Battle Of The “Experts”

This month, our staff contributors Kid Spill and Shel Desormeaux tackle the controversial subject of Reality TV.

Kid Spill: Okay, so reality TV.  Good or bad?  Well, obviously it’s “bad” in the “quality” sense, but one can't deny the so-called guilty pleasure appeal of made-for-the-masses, shock-tactic, sucks-you-in media.  I, for one, have a thing for the Top 40 stylings of many young and coiffed starlets while driving in the car alone.  Like candy, the music is amazing for like five minutes but then sours and makes me feel ill.  I don't, however, see how this sort of blissful indulgence extends into reality TV.  Since it’s “real” people, you don't get that voyeuristic rush of taking part in the glam, shiny bits of the entertainment world.  You're just sitting home, watching some boring yokels cry or bitch to the camera, instead of directly at you the way your friends do.

Shel: Could one honestly make the argument that aside from HBO, other networks offer any quality programming?  TV is shit, there's no question about that.  Young and coiffed starlets hold no appeal for me.  My heart lies with unabashedly naked queers.  No.  Hang on.  Young and coiffed starlets... Okay.  If you allow 15 minutes, okay, yeah, I can dig them.  The Bachelorette   Have you ever sat through one of those??

Kid Spill:  I think for SURE other networks make good TV!  Even dirty Fox offered up The Simpsons; although that was just smart programming - it’s not like the morons that are involved in Fox "News" had input into The Simpsons when it was at its peak.  I also think that some of those crime shows are pretty good, and Scrubs and Gilmore Girls are wholly mainstream and kinda dodgy but have moments of cool, quirky awesomeness.  So yeah, TV in general is shit, for sure.  But there are alternatives to the wave of reality television, which has hopefully crested.  I don't see how it couldn't have - how many people are yet to be exploited?  Surely the supply of willing Americans is running dry.  The unabashedly naked queers brings up a good point: props for Queer Eye and the rest of them, like Amish in the City and Survivor (and even that bizarre one that includes a gay dude “acting straight”) for attempting some kind of representation of gays (although lesbians and non-Carson looking, non-hair-flipping, non-accent-having, non-shopping-obsessed gay men are fully absent).  All of the representations are weak and simply used to play off the straight normals that middle America is meant to identify with.  I have indeed sat through The Bachelor - the rose?  Yeah,  I would fucking love it if one of the girls was like “I don't want your petty, played-out rose, you sickitating man-whore!  Damn.”  Those shows are truly breeding grounds for oral herpes.

Shel: The Simpsons, Law & Order, CSI... I'll give you those.  But two of the three have been running for years, and the third could go into either overkill or in the same direction as L & O.  Scrubs has had its moments, but Gilmore Girls hurts me in a strange, strange way.  I don't know, it’s TOO quirky for me.  It’s tried to be too hip and you can see signs of strain over there.  Yes, I'll agree that gay representation is so horribly skewed, but it's THERE, finally.  It sucks that Will is such a prissy piss ass and Jack's a braying little fop, but ten years ago they didn't exist. Moreover, Queer Eye heaves a straight guy into a den of gay men who have to touch him, and he loves it.  And there was NOTHING limp-wristed about Survivor's first winner.  Richard Hatch is a bastard, plain and simple.  The Bachelor is a better example of what I was driving at, though.  Reality TV exploits people, yeah, in spades.  But these people want this exposure.  They want a chance at fame and money.  They willingly allow themselves to be manipulated and edited into becoming whatever character the producers have decided their show needs.  I gotta tell ya, I get off on the idiocy of the whole affair.  Nothing kills time better than watching four bims bawling over the “love” of a man they've known for 16 hours.

Kid Spill: The gay character issue is still troubling.  Sure, Richard Hatch was a Machiavellian arse, but he also hung out naked.  Because remember, gays love to force it on other people!!!  I don't think representation is enough on its own, or else we could say that lesbian issues are being examined in some current beer commercials.  The problem with the Queer Eyes/Survivors/etc., as well as all the dating shows, as well as The Swan and the “Makeover Insanity” shows and what have you, is that they all, individually and as a whole, really push this idea of normative, compulsory heterosexuality, complete with a very white, upper/middle class aesthetic.  And calling that “Reality TV” (i.e. all women want is a doughy-faced man in a tux and an ugly ring!  And LOTS OF PINK!) really reinforces the dark side of the dominant culture, which makes me feel creepy instead of entertained.

Shel: Agreed. Creepy it is.  But a show like Extreme Makeover doesn't just pluck a mousy little weeper out of a crowd and fix her overbite.  We're talking the real deal here.  Some of these people have been so routinely and consistently rejected by society for the way they look that they hate leaving their homes.  They have no sense of self-worth.  They hide parts of their faces with their hands and they're afraid that they actually embarrass their loved ones by being seen with them.  And dude, I hate to say this, but way too many chicks want to wear pink and hand their ass over to some doughy freak in a tux.  It's disgusting, but that “Princess on my Wedding Day” thing isn't being shaken any time soon.  Women eat that shit up.  If a TV show reinforces it, then so do bridal magazines, jewelry stores, just about anything on The Learning Channel, Julia Roberts movies, girlfriends and mothers.  It's saccharine bullshit, but too many women still buy the idea that it's the perfect way to start the perfect life with the perfect dork.

