by Henry Amon

Created on: July 11, 2008   Last Updated: July 12, 2010

Reality TV is a genre and not a description. The sooner everyone understands this the sooner the debate will be over. All you have to do to really understand that reality TV is not real is take a quick look at several of the popular reality TV shows.

Survivor is perhaps the most popular reality show. Do people get abandoned on a tropical island in real life? Sometimes people do. Does a cast of 16 people most of whom are attractive bikini wearing women or strong muscular men with a few odd people here and there usually get stuck on an island together? No, not usually. But even getting beyond the plot, the situations are created by the producers to provoke people to act in a way that will make for what they think is interesting television. These kinds of situations usually result in high drama because people are put in falsely strenuous situations and not allowed contact from the outside world. On top of everything else let's not forget that film crews probably take hundreds of hours of footage that results in one 40 minute TV show each week.

The Bachelor or Bachelorette is another popular reality show that is easy to point to, to see that it's not reality just TV. If you were a fan of the show you might think initially that this show best exemplifies how reality TV is real. However, with a deeper look these shows reveal the total lack of reality. There have been about ten seasons of the Bachelor and three of the Bachelorette that have aired not counting the most recent seasons. Taking a look at where the couples that came out of this show are now, we see that most of them have broken up and despite engagements and hopes. Only one or two weddings have resulted. When asked what happened to them as a couple one couple said, the fantasy of their TV romance didn't translate into reality. Even though these are real people with real emotions they are put into a dating situation that otherwise they wouldn't deal with because it's a competition. In real life, almost everyone would stop dating someone if they found out the other person was dating and kissing ten other people at the same time.

When you take a picture and you tell someone to say "cheese" they instantly change their smile or even total look and pose for the camera. The same is true for reality TV. When you let someone know you'll be filming them they change how they otherwise might behave, this is the first removal of reality. Second, you put up a prize of some kind to get people to really put themselves into the action. Whether the prize is a pretty girl or a million dollars this competition removes a little bit more of reality. Finally you put people in specific positions or games or whatever for a specific segment of the show and you really loose a lot of reality. These shows are a reflection of an alternate reality. While they may be entertaining, no one who has even the smallest idea of what it takes to make one of these show can conclude it is reality.

The closest thing we have ever had to reality TV were shows like Candid camera and perhaps Americas Funniest Home Videos. But after a while even AFV felt scripted because some people obviously faked real life situations to try to win the $10,000 prize.

Related link:

The Bachelor Where are They Now?
http://tvfilter.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!DB9D137CC0F 754C9!21778.entry

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