Reality TV? Who Are They Kidding?

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I hate the so-called reality TV shows. They seem more far-fetched and detached from reality than a surrealist painting or an episode of StargateSG-1. Big Brother, I’m A Zed-List Celebrity Get me Out Of Here, Geordie Shore, Keeping Up with the Kardassians, etc. Where on Earth do they find these people? I know no one like them in real life. If I was crazy enough to ever sign up for such a show as Big Brother, I’d be an extremely boring contestant. I’m far too introverted and self-conscious to want to play along properly. I’d be acutely aware of the ever present, almost omniscient CCTV camera coverage on me. Could I scratch that itch I was feeling without it getting to the front news of the tabloid press? Would I make too much noise blowing my nose? I’d end up sitting on my hands and staring at the wall, avoiding talking to anyone for fear of saying something stupid in front of twelve million viewers. I guess I’d be voted out on the first eviction ballot. I find it both amazing and disturbing that the Contestants so easily forget the cameras and the viewers watching their every move, and expletive. They end up bed hopping, swearing, and expressing their prejudices very openly. Of course, applicants for places on the shows who wouldn’t do that fail the auditions. The Producers want the conflict. I’d be bad for the ratings. Careers are ruined by such shows, and reputations are shattered. Many contestants come out to find their friends have lost all respect for them, and only the winners, who are mostly forgotten within weeks, actually make any prize money from it all. Why does anyone think it is worth the trouble? The contestants forget the basic premise – being watched in close detail 24/7 and not just on TV but also on continuous Internet webcam coverage. We see only edited highlights on TV. I’m appalled when the cameras still role as the contestants sleep – that isn’t entertainment. It’s a test card transmission. What do the viewers of that hope to see other than their own waste of electricity in continuing to watch? At least that part of the viewing is a genuine reality – people left to be themselves are not particularly interesting most of the time. The most a sleeping contestant will do is get up to go to the bathroom and crawl back into bed. Whoo, must set the video to capture that one. The consequences of continuous surveillance as entertainment is that it shows how badly we behave when our guard is down. The contestants easily forget the consequences of even their slightest bad behavior, in public vilification, humiliation, and ridicule. Big Brother contestant, Jane Goody had her life shattered by the revelation of her foolishness, her racial prejudices (in her spectacular vitriolic outbursts against an Asian co-contestant), and her sheer arrogance. Her eventual doomed struggle against cancer gained back her respect, but she was obliged to treat that as another game show procedure rather than being allowed to pass on quietly and with any dignity. Her whole life and death became an un-reality TV show. The contestants forget the cameras to the point of having very public hissy fits, diva-strops, tantrums and emotional breakdowns. The producers do a lot to provoke this to boost the ratings, as without the stupid contrived forfeit games and arranged stunts, contestants would just cabbage out, and sit saying very little all day. The controversies are often engineered to trap them. Big Brother becomes another Orwellian vision – Room 101 – where the Ministry Of Entertainment pulls strings to make its individuals and hedonistic exhibitionists dance like puppets on a string. Who can forget MP George Galloway being forced to pretend to be a cat? Who can forget his constituents asking how an MP who thinks he is a cat be taken seriously in political debates? Not only would I never be a contestant in such a monstrous freak show, I could never waste valuable phone credit voting contestants in or out of the running. It seems to me to be a sadistic game, rather like the tests where people press buttons that give a prisoner an electric shock. Too many people would gleefully turn up the current. Faced with reality TV, I seek the unreality of the news, or the escapism of another channel. The Walking Dead seems more real than anything on Big Brother. I’d sooner be voted out of life by a Zombie than someone texting in to a quiz show at premium rates to decide my destiny. Arthur Chappell