The truth of the matter is that a substantial portion of the audience for reality TV—-perhaps even a majority?—-watching it is not about enjoying it in a straightforward manner.  It’s ironic, and about feeling superior. The pleasure is in not buying in the values espoused in the reality TV show, but actually rejecting those values

I submit that this show brought such irony to an apex.  They only let the mask drop ever so slightly (on that page, the word “spoiled” is only used once).

Still:  8 seasons?  I figured the joke would run dry after three.

They left out MILF Island, which also had the “I didn’t come here to make friends.” comment.

The difference is a simple one: cranks know their place.  They don’t vie for power or mainstream acceptance.  They offer their crank ideas to the world and let them subvert the common wisdom, but don’t employ volume, power, and money to elevate crankery to a level of prestige it doesn’t deserve.

Or, they find a place in society:

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the accession of Norton I, emperor of the United States and protector of Mexico, unquestioned monarch of all the zany characters who have inhabited the streets of San Francisco.

On Sept. 17, 1859, the San Francisco Bulletin published a notice on an inside page announcing that Joshua Norton, formerly a prominent San Francisco businessman, had proclaimed himself Norton I, “Emperor of these United States.” He had acted, he said, “at the peremptory request of a large majority of the citizens.”

The newspaper notice was the work of an unhinged mind, printed in a moment of caprice by Bulletin Editor George Fitch, but it marked the beginning of the 21-year reign of San Francisco’s most beloved character.

Norton followed his first notice with a second proclamation, abolishing Congress because there was too much fraud and corruption. Later, he abolished political parties for the same reason, ordered a bridge to be built from San Francisco to Oakland and carried on a correspondence with other crowned heads.

He reigned over San Francisco as a benign despot, honored everywhere he went.

“Newspapers accepted him as part of the fun of living in San Francisco,” wrote John Bruce in “Gaudy Century,” a book about San Francisco journalism.

Link

I think Gossip Girl might be an example of what is replacing reality tv as the primary fantasy, if you’re right about it.

I can’t believe you missed the classic examples of TV shows features the rich during rough economic times: Dallas premiered in 1978, Dynasty in 1981.

Although to be fair there is a legit story-telling reason to feature the economic upper classes: Rich Idiot With No Day Job gives a whole lot of opportunities to bring in utterly ridiculous storylines that aren’t interrupted by te characters actually, you know, having to make a living.

The main problem reality shows is that they’re repetitive with a different cast.

Shows can be highly repetitive and still succeed: WWE Raw has been on for over 16 years now, and their writers have used a three year rule: after three years you can recycle a storyline without the audience complaining, based on the principle that you’ll probably have had enough fan turnover in that period of time that for a large portion of them it will be new, and for the dedicated people that stay around longer they’ll have other reasons, the main one that they’ve become fans of the characters.

Reality shows do the same thing year after year (some minor variations in their games, but other than that they’re pretty much identical), but their casts don’t come back: you don’t get fans who simply have to tune in for the next season because they’d like to see the continuing evolution of Bob and Elaine’s rivalry because Bob and Elaine aren’t there any more.

Reality shows do the same thing year after year (some minor variations in their games, but other than that they’re pretty much identical), but their casts don’t come back: you don’t get fans who simply have to tune in for the next season because they’d like to see the continuing evolution of Bob and Elaine’s rivalry because Bob and Elaine aren’t there any more.

That may be why reality shows have started doing “all stars” episodes where they combine people from different shows and different seasons.

The truth of the matter is that a substantial portion of the audience for reality TV—-perhaps even a majority?—-watching it is not about enjoying it in a straightforward manner.  It’s ironic, and about feeling superior.

Recalled many late night discussions with undergrad classmates in the mid-late ‘90s about how this was the very reason why shows like Beavis and Butthead and characters like Homer Simpson were so popular. 
We concluded that since they were all characterized as being incredibly stupid beyond what many of us would encounter in our daily lives barring a few extreme cases in our lives, the target audience is reassured of their own superiority and competence by having more idiotically stupid characters to laugh/belittle…..

While I did find this true of many who loved such shows, never can really relate to that appeal, especially when it is too depressingly reflective of real life for most people I’ve known in their daily lives.

That may be why reality shows have started doing “all stars” episodes where they combine people from different shows and different seasons.

Yep, but that only puts off the inevitable, especially given the format where some of those people are gone before much of the season has passed.

I just realized that we’re talking about the competition style reality shows, and ignoring the other one: the one where cameras just follow someone around, the celebrity based ones and the job-based ones.  I expect those to be more durable (COPS has been on for 21 years now) because they’re more documentary of stuff that people find interesting and not forced competition.

Heh.  That reminds me of a joke someone made a while back that if someone wanted to do a realistic “Survivor”, they’d dump the two groups on different islands, not use the stupid competitions which force intra-group rivalry, and allow cooperation so that one “tribe” wins, not an individual.  And they’d decide the winner the old fashioned way: whoever manages to construct a warship first and sail over to the other island to conquer it.

Reality TV also can focus on luxury and glamour. Getting millionaires to fall in love with you and spend money on you, for example. Part of the allure to the Real World since about the 3rd season has been the large beautiful houses these people have been in. The “beyond real” reality is enticing in the sense that most of us have jobs or school and can’t just sit around drinking and partying all of the time. I think that reality TV is far from over, and that the cycle will lean toward the fantasy of wealth aimed at “Joe Schmoe” or “Jill Schmoe” like they have done in the past to some degree already.

