mouseandhat Wednesday: reality shows

Jul 14, 2010 by Joshua    2 Comments    Posted under: mouseandhat

Let the ranting commence!

But first, a disclaimer: I don’t watch much television. I watch TV shows on occasion, but not on a television. I have my reasons, but I don’t intend to get into them in this post.

What I would like to address in this post is why I believe reality shows have been damaging to American culture.

Image courtesy cbs.com.

When I talk about “reality shows”, I am referring to shows such as “Survivor”, “American Idol”, “Dancing With the Stars” – shows that feature (supposedly) non-actors in unscripted situations. The genre has been around for decades, taking form in early shows such as “Candid Camera” and various game shows, but it has taken on a unique form in the past decade. From 2005 to 2009, Fox even had a whole channel devoted exclusively to reality television.

Yet it almost goes without saying that these shows often lack what one might define as “reality”. Take “Survivor”, for example. The show premiered in the United States in 2000 and has gone on for 20 seasons. Each week during the first season, the American people were brought about an hour of footage from Borneo, spanning over 13 episodes. The actual challenge took place over 39 days, as at least 10 cameras around the island recorded the contestants’ actions and interactions.

Think about that. Each week’s episode was the culmination of only three days’ worth of footage, but it was composed of the output of 10 cameras. Hours – if not days – of footage were truncated and fitted to less than an hour. Much of that footage focused on the challenges, but just as crucial to each episode was the voyeuristic glimpse into daily life for the contestants. In this way, “Survivor” tapped the same sort of drama that made shows like “The Real World” and “Road Rules” popular with young adults and made it approachable for a wider audience.

But the producers of “Survivor” were not out to present the most realistic and all-encompassing depiction of the contestants’ daily interactions. They sought that drama, even if that meant exaggerating conflict by focusing primarily on those scenes where individuals argued and fought with each other. Anyone who has watched a decent amount of reality television is more than familiar with the commercial fades that involve a sustained shot of one person glaring at another over some trivial dispute. Reality television producers use camera techniques and selective editing not to show reality but to show drama, even if that means exaggerating actual events. The structure of shows such as “Survivor”, “Big Brother” and “The Real World” work well to exacerbate relationships through atmosphere by forcing individuals to interact with each other, often increasing the tension by selecting contestants who have noticeably different worldviews. In fact, that last point has been a key element of casting for “The Real World”.

So, dear reader, you might be asking why this sort of thing is so bad. People love drama. They love stories that have conflict. Life would be boring without drama. Right?

Therein lies the danger. I do not have the ingenuity to explain the potentially misleading qualities of fictional drama, but a better writer – Kurt Vonnegut Jr. – has said it better than I ever could in this talk. His argument, essentially, is that stories such as fairy tales and tragedies exaggerate the highs and lows of emotion. We embrace these stories, and when we compare them to the events in our own lives, we find that real life is rather mediocre and lacking in high drama. As a result, we take small issues and magnify them into catastrophic problems.

Now, take reality television. A reality show has that same high level of drama, but it is carried out in something somewhat resembling real life. These people are normal, they are not actors. They are just like us. We could have been in their position, if only we had auditioned and been selected. Reality shows give viewers the impression that exaggerated drama is normal and that life without it is not worth the time.

But that’s just my opinion. Let me know what you think.

Next week’s topic: cooking.

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