Real Housewives of New Jersey.
The Jersey Shore.
Real Housewives of New York.
Keeping Up With the Kardashians.
Real Housewives of Orange County.
Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Jon & Kate Plus 8.
The Hills.
This is just a brief list of the recent crop of “reality” shows on TV. There are many, many more, but I think this list is long enough for the question I’m asking, which is:
Why? Why do we watch this crap? I’ve wondered this from the very beginning, and I have yet to find a satisfactory answer.
By the way, I’ve purposely left off this list shows such as “The Bachelor/Bachelorette”, “The Amazing Race”, “Survivor”, “Miami Ink”, “Extreme Makeover”, and others of that ilk, because I can understand the draw with those types of shows. People like to see other people competing, whether for a mate or a million dollars; they like home renovation shows; they like the background in which the show is set (whether it’s a motorcycle garage or a tattoo studio). I can even understand the attraction of shows like “The Osbournes” and “Being Bobby Brown” – after all, who doesn’t anjoy getting a sneak peek into the lives of celebrities?
But shows like the Housewives, the Kardashians, and The Hills star regular, everyday people (or at least, they were regular people until they got their own reality show). These are people who are considered “extraordinary” because they’re a housewife, or have a lot of kids, or want to be famous (and really, when the majority of the population could claim at least one of those characteristics, it’s no longer extraordinary).
So why the obsession? I know, from hearing people talking about these shows and catching the unavoidable snippet on the news or a talk show, that although these people might have started out ordinary, they very quickly became caricatures of themselves – people whose surreal, outlandish, outrageous behavior classifies them as anything but ordinary. Is that it? Is it the outrageous behavior? The temper tantrums in inappropriate places (weddings, funerals, the supermarket)? The insanely expensive and usually inappropriately skimpy wardrobes? The drama? I suppose I can understand that, to some degree – after all, it’s not that easy to turn away from a train wreck, much as it might horrify us.
But I can’t help but wonder about the effect of watching that crap on a daily or weekly basis. We know that putting junk food into our bodies will eventually have a negative effect; do we really think that ingesting that kind of mental junk food won’t do the same? That it won’t eventually increase our capacity to tolerate such horrible behavior, off screen as well as on? Do we really want to be the kind of people who are entertained by the horrible, amused by the grotesque?
I’d say no, but maybe I just don’t understand.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s totally the train wreck factor. I don’t watch any of the shows you mentioned in your “I don’t understand” list, though I do like the “other” class of reality shows… Extreme Home Makeover, Pawn Stars, stuff like that.
Most of the trainwreck shows are just too painful for me to watch.
You’re right, there’s definitely a train wreck factor to it. But week after week, month after month? And many people watch more than one of these shows…I guess i’ll never understand. Watching other people getting embarrassed makes me cringe. Like you – it’s painful for me to watch.
I love what you said about putting junk food into our brains; that’s exactly what we believe/teach from a yogic perspective, in Kundalini Yoga! And no, I *never* watch the stuff in your “don’t undrstand” category; occasionally some of the others.
Yeh, I can actually feel the effects when I watch crap – it affects me, and the more I watch the longer the effects last. And I do watch some of the other shows too; mostly ones that have to do with home improvement (well, back when I had cable I did), because I love those. Now that we only have antenna TV, we watch no reality shows at all. And it’s pretty damn good.