What is this television you talk about?

it is getting close to twenty years since I have had one.

You mean people still watch television programs?

And they take them seriously?

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Never could take that reality show crapola after two seasons of The Real World: no less the stupid contests for love or money.

5 minutes of one of those batchelor shows and I had intuited that plot points were scripted, with bad actor real people improving their own bad lines. A combo of crap.

However, a reality show in which something is created is another matter, whether it’s a version of This Old House or Project Runway or Ace of Cakes—don’t care about carpentry, baking or fashion per se, but the drama of creation (bitchy designers add to the fun), watching people with skills employ those skills. Make it work, people!

Frankly, WWE to me is as boring as S &M;, and daytime soaps: bad plays with bad actors and stilted dialogue: watched a couple bouts of early TV wrestling with my grandpa back in the black and white ‘50s, and one climatic battle between Haystack Calhoun and the Human Fly has pretty much held me for a half century.

Also had no interest in the night time soaps: Dallas, Dynasty.

You’re also not factoring in the more perverse and blatant (no pun intended) reality of these types of shows: they exist because they are incredibly cheap to make.

Because the shows are categorized as “non fiction competitive programming” the producers of the show get away with not calling the writers “writers,” meaning they can gets tons of people not in the unions and pay them a fraction of what other shows cost.  One of the key sticking points in last year’s writer’s strike was this issue. They do not have to pay actors, again dealing with SAG/AFTRA fees or for that matter agents.  At best the “star” or “host” of the show may get executive producer credit and a share of royalties.  Contestants provide their own wardrobes, and local businesses bend over backwards to provide sets, props, and indulgences upon the contestants for free.

“Rock of Love” probably costs about a tenth of what a season of “Battlestar Galactica” did, but it probably had a much larger cost-to-ad-revenue factor.

I only watched one reality show during its heyday and that was “So You Want to be a Superhero”. I knew enough from the omnipresent culture of reality TV and the expectations of some of the characters at first that the entire basis of its structure was inverted so as to promote the exact attitudes you reference. It was designed to celebrate cooperation and to make the audience feel humbled at the kindness of the eventually winning or in the first season second place contestant.

I don’t see reality TV being all that easy to kill and I think it’s the reason a number of young people either do without TV or only use it for the sci-fi channel and comedy central. It’s just insanely cheaper for the companies running it. You underpay the actors, recycle the same scripts, pay a handful for “low-quality” film style and you’ve filled up an hour of programming for pennies on the dollar.

It’s how the TV world has entered into the “screw-the-workers” phase of corporation.

If you liked Pierce’s book, take it to the next level:

http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307398468

KeithM:  I don’t know, Melrose Place managed to shut my entire college down every Monday night, and all those characters were employed.  They even spread the crazy around at work!

Sadly I heard on the radio they are remaking the Melrose.  I doubt it could ever be as good today as it was back then.

I enjoy reality tv shows, because I am a cruel person who enjoys watching grown men cry because their cakes have fallen in. I also enjoy seeing how someone can make a dessert from peas and a entree using only cornflakes, bacon, and pumpkin pie filling.

I also enjoy seeing people suffer through historically accurate situations. I think that the cooking competition shows will still go on even though historically accurate suffering shows are off the air.

““Rock of Love” probably costs about a tenth of what a season of “Battlestar Galactica” did, but it probably had a much larger cost-to-ad-revenue factor.”

They shut themselves out of DVD sales, though.  Not such a big thing if you’re CBS, but problematic if you’re smaller-time.

A good half the time I write about TV—-the good or the bad—-someone shows up in comments to explain that they’re better than the rest of us because they don’t watch TV.

And every time, I’m reminded of how, in the late 18th/early 19th century, there was a lot of concern about how novels enfeebled the mind, particularly of already feeble-minded women.

Novels won, and I suspect TV will, too.

Digital technology, with its facile manipulation of ones and zeros, fractured that critical triad composed of the artist, her work, and the cultural reality in which the work was created. “There is no reality anymore. The vast maw of modernity has chewed up reality and spat the whole mess out as images. We live in a ‘society of spectacle.’” (Susan Sontag, Looking at War) The original or master work, along with its subtext, can now be plagiarized and reworked by technicians into an image sufficiently malleable to penetrate even the most remote backwater of the global marketplace. “[T]he culture industry has become thoroughly commodified, and absorbs and deflects all oppositional culture to subservient ends.” (Douglas Kellner, Adorno on Mass Culture)

I liked that PBS show about making a couple families live like pioneers.  What would be interesting is to do that, but with the 50s.  Sure, the hardships are minor, but it would be interesting, because people idealize that period.  What you could do to make it interesting is for an office space to rely on 50s-era technology, as well as a home.  The nasty food, the shitty appliances, etc.

What is this television you talk about?

it is getting close to twenty years since I have had one.

I have the same reaction to threads about fashion where I’m like, “Is this something you’d have to wear clothes to understand???”

“I don’t even own a TV” is so 20-years-ago, Dave. In this day and age, luddite moral preening is all about bragging how you don’t own a cell phone or, better yet, a car (unless you live in a dense city, in which case it’s too easy to get any kind of moral credit for).

Amanda: There was a British show about a family living in the 1940s in London during the Blitz.  Not exactly like the 1950s, but the appliances and food were all very grim (all that lard) before they started having to abide by rationing, etc.

Actually, it was all around awesome TV.  I think it’s just called “The 1940s House” and is out on DVD.

