BIG IDEAS FOR A RICHER LIFE

Get Real: How Reality TV Is Ruining Your Life.

The answer of course is yes. And no.
If Reality TV is too large to be effectively summed up—and
it is—it is also too democratic to be pinned down. From the
vapid faux-life of Gene Simmons’ Family Values to the nutri-
educational activism of Jamie Oliver’s School Dinners, from the
historicity of 1900 House to Porn Valley’s docu-verité titillation,
from the culinary-crisis-relief of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares
to Survivor’s campfire office politics, there’s little consensus on
subject, tone or format—shows like Top Chef, Project Runway,
and So You Think You Can Dance have even given a clandestinely
highbrow lustre to the reality show.
There is simply too much at play in the chaos of reality
programming. So what’s the elusive factor? Why does Reality
TV have so many avid viewers? And why do they span such a
diverse cross-section of the populace?
Perhaps one of the best/worst-kept secrets in Reality TV is
that these shows are written. They’re not written in the sense
that Mad Men or Californication are written—and what gets
written is largely at the whim of what “characters” actually do on
camera—but they are written nonetheless.
Writers carefully track the themes that surface during filming
and—playing off the tensions and struggles of participants—
Sure they’re entertaining, but the likes of Survivor tease stories from the edited footage. Such efforts produce the
and The Hills might actually be undermining reality narrative arcs that drive every reality show from Canadian Idol
to The Real World to Holmes on Homes. And that’s the hook—
as you know it. we’re suckers for the story, even when it isn’t very good.
Of course, our love of story is a deeply rooted one. After all, a
life is little more than the narrative you author for yourself. And
Television pioneer Allen Funt used to say that his show taught a good deal of the richness of life stems from how well one does
lessons in subversion. Big talk for a man who specialized in that—consciously or unconsciously.
putting average folks into situations ranging from the befud- Our world provides—in the form of books, films, comics,
dling to the banal and filming their reactions for laughs. Funt songs and television—lessons in how to build better narratives
probably never understood the scope of the “subversion” Candid for ourselves, lessons we can use or fail to use in drafting our
Camera helped set in motion, or that the reality-based dynam- stories. And Reality TV, with its unvarnished expressions and
ics of his antics would evolve and reverberate into not only a verité stylings is especially tempting for this purpose because it
television revolution but also a progressive alteration of the looks like life, or at least something that closely resembles it. But
mass consciousness—and, finally, a systematic defrocking of our this is where things get weird and where the line between fact
notions of reality. and fiction can easily get blurred.
Today, Reality TV is much more than a collection of mean- Particularly with shows like The Hills, Single in the City and
spirited tricks (Punk’d notwithstanding). It’s been divided into a Laguna Beach—reality soaps that encroach on the narrative
thousand subgenres, consuming and re-slanting the documentary, domains of fictional programs like Melrose Place, Sex and the
the game show, the news magazine, the sitcom, the talent contest City, and The OC—the subversion of reality is extreme.
and the variety show, colliding and cross-pollinating them with By inserting “real people” into the melodrama of these soap
the abandon of a latter-day Dr. Moreau. operas and allowing those people to be celebritized both as real
It makes for damn good television. Viewer numbers show people and as characters, it becomes nearly impossible to distin-
Reality TV at the top of every ratings/share. It also makes up the guish the already thin divide between reality, reality program-
majority of all television aired worldwide. There is an economic ming, and the spiritual void of celebrity culture.
factor to this. Reality TV is cheap to make. But cheap or not, we It’s not that we’re in danger of mistaking Reality TV for
wouldn’t watch if we didn’t like what we saw. authentic experience. It’s that in taking clues from Reality TV
So what the hell is going on here? Do we really care who on how to script our lives—clues that are all too easy to extrapo-
wins $1,000,000 for living on a beach for 30 days? Are the late from the brutally simplistic but oh-so-compelling narratives
lives of tattoo artists and custom cycle builders really that of reality programming—we risk losing the ability to recognize
interesting? Is it just voyeurism, like banging on the glass at the genuine article when we encounter it.
the gorilla exhibit? DYLAN YOUNG

82 Sharp Oct/Nov 2008 SHARPFORMEN.COM ILLUSTRATION: ROCCO COMMISSO