Here are the scenarios: 20 beautiful women lined up outside your mansion, each one waiting for you to choose them as your lover; you’re trapped on a remote tropical island with only your wit and skill to keep you alive; switch your wife with another for one week!
No, these are not someone’s personal dreams, nor are they pathetic novels on the shelves of the library only there to collect dust. These are the current top-rated shows of primetime television.
Since the start of a little show called “The Real World” in the early ’90s, and skyrocketing since the millennium, our TV programs have drastically switched from family comedies and adult dramas to bogus “reality” shams. For an example of the forged content of these shows, here are a few program titles that all promise their contestants will surely find their one, true love in a group of gaudy and outrageous strangers: “I Love New York,” “The Bachelor,” “A Shot At Love” and “Rock Of Love.”
It is absolute madness to think that a human being can randomly be set up with their “soul mate” on a television show that is completely controlled by producers and directors. On top of that, every second of their lives is, obviously, being taped – stopping short only when contestants use the restrooms (and sometimes not even then. See: group shower scenes.) So, after the show is complete and the cameras are all gone, there is only the lover and the loved left. With their new relationship blooming and their “love” growing quickly, they are supposed to survive through all of the celebrity-like disadvantages and live their lives as if they met at a coffee shop during a college finals study break.
Yeah right.
With the genre’s title actually containing the word reality, wouldn’t you think the shows should include that vital credential? Wrong. The only reality that these shows successfully expose is the truth that the world is changing; from the looks of these shows, it’s not changing for the better. Of course change in inevitable, but every night I sit on the couch and wonder why these kinds of shows have to become so popular.
Sure they can be entertaining, but entertaining only for the pure stupidity of their contestants, and clearly not at all entertaining for true comedy or stimulating writing. But do not take my unhappiness as prudish. I do not believe the only acceptable shows on TV are either on the Discovery Channel or History Channel.
My point is these reality shows are useless in every way possible. There are plenty of comedy sitcoms on every single night to fulfill your giggle needs, and there are also plenty of dramatic thrillers during primetime to please your exhilarating wants.
So what’s the draw of these shows? Do their viewers lust after these “realities?” Or do they actually believe the shows are a reflection of their own reality? If these motives are false then why do we continue watching these shows enough for them to keep coming back and even multiply? If we, in fact, have sufficient amounts of quality TV shows that are both entertaining and enjoyable, then is it really necessary to have these shows clogging up our airwaves, wasting our primetime, and making us dumber with every half hour that we exhaust in front of the boob tube?
Hannah McCluskey is a senior at Kingston High School. When she’s not writing, she’s playing fast-pitch softball.