“I’m not here to make friends” is a cliché but that’s because it’s the right attitude to adopt in these *game shows*. There’s a million dollar and X people and only one will win the million dollar. Nobody complains that someone beat them at Jeopardy, but make the *game show* about physical challenges coupled with social manipulation and suddenly people think that playing to win it means you’re a jerk.

What is this television you talk about?

It’s this communications medium that brings us good and bad fiction and non-fiction content. No-one is particularly impressed with the hair-shirt act, especially when you’re missing out on series that are entertaining and thought-provoking—shows like BSG, The Wire, and Mad Men (to name some fiction content), which allow one some connection with popular culture and zeitgeist without turning one’s brain into mush.

Not that I watch much TV on TV anymore—everything goes through my computer. And not that I watch a lot of TV—I’m just discriminating in what I choose to watch.

It’s all too easy for people to grow genuinely scary shit like powerful wingnuttery with other things that are simply tasteless and stupid, like reality TV, and suggest it’s all part of a general trend of American fuckwittery.

It’s easy to conflate them for a reason: they’re both the outcomes of extreme intellectual indolence in the rank-and-file followers, the products of a national culture that devalues thoughtfulness and education and elevates celebrity and flash. True cranks like Norton I put a lot of effort and thought into their crankery, and (as Avenger notes) do so because they’re more concerned with giving society a good reason to find a place for them than they are with forcing their views into places and institutions where, absent ignorance, they’re not really wanted. This is one truth that the 9-11 Twoofers have yet to grasp.

I’m not going to write some preachy piece celebrating the end of irony—-I fucking hate that shit—-but I suggest that perhaps Americans have a different fantasy/disapproval need.

I recently re-read a post-9/11 piece by David Carr, who had a good take on irony:

Irony is not dead; it abounds. It’s just reverted to form.

Kidnapped by twee practitioners, irony itself ended up in quotes and was used as a cover for collegiate snarkiness by a generation that never had to get serious about anything. Until now. The situational ironies compound horror: the rescuers who are also victims, the firehouse buried in disaster, and a death toll that inexplicably mounts at a site that yields few bodies. And civic discourse is now rife with rhetorical ironies: holy war, the gifts of tragedy, and heroic politicians. This has become a city where people can only smile wanly when its mayor describes New York as “the safest city in the world.” That’s irony in its natural state.

Taken from that angle, it’s hard to see anyone today watching these reality shows ironically except in the snarky po-mo way. And, as you note, that superior attitude becomes increasingly difficult to maintain in hard times. There’s just not much pure irony to enjoy in the shows themselves—the contestants are semi-psychopathic fame- and money-obsessed ignorami, and far from behaving the opposite of what you’d expect, they behave exactly as you’d expect. Which is why it gets tiresome for anyone with a brain and a life.

Reality shows do the same thing year after year (some minor variations in their games, but other than that they’re pretty much identical), but their casts don’t come back: you don’t get fans who simply have to tune in for the next season because they’d like to see the continuing evolution of Bob and Elaine’s rivalry because Bob and Elaine aren’t there any more.

If I remember correctly, the reporter on the This American Life piece likened it to the appeal of spectator sports: same game, same rules, different players. The difference between the reality show contestants and professional athletes is that the latter actually have talent and put an extraordinary amount of work into developing it.

By the way, for those who haven’t read the Idiot America book, here’s the original Esquire essay.

The more idiot irreality TV that I have seen, the more I realize what a masterwork Idiocracy was.  Reality TV iterated through 25 generations.

Ow! My Balls!

“Don’t own a TV” no, no, don’t watch a TV, everyone knows that TV is just the output device for the video game consoles.

I don’t think all of it is neo-luddite crap. Young people are turning away from TV, because a lot of it is crap. What isn’t crap can be found online either legally or pseudo-legally and for those who can afford to wait, Netflix or Blockbuster has box sets you can rent at the season end or you can purchase them from stores if you liked it enough from watching it pseudo-legally.

Young people are poor and TV just doesn’t pay enough dividends usually to make it a better investment than internet or a Netflix.

There’s good tv out there, I’m a huge fan of Mad Men and Dollhouse and the rebirth of sci-fi that occurred this decade was all sorts of awesome.

But I can’t say I’ve used a TV to watch them for most of a decade and most people my age could probably say the same.

So did he pick the chick with the vermillion hair?

Okay ... same Charles P. Pierce who opines in the Boston Globe Magazine.  Sometimes I think he’s just an aging boomer caught way off base, but at least he’s trying to run the bases!  Even when I think he’s totally off, at least he presents a refreshing and unusual perspective I can appreciate.

Here is something to consider: the reality TV shows where plastic surgeons and dentists, etc. helped really malformed people look fairly normal?  They all somehow disappeared when the doctors who participated started talking about how the lack of a comprehensive health care system was largely responsible for the need for their extreme makeover work.

“What would be interesting is to do that, but with the 50s.  Sure, the hardships are minor, but it would be interesting, because people idealize that period.  What you could do to make it interesting is for an office space to rely on 50s-era technology, as well as a home.  The nasty food, the shitty appliances, etc.”

I don’t know if it’s still possible to find that many chainsmokers, though.  They’d have to figure out a way to just pipe second-hand smoke into everything without getting sued for it.

“A good half the time I write about TV—-the good or the bad—-someone shows up in comments to explain that they’re better than the rest of us because they don’t watch TV.”

Which seems silly.  It’s like posting “I have nothing to contribute!”.  Why bother?

