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18 March, 2000
Why reality TV?

Do you ever want an escape? Ever want to get away from the mundane realities of daily existence? Well, today’s media-soaked society has plenty of escapes. Or does it?

It used to be that, to forget about the 9 to 5, to avoid the ever-present obligation to do homework, or to put off whatever other humdrum commitments we had, we would turn to television to distract us. We could watch crazy Captain Kirk, those bizarre Bradys, or at television’s high points, the mysterious moonwalk. Television was about stuff that we were unable to witness or experience due to the earthly restrictions of our existences. It used to be one television set per about five families. Now it’s five television sets for each family.

Television is everywhere. The visual image, printed, projected, digitized, dominates our urban environment. Now our surroundings are infinitely manipulable; we can create anything we want. Now the walls of our previosuly humdrum lives are humming with constant drumming of wild imagery. Anything is possible. The pace of our virtualistic lives is getting so fast we now have to stop to catch our breath. But where do we do that?

Well, since television has come to give us almost everything we could ever desire (a walk on the moon, a stroll through the jungle, professional chefs in heated cook-out competition), we have come to need the outside, “real” world that much less. It has come to the point that many of us don’t really go out to see much at all. It’s all there on the screen. But if we don’t leave the house, and television is all fantasy, how do we see anything real? The answer, my friends, is “reality programming”.

“Reality programming” is the label now given to shows such as Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire, Blind Date, Survivor, and all those disaster shows that drool and lick their lips over tornadoes and dumb tourists running with the bulls, and with the camcorder. It’s labelled that because it isn’t a fiction, technically. No suspenseful plots, no traditional scripts, no star actors. It’s reality, beamed straight to your comfy recliner, a nice escape from all the fake imagery surrounding us in malls, on streets, and even in public washrooms.

I find this to be alarming. Even the name “reality programming” is somewhat disconcerting, don’t you think? I mean, a disaster show I saw kept flashing the word "REAL" in psychedelic colours between dramatic, breathtaking segments. The narrator-guy kept stressing how real, how authentic all their footage was. It was creepy. Not to mention the bizarre voyeuristic obsessions the show plays on. Something or someone is usally getting destroyed or injured in some way here. Yikes.

At least that is stuff that requires a “right time, right place” kind of lifestyle, which most of us don’t have. But what about Blind Date? Do so few of us really never go on interesting dates? Do we really need to watch flakey strangers hit it off (or not) with cameras following them around? Also, how “real” would you be acting if there was a camera crew serenading your date? Don’t we at least have friends who have gone on neat dates? Do we even have friends anymore? Change of Heart doesn’t even show the date. They just film people talking about the date they went on. Fascinating viewing for all ages.

Well, even if we did learn how to date effectively, we would never use our newfound skills, because we would have Survivor to watch instead. This soon-to-be-aired show drops a dozen-or-so people on an island, and, you guessed it, videotapes them “surviving”. The last remianing on the island wins big money.

We need to re-examine the role of digital media in our lives. We need to ask why reality programming is happening. We need to ask people out on dates.

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