popular Culture. New York: Columbia UP, 2003. 300 pp. $59.50 cloth/$22.50 paper.

Eva Illouz's book, Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery, examines the Winfrey talk show in terms of what the author calls "the culture of pain and suffering." The "glamour of misery" of which the Oprah Winfrey show is said to partake is part of a larger cultural phenomenon by which victimization and the power to transcend suffering provide the basis for Winfrey's enormous popularity. The tales of woe told by the guests confer upon them the right to be recognized as individuals and endow moral power on the beleaguered storytellers. Illouz's point is that we live in a culture fascinated with the pain of others; the victimization du jour of Winfrey's show is popular because it assumes that there is virtue in suffering that leads to holistic healing.

Suffering and the virtue of overcoming is a trope of western culture rooted in Christian iconography, but it is also, according to Illouz, a particularly American idiom. The individual triumph over adversity supports the American idea that suffering builds character. The virtue of perseverance according to the postulate of the work ethic is transferred to Winfrey, who has overcome child abuse, rape, weight gain, depression, failed romance, and other hardships to attain her success. Winfrey symbolizes the individual who by such means rises above the torment to become one of the wealthiest and most recognized public figures in the world. Her guests attempt to imitate her by confessing transgressions and revealing childhood traumas. In a society that prizes the sufferer and engages in one-upmanship particularly when misery is concerned, Winfrey has cornered the market. Her status as the ultimate victim who persevered grants her the privilege to preside over a talk show that validates the triumphal. Illouz makes the most of Winfrey's show by focusing on the biography of misery and the power to overcome.

Each of the nine chapters examines in considerable detail The Oprah Winfrey Talk Show's impact as a cultural phenomenon. For Illouz, who holds nothing back in extolling the virtues of Winfrey, the show "represents one of the most decisively democratic cultural forms to date in the medium of television" (13). Winfrey exemplifies cultural "habitus," what the author describes as the "thick culture" of biography, discourse, democracy, and agency. Winfrey, the author maintains, was raised in an abusive home and African American culture, both of which supply the background to her appeal; the former offers her cachet as a victim, and the latter points to support systems--church, community, and matriarchy--that served as safety nets. According to Illouz, Winfrey is a "biographical icon" (30) who became famous because she prevailed through the network of black culture. She thus provides a "therapeutic narrative" (40) worthy of emulation. Winfrey's show makes use of the host's charisma, her transformation from battered victim to healthy individual, and the disintegration of boundaries between her public and private life that serve as a paradigm for women in their quest for happiness.

In building her case, Illouz draws on social and literary critics such as Weber, Geertz, Habermas, Foucault, Arendt, Derrida, Freud, Voltaire, and Benjamin, as well as cultural studies of the Frankfurt School, African American culture, the public sphere, modernism, postmodernism, capitalism, melodrama, Greek tragedy, and much more. Illouz raises the interesting point that the victim's appearance on Winfrey's show establishes a "trauma narrative" that "seems best to embody modern tragic narratives of the suffering self because it condenses the family narrative, the abhorrence for cruelty, and the moral demand that people be given a chance to develop unhindered" (97). Illouz, in fact, calls our attention to several other insightful points: the "culture of recovery" that Winfrey represents, the individuation of suffering, the connections of romance novels and talk shows, the use of storytelling drawn from the African American oral tradition, the meaning of suffering as an indicator of identity, the questions of morality in a pluralistic world, the impact of the New Age movement on self-help, and the use of the written word (Winfrey's book club and magazine) to aid our understanding of life. Many of these points can apply to "Lifetime Television for Women," which uses similar notions. But Winfrey's show, as Illouz points out repeatedly, is therapeutic; its popularity worldwide is based on the show's ability to root out stories pertinent to the general malaise of our world and indicate paths to recovery. The most insightful points come at the end of the book, where Illouz illuminates African American cultural influences. Although Chapter Seven's beginning epigram is a quote by Zora Neale Hurston about "angularity" that seems gratuitous (neither the rest of the chapter nor the book mentions Hurston or makes use of "angularity"), Illouz describes in rich detail Winfrey's popularity with white women. The black family infrastructure and the strategies of overcoming oppression become models for white women's search for self-satisfaction.