A lot of everything is crap.  We wouldn’t applaud someone who said, “I don’t listen to music.  Most of it is crap.”  Or someone who boycotted novels because 95% of them are unreadable crap that sells because it’s pornographic.  I fail to see why TV is the one medium that is unilaterally condemned for having the same crap to quality ratio as everything else. 

Look, I have no problem with snobs.  I just think that you have to work for it.  Cheap, easy snobbery is cheap and easy.

One benefit that might result from Reality TV is a growth in documentaries, both in people ceating them and people watching them.

It brought my friend Joe Winston to mind, who just finished a movie version of Tom Frank’s What’s The Matter With Kansas? (http://www.whatsthematterwithkansas.com).  He’s been doing it a lot longer (20 years), but his day job relies on networks like HGTV that have a lot of proto-reality show stuff.

With that, I bring you Reality TV we can believe in

I fail to see why TV is the one medium that is unilaterally condemned for having the same crap to quality ratio as everything else.

Having worked in TV, one thing I learned was that the medium of broadcast television, more than any other, has a major tendency, almost a natural imperative, to debase anything it touches. One of my former co-workers called it an “evil business,” and he wasn’t far off. Which makes the achievements of those who produce quality television all the more impressive.

But it’s easier for a smart but lazy person to ignore that, recognise the nature of TV and then issue a broad-brush condemnation to demonstrate to everyone that he sees the obvious.

“The more idiot irreality TV that I have seen, the more I realize what a masterwork Idiocracy was.  Reality TV iterated through 25 generations.

Ow! My Balls!”

Ow! My Balls! wasn’t supposed to be reality tv, though.  There’s a bit where one of the characters meets the Ow! My Balls!-guy and tells him he really loves his work.  Ow! My Balls! was either the comedian-driven sitcom iterated through 25 generations or Masterpiece Theatre for the aggressively idiotic.

“I fail to see why TV is the one medium that is unilaterally condemned for having the same crap to quality ratio as everything else.”

It’s still thought of a passive medium.  I imagine if we give it another decade or so for the people who grew up being able to exert a high degree of control over how and when they view programming to start really dominating the general culture, we’ll pick some other medium to shit on for rotting brains and corrupting the culture.

Hey, let’s not knock irony too much. Irony, at least in the Rortyan sense, has a lot going for it. We’d be a better country if more people could view the world with a little more ironic detachment.

I fail to see why TV is the one medium that is unilaterally condemned for having the same crap to quality ratio as everything else

It’s ubiquity, coupled with it’s popularity (in order to distinguish it from radio).

I’m not saying you’re wrong to point out the double-standard, Amanda, I’m just saying why people pick on TV over other media.*

Although, in reading your recent 90’s thread it occured to me how many TV shows I watched as a kid that wouldn’t get made today:  Against All Odds with Bill Bixby (pre-Viacom Nickelodeon), about social and scientific pioneers that once did an episode on Karl Marx; Trade-Offs (PBS), about microeconomics; though not TV, “Free To Be You And Me” had a huge influence on me; “Schoolhouse Rock” hasn’t been topped yet (though I hear They Might Be Giants are doing a kids album).  One reason you may have had an easier time of it in the 90’s is that people who were kids in the 70’s took in messages all the time about treating other people with respect and dignity.  Even if they didn’t always live up to those ideals, at least they knew what they were.

I’m realizing these are all aimed at kids, so not really what’s being bandied about here.  Still, I feel they were important in helping me see the world in a different light (add the FCC mandated stuff in and between the cartoons as well), and frankly, there was no way I wasn’t going to watch TV, which goes back to demonstrating TV’s special place in the household, and thus the reason it’s a special target fo scorn.

* This may be the first time I’ve ever used media as the plural of medium.

34-

Absolutely true. Which is also why I don’t tend to listen to the radio and going to the movies is always a planned event. Books you got me, I’m a giant book slut, though I haven’t gotten burned as often because of it as I would expect, but maybe that’s just because I’m friends with a couple of bookstore owners who can point me in the direction of my tastes. Or maybe I’m just lucky.

Yeah, it would be absolutely silly to deny oneself any TV series, because it’s like every other form of media out there and like you say most is crap, but a small amount is literary gold. It’s like any other medium, really.

But every other medium allows more variety. You can buy the CDs you want or you can download or buy the songs you want on iTunes and you can form playlists on several sites to tailor a radio station entirely around your tastes with little to no advertising. Similarly, the books on your bookshelf are the ones you want there, the movies you rent are ones you want to see and you pay on an individual level.

TV, the structure of distribution it represents, rather than the shows that make up its programming, asks you to pay a bulk rate for all TV, good and bad, and extra for a service to control and filter it to make it watchable (Tivo). For young’uns this is a mostly bad investment with the digital distribution of the internet or box sets through Netflix. This returns control over individual buying to the consumer and thus allows them to only support what they like.

A plan that admittedly backfires when the networks running the shows only pay attention to the watchers who watch it on its exact airing time.

I think that’s part of the response, the other is that like it or not, TV is what ends up defining culture. The reason the wingnuts are so crazy is that they are appealing to the 1950s…television shows as an example of “how we used to be” while comparing it to 1990s and 2000s TV shows as an example of “how we are now”. There’s a reason that Scalia and the wingnuts turn to 24 as proof of torture but not James Bond and most action movies. Television is for better or for worse, what will color impressions of that generation for the next X years.

So there may be some bitterness as well that we frankly look bad by that unfair bullshit standard and that for those who buy into that frame, we’re sliding into decay.

Then there is the whole “accepted” history of it being one of the tools bringing about modern invasive advertising from birth to death as well as one generation wholly enraptured by it and several since fully sickened by it.

