The sheer amount of “reality television” on the air most evenings is disturbing. Even more disturbing is the fact that the vulgar, base, inane, and otherwise offensive content of these television shows passes for entertainment and many young Americans are being raised on a steady diet of this brainless garbage.
For these reasons, I was intrigued to happen upon a new book and website dedicated to exposing the insanity and danger of reality TV:
In Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV, Jennifer L. Pozner, founder and executive director of Women In Media & News (WIMN), takes a fierce, funny, and in-depth look at how reality TV affects our beliefs, our behavior, and our culture. This genre encourages us to think less and buy more… but Pozner isn’t buying. Instead, she lays out the deep-seated biases reality TV promotes about women and men, race and class, love and marriage, sex and beauty, advertising and consumption, and more. Drawing on a decade of journalistic research, she connects the dots between reality TV’s hostile representations of women and people of color to decades of similarly harsh narratives in news media and politics.
Do you watch Reality TV?
I was an early fan of Survivor—the pioneer American reality television—back in its early days, but I don’t watch that one anymore.
I have seen enough clips of many of the newer, bolder shows mentioned at Reality Bites Back, however, to know that author Pozner is not exaggerating when she claims that our culture is at stake.
She writes:
“On The Bachelor, twenty-five interchangeable hotties compete for the chance to marry a hunky lunkhead they don’t know from Adam. Weepy waifs line up to be objectified for a living (or simply for a moment) on America’s Next Top Model. Wealthy ladies who lunch backstab while obsessing over brand-name clothes, cars and jewels on The Real Housewives Of…everywhere. Branded “ugly ducklings,” appearance-obsessed sad sacks risk their health to be surgically altered on The Swan and Dr. 90210. Starved women get naked for Oreos and men gloat about “dumb-*** girl alliances” on Survivor. Women of color are ostracized as deceitful divas on The Apprentice, lazy or “difficult” on Wife Swap and Bridezillas, and “ghetto” train wrecks on VH1’s Flavor of Love and I Love New York. And through it all, slurs like ... are tossed around as if they’re any other nouns.”
This is entertainment?
This is the best we can do?
Of course it isn’t. But until those of us who choose to watch television demand something other sex-saturated, mindless drivel aimed at the lowest common denominator ... sex-saturated, mindless drivel aimed at the lowest common denominator is exactly what we’ll get.
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I am not a reality TV fan.
I do believe that our media choices ultimately affect our lives. Watch it long enough and the attitudes we see are absorbed by us. We develop a relationship with the personas we see and begin to justify our actions by saying “They are a lot like me”.
Youth especially do not grasp that while reality TV has a footing in real-life, it is just entertainment and is very contrived. Take Jersey Shore for example. While those may be real individuals in an actual setting, they were chosen specifically to fit roles in this program and someone is guiding them. Then teens go out and try to emulate these individuals in both deeds and dress.
I would add another suggestion to the statement about demanding better entertainment. As Father James Keller, the founder of The Christophers once said, “There is some value, of course…in turning off vulgar, boring or subversive radio and TV programs…But the cure does not lie there, for it is like objecting to bad food without providing anything better…New and better writers can be found. They will come from among you…the vast group of Americans who constitute the backbone of our nation and of our Christian civilization.”
Our TV shows and movies are only as good as the people making them. If young people (or even older people) with a talent for media & the arts and a solid grounding in their faith would become writers, producers, executives etc., the quality of media would change. Thankfully groups like Act One have been working on that for years, but there’s still much work to be done.
There are some good programs on TV, unfortunately, you really do have to look for them. Increasingly, whether it is reality TV or scripted TV, it embraces and celebrates the worst aspects of our culture. I find it harder and harder to justify turning on the TV. Thank goodness for books.
I think the question is not so much, “Can’t they put something better on TV?” but, “Can I expose my kids to something better?” Who says we have to watch TV, anyway?
