TV and reality. Two ideas that some CBS programming alchemist mixed together, spawning golden ratings and the trend of this television season.
Survivor! Big Brother. Real World. The 1900 House. Reality based shows are sprawled out across the TV Guide grids like millionaire games shows were last season. While I admit to being sucked into the mind-numbing vortex of reality programming, I by no means watch it mindlessly. I have to turn a innocuous piece of televised drivel into a full-fledged analysis of popular culture. But hey, that's me.
For starters, TV is fantasy. TV is a docile housewife who vacuums in her pearls and navy pumps. TV is Xena, Warrior Princess. From it's inception to today, TV is a bevy of unrealistic dramas and formula sitcoms. So when a show is touted as being real it captures immediate interest. We can't resist the lure of reality. It's all around us yet we still want it beamed into our eyes in tasty half-hour morsels.
But this is the grand paradox. For all it's supposed reality, MTV's The Real World can never be a real show (Sorry for sounding all Pinnochio). The presence of cameras automatically negates any realism in a program. Any good behaviorist knows this. People act differently when they're concious of someone watching them, like, say ... all of America. If there's going to be a real show, it's going to have to get cruel. We're talking no knowledge of being taped, but that's just too much like the Peter Weir film The Truman Show and too inhumane.
These shows are interesting creations though. The spice of my normal TV diet. I particularly love judging how I would act in similiar situations, like if I would eat dog food if hungry enough. Just for the record, I wouldn't really survive well on Survivor because they eat way too much fish and I have this thing about consuming anything from the sea. I'm also quite fair and would burn easily. My choice for shows to be on would be Real World. No skydiving, no bathroom cameras, cool house ...
But some shows I would never be on. It frightens me that the creators of Big Brother sought to create the privacy-free existence of George Orwell's novel 1984. Even more frightening is that someone would submit themself to that. Come on, cameras in the bathroom. How degrading. How embarrassing to become a fish in an aquarium that people watch at 8:00, 7:00 Central. I'm seriously surprised that there's no 24 hour Big Brother channel on cable.
Another show I wouldn't like to be on is The 1900 House on PBS. I haven't checked it out yet, but the premise is sending a family back in time to live as people did at the turn of the 20th century. Watching someone churn butter is not my idea of quality entertainment.
Nielsen ratings, media blitz and devotional websites are the things that have turned these fish into TV royalty. And it's just a theory of mine, but we are using them to satisfy our gossip-loving palates. We just can't get enough of celebrities. We want to know all about Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt's sex life. And when we can't stick our collective noses into some poor celebrity's life, we manufacter psuedo-celebrities of our own out of these people on reality shows. And it's so much easier to keep tabs on them, afterall, their every waking moment is on film. Rooting for the most despised characters to be booted off the Survivor! island and tracking some tramp's trail into several castmember's beds can be the type of television that fosters weekly alligence. Being able to chit-chat about Colleen and Greg's jolly trek into the woods to do the nasty at the watercooler with your company's computer tech is great. Forget the fact that we're stalkers - television voyeurs.
Picasso said that "Art is lies that tell truth." This comparison is loose like the Real World's Hawaii's grasp on the concept of clothing, but I hope you'll forgive me. Reality on TV is a lie (certainly not art), but it says a whole lot of truth about ourselves.