Though I don’t see myself or other young people as better than people who do cable or can afford Tivo, just poorer or more desirous of spending the money saved there on other minor luxuries.

“I really don’t watch a lot of TV, and I’m always hesitant to say that because I don’t want to be One Of Those People who smugly says, “You know, I don’t watch a lot of TV, which makes me better than you.” Really, I don’t! I mean, my mindless evening entertainment generally consists of reading and correcting Wikipedia articles about obscure European nobility and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes, which I in no way think of as being morally superior to, say, watching According To Jim.”

http://joshreads.com/

The trick is that people get to feel superior while still getting indoctrinated with the hate. And the short attention span.

When you can do that and have a half hour of well-watched filler-between-commercials for a fraction of the cost of a real show, what more could you ask? And although you can’t do DVDs, you can recycle cast members endlessly through allstar reunions, second-level competitions, blah blah.  (Remember, scripted shows rely on DVD sales and syndication because they’re not necessarily making a profit on the initial broadcast; “reality” shows are.)

God, I love TV. I didn’t watch it at all until I was about 25 and now I watch a goodly amount everyday, from Rachel Maddow to shows like Walking with Dinosaurs and Life After People to series like Lost, True Blood and the now deceased L Word. I find it funny when people sneer at me over it, as if Rock of Love and bad sitcoms are all that’s out there. It’s cheap entertainment and it has yet to turn me into an apolitical zombie, which is the party line I swallowed in my self-righteous punk rock youth. I still see a lot of Kill Your TV! bumper stickers around town.

I kind of thought the whole lure of reality TV - especially the really emotional, trashy shows - was the force behind tabloid culture. People follow celebrities today to feel superior to them, whether it’s their dumb tweets or their bad plastic surgery or their drug-fueled meltdowns. It’s a huge high school and everyone’s snickering at the popular kids. That’s how it seems to me. But taking it seriously - that I don’t get. A friend of mine is currently on a reality show (one of the more respected ones, not a competition one) and yeah, of course it’s highly manipulated and deceptive. And damn, do they own her ass and for not very impressive compensation, I might add. It isn’t just the writers they’re not paying well.

Marcel Vigneron may not have gone on Top Chef to make friends, but if he had, he would probably have been much more psychologically damaged by the hateful, playground-bullying pit of vipers he was thrown into. He was a lot stronger and more self-assured than I would have been, the poor guy.

I don’t watch much tv anymore, but it’s because I’m too busy reading blogs, so I’m well aware it doesn’t make me better than anyone. I usually wait for whatever show everyone’s going on about to come out on DVD so I don’t have to wait a week to find out what’s going to happen next.

The only Reality TV show I’ve ever watched is Living With Ed.  I can’t imagine what the others have to offer.

DVD box sets are expensive, and they take me a while to get through (Eight months to watch all 81 episodes of Dr. Katz) so I’m not going to buy a lot at once.

This is the reason they invented BitTorrent…

Make no mistake, one of the messages most reality TV shows the people is that the lottery model path to fame and fortune is still valid and that they should know their place until then.  There are the rich, the famous, the powerful and the wealthy and then, on the other side, are the rest of the punters, scrapping for a piece of the action.  It’s Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous blended with WWE wrestling.  And it’s the message the people who make these shows want to send.  Sure, you’re not good enough, you don’t deserve it but we’ll give you a shot to debase yourself for some small piece of the action.  Don’t forget that a huge part of these shows is showing how these “average” people, the contestants, are so unworthy of the prize they’re competing for.

And Charlie Pierce is brilliant.

The problem I have with TV—not TV shows, I adore a bunch of them—is its goddamned delivery.  If you stop watching TV as it streams live, with its obnoxious promos and insipid ads and irritating crawlers, it becomes harder and harder to take.  I’ve been watching TV shows on DVD exclusively for years now, and when I go to a hotel room (o boy! reception!), I can only take “TV” in its good-with-the-bad form for about a day and then I’m fucking done.  It’s so obnoxiously formatted, more than it ever was (faster edits, more crawlers/split screen, Idiocratic promo voices, network logos popping up in-show).  Thanks to Tivo, downloading and the almighty DVD, it’s easy to get away from some of that, though.

What kills me, as a gamer, are all the people who make eyes at me and ask me, smugly, how on earth I can find the TIME to play video games, when I’m sure most of them find equal leisure time for TV-watching (or for popping a movie into the player once the kid is down).  It’s about preferences and priorities, as commenters upthread have mentioned—we all love and need narrative in some form, and it’s up to us to parse out the bad games, films, TV, music, books from the amazingly great, or from the ones that simply do it for you.  I agree with comments that suggest, at bottom, we’re all pretty much the same narrative-seekers deep-down.  TV has an important place in this equation (esp. since by and large it has better writers than Hollywood does at the moment).

For me, the fun of reality TV is the opportunity to pass judgement on peolple (and yes, feel superior) without feeling guilty for being judgemental.  They signed up to be overexposed, analyzed and judged, after all.

If you’ve ever dealt with either the idiot parents or their poor acting-out kids, you’ll know why some comfort for the folks stuck in that situation isn’t the worst thing in the world.

“thank you, august j. pollak for pointing out the labor/cost issues that make reality tv here to stay for as long as anyone is watching.”

The drama-llama human wangst-centric shows are a new thing, but if you expand “reality tv” a little bit beyond that (cooking shows, home improvement shows, Mr. Wizard-type shows etc.), it’s been around almost since the beginning to tv.  Why wouldn’t it stay?

