© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 125
The yo-yo comes and goes every few years. The pet rock has been and gone. The mullet haircut thankfully seems to have been cut short. However reality shows seem to be here to stay. I spoke to someone in the television industry, just the other day. His take on the matter… “I don’t have enough of them.”
Expect more reality shows coming to a television near you, with highlights packages and uncensored late night reruns.
The formula for a reality show is depressingly simple. Take a bunch of people. Put them in a high-pressured environment. Challenge them. See what comes up. Up to this point, it seems as if the classification ‘wildlife documentary’ might be acceptable. But add a large amount of money as the stimulus for behaviour patterns to emerge, and the term ‘reality show’ is slightly justified.
Lock them all in a house. Strand them on some island. Give them the ability to remove one another from the equation, though without the obvious crutches of, for instance, automatic weapons. See how real people behave in an unscripted environment.
Those who emerge victorious, though probably not unscathed, will enjoy the status of media celebrity, endorsement offers and adulation or notoriety.
My question is this: why do people watch reality shows?
I know that it has something to do with the fact that the bland prole feed dished up under the banners ‘sitcom’, ‘soap opera’ and ‘drama’ really have no bearing on the real world. Sanitized households with no real problems do not spell laughter. Soap opera situations with dramas of Greek proportions are no longer enough to entirely fill the emotional voids of viewers.
Yet I can’t help wondering if reality is not the stuff which surrounds us?
To my mind, reality is the stuff which happens on a day-to-day basis of lives led in offices and households across the world. But there is never a camera crew on hand when John Smith needs to change a tire, only to discover that a neighbour borrowed the jack. Nor is there a show anchor to ask penetrating questions and provide situational analysis when Jane Doe has hard words with someone about some or other messy little rumour.
And then
there is the broader reality of news. Cameraman may flock to witness the
demise of some small nation, but there is always the conspicuous absence
of branding in the production. But then artfully scattered pizza boxes
amongst the corpses wouldn’t do much for sales. On the other hand,
the words “This war was sponsored by some or other sovereign state,”
seem implicit to the situation, and not worth mentioning.
What can be the possible value of reality shows?
The one aspect seems to be education. There is probably some benefit to being able to put the knife into somebody’s metaphorical back in a way so new that he or she doesn’t see it coming. And no doubt, with little or nothing to distinguish individuals in the workplace, the ability to remove players from that particular game will enhance the possibilities of promotion.
The troubling aspect is the emotional one. On the one hand reality shows seem uniquely able to provide the vicarious thrills of emotion in unemotional lives. On the other hand, emotion imparted by reality shows indicates the sort of emotional detachment that requires an injection of feelings from time-to-time.
I see this detachment in myself. I am an emotional being. Yet in the face of complexity of systems, particularly in working situations, I have to suppress my emotions and try my level best to be objective, to the point where emotion tends to be unwelcome.
Yet I don’t watch reality shows. I do have an emotional reserve to which I can return, without needing to reference some or other contestant’s behaviour or my feelings towards the situation.
The complexity of life argues against emotions. And the concept of emotional intelligence sets a standard that does not recognize diversity of personalities. If a reality show is the only place where emotion can emerge, frankly, humanity is a lost cause.
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