Kid Spill: Yes, for sure the quality of TV is shoddy at best, and I noticed that the shows I cited as “good” are either one-offs or long-standing dramatic fixtures.  Okay, if someone is so unattractive that they require surgery to get along in the world, why would they broadcast it?  I get the attention whores on The Bachelor, even on Average Joe, but when it comes to the Swan people, or for that matter, the Amish in the City people, it seems to be so hugely exploitative and ridiculous that it becomes unpalatable as entertainment.  Like, these Amish kids are meant to freak out the (studio exec version of) way-cool, liberal L.A. types because they are different and conservative. It’s like the fourth grade!  The very concept of the show is explicitly exploitation!  Too bad it’s not also “XXX” to add to the alliteration factor.

Shel: Because the vast majority of us are attention whores!  If I knew that after surgery, I was gonna look like Catherine Zeta-Jones, maybe I wouldn't mind half of the known universe watching my nose surgery.  And a bunch of Amish kids on TV?  They're still kids, and maybe they've never OWNED a TV.  Everybody's gotta sign a release form, and they're all going to have their reasons for doing so, stupid or no.  There might be a little bit of arm-twisting, but I'd be willing to bet not much.

Kid Spill:  You're right, I'm sure the arm-twisting is minimal, as they could also offer stuff like limos, cash, promises of future fame and fortune; maybe they even have those warm chocolate chip cookies in their meetings. But that doesn't mean we have to watch their exploits on TV.  I cringe to such a degree when I watch, knowing the social implications, that it can't be fun, even the cheesiest of the cheese.  Did you watch the Ryan and Trista wedding?

Shel: Mmm, cookies.  See, that alone would rope me in.  I won't deny the cheese factor, the embarrassment, and because I love... I’ll throw in the death of any present and future dignity these people ever hope to muster.  But for money and fame, dignity will often be cheerfully thrown into the toilet.  Maybe we'll discuss that some other time over, say, boy bands and steamy muffins?  You know, I started to watch the wedding, but couldn't do it. Not because it was Ryan and Trista, but because it was a wedding. Now, don't think I'm against marriage, because I'm not.  Tulle-encrusted events never did it for me.  If I cry at a wedding, it's out of boredom or frustration, or because of the stabbing pain behind my left eye.

Kid Spill: I know a girl who was maybe seventeen at the time of the epic Trista wedding (I realize there was a man involved in some capacity, but that pink fluffy brouhaha would have surely robbed him of any residual masculinity, and I'm guessing that he was curled up in the corner for the duration), and my wee friend really believed that They.  Were.  In.  Love.  She cried, she moaned and sputtered about not having a boyfriend, and she loudly fantasized about her desire to have such a wedding.  And this, my friends, is where reality TV's real horns emerge: indoctrinating the masses with ideas about network-sponsored love and commitment, and the mining of every possible moment of life that contains even a shred of action (The Amish girls left their underwear on the floor!  The Survivor girl is slutty!  The Queer Eye guys sleep with men!) for its full "dramatic" potential, and then use it to sell Mountain Dew or engagement rings. I really think it’s so much more harmful than Britney's slutasma.

Shel: I think I agree to an extent regarding Britney.  But again, I don't think you can blame reality TV alone for this fluffy brain soufflé.  That has been going on for generations, with many to blame.  And really, these TV match-making messes are an extension of telephone and internet dating services and the like, and we're a bunch of voyeurs.  Was it DeBeers that sold the idea that an engagement ring should cost three months salary?  What a load of crap.  I don't like diamond rings, do you know that?  I was married once upon a time, and my engagement ring was a garnet. A lot of people thought he was cheap, but that's what I'd ASKED FOR!

Kid Spill:  I agree that there is a long and sordid history of mainstream media focusing in on the nasty and torturous parts of human life for entertainment value. And I don't necessarily have a problem with that. It just seems that while some aspects of Western society are getting more progressive, and in my opinion, better, there is this enormous movement to backpedal and reinstate tired gender roles and conceptions of how people are and "should be" (see The Swan, Average Joe, all the decorating shows, the heinous wife-swapping show), which, yeah, includes the ring and the roses and the Crest white-strips teeth.

Shel:  Stereotypes take forever to fade; maybe they never really do.  Take away reality TV, and life is still nasty.  Maybe just a little less fun?  And you'll get enough rings around your roses when Brit gets married to that slacking sack in a couple of months.  Reality is really sad. But sometimes, it's really good. Life's like that, man.

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