Anyone watch The Colony on Discovery?  I usually don’t like reality shows because the situations and/or people annoy me, but I’m a fan of post-apocalyptic scenarios, and The Colony is a whole “what if the world fell apart and you had to fend for yourself” thing going on without the overt competition and back-stabbing of Survivor.  Given the current real-world situation, I may start studying it for handy tips.  And it makes me wonder how I would fare in such a situation.

I’ve been nursing a theory that reality TV is in part responsible for the current state of public discourse as practised by wingnutteria. See, they have instances all over television of folks acting out, becoming famous, and living a minimally posh lifestyle in the wake of that fame. They’ve seen Joe the Plumber act out, and become a right-wing schill who gets invited to Iraq and to meet various pundits on the right and so on. They correlate the two notions, and suddenly, you have people screaming at town halls, not just because it gives them a chance to bask in their own bigotry, but because sekritly they hope that Michelle Malkin or Rush Limbaugh or somebody will pick them up as the New Voice of the Common Folks and make them famous. And they can justify their behaviour by believing that they have a Cause.

It’s just a theory, mind you.

...

Incidentally, I don’t watch TV, except via DVD or Hulu. But I’ve seen some of the latest reality TV because it’s always on the TVs in my gym.

Deadliest Catch seems pretty much legit.  Of course they cull out the more boring aspects and focus on the most dramatic, but it’s all really happening.  Capt. Harris damn near died on-camera trying to be a tough guy while a blood clot passed through his heart and lodged in his lungs- you can’t tell me they faked the X-rays and bought off the hospital in Anchorage.  I doubt the Coast Guard would buy in to faking rescue missions in hurricane-force winds.  No, Deadliest Catch is real, and it’s been a real privilege to get to see what those people do and share in their lives.  I love the eagles in Dutch Harbor, too.

Idiocracy is just a revised version of The Marching Morons:

The story is set hundreds of years in the future: the date is 7-B-936. John Barlow, a man from the past put into suspended animation by a freak accident involving a dental drill and anesthesia, is revived in this future. The world seems mad to Barlow until Tinny-Peete explains the Problem of Population: Due to a combination of intelligent people not having children and excessive breeding by less intelligent people, the world is full of morons, with the exception of an elite few who work slavishly to keep order. Barlow, who was a shrewd con man in his day, has a solution to sell to the elite.

Link

Deadliest Catch=reality
Survivor/The Bachelor/The Bachelorette=“reality”

I enjoy reality tv shows, because I am a cruel person who enjoys watching grown men cry…

That’s 99% of the appeal of “reality” shows:  who will break down, who will freak out, who is the most cynical manipulator (and we get the voyeuristic thrill of being in on their manipulations).  I’m not really into that kind of thing, so I don’t watch “reality” shows.

“Idiocracy is just a revised version of The Marching Morons”

But aside from “dude from the past helps solve idiot populations’ problems,” those two sound absolutely nothing alike.

I have seen, by being a media-doused American, that the financial crisis has driven the “idea life” vision (nice house, chic decorum, everyone’s trendy) bar to the upper upper middle class. Watch any nighttime drama and you can tell that the only way writers can make characters untouchable when it comes to real life issues like lack of adequate health care, good schooling, unemployment, etc, is to make them wealthier while not making them so wealthy that people hate them. But that line is getting harder to straddle.

If TV is about forgetting your own problems or blaming someone else for them, I only suspect every kind of show that does this well (reality TV, genius drama [see Bones, House, Lie to me], biased angry news) will continue to grow. Reality TV isn’t going anywhere but it is getting more and more entwined in the maelstrom that is Americans trying to ignore the sheer mountain of bullshit that is growing around them. Instead of being a pleasant distraction, people are opting to live in these “realities” so that they can feel better about everything. That’s not just Reality TV. That’s the internet, too. If this place isn’t escapism, I don’t know what is.

Idiocracy is just a revised version of The Marching Morons

It’s a great story, even if the evolutionary science is off. There’s also a semi-sequel called “The Little Black Bag.” Space Merchants fits into the theme, too. Kornbluth was a vicious, Swiftian satirist. To a degree, Kornbluth himself is riffing off the Morlocks/Eloi dynamic from Wells’ Time Machine.

Idiocracy stands on its own, though. Mike Judge puts a good twist on the concept, and his story ends a lot more happily for the morons than it does in Kornbluth’s.

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This comment brought to you by Brawndo™, the Thirst Mutilator.

It’s so obnoxiously formatted, more than it ever was (faster edits, more crawlers/split screen, Idiocratic promo voices, network logos popping up in-show).

I really stopped getting a feel for how bad it’s gotten since I stopped watching live tv as much. When I do, I want to throw something at the screen every time I’m helpfully informed of what channel I’m watching. Thanks, Bravo.

“Anyone watch The Colony on Discovery?”

Some, havent seen all of them

I like anything that subverts the “Mad Max” troupe in post-apocalyptic fiction - in reality you would be more likely to die because your drinking water is crawling with parasites then to be shot by a crossbow from a mohawk wearing dunebuggy rider

have yo ever read David Brin’s “Postman”?

It was even better as the original 3 short stories

“I submit that a sense of superiority is the fundamental appeal of one of the grand patriarchs of reality shows, Cops.  People watch that not only because they love to see authority’s hammer come crashing down, but because it makes them feel smug that they’re smarter than the people being slammed on the hood of the patrol car”

At least if im ever arrested, I wont be shirtless

have yo ever read David Brin’s “Postman”?

