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| No | 79% | 511 votes | Total: 646 votes | |
| Yes | 21% | 135 votes |
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From what I can remember, reality-TV shows have been present in our TV since the 1990's and my personal opinion is that, with them, although followed by a large public, the quality of TV programs has really reached the minimum.
If these programs reflect and witness the reality of VIPs' life or that of common persons aspiring to become so, becoming part of a "golden" world where exhibitionism, superficiality, triviality are like bread every day, it's true: these shows are faithful in representing it and the guys protagonists of these programs can be considered typical representatives of this world and are even a model for many people, not aliens coming from the stars. Instead, if these programs want to represent the reality of normal life as they affirm, they are false and deceiving.
Most of these programs are based on the h-24 broadcasting of what happens in a closed and insulated circle of persons in particular conditions, like living together in a house, in the jungle or on a desert island (the last version, present obsessively every day for months also on the TV of my Country, Italy) without the facility of our civilization and obliged to survive.
Who is considered the smartest or the most excessive is then judged by the TV public who expresses weekly or daily its preferences for the protagonists and the loser is eliminated from the circle, so, failing his or her run toward "celebrity & success".
Already in this judgement and selection there's the first falsity because this doesn't exist in the reality, when a group of persons is obliged to live together by circumstances.
The real nature (positive and negative) of a person emerges in the real situations, not surely like in reality-shows....In this way, the guys "prisoners" in the reality TV undergo the first great pressure that make them act and speak to win the contest among them and they try in every way to play some roles and make certain things to impress the public.
The authors of these programs claim there's not a programmed direction of the show that continues for many weeks, everyday and that can be followed also through Internet or the satellite TV-channels at every hour, to show every detail; this is false, in my opinion.
It's enough to observe all the mini-cameras placed in all places where the guys can stay, even in the desert island, so that each guy is never at more than 2-10 metres from the camera, always shot in the best way to show all details.
Another proof of the not spontaneous behaviour of these guys is their activity; they never decide to make their own businesses in the house, as they could easily do in real conditions, sleeping all the time, reading or watching TV, without never saying a world. Instead, they always try to make something, to say something, to create and increase problems with the others, even when they don't have anything to make and say (the better way to tell nonsense).
The only thing they can't really make (despite being a group of young men and women) is real sex, as they could make, sooner or later, in a normal house or on an island. It would have been right and natural, but sex is not possible in TV! Too realistic, it creates scandals in the public, made of family and children. There's the "common sense of decency" to respect!...
The drama is they know very well to be under the electronic eyes of many cameras so that this is the second great pressure they undergo and there's really too little of real and natural in this. It's only a bad comedy that lasts too much for its minimum quality level.
I've tried to follow it many years ago, the first year that this TV format was copied from the US where it was invented with the purpose of raising at any cost TV audience with a sort of interactive program; I couldn't resist watching it after the second day, following it for not more than half an hour each day. It was enough for me and I don't think to be a snob left-wing or "Communist" intellectual, as I would be labelled in the US; simply because I consider it trivial, false and terribly boring.
Moreover, there's nothing bad or snob in liking better more interesting, amusing and cultural programs (rare, more and more rare...) like a documentary on nature, actuality and history, a movie (based on an invented or real story), a debate on an important actuality topic, a cabaret show with amusing political or social satire.
In Italy, my Country, the reality are very popular, but the preferred ones are those in which VIPs or former-VIPs are the protagonists, in sharp contrast with the Anglo-Saxon Countries where the reality shows with common people are always very popular. So, in the recent Italian version of "L'Isola dei Famosi" ("The Island of the Celebrities"), from what I read about it and the few frames I couldn't avoid to watch on TV, the "heroes" wanted to make us believe they were risking everyday to starve if they didn't find something to eat in nature, that cold and tempests were really a danger for them and that they had to live in the wild nature...
Now, if this is true, why was nobody of them ever dead, wounded or fallen ill under the eyes of the public, as it can happen in the "real" reality? Very simple: the wilderness to challenge was only a fake, the show is only a bad comedy of young or ageing exhibitionists and showgirls with silicone lips and breasts; when the cameras don't shot them, all these freaks are allowed to eat like big piranhas the best of Italian food as a reward, somewhere on the island or on board of a yacht. Reality or not, life is beautiful like this, well paid and fed to play the idiots on a tropical island!....
This year (all Italian mass-media have talked of it, even with political polemics among Italian parties!) the winner at "L'Isola dei Famosi" was a well-known trans-sexual, recently, deputy of the Communist Party in the Italian Parliament, whose name is Vladimir Luxuria, who won because gays and trans-sexuals are "in fashion", over here, in the last times and it was "politically correct" to make him (or her?) win.
Where is the "reality" in all this farce?
I have nothing against trans-sexuals, but I know he/her was much more useful in the Parliament, being an intelligent and sensible person; maybe the desire of "breaking the schemes" at any cost has made this person accept to take part to this reality-show, after the resignation from the Parliament.
Learn more about this author, Aldo Bonincontro.
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Yes
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.
Learn more about this author, Andie McCoyd.
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