Ask people why American culture is going down the tubes, and the culprits might be partisanship, declining trust in institutions, empty calorie entertainment.
Or maybe the answer is an episode of “The Jerry Springer Show” from October 1997. That’s when “Springer,” a daytime talk show that reached around eight million daily viewers at its peak, aired “Klanfrontation!,” an episode in which a chaotic brawl broke out among Klansmen, a Jewish activist and audience members.
Nothing quite like those fisticuffs had been seen on television, and the episode drew heavy criticism. But it also drew eyeballs, which, as the two-part Netflix documentary “Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera Action,” makes plain, was the point.
“If you’re producing a show that you want to be insane and unlike anything that’s ever been on TV before, there’s your goal,” the show’s cutthroat executive producer, Richard Dominick, says in the documentary, referring to “Klanfrontation!” Once that episode aired, he “never tried to do anything that didn’t fall into some kind of confrontation.”
In a world where slugfests on “Real Housewives” are ho-hum, and where a felon and former reality star is the president-elect, it’s hard to imagine that such scenes were ever noteworthy, let alone shocking. But as the British director of “Fights, Camera Action,” Luke Sewell, argues, the episode was a turning point for “Springer,” which went on to have a coarsening effect on American culture that has only worsened since.
“I think that it obviously led to quite a dark place,” Sewell said in a recent video call. As the show leaned on hand-to-hand combat and outré sex topics (“Diaper Bob” was a fan favorite), it “pushed the envelope in ways that no one else had,” Sewell added, “and gave permission for everyone that followed them to go there.”
Springer declined to participate in the documentary before he died in 2023, at age 79. The series, which debuted on Tuesday, relies instead on interviews with Dominick and several members of his producer staff, whose recollections evoke visible feelings of both nostalgia and shame. (One producer, Toby Yoshimura, describes having reached his breaking point while developing an episode about a father who paid his own daughter for sex.)
And yet the legacy of “Springer,” which ran for 27 seasons and got better ratings once in 1998 than “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” isn’t simple. (Full disclosure: This reporter used to give tours of NBC Tower, in Chicago, that included the “Springer” set.) He also, for example, brought visibility to groups that had been historically overlooked.
Why does “The Jerry Springer Show” still fascinate? Speaking from London last month, Sewell had plenty of theories. Here are five takeaways from the conversation.
Springer Had a Way of Getting People on His Side
In 1991, Springer hosted a serious but unremarkable talk show in Cincinnati, where he was once mayor. He was a shrewd communicator, a skill that helped him navigate the various controversies the show generated after it moved to Chicago and became a circus, particularly after Dominick, a former tabloid journalist, took over as the show’s executive producer in 1994.
Part of the show’s appeal was the seeming surprise with which the mild-mannered Springer usually greeted the shocking revelations of his show’s own making — for instance, during the 1998 episode in which a man revealed marriage to a Shetland pony. The episode was banned in many markets and prompted protests, but none of it seemed to matter.
“He had this avuncular, almost detached way of making the show invitational to the audience,” Sewell said, adding that criticism “didn’t stick to him,” as if Springer and his show “were two different things.”
The Show Was Connected to a Murder Case
The show and Springer were sued unsuccessfully in 2002 by the family of Nancy Campbell, a woman who was killed by Ralf Panitz, her ex-husband. Both, along with Panitz’s more recent wife, had been guests on the show. The killing happened on the day the episode aired nationally.
“What is interesting about the murder is that it showed how out of control things had gotten” in the making of “Springer,” Sewell said, adding: “It raised all sorts of questions about duty of care.”
It’s difficult to say how much the murder can be pinned on the show. But when Panitz was sentenced to life in prison, the judge castigated Springer. “Are ratings more important than the dignity of human life?,” she asked. “Shame on you.”
The Producers Played With Fire
Sewell said he had been stunned at the producers’ questionable tactics. As the documentary explains, most of the guests came from small towns in what producers called the “Springer Triangle,” which cuts through Tennessee, Ohio and Georgia. Producers lured guests with assurances that going on the show would help them solve their problems, then gave them limo rides and drink tickets to keep the party going the night before taping. Backstage, producers rehearsed with, yelled at and otherwise provoked their guests, all in an effort to make things as combustible as possible.
Sewell said that the show’s unscrupulous tactics included refusing to provide return bus tickets if a guest left the set mid-taping — something which, according to the documentary, happened to Campbell before she was murdered.
Campbell’s case was “a damning indictment on what was going on behind the scenes, and how little importance they seemed to give to people’s emotional well-being,” Sewell said.
The Show Was an Inadvertent Positive for Queer People
As Springer argues in a TV interview excerpted in the documentary, “In a free society, the media should reflect all elements of that society, not just the mainstream.”
Unfortunately, Springer’s guests from outside that mainstream were rarely treated with dignity. That was certainly true of gay guests. (Their presence was hardly “a public service thing,” as Sewell put it.) And the show treated transgender people even worse, Sewell noted, focused usually on how they had “duped” their lovers.
But for many queer people in the 1990s, cringe was better than nothing. Where else on television, especially during daytime, could gay men see other gay men rip their shirts off and make out as part of a love triangle? As flawed as it was, such visibility mattered, right hooks and all.
“They’re important, those moments on the show that brought stuff out that wasn’t widely seen,” Sewell said.
Springer’s Daughter Was One of His Biggest Defenders
Springer was fiercely guarded about his personal life. But he sometimes talked about his daughter, Katie, who was one of his most outspoken champions.
In the Netflix series, the Chicago media critic Robert Feder reads a letter that she wrote in which she came to his defense following attacks against him in the press.
“My dad has more education than many of the so-called journalists in this town,” she wrote.
Decades later, Sewell said, the letter spoke to just how huge the show was — and how pervasive the criticism. “It’s amazing that she felt compelled to write and defend him in that way,” he said.