Not yet; thanks for the recommendation.  I just finished my nth reading of Earth Abides, so I’m looking for something new.

It’s a great story, even if the evolutionary science is off. There’s also a semi-sequel called “The Little Black Bag.”

That’s the one I remember (didn’t see it mentioned in the Wiki link above).  What a great short story!

I hate the very act of watching TV. I can sometimes sit still for a movie, but most of those languish in the Tivo for months.

But, last spring I got sucked into American Idol.
Every Tuesday and Wednesday found me watching.
It was a trainwreck in many ways. One who could barely sing. One who committed necrophilia on a weekly basis. Several passable ones. Me, I was watching for Adam Lambert.

Reality shows are cheap and easy. As long as people keep watching, they’ll keep coming out.
I’d like to see a return to the variety show format. *ducks and runs*

“Not yet; thanks for the recommendation.  I just finished my nth reading of Earth Abides, so I’m looking for something new.”

best part is the the title character keeps searching for someone who is trying to rebuild civilization without realizing that he is inadvertantly doing just that

Ice Weasel at 49:

And it’s the message the people who make these shows want to send.  Sure, you’re not good enough, you don’t deserve it but we’ll give you a shot to debase yourself for some small piece of the action.

I work in reality TV, and I can tell you you are reading a bit too much into it. The producers aren’t consciously “sending a message” - they are making TV that a network will pay for. And the network will pay if people will watch. It is just commerce. You can call it heartless or soul-less if you wish, but it is no more than business.
And norbizness @ 30: No, he didn’t pick the vermilion-haired chick, but she did get recycled through a few more shows afterward.

“producers aren’t consciously “sending a message””

but Un-consciously? maybe

Cerebus, I think the rise in DVDs has a LOT to do with explosion of good TV, because it allows that control.  But that explosion in quality makes the “TV is crap” self-congratulation sound even weirder and outdated.

but Un-consciously? maybe

More than maybe.

There’s no deliberate conspiracy at work here, but there is a certain mindset that permeates the entertainment industry. And ice weasel nails it. In a similar vein, I’ve also heard the industry accurately described as “high school with money,” which resonates with me on a number of levels.

Whether their motives are commercial or social or both, the network execs and the producers are all complicit in this mindset, as evinced by the very casting choices the latter make and the former encourage. Whingeing that “we’re just giving the public what they want” is the weakest of justifications for proudly producing a low-grade, empty-calorie, lowest-common-denominator product—especially when you’re talking about a cultural product.

Chareth - yes, audience tastes are partially shaped by the media, but not like it was thirty or forty years ago, when most people had only the three major networks and maybe one or two publics to choose from. Most TV watchers have a lot more options now, which I think has altered that feedback loop substantially. Many more programming choices also means that a lot of shows have tiny fragments of the overall audience, compared to, say, Fantasy Island.  So, while some hand-wringing over the debasement of popular culture is certainly called for, we need to remember that a lot of people are also watching higher quality TV.
And Gracchus - if the “whingeing’ comment is directed at me, I promise that as soon as I figure out how to live without a paycheck, I will only accept work that meets your standards of worthiness. I can’t wait to join you atop Mt. Holier-Than-Thou! I’ll bet the view id great!

“There’s no deliberate conspiracy at work here, but there is a certain mindset that permeates the entertainment industry”

“follow the leader” is thier favorite game

And Gracchus - if the “whingeing’ comment is directed at me, I promise that as soon as I figure out how to live without a paycheck, I will only accept work that meets your standards of worthiness. I can’t wait to join you atop Mt. Holier-Than-Thou! I’ll bet the view id great!

Hey, as long as you’re not claiming it’s quality product for an intelligent audience, fine with me. But let’s face it, most people who use that “giving the public what they want” dodge are avoiding the hard truth about the nature of their product and (in the case of cultural product) the message it’s sending. I don’t have standards for what you choose to do to earn your paycheque, but I do have standards about the end result of that work.

To give you a sense of where I’m coming from, I spent years producing TV news before I got sick of the soul-destroying compromises and had the opportunity to get out (the view is great, by the way). However, I certainly understand that it’s not an option for everyone in the business, especially when the money is so good and you’ve been at it for decades. No-one’s begrudging you your living, and you’re making more of an effort to concede points about cultural degredation than most producers and executives I’ve met.

You’re quite right that, with the rise of cable and the Internet, the audience has more choices than before and that the “long tail”/power law is more in effect than in the old days. However, it’s worth noting that the bulk of those who make television their main source of entertainment and information still operate well to the left of that graph, and there lies “I’m not here to make friends” reality TV, with the crappy message it sends.

Another thing to remember is that, within limits, the cost thing isn’t about actual affordability. It’s about who gets a bigger share of the enormous piles of money sloshing back and forth. With conventional shows, the production companies and the people they employ get more, the broadcasters less (proportionally speaking) whereas with “reality” shows the broadcasters can capture a much larger share of total revenues.

Actually, Gracchus, The Little Black Bag was written first, and it was dramatized for an episode of the old Rod Serling series Night Gallery,

Actually, Gracchus, The Little Black Bag was written first, and it was dramatized for an episode of the old Rod Serling series Night Gallery

Didn’t know that, Avenger. Just looked up the Night Gallery episode on IMDb. Burgess Meredith as the doc is great casting. Do they dramatise the Marching Morons future part of the story?

Not really, it was minimized compared to the original story.

