you did, for a minimum of ten minutes. And you felt much better about yourself afterwards.
That’s the first function of reality TV: it reminds you that, no matter how stupid or degenerate you might be, there is someone worse. Every drug-addled flasher in the world slimes into his morning trench coat with breezy relief, thinking: “At least I’m not Snookie.”
I’m convinced that casting these shows is very difficult. No, really. The stars must be both deluded enough to believe their lives are interesting and clueless enough to forget the camera is rolling. That’s some rare DNA in the old gene pool.
Where do these people come from? I imagine a common Neolithic ancestor who enjoyed mooning hungry lions, but how this person lived to reproduce baffles me. Maybe the rest of tribe felt the sheer entertainment value was worth preserving, provided that access to fire and sharp objects was restricted.
After all, we do much the same today. That’s the second function of reality TV: it keeps dangerous nitwits safely in their own fantasy worlds, where they can’t harm themselves or us. Imagine what would happen if these folks had any real power or influence…
Oh never mind, we already know what would happen: a Republican nomination fight.
I know I’m not the first to make the comparison, but that doesn’t make it any less apt. The vacuum inside Kim Kardashian’s skull holds more substance than all the Republican debates of this season combined. Any of the self-obsessed Real Housewives (minus the one or two sane ones who are cast for contrast) is a match for Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Rick Perry on both narcissism and, for that matter, mastery of the facts. The generic loudmouthed reality villain could replace Gingrich in a second. Romney, of course, is the miscast blandity who can’t ever make a decision.
While I hope that’s amusing, I know that it isn’t. Because it’s indicative of how the US, like a drunken, nauseous eagle, is shedding dignity in a lurching, downward spiral.
The popular glorification of stupidity predates reality TV. I’m pretty sure it started with Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which, while a great movie, portrayed naïve doofusness as a virtue. The heroes are nice enough, but Nancy Drew detective material they ain’t. Later, when kids started to regularly imitate Bill and Ted’s successors, Beavis and Butthead, the red flag went up.
The question is, are these willfully foolish characters acting as role models or as fun-house reflections? After all, Beavis is a so sugar-addicted that he regularly believes he’s prophet, and Butthead can’t read. Damn good commentary, that.
Art imitates life imitates art. Yeah, we know. They should do so; it gives us perspective, as all good commentary should. But we’ve moved way beyond commentary with the latest iteration of entertainment. While life and art imitate each other’s notable features, life and reality TV validate each others’ worst aspects.
Andy Warhol and PT Barnum together might have agreed that every sucker would get fifteen minutes of fame, but I doubt they’d have foreseen people fighting each other for a chance to eat vermin on TV. Say what you will about their standards, they still had too much class to come up with Fear Factor.
Extremes intrigue and sell. As the market for reality shows, talk shows, et cetera becomes crowded, or as ad revenue decreases, the incentive to be extreme grows (1).
But there’s a problem: it’s far easier to be extremely crass than it is to be extremely admirable. It’s easier to be hateful than uplifting. Worse, such entertainment is creating an audience whose members believe that stardom is just one degrading act away, and that political success is just a matter of spewing the most bile at the best victim.
It’s no surprise that this belief has worked its way into the Presidential race. No further or more frightening evidence is needed than recent Republican attempts to outdo each other on foreign policy. It went something like this:
Candidate One: All options are on the table with Iran. Candidate Two: Oh yeah? I’d start picking targets the moment I walked into the Oval Office. Candidate Three: Oh, Please. The second my hand is off the Bible, I’ll have the Secret Service hand me the Button. Candidate Four: Wimp. As soon as the results are in, I will personally eat Ahmadinejad and carve Ronald Reagan’s portrait into his skull!
The creepy thing is, I’m not really adding much in the way of hyperbole there. And this competition for America’s Next Megalomaniac extends to the domestic front as well, where Newt Gingrich alone is competing against himself every day to see how badly he can screw poor children.
I simply can’t believe this is sustainable or irreversible. There must be a market, however small, for virtue. A society that can produce both the vomitous Cops and the thoughtful Law & Order should be capable of producing both Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Who Wants to Change the World. Maybe, in addition to the Real Housewives of Wherever squabbling over invented drama, we could also have the Real Nuns of Calcutta fighting genuine starvation.
Yes it’s difficult. But popular entertainment can be inspiring art, and inspiring art can guide us in thought and action.
Want an example? Here:
Luke: Is the dark side stronger?" Yoda: "No...no...no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.
At our best as a nation, we haven’t chosen the quicker, easier and more seductive path. Let’s make our best our reality.