Certainly on the academic side, but colourful and light-hearted and never too deep, this is a psychotherapist's view of modern reality TV – not the competitive, "vote for me! Like me!!" contests, but the potentially more gladiatorial scripted reality shows. Wanting to get on a show to prove there is some worth to them and to her, our guide, who needs to get out of her over-intellectual family, ends up a script-planner, therapist, interviewer, on one of those "Fresh Sluts of Phuket" shows, watching bimbos and himbos do their thing and tell us how this equates to narcissism, our own verification issues, and more. At first I didn't think there was that much need for this – having done media studies A-level decades ago I am sure the curriculum has updated to cover such subjects to roughly this level – but even that didn't really put me off; it mentions many of the French penseurs' names you might expect but doesn't just recycle old hat stuff. It certainly smacks of someone who has first-hand, on-set knowledge, and part of the intention here, that is successfully met, is to show the issue the authors see where we absorb all this stuff, while universally dismissing the performers of it, without allowing ourselves to admit that it and they all have a certain merit.

There's also a pretty decent and likeable narrative about all this, meaning it never falls into a stuffy textbook world. Not for everyone, but certainly of benefit to the open-minded and curious.

Reading this was a wonderful experience. I have enjoyed reality shows from time to time, and this "behind the scenes" story was surprising and incredibly educating. The combination of pop culture, sociology, feminism, is simply amazing.

I would recommend it for anyone interested in media, tv, reality shows or gender studies. It is fun, insightful, and eye-opening.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC!!!!

"I'm just not sure that the mindless idiots who watch reality TV will want to understand the mechanisms behind it."

First let me state that I work in retail and after a long day tolerating people, all I want is some brainless entertainment, and reality TV is EXACTLY that!
Second, I'm not a mindless Idiot and I did enjoy everything.
Third, THIS was NOT AT ALL what I expected.

From what I thought would be a fun and brainless graphic novel to being surprised and reading a semi educational yet fun and realistic graphic novel.

This is an easy read due to the fact that it is funny as hell.
But it is no brainless read.

Loved it!!!

This book is both an exploration and a history lesson of reality TV. It’s seen through the eyes of a character who loves and wants to be part of reality TV. Unfortunately, the obnoxious lesson and the comparing of reality TV to fine art was heavy, handed, and boring. Therefore, this is a DNF

Thanks NetGalley for an early copy!

What a fun story! I’m not a fan of reality TV, but this behind the scenes look was so fun and interesting to read!

I highly recommend to anyone who likes a good behind the scenes stories or reality TV.

"Praising the surface" is a comic strip that reflects a kind of psychosocial study of reality show participants. The main character, Yasmina, is a psychologist and reality TV fan. Something her family and friends don't understand, finding that these programs represent the lowest depths of human stupidity. Especially as Yasmina comes from a family of scholars and wants to prove to them that reality TV is worthy of research. To understand the mechanisms that drive people to become passionate about watching strangers reveal their lives on TV, Yasmina decides to apply to take part in the next reality show. Instead of being recruited as a contestant, she is recruited as a script girl, and follows the show over long, exhausting weeks. In the midst of her fun-filled days, she shares with us the mechanisms at play in the addiction to these programs, and the universality of the people it affects. The comic strip is amusing and rather gripping. I found the subject matter very interesting, and the behind-the-scenes look captivating.

I would like to thank the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this eBook.

Praising the Surface was very different from what I expected it to be. What I thought it would be - a funny comic about the behind-the-scenes of Reality shows. What it ended up becoming - a super dense book on psychology and history about reality shows. It had way too many psychological theories for my liking.

Thank you to Netgalley and Europe Comics for the opportunity to read and review this graphic novel. Honestly, this graphic novel is interesting but very dense as well. I think it's a semi palatable way to read this information, but I personally couldn't get through it due to the art style and formatting. Because of these points, I have to give this a 2 out of 5 stars.

I thought this was going to be something funny. I was expecting something around the lines of Total Drama, the animated TV show, but with a bit of a psychological explanation of it. Honestly I don’t see the point of the story. There is not really an arc for the main character, and while in some instances the MC was funny, there were many others where I found her annoying. How a psychologist, someone that understands the human mind, can be fixated with reality TV shows is beyond me. Personally, I think something is off there. It is clear that there is a wide knowledge of psychologists and psychological theories but that didn’t connect well with the story part of the graphic novel. it just felt too much. And that's from someone who has been surrounded by psychology her whole life.

It contains too much Telling of various issues and not enough showing them. Feels very preachy. And there is a lot of victimism of women. Talks about the “male gaze” and how women get sexualized by society; and then there is a panel where one of the characters is into the pool but you only get to see boobs and legs, non even her face. If that’s not sexualizing someone I don’t know what it is.

I think the interesting part of the situation, where Yasmina gets herself into, is to see the producers POV of the show and how they manipulate everything and everyone to get the visuals they need for their narrative.

The last scene definitely didn’t punch as it should’ve. It felt like she cheated by putting the picture in the “wall of fame”. It wasn’t the big accomplishment she thought it was, at least not in my eyes.

I did not appreciate the MC crushing the baby. I know it was a hypothetical scene, but still.

Also saying that the reason viewers love these shows is because they give them an outlet because the participants can do what the viewers can’t seems not accurate.

