Oprah Winfrey is undoubtedly one of the most famous women in the world, perhaps the most famous American woman. Having built an economic and cultural empire in less than two decades, she has starred in and produced movies, had her own talk show, a magazine and more recently a TV channel. The initial talk show formula that turned her into a cultural icon has now ended, but its basic structure has largely survived: its most salient characteristic was the fact that it solicited, to put it in broad and vague terms, the stories of unhappy people. Oprah became the master at staging emotional unhappiness in all its guises.

Let me begin with an example, that of Truddi Chase. This example might be prototypical of the fact that the ideal Oprah Winfrey guest is a victimized guest. Less prototypical, however, is the fact that, when the guest appears on the show, she has already been abundantly recycled by the media, through her own autobiography recounting her trials and her life story as the subject of a nationally aired documentary. Presenting her guest, Oprah Winfrey claims:

Here Winfrey stops and cries on camera before continuing: “and most of the therapy was videotaped because Truddi says she wanted others to someday be able to understand that they are not alone in their abuse and that is why we are doing this show.”