Reality Network -- Nein Danke
As this Monday reaches lunchtime, disturbing reports have come out that cable TV wizards have decided to create an all-reality show network. It seems that 24-hours a day 7-days a week is just the right amount of time to devote to such programs as "Survivor", "Fear Factor" and Monica Lewinsky's "Mr. Personality". If that weren't enough, there will be original programming such as "The Making of Reality TV". Vast wasteland, indeed.
The problem is that reality TV has been around since the beginning, but it was simply called "the news". Political candidates get voted out of office rather than off the island, but it is the tribe speaking. What is being flogged as reality is precisely not real. The fact that people in the business of entertainment can't see the difference would be disturbing if it were new.
Mr. Orwell called it "prole-feed" in 1984, and that is precisely what it is. But in that novel, there was a sense among non-proles,e ven those producing it, that it was beneath them. In 2003, the people who ought to feel a bit embarrassed by it are actually blaring out the news of their activities to all and sundry, whether they are watching or making this drivel.
Watching grown Americans eat slugs for a chance at a monetary reward (and actual event on "Fear Factor" in recent weeks) apparently is more real than watching children work in sweatshops in Asia, or blow themselves to pieces with left-over ordinance from the liberation of Iraq. Thank God more than half the adults in the nation don't vote.