Yes

by Andie McCoyd

Created on: April 23, 2009

Everybody - EVERYBODY - watches reality television. I don't care how much Proust you've read, how many different ways you can dissect Blue Velvet, or how deeply you appreciate the avant-garde musical stylings of John Cale. I don't care about your law degree, or how badly Harper's wants to publish your essays. Philosophers and Philistines alike, we all watch reality television because - philosophers and Philistines alike, reality television feeds our perversions. We like to believe we subsist solely on the finer things, and our desires are baser than we'd like to admit. Take one part schadenfreude, blend with voyeurism until incorporated, and that's how you make dessert for your ego.

Reality TV is basically scripted, and, when not, directors encourage participants to at least guide their conversations to a certain plot point. The thing is, though, the finished product that fills our living rooms with bleeped-out swear words and asinine observations is really the work of the editor. Come on, you really think they pay these people? Not a chance in hell! So, to a point, these are real people you're watching. Why do they do it? Two reasons. Kick up a big enough stink every episode, and there will be loads of promotional work to follow - recognition sells, irony is back in fashion, and what's more ironic than a cat-fighting reality show star selling you car insurance? The other reason: because they know you'll be there, every week.

It's the thrill of watching, of being watched, and reinterpreting what you see so that it pleases you. Don't try to tell me that watching Bret Michaels lumber through a sea of bikinis and fake breasts like a stoned bear doesn't give you a little chill. Who doesn't want to live in a world where a beer-bellied man who not only has never done a single thing of consequence but also has blonde hair extensions can spend two months on a tour bus full of women vying for his affection? Reality TV doesn't reflect how real life plays out - of course not; who the hell wakes up to Ray J. wheeling a breakfast cart up to your bed in a Las Vegas resort? And who watching Survivor can ever say, "Ah, yes. I remember when I had to jump over a series of boulders on a remote island in Micronesia to acquire a large sum of money. So glad I quit my day job!" No, reality TV reflects something a bit scarier: who our Everyman has become.

The Everyman, and in later years, when people actually started to pay attention to the fact that women are human beings with thoughts and agency, the Everywoman, serve as our proxies in all forms of self-expression. It's Llewelyn Moss in No Country For Old Men, because - what would one of us do upon finding millions of dollars abandoned by a truck? We want to think we'd be sensible, and leave it - but we are humans with bills to pay and dreams deferred. We'd take the money and run. It's Juno McGruff in the ostensibly idiotic film Juno that, despite its stupid-bordering-on- offensive pandering to a certain generation by way of invented hipster slang and catchy pop-culture references, delivers a portrait of the real strength of a sixteen-year-old girl whose worst nightmare comes true, and intelligently and sensitively begs the question - what would you do?

Or, it would beg the question, if anyone saw it. Sure, both films got Oscar nods, but did anyone actually see them? Box-office rates have been at an all-time low, and rather than shell out an extortionist fifteen dollars for a movie ticket, people hunkering down for an evening of blank-faced monotone and expensive handbags with Lauren Conrad and the rest of the literati on The Hills. So, replacing well-rounded fictional characters in our collective unconscious are the attention-starved denizens of the world of reality television, and no one has really wondered - why are we all so creepy? Why are we so fascinated with the scripted lives of the rich and moderately and undeservedly famous that we will carve out time every week to guess how the next bizarre and surreal interaction - obstacle courses involving hot dogs and a stripper pole on Rock of Love Bus or whatever the hell it's called come to mind - will play out?

I can guess what some of you are thinking. So what if now we'd rather watch Flavor of Love than Frost/Nixon? Times is tough, kid; sometimes something like The Reader is a little heavy, and after a long day of stressful work during a recession for Pete's sake, Nazis are absolutely the last thing you want to think about. Or, you know what, it's like you said earlier - yeah, I've read Proust, but I also enjoy The Bachelor - so what?

So: various media outlets are always blathering about how watching violent films or playing violent video games seeps into our subconsciousness and desensitizes us to violence. And, to a degree, they are correct. Basically, we get used to it. Now, if we saw the same Wild Bunch style shoot-out at a bank, that doesn't mean most of us wouldn't still freak out. It just means that when the necessary elements are present - when we are physically separated by a screen from the fantasy playing out before us - we can create that mental divide that makes the sanity-defying, stereotype-rich, sexist behavior entertaining.

And that, that is how reality TV reflects reality. Because in our current reality, where we openly discuss pornography but pitch hissy fits when part of a breast is exposed during the Super Bowl half-time show which typically gains its viewers with the promise of breasts, whether they be the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders' or Janet Jackson's, we want to have our fantasies and mock them, too. We want to write in our blogs about the idiocy of Heidi and Spencer, because of course we're all so much more intelligent than they are, and how could they be so bland, and thank the heavens we understand irony and have such fantastically hilarious senses of humor, but we also want Ray J. to give us a name so we can prove ourselves to him. Because there's a part in all of us who cares nothing for quick turns of phrase and the New York Times, who thinks, I would be such a better choice. If I were on this show, I would so win. We want to be on that tour bus, embarrassing music career and plastic surgery and hair extensions and all, because if Bret effing Michaels can get girls to act like animals over him, why not us? We don't even wear that much makeup. This kind of television allows us to indulge our darkest desires, the ones to do with power and control and really, come on, sex, while still maintaining a veneer of social acceptability, a veneer equipped with enough sense and an appreciation for the tongue-in-cheek that allows us to laugh and point mocking finger to mask just how accurately Flava Flav's soliloquies on life and love echo the things that reside in the deepest recesses of our dark, ironic, Tolstoy-reading, breast-loving, catfight-watching hearts.

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