Ian Shoales
Hasn't 'reality TV' always been with us?
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Reality television is epidemic now, they say, though I'm not entirely
sure what that means. Hasn't reality television always been with us?
The news is reality --- real guys and gals talking to us in real time about real events. Game shows feature real people winning real prizes. Blooper shows portray actors blowing lines, just like real people. Practical joke shows are about actors playing tricks on real people.
And then there are the shows in which real people live with real camera crews who watch them do real things. Don't forget talk shows: actors acting like real people talking in real time about their real projects and careers. So what's new?
Well, reality television is becoming ever more strange in its variations. It's not just ordinary people videotaped as they go about their daily lives --- it's the Osbournes on display. Or Anna Nicole Smith, or Liza Minelli - before she freaked. And Surreal Life! Throw a bunch of half-remembered celebrities into a house and let them stew while the camera's running. Or throw ordinary people on a desert island and give valuable prizes to anybody who makes it off alive. Or double dare ordinary people to eat bugs. Or strap them to a flaming chair and ask them trivia questions. Ask a man a woman to choose a mate for life on the air! Or have a bunch of women compete for a rich guy and then reveal at the end he's really broke and psychotic.
Of course, by now it must be clear that reality television is an oxymoron. None of these shows achieve reality, as we know it- unless being televised is somehow necessary for reality. There's a classic philosophical premise -- to be is to be perceived -- but I'm not sure that videotape even existed at the time it was formulated.
But even if it its true -- to be is to be televised -- what about those who are not televised, the watchers. Are we couch potatoes less than real?
No, we must be real, because if we're not, then nobody's watching, and
if nobody's watching, reality television doesn't exist. Q.E.D. Come to
think of it, philosophy has its consolations after all.
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JWR contributor Ian Shoales is the author of, among others, Not Wet Yet: An Anthology of Commentary. Comment by clicking here.
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