Reality Check

I have something controversial to say. Reality TV sucks.

I don’t just mean that it’s crass, puerile, artificial, prurient, self-indulgent, manipulative, shallow, melodramatic, and utterly moronic. I mean it really, really sucks. There’s nothing - absolutely nothing - that can be said in its defence. No amount of apologetics can paper over the gaping chasms in its credibility.

For example, reality TV is often defended on the grounds that it’s "entertaining" - an entertainment that allegedly arises from its format. This format usually consists of people being dumped in circumstances way outside their usual experience: on a desert island, in a sealed environment, among a family of strangers. Every tantrum, every faux pax, every tear or argument or conflict, every shameful act or betrayal, every moment of weakness as the participants struggle to come to terms with their situation, is recorded in agonisingly exquisite detail. These same snapshots of angst are then utilised in the program’s advertising, the juicy bait that hooks us into watching the show.

And it this trauma ­- yes, that’s what it is, folks: trauma - that we’re meant to find “entertaining”. In other words, the “entertainment” value of reality TV actually consists of an appeal to sadism - it‘s the “entertainment“ of the wild beast shows and gladiatorial contests of the Coliseum. Our part is to languidly sit back and watch while other people degrade and humiliate themselves for our titillation, or so we can have something to gossip about in the tearoom at work the next day.

The other defence frequently relied on by the devotees of reality TV is that it has some “scientific” or “social” value: it tells us something about human behaviour and psychology.

This argument is perhaps even more spurious than the “entertainment” defence. There is absolutely no value in reality TV. It is not produced under the same stringent ethical conditions that would characterise genuine scientific experiments designed to test some aspect of human behaviour. Indeed, scenarios in reality TV are deliberately designed to bring out the worst in the participants; their purpose is not to test, but to produce reactions. Likewise, the situations in which the participants find themselves bear no relation to “real” life; the most farcical aspect of reality TV is that it is entirely artificial. In essence, reality TV has all the scientific and social credibility of torturing someone to determine whether they’re a witch.

Once these arguments are stripped away, a final attempt to justify reality TV usually takes the form of pointing out the ratings which it enjoys, as well as the fact that the participants volunteer to appear on the shows. In other words, the alleged "value" of reality TV lies in its popularity, and the fact that any humiliation suffered by the participants is self-inflicted.

But those who mount this argument just don’t get it: that reality TV is both popular and a voluntary exercise is the saddest fact of all. And it is the fact by which reality TV is most damned. Because, in the end, it means we are all accessories to the abuses perpetrated by this genre. The producers and networks who conceive and promote reality TV; the audience who allows them to profit from their activities; and the attention-hungry wanna-be celebrities who willingly permit their humanity to be debased for the sake of their fifty seconds of fame. We are all of us guilty.

So what's the solution? I honestly don't know. Perhaps it's just a case of hoping this is a fad which, like all fads, will eventually pass away once we've found something else with which to distract ourselves. In the meantime, a little self-awareness probably wouldn't go astray. Or is that the very point I'm missing - that we don't want to know ourselves because doing so is too frightening a prospect, requiring as it will that we confront ourselves with the artificial emptiness of our being? Which in turn will require us to do something about our existential malaise, instead of constantly resorting to the tranquiliser of the soul that reality TV - and all fads - ultimately represents?

Ironically, perhaps reality TV does have some value, then; if only negatively, and if only to open our eyes to how low we've sunk. But this is a realisation that itself has worth, for it is not until we understand we are ill that we can hope to be cured.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic. (George Bernard Shaw)