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to note that Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman addressed this form of entertainment as early as the 1980s with his speculative fiction work The Running Man. In The Running Man, contestants competed in death games and other various forms of reality programming for money and medical care. It seemed horrifyingly farfetched twenty years ago and a disturbing reality in today's entertainment television.

The current TV landscape is replete with reality television shows while the Internet is burgeoning with thousands of web cams beaming private life images. Contemporary culture is filled with personal modes of expression and confession. Recent years have witnessed a relentless interest in memoirs, video diaries, tell-all books, ordinary people's stories, so on and so forth. As a culture, America has become much more interested in real people. The popularity of such anthologies such as Chicken Soup for the Soul or the number of people who watched the OJ Simpson trial as it aired live on television; the round the clock news coverage, retrospectives, interviews and behind the scenes look at tragedies such as occurred on September 11th, or little Jessica McClure, who fell in the well, or the disturbing cases of children being kidnapped from their front yards. America is tuning in.

The buzz and gossip surrounding these shows probably brings in as many viewers as any other factor. And indeed, the buzz surrounding the knife event on Big Brother 3 has upped the visibility of the show. (Byrne, 1.) The continued bad press that plagues the producers about the contestants simply ups their visibility quotient. In a society where Robert Downey Jr's trials with drug abuse and run-ins with the law still warrant constant surveillance by the press and hasn't seemingly hurt his popularity is another demonstration of America's fascination.

Reality television constantly decorates the headlines either through scandalous stories involving the background of its players or scandalized viewers raving about the latest episode. The appeal, whether as a by-product of Social Darwinism or good old-fashioned voyeurism, doesn't seem to be waning despite the plethora of reality that grips our nation in this time of terrorism. Perhaps it is that exact reality that reality television helps to mask. After all, that is supposed to be the appeal of these shows: entertainment and escape. Ironically, the public is searching for real in the very medium which exploits it to the full, saturates it with images and returns it leaving the public hungry for more.

Learn more about this author, Alyx Grayson.
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