In our family of seven kids, who range in age from 2 yrs. to 16 yrs. old, we have had periods where we had cable and periods where we didn’t have cable. We are in one of the periods now where we don’t have cable.
Without cable, the kids use their imaginations, they create art, they play together, they are happier. They live fuller lives instead of watching others live (often times immoral)lives. To permit TV in the house is not much different than permitting a stranger into your house to display and propagate all kinds of obscene and immoral behavior.
Many will say that TV provides “teachable moments”, and that is certainly true. In my experience, however, living in relationship to others provides an enormous number of teachable moments.
We do watch movies as a family, but only those movies that are consistent with our morality. It seemed revolutionary to live without cable at first, and now it seems revolutionary to permit cable in the house.
I appreciated this post very much, Danielle, and especially liked Tony Rossi’s comments—all of which I plugged today on my own blog, “High Concepts,” devoted to the entertainment industry, new media, and culture. See danielmcinerny.blogspot.com.
Joy you make excellent points and I totally agree that people use these bad programs to justify bad, immoral behavior. On the otherhand, I disagree that there is not enough quality programming. I have over 300 channels and 10 of them are dedicated religious/catholic programming. Animal planet, Foodtv, HGTV,History channel, NatGeo and plenty others provide family safe educational programming. My sister monitors her childrens programs and they don’t have access to this horrible shows. At the same time, they don’t spend alot of time in front of the TV either. They spend alot of time writing stories, reading and drawing.
I would point out that there is another aspect of Television, that, with few exceptions, it is more difficult to defend our family against (well short of Tivoing everything…). Commercials. Even if we only watch the best stuff on other networks, we still are bombarded with many of the worst aspects of our society through commercials. EWTN and some other religious stations are exceptions….
Not all reality TV is sex-saturated, mindless drivel (some of it is actually compelling and humorous mindless drivel). I have reasonably high hopes for TLC’s new “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” (premiering this Sunday!), and I thoroughly enjoy SyFy’s hilariously tongue-in-cheek paranormal investigation / international globetrotting show “Destination Truth”.
So yeah, like most things entertainment-related there are good examples and there are ad examples.
outside of EWTN, tv is a wasteland of filth
“Reality TV” in our house is usually “Unwrapped” on Food Network. My kids loving seeing how candy and other foods are actually made and distributed. Then there’s “How It’s Made” on the Discovery Channel, I think. Another good show about how things are made. Presently, we’re a huge fan of “Dogs 101” on Animal Planet. Learning all about lots of breeds of dogs.
It is truly frightening what most people consider entertainment today. It is no great surprise that our society is going down the proverbial toilet, since everything being consumed is utter garbage.
It seems to me that all this sexually charged “reality” TV is nothing more than a primer for the “Adult Industry”.
My wife and I gave up the unreality of television a year ago, and now only watch movies from Netflix. We control the content, and tend to spend our time with films based on classic novels. You have no idea how wonderful it is to have the TV demons banished from our souls. Of course there are hideous films, too, but it is easy to keep them out of the house. The TV lets in Legion every day.
As some people previously mentioned, Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel has some good content. You just have to be picky. I enjoy “Deadliest Catch” and “Mythbusters” as just two examples of good television. And you get get them on Netflix. I also ditched my expensive cable TV package in favor of Netflix so I can watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it. You know how refreshing it is to banish television advertising from your life?
I only watch two “reality” shows. These are “Undercover Boss” and “The Apprentice”. I have never watched Survivor or any of those shows.
I like undercover Boss because it shows a CEO of an actual company going undercover and trying and usually failing to do an employee’s job. At the end of the show, he rewards the people he worked with and vows to change things in the company. I’ve seen the CEO’s of Direct TV and particularly Frontier Airlines really learn what hard work is like.
As for the Apprentice, I will admit that I am fascinated by what lengths some of the so called young business people will go to to win and the backstabbing that goes along with it. Unfortunately, it is really a mirror on what goes on today in many offices.
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