Though not my preferred artstyle I found it fun. Also, I appreciated the exaggeration of the facial expressions, they are a way of communication after all, and it works for a better understanding. But even If I usually pick graphic novels due to the artstyle and this one was appealing ,I just can’t pass all of the things I didn’t like in the story itself, and it's not the artwork's fault.

The story kind of confirms my theories that Reality TV is a waste of time. Not that you should be productive %100 of the time, but certainly you can do something more interesting with it and be creative.

A fun inside look at reality TV. Yasmina is wicked smart but not quite good enough to her parents. She is interested in the psychosocial draw to reality TV. To prove something to them, she applies to be on a eality TV show. Instead she winds up working the show.
We don't get exposed to research but to characters that aren't too far from what they portray on screen.

3 stars.

Do I learn a lot about reality TV show from this book? Yes.
Does this book feel like a mess that needs to be tidied up? Also, yes.

This book is about reality shows. They've shows had been criticized to hell and back that there's nothing to really talk about anymore. And 80% of the insights made by the author are not really groundbreaking. A gen-ed class about feminism can tell you everything in here.

So, naturally, my favorite parts are moments of connection between Yasmina, the narrator, and Lenina, a contestant on the show. Chapter 4 and 5 were enjoyable, but that means in contrast to them, chapter 1 to 3 just didn't have enough material to hook my interest. I like the artstyle but it's also not enough to bump this to 4 stars.

I really enjoyed this comic about reality TV, and why we as a society are so addicted to it. The part I enjoyed the most was the in depth analysis of the psychology behind the book. Eventhough there could have been more of a story, I consider the psychology part way more interesting.
The point of view of Lenina, one of the stars was in fact so real: celebrities have a rapacious need for attention and fame., herself being the main star of the show. The reality show she belongs to promotes normal people who have become micro-celebrities.
The entire read was so entertaining and I liked a lot how they talked about the transformation of celebrities from a psychological and sociological point o view.

*Thank you NetGalley and Europe Comics for sending me this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.*

This was a hard one for me. I did not connect with the illustrations or with the humour of this book. The bones of graphic novels being the art style, it defines the reader experience rather quickly. And while the current choice made sense, it unfortunately did not make me appreciate it more.

As for the actual content, I am a bit conflicted. Even though there was a lot of interesting information and data about the psychology behind reality TV, they sometimes crammed too much into those pages making it hard to digest.

Bottom line, I see what they tried to do but I'm not sure they went the right way about it.

2/5

Hmm... I couldn't really get into this one. I never connected with the characters and the humor didn't strike me. But don't listen to me, I'm a grump fuck who doesn't like comedy, so if you're the opposite of that this would be your jam!

This was interesting. As an individual who has been in photoshoots I do realize much of reality TV is staged and fake. The graphics were a bit too graphic for me. I did not appreciate the nudity. But I felt this book showed an accurate portrayal of reality tv and how extreme it is. I did really enjoy the explanations regarding why we are so interested in reality TV.

Unfortunately, I just could not get into "Praising the Surface". It's about this woman named Yasmina who is the only person in her family that isn't into academia, and instead is a therapist (A job that is highly respectable, yet her family just writes her off). She loves reality tv and tries to convince them about how important it is and how all their fields relate to it, and they just laugh her off. This is where the story lost me-about 20 out of the 100 page story is a tangent about the history of reality tv. It was so boring, and I ended up skimming. I tried to get back into reading after the long tangent; Yasmina decides to try to get on reality tv and does an interview, only to explain to them that she is a fraud-so instead of casting her they make her a journalist. After that I just skimmed to the end-I was completely unabsorbed in the story and felt it to be slow and boring. The artwork is ok, but I felt the panels were overstimulating and very crowded. I was not interested in the plot at all, especially because of the tangent on the history of reality tv. This could be a great book for someone who is into watching reality tv, but that's not my interest. Overall I would rate it 2/5 stars.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing an arc of this story in exchange for an honest review.

Praising the Surface is a graphic novel with an in depth look at reality tv.... and that's about it. It feels like one person's extreme passion and research on the topic that did not need to be shared with the rest of us. It teeters on the verge of non fiction and doesn't have much of a story. I love an exaggerated art style but I found this one to be too obnoxious for my taste. There's too much happening on every page that makes it difficult to decipher.

Praising the Surface was a fun but really interesting insight into the psychology behind why we love reality tv so much. I liked the story but appreciated the broader science more.

Praising the Surface is a graphic novel about reality TV, and why we as a society are so addicted to it. I did like the in depth analysis of the psychology behind the book, but I feel like there could have been more of a story. The story sort of takes a back seat in this book, and I feel like there could have been much more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Europe Comics for providing me with an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

I didn't expect this to get as deeply educational as it did, but I'm glad for it! This book, whilst being a comic, really manages to dive deep into the psychology behind reality TV whilst also managing to be an entertaining comic. The psychology behind why people like to watch reality TV was never something I particularly thought about, but it ended up being a very interesting topic. Some of the concepts I already knew, but there were multiple I did not. The art style is very cartoony, but it honestly works great at conveying the author's passion for the subject. The pacing did lose some steam near the very end, but seeing as this is based on a true story (I think mostly?) that's easily overlooked. This book did unfortunately do the "huge block of text" on several pages, but it's a LOT of information trying to be told through a comic format. They managed to balance out that issue fairly well, but I did notice it cropping up from time to time.