reality in TV land

[piranha]

whenever the paramour goes away, i watch a lot of TV for a while -- it catches me up with much of popular culture. wow, there is a lot of dreck on, more than usual, it seems. the "reality show" theme has thoroughly taken over. my very favourite, smack in the irony department, is the surreal life on muchmoremusic -- it puts several has-been B-rate stars (charo, brigitte nielsen, some chick from the first american idol, a guy from a former boy band, a rapper, and some guy from that inane show full house) together into a big LA mansion. yeah, this is reality, people.

i see that a former winner of the bachelor, whose relationship didn't survive the finale of the show by much (do any of them, i wonder?) is back, this time as the bachelorette. trying to find "twue wuv" by setting up an intensely competitive situation between people who appear to have been solely chosen for their looks, and picking the keepers from week to week by not even as much as one date with each one-on-one is a good strategy exactly why? flat learning curve, anyone?

and if anyone were still doubting that the main purpose of reality shows is to entertain couch potatoes by humiliating people on national TV -- trading spouses is exchanging a self-righteously vegan california mom with a down-on-the-bayou woman from louisiana whose family makes their living by slaughtering alligators and selling the heads as souvenirs.

ok, i am slumming. i know there are better shows. still -- this is astounding.

Comments

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Trading Spouses sounds amusing, in a train wreck sort of way. Or perhaps I mainly think so because I'm a Southerner in Southern California, and can probably identify with both families to some extent.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

The only reality that "reality TV" illuminates is the reality that the TV watching public has sunk so far into mindless stupor as to eagerly lap up shows so crappy that I would have been embarrassed when I was in high school if people from my own school had produced a show so bad and it had been broadcast on the local community access channel.

Where's the appeal in reality TV?

[eagle]

Speaking as someone who generally dislikes reality TV but occasionally watches some of it and finds it not as bad as it sometimes seems, I'll hypothesize as to the appeal.

Some of the shows are clearly based on feeling superior to the people in the show. Trading Spouses is a good example; other examples are Nanny 911 and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. The idea is to watch people with seriously screwed up lives and be glad that you're not them (and maybe "solve" some of their problems in the process to further establish superiority), a similar sort of appeal as the (immensely popular) daytime pop-psychology shows like Dr. Phil, Geraldo, and the like. This particular appeal completely loses its charm with actors rather than real people.

Other shows are just using the tried-and-true soap opera approach of showing emotionally manipulative people screwing with each other. This doesn't work for me, but given the continued popularity of soap operas, it clearly works for some people. I think it's the appeal of rooting for someone or against someone in a situation that completely doesn't matter -- utter escapism. I'm not really sure. But the advantage of reality TV is that it's much, much cheaper than actually producing soap operas, so stations can try tons of these in all of the blank spots in their schedule, paying for them out of pocket change, and see if they get lucky. Good examples of this genre are Survivor, The Apprentice, and of course Real World (which started this all off); bad examples include all of the stupid dating/marriage reality TV shows. (Special props to The Benefactor, just because Mark Cuban has more personal charisma in his little finger than Trump could ever dream of, while being completely insane. Although that's not on the basis of anything he did on the actual show, just on the basis of how he screws with the NBA league office on a regular basis.)

The way that people watch those shows even seems to match soap operas. They pick favorites, root for the ones that they like, get angry at the ones tho screw over the ones they like, and so forth. I think the idea that it's unscripted (whether actually true or not) adds a lot of appeal over soap operas for suspension of disbelief; I don't think the audience is after high drama so much as the weirdly fascinating feeling one can get from watching someone else's argument play out in public.

Then there are the "oh my god, I can't believe they actually did that to that person" shows. Fear Factor is the primary example, but this for me also includes the sick plastic surgery shows like The Swan. Again, not my style of entertainment, but given that it's the spirtual descendent of people lining up to gawk at circus freaks (to phrase it in the offensive way that it was historically presented), it's hardly surprising that it finds an audience.

Finally, there are the actual competition ones that are based on really going out and doing something. Amazing Race is the quintessential example, although Richard Branson's show verged on this when it wasn't trying to be Fear Factor and parts of Survivor (the immunity challenges) also fit into that. This I can actually see the appeal for; apart from the bizarre rules that they seem to often make up on the spot, this is something vaguely approximating a "game". Urban orienteering, or social survival skill challenge, or competative teamwork, something like that. I wish they'd do more of those.

(Then there are the fairly harmless ones like Trading Spaces or Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that are basically just home improvement or decorating shows with a competition or time crunch twist to them, but I'm not sure I'd even really call those reality shows.)

Re: Where's the appeal in reality TV?

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

Excellent analysis! And I am glad you watched all those shows so I don't have to... Last summer I became fascinated by one of the marriage shows, watching it every week. I was very disappointed when the Bachelorette did not pick the man I'd been rooting for. It was a silly show, a total waste of time, and I could not miss a moment of it.

I really do like Amazing Race. I sometimes wish, though, that instead of feuding couples they'd pick more contestants who are actually good at working together.