Burgess Meredith was  great as the doctor.

Night Gallery did a good version of Lovecraft’s Cool Air, Clark Ashton Smiths’ Return of the Sorcerer featured both Bill Bixby and Vincent Price, and my favorite short was Professor Peabody’s Last Lecture:

Carl Reiner is superb as Peabody, the man who just doesn’t know when to shut up (there is a lull in the proceedings, indicating that if he’d just quit while he was ahead, the Old Ones would have let him off the hook.) He’s also the professor who constantly cracks jokes which are completely unfunny. The students who are identified by name are the In joke—the names are connected to Lovecraft: Mr. Derleth, Mr. Bloch, and Mr. Lovecraft himself. The latter is very well portrayed by Johnnie Collins III, who was a dead ringer for Billy Mumy. He is very good—his face expresses perfectly his growing sense of alarm as he seems to realize what is really happening.

You Tube Link

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Huh, I always assumed that it was that, but more specifically the sci-fi explosion where somewhere around BSG or Firefly the distribution companies had to face the demand from the geek and youth markets who were demanding better distribution.

But considering the HBO revival ala Sopranos, you’re probably right that it’s a more generalized thing.

But yeah, agree with many that the main problem with TV is it’s first airing distribution. The shows themselves are actually better in terms of top quality works than movies are at the moment because of the blacklists.

A good half the time I write about TV—-the good or the bad—-someone shows up in comments to explain that they’re better than the rest of us because they don’t watch TV.

That would include me.  However, I love certain TV series - on DVD.  And your recommendtations have led me to things I would have otherwise been unaware of, for which I thank you.

But I’m better than the rest of you simply because I’m made of awesome and never make misteaks. Nyah nyah nyah.

More seriously, the advantage of not actually having a TV is that you avoid the vegging out - you’re still a keyboard potato, but it’s not as passive and automatic as sacking out in front of the TV at the end of the day.  Given how lazy I am, it’s better to arrange my environment to suit the way I want to be than to rely on my often non-existant willpower.  If I want to watch a series, I have to arrange to watch it.

And every time, I’m reminded of how, in the late 18th/early 19th century, there was a lot of concern about how novels enfeebled the mind, particularly of already feeble-minded women.

I would make a comment here, but a friend of mine would likely beat me to death with her Masters thesis on feminist themes in Mills and Boon novels…

Gracchus -
No, you’ll never catch me claiming it is quality product, although sometimes the audience surprises me. (That’s only anecdotal, of course - people I know or meet who watch shows I have worked on. And while there are a bunch of different reasons they give for why they are interested, most popular seems to be “gawking at human train wrecks.” Not particularly noble, but part of human nature, I guess, although I don’t watch them myself.)
I haven’t been at it for decades, and my position is very lowly. I wonder, if I had been at it for a long time, and I was in an executive position, if I would be more defensive. I will say, though, that there is a different type of satisfaction when I do get to work on more high-brow stuff.

Cris @87:
That’s funny! I suppose what he means is “I don’t watch TV that I don’t watch.”

I have to say that the only reality TV I have ever liked (and still like) is Ace of Cakes.
It’s a bunch of stoners, who do something constructive, are hilarious & adorable and make people happy.
That’s all I want out of a show really.
The rest of reality TV is too packed with soulless douchebags for me to care.

The Real Housewives of Washington, D.C. would be more frightening if they were (as is rumored) right-wing lobbyists. Above a certain socioeconomic stratum in this city, you cannot say that you do not work. You are either a lobbyist, a communications expert, or a consultant, even if your job consists of looking very highly polished and blathering about nothing.

I openly admit to watching and enjoying both America’s Next Top Model and Rock of Love.  I think I like both of the shows for the same reason I love Mommy Dearest, Grey Gardens and drag shows:  I love shit that is fucking bizarre and campy.  I can’t get enough of it.  Plus Rich Juzwiak writes hilarious recaps for ANTM on his blog fourfour, and the Television Without Pity recaps on Rock of Love almost made me wet my pants a couple of times while at work.  The way I see it, the entertainment industry executives may be trying to hand out polished turds and laughing all the way to the bank, but I think there is a significant population that are pointing at those turds and laughing at the stank shit the executives left behind

I wouldn’t bring in movies of the ‘30s so much as an example of opulent escapism. Glamour was certainly there for some, but a lot of the more successful films were far more knowing of the Depression than you give the era credit for. Warner Brothers was thriving, doing it by going straight for the Prohibition/Depression angle (and being the cheapest bastards in Hollywood). Even their big musicals were far more street than other studios. There was plenty of escapist entertainment that did well (MGM, Fred and Ginger at RKO), but it wasn’t until the late ‘30s that the public started tiring of the gritty tales of street life and you see the opulence start to take over. Another think you’ll notice if you watch a lot of ‘30s movies. The plots show women having jobs in them almost as a matter of course. The enforcement of the production code was the first regression in films which started in mid-1934, it’s something of a bigger regression to go from the ‘30s to the ‘50s and see how women are treated.

Gotta pay the rent.  I get that.  Sadly, sometimes we have to debase ourselves to do that.

And yes, Deadliest Catch is one of the few things on TV I enjoy and seek out.  A compelling, interesting and fun show.  Who woulda thunk it.  Crabs.  Wow.

If you can get it, try “Holmes on Homes” some time.  It’s not really about the renovations or telling people how to do their own construction work (one of the constant themes of the show is, in fact, “Bring in people who know what they are doing”) but instead about how competent professionals react when faced with the incredibly stupid.