Why is it that shows about “normal” social situations are all in reruns, but shows about fake reality with annoying catch phrases are on prime time on every channel?
Remember “Felicity,” “Home Improvement” and “Family Matters”? These shows were a lot closer to reality than “Survivor” or “The Apprentice.” Kids got into car wrecks and parents and grandparents died. People got hurt and the family dealt with all situations in a positive manner. People lost jobs and got new ones, got in fights and made up.
At some point this just got too sticky sweet for America. We crave blood. We want to see fights and yelling. We want the censors to have to bleep out every other word.
Maybe these old shows were just too unrealistic because of their happy endings. As a society we have become cynics. We have given up on being happy in our own lives and don’t want to see anyone else happy, ever. Life doesn’t always have a happy ending, but, jeez, it doesn’t always have a tragic one, either.
Shows with happy endings are out and every show on TV should be about “real” life. Unfortunately, our “real” reality shows are all fake, and our new dramas and sitcoms are based on current events that make the news channels buzz. Take “CSI,” “West Wing,” “Law and Order” and “JAG.” All these shows get their plots from paraphrasing the news. The news scares us and thus captivates us. So to see the same thing sensationalized gives us some sort of thrill.
America is into this padded envelope of protection around reality. We don’t want actual reality. Yet people will almost come to blows about the “realness” of “Survivor” and “The Bachelor.” People watch those shows for the same reason they watched “Melrose Place” or “Alley McBeal.” We love drama! Who slapped whom or slept with whose boyfriend?
Look around your own life. Is that kind of drama actually in your life? Don’t you avoid hanging around people who want to covet your significant other or constantly start fights with your friends? Yeah.
So you don’t want drama in your own life, but you want to watch fake people pretending to be real facing idiotic situations and ending up unhappy and “Punk’d.” All of this baffles me. We would rather watch news with prettier people like our news-based dramas or fake, not-so-pretty people, be mean to each other, lie, cheat and steal like “All American Guy” or “The Mansion” than “Friends” and “Malcolm in the Middle”? I just don’t understand.
Isn’t the point of entertainment to be distracted from real life for a while? Instead, we are telling ourselves that this is “real life” and are eating it up. You can even get DVD collections of reality shows. I’ll stick to my out-there shows like “Farscape” and “Joan of Arcadia.” At least with those shows I can just suspend my disbelief and be entertained rather than revel in someone else’s fake “real” suffering with a sardonic smirk on my face.
I don’t enjoy real people’s suffering. This doesn’t create a void of any kind in my life; I don’t have to get a fix of mistreating other people. It must create a void in other TV viewers lives because these shows would not be so popular if people didn’t crave watching people suffer.
Think about it. People don’t watch these shows to see who wins, who falls in love or how they spend their exorbitant amount of prize money. They watch to see who loses, who gets mad and who throws a fit and makes a scene. The networks are making tons of loot off society’s need for failure, pain and mindless drivel. Only in America.
Adrienne Howse is a junior communication major. She can be reached at [email protected].