"Reality" TV

I had a dream once that all of TV had been transformed into a strange version of reality television, every channel was a different person, and you could just turn it on and watch it anytime you wanted to 24/7. It was peoples' source of everything from entertainment and diversion to porn. In left me all in a strange way, and wondering what to make of it. A vision of what the collective secret desires of society as a whole could be at times, with its most honestly voyeuristic confessions granted. To surf through channels was to pick a random stranger and watch them. Some people were very popular and had many people watching them, others probably none at all. But it was all there if you wanted to see it, anyone else's life at the click of a button. Like all dreams there were gaps in the logic of it all. The idea of strangers watching them did not leave anyone unsettled, frightened, or trying to hide from it all.

Back when I was still going to State and studying communications, I took a class on the history of radio and television. I remember one of the teachers I had back then told our class that reality TV was the result of a writers' strike that made producers begin to consider alternative programming that wouldn't require scripts. While reality TV has certainly been around in some form or another for much longer than this actual event, I do believe it was a writers' strike that caused the real boom in reality TV in the sort of form we most commonly see it now.

Just where I stand exactly on reality TV is tough to say. I watch it very rarely, but in the end, I guess I am still watching it. On the one hand it often serves its purpose as a diversion. It can even be entertaining and sometimes even instructive, actually teaching its audience new things or making them aware. Usually, however, it's hard for me to look at it as anything other than the epitome of popped, disposable entertainment at best, the opium of the masses at worst. Too often it feels like, well, turning on the TV and watching a random stranger no different than in the dream I had.

Have the television producers won? I honestly haven't got a clue what those writers were striking over, but as a generally over worked, underpaid group of artists who have to endlessly come up with stories and characters and scenarios to try touch our hearts and minds, I have a hard time not siding with writers over producers who tend to see the whole thing as more of a means to make money.

No one ever seems to doubt that the invention of the television has enriched our lives. With it we don't just see how tomorrow's weather will be, find out if our favorite team won, or what's happening in remote parts of the world but still affect us. Through programming we learn what it is like to have a brother or sister even if we don't, to be in love before we ever are, to experience death and loss before we ever do. While I won't argue that the scripting on many TV shows doesn't get stale after a while, when I look at unscripted programming like what I see on reality TV shows, it's sometimes hard for me not to think: "They would kill off the writers altogether if they ceased to be profitable, while they simply dream up situations to put real people in rather than write up the dialogue themselves..." Who wouldn't argue that it is not only much cheaper to bypass hiring a writer but also easier to simply let the cameras roll on some ordinary people and record them unscripted?

I wouldn't claim that the unscripted aspect of it all doesn't offer an otherwise unavailable opportunity to young and just-starting-out filmmakers in the form of the documentary. The documentary often stands at the height of what realism has been captured on film. It is a form which seeks to analyze what it takes in, to record it for genuine understanding and reflection. Some reality TV shows, such as "The Real World" has certainly done its homework when it comes to this aspect, and as such has tried its hardest to model itself after the documentary, even if its subject (in this case, young, uninitiated kids just barely old enough to even live alone basically) doesn't in actuality have a whole lot to teach us.

While even dull documentaries are plagued by shallow subjects, what's outright annoying is just how engineered the "drama" in "Reality" shows actually is. We decry movie writers for coming up with contrived situations, we would call foul on a documentarian who tries purposely to influence what they record just to make things interesting rather than observe it naturally, and yet we basically let reality TV get away with exactly this all the time. Part of the ability of reality shows to achieve any kind of an engaging narrative out of hours and hours of raw footage comes from editing. It isn't just an art of piecing together crucial and important moments and adding appropriate music. If one of the people filmed never manages to say anything truly offensive or edgy while drunk if not sober, it can always be edited it in such a way as to make it seem so, in essence "caricaturing" the person for the audience.

Very loud, quick to anger, overt, people are casted purposely because they make for memorable personalities, even if we wouldn't ever wanna talk to someone like them in real life. I often wonder though, just how much the "characters" on reality shows are actually encouraged to confront or fight one another or confess their attractions just for the viewing audiences' entertainment. Generally in real life we tend to keep things bottled up inside rather than say things we can't take back, and the whole thing also seems to get heightened even more by having bystanders (if not other cast members then at the least rolling cameras and camera men) present at all times to witness what would otherwise take place privately behind closed doors. People tend to get much more emotional when they know they're being watched. People often feel like they're being ridiculed or are losing face if they become embarrassed in front of others. In fact, people pretty much stop acting the way they really are the moment you put a camera in front of them which in itself seems to defeat the whole purpose of calling it "Reality" TV. They have a tendency to try and be amusing or charming or lively even when there's nothing really going on, nothing worth saying, until you just basically wanna tell them to shut up.

Perhaps most agitating of all are some of the "stars" to be born of this whole medium. I'm not gonna try and disguise this one at all. I honestly can't stand the idea of society having celebrities purely for the sake of having celebrities. So often people like these have no real, discernable talent at all whatsoever, and yet they rise. They achieve fame as result of notoriety, luck, advertising dollars, and I'm sad to say, the public's lurid desire to see more. And far too often it is from the crucible of reality TV that impurities such as these rise to the surface to be first glimpsed by the public. I don't know how many times or with how many people I've collectively wondered exactly why Paris Hilton is a "star" or "celebrity" or whatever else you'd call her (the word "celebutante" was at one point floated around to describe the ones likes her but it never seemed to catch on). Too often the general consensus was that she basically screwed on camera and that gave her her big break. Regardless of wether she meant for it to get out to the public or not, it's hard not to argue that it was the best thing which could've possibly happened for her career. More troubling, however, is the thought that by doing this, she may in a way have just been giving the public what they wanted. To stare and gawk and talk badly about the whole thing while secretly wanting more.

Sometimes I wonder if they really have won. Nobody has any interest in what's going on in the world, the politicians run wild while we're all distracted, bad things happen, we don't pay attention, we get lied to and cheated, and all the while we're just more concerned about the next episode of American Idol than any of that. The public is completely hooked and has an insatiable appetite for what has become the new opiate of the masses, and it's even cheaper and easier to produce than something that actually requires writing and imagination. They say there is truth in dreams but the logic is missing, and I now begin to wonder how different we are from those in the dream I had. Perhaps we are all just luridly obsessed with watching and people like Paris Hilton are just indulging us, giving us what we want without having to channel surf till we can find other people acting shallow, crazy or bitchy or having sex just so we can watch them. When we're not doing that, we are just watching total strangers, and in a way, the producers just selling us our own lives back to ourselves and we're actually paying them to carry a camera around and follow people so we can watch...