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These charges are so contradictory as to cancel each other out. How, exactly, can reality TV mock its participants and celebrate them at the same time? In fact, the audience's relation to reality shows is more complicated. People don't watch Jersey Shore because they consider the Situation a role model. It's entertaining because the show is basically satire, a pumped-up spoof of bigger-is-better American culture. (Quoth Jwoww: "I see a bunch of, like, gorilla juice heads, tall, completely jacked, steroid, like multiple growth hormone - that's, like, the type I'm attracted to.") (Read...
...biggest proponents of the idea that reality TV appeals to the worst in us is ... reality TV. Case in point, Susan Boyle. When she showed up, unpolished and dowdy, and blew the doors off Britain's Got Talent in her singing audition, it was hailed as a sign that we were finally getting sick of the ugly, snarky culture of reality TV. Did you see her wipe the smirk off Simon Cowell's face? The judges were ready to laugh at her, but she showed them that looks aren't everything! Well, yes, except that Boyle's entire "subversion...
...Reality shows showcase plenty of bad behavior, but they also presume a heavy moralism on the part of the audience. Survivor is known for its self-rationalizing, situational ethics. Anything you do to win can be justified as playing the game. But part of the reason fans become involved in the show is that they get invested in the good guys and bad guys. (Read more about television on James Poniewozik's blog...
...their whole story was the implication that their kids were being raised to think it was all a normal thing that people do to help the family business. As Falcon Heene blurted to his dad on Larry King Live, "You guys said that we did this for the show...
...Adam Goldstein, a.k.a. DJ AM, died last year of an overdose resulting from a drug relapse - while making a reality show about drug abuse for MTV that brought him close to his old temptations. NBC's The Biggest Loser casts ever heftier contestants and subjects them to ever-more-stressful challenges, to the point where it seems a competitive-eating reality show would be healthier. Sometimes it's the producers, not the viewers, who could use the reminder that it's not O.K. to do whatever it takes to win the (ratings) game. (Watch a video with Jillian Michaels...