Reality TV
by Mentality
Ever since the first release of a show called 'Big Brother' in Holland, Reality TV shows have stormed the air waves. The theme? Big Brother was to be some sort of omnipresent being, constantly watching the 'house mates' every second of the day. The truth? Dozens of cameras have been concealed behind walls and on top of trees and fences to stream to the nation, live 24/7, the lives of 12 people, living out their lives for the next two and a half months.
You may well be familiar with Big Brother in your own country. 27 countries have made their own versions of the show, including the UK, Germany, France (known as Loft Story) and the USA. It has also seen the birth of other reality television shows, such as Temptation Island and Survivor. It has spawned other events too. The most read newspaper in the UK has offered £10,000 to the first two house mates which sleep together! Has this gotten out of control?
But one must question - what is the interest? When the whole plot is stripped down to its roots, what have you got? People sitting in a house, watching other people..sitting in a house.
So what is the fascination? The wonderment? The craze that is, Reality TV.
Many psychologists believe that humans are fascinated by prying into other people's lives. We love to be nosy, we love to watch others go about their daily lives, none the wiser to the fact that you're sitting there, cuddled up on the sofa, watching them!
It is also very likely that this is the reason for the extraordinary popularity of the 'Reality' Game - The Sims which was (and is) such a success. In this game, you create the characters lives and you control them - they do your bidding. They can have children, go to parties, have pet, have jobs and even die! All this, whilst you mould and shape their destiny and watch them whenever you feel like it.
If we are honest with ourselves, there is a slight perverseness in most of us. We cling on to the hope that maybe, one day, at some point in the series, some juicy gossip might be spurted out, or something steamy might arise in the bedroom - as long as the majority still cling to this hope, Reality TV will continue to rock the air waves and be ever more successful.
In my honest opinion, there is no harm as long as it stays at its current level of entertainment. I do not believe it to be in conflict with human rights, nor it to be violating privacy laws and it certainly isn't going to be the down fall of society as so many organizations try to make us believe.
It does worry me on the other hand, how out of control society starts to go as soon as a new series is released. What's more, it worries me how many people are sucked into the producing companies 'scandals' to take peoples money - text message voting, website voting, phone charges - so many ways are being conjured up to make people like you and me throw our money away like confetti.
Perhaps it is time for us to keep an eye on Reality TV, and not the other way around.
© Mentality 2003
Editor's Note: An interesting twist occurred in the UK when people answered an advert to take part in a reality TV show for a year. A dozen young people were chosen and, after giving up their jobs and, in some cases, their homes, they waved goodbye to family and friends and prepared to be on TV. They arrived at the production company to discover that their 'challenge' was to split into two teams and make a million pounds over the next year - they were to be given neither money nor even a place to sleep, they had to do it all themselves. If this weren't shocking enough, it then transpired that there was no TV show, the Producer merely 'hoped' a TV station would pick it up if this project went ahead. One of the groups split up and went back to their families, having to deal with the fact that they'd lost jobs and homes because of a scam. The other group holed up in a house and started to film themselves, and their battle against the Producer, Nick Russian. In a further twist, this particular group eventually sold the filming they had done to a national TV station as a documentary.
