| Popis: |
In graduate school, when sociologists I met regularly asked if I was related to Bill Gamson, I smiled and nodded, added that my mother was also a sociologist, said very good things about them both, made some self-deprecating comments about the family business, and mumbled to myself that I knew I should have gone to film school, goddammit. For a while, I took to calling myself the Tori Spelling of sociology. Tori went into the profession of her father (he produced Charlie’s Angels, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, and Dynasty), and I went into the profession of both my parents (he is a past President of the American Sociological Association, she a well-known expert on the sociology of higher education). There are some minor differences in our paths—I’m about a decade older, and a different sex; Tori starred on Beverly Hills 90210, produced by her father, while I’ve never even shot a pilot—but somehow the dynastic analogy worked for me, with its implications of tacky nepotism. Like me, Tori was probably a bit defensive about her unearned name recognition, although neither of us could really deny that our family name gave us a bit of oomph in the industry. Although neither apple fell far from its tree, both of us eventually tried to put our own generational twists on our careers: she by spoofing her own public image on VH1’s ‘‘So NoTORIus’’ and by starring in a reality show with her second husband, I by publishing books about celebrity culture, tabloid talk shows, and a gay, drag-loving disco star. Ms. Spelling and I were also both apparently influenced by our parents’ professional training—she learned to turn her own life into a TV show, and I learned to ‘‘sociologize everything.’’ It’s this last experience that my father, prodded by the only nonsociologist in my immediate family, my sister Jenny, questions. He is clearly unrepentant in his belief in |
