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Marielle project 4-5 final draft

Page history last edited by marielle frattaroli 12 years, 3 months ago

Here’s the world of reality television. The cast members bear little resemblance to your usual television actors (but they also seem quite unlike you and me). In exotic settings and high-stakes competitions, strangers are stranded and banded together, elevated to star status as long as they are willing to do and say things we could never imagine. Video editors whirl through raw footage, past the mundane, in search of incidental lusts or brawls. Promises are bound and broken in a single breath. Triumph is declared over enemies who, moments before, were friends who, days before, were strangers. True love may or may not be found, depending on whether the check is real. (Jaffe)

 

This is almost an exact picture of what reality shows have come to be.  Over the past thirty or so years, reality television has become quite the oxymoron.  These shows are not reality.  Reality TV shows are a horrible source of entertainment because everything about them is indeed fake, not reality, and they provide bad morals to their audience. 

The fad of reality television started way back in the 1940’s and 50’s with Allen Hunt’s “Candid Camera” and the more ‘talent search’ type show, “Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour.”  Just a few years later, throughout the 60’s and 70’s, reality shows were turning regular everyday people into normal celebrities.  The first show to do this was a documentary style show called “An American Family” which followed a family going through a divorce.  Also during the 60’s and 70’s, dating shows started to appear where people would give anything, including their dignity just to be on TV.

 

The 80’s and 90’s are when things really started to heat up for the reality television industry.  The show “Cops” was the first to introduce the camcorder look, which is now a huge phenomenon.  One of the most famous reality shows as well as well as one of the longest running also came to be: “The Real World.”  This show brought strangers from all around the country and put them in a house together.  Everything these strangers did, including the partying, fighting and hooking up were recorded.  It introduced the concept of unscripted drama which many reality shows now rely on.  The strangers were recorded 24/7 for five months which produced thousands of hours of video which had to be cut down to less than a hundred hours of film to fit into a season of one hour episodes.  Production studious like Avid Technology made that happen.  They were able to cut days and days of footage into a small amount of time.  This was later caught on by shows such as “Survivor” and is needed for nearly every reality show now-a-days.  In the summer of 2000, there was a huge blow up for reality TV.  The finale special of “Survivor” had over 51 million viewers (almost as many as the Super Bowl has). Categories for reality TV shows were added to the Emmys.  There were even television channels that started devoting every time slot to reality shows.  MTV is now one of these channels.  (Doesn’t MTV stand for music television? Hmm…) Since the blow up in 2000, people have become addicted to these shows.  They have literally taken over.  You might as well switch the M to an R to stand for reality. 

 

Over the course of reality television’s rise to popularity, the messages the shows give have changed drastically.  What used to be all about fun and real life problems has turned into drinking, fighting, having sex, humiliation and people trying to be “beautiful.”  These reality shows don’t even try to replicate real life anymore.  These worlds that these “characters” live in are completely fabricated.  These people are thrown into unreal environments and are told to act a certain way.  The producers specifically select the participants of the show and carefully design certain scenarios, events, and settings to encourage particular behavior.  Mark Burnett, creator of “Survivor” has agreed to this and makes sure to avoid the word ‘reality’ when describing his shows.  “I tell good stories.  It is not reality TV.  It’s really is unscripted drama.” –Mark Burnett (Wikipedia).

 

            Almost everything on reality shows are planned, even though they are said to be unscripted.  The film editors search and search through hours of footage to find drama worthy enough to be on television and often combine audio and video from different times to get the results they want.  They even make the characters re-do a fight, kiss, etc. if the camera angles weren’t good the first time.  As you can see, these shows are far from reality, but that’s not what the audience thinks. 

 

            The primary audiences of most reality shows are pre-teens, teenagers and young adults.  (So, ages ranging anywhere roughly between 11 and 30.)  Although that doesn’t seem like a very large age group to be directed towards, you would be surprised with how many people actually watch these shows.  Reality television shows have topped the charts since the big blow up for the genre in 2000.  In particular, two of those shows are “Survivor” and “American Idol.”  “Survivor” led the rankings in years 2000 to 2002 and “American Idol” took over the top spot every year after that until 2010.  These two shows as well as many others such as “Big Brother” and “America’s Next Top Model” have had such high success rates, that they have been syndicated in countries all over the world. 

 

            These millions upon millions of teenagers, children and young adults that watch these shows believe what they see to be identical to real life.  As already mentioned, these shows are carefully planned out but are made to look like they aren’t.  The audience is essentially brainwashed to think that what happens on reality TV is normal. 

 

One thing on reality TV that the audience thinks is real is the relationships.  Whether you’re watching “Tila Tequila’s: A Shot at Love” or “Survivor,” you’re bound to see relationships form.  Most, if not all of these relationships, are mindless.  On the competition shows like “Survivor” or “The Amazing Race,” friendships are formed just as fast as they are broken.  These friendships are often referred to as allies.  They stick together and team up against the other contestants to stay in the game.  Sometimes, things don’t go as planned for these packs.  Many times, as I have often witnessed on “Survivor” when I was younger, these people turn their backs on each other way too many times to even consider themselves friends.  If one vote was needed to eliminate someone, that persons allies would quickly have a change of heart and eliminate them.  “The tribe has spoken;” a member of the ally was eliminated just so the other members could be closer to the prize.   What could have been great friendships are ruined daily by reality shows.  Undoubtedly the audience catches on to this act of befriending and unfriending.  It is seen everywhere.  People use other people to get what they want.  The second they get that big promotion, scholarship, the popularity, etc. they’ve been waiting for, they drop their so-called friend faster than a drug dealer drops dimes.

 

When I was younger and in Junior High, I witnessed this first hand.  I had been best friends with a girl for three years when she made friends with a new group of kids.  Suddenly, I became this horrible person that she didn’t want to be friends with anymore.  As a result, all of her friends thought the same way about me.  I was exiled from my group from friends just because one person had decided that her new friends were better than me.  I guess she was just using me until something or someone better came along, just as contestants do in reality shows but with money.  The tribe had spoken. 

 

Reality shows are overflowing with all of the love and sex scandals; it’s hard to keep up with all of them.  That’s why you shouldn’t.  On shows like “Tila Tequilas: A Shot at Love” or “The Bachelor,” the contestants are actually competing for love.   Tila, the many different bachelors, Bret Michaels, and every other person that has their own quest for love reality show are really not on a quest for love at all.  They are given, yes actually given, twenty or so people ‘in hope’ of finding true love.  (Yea, right.)  Every episode, the celeb or person looking for love eliminates one of the contestants, narrowing down his/her choice.  Tila Tequila, famous for being in numerous men’s magazines, had both male and female contestants on her show.  Every episode was full of hooking up, both guys and girls walking around more than half naked, lots and lots of drinking, and even more fighting.  After many eliminations of her hopeful lovers, she ‘fell in love’ with Bobby Banhart who became the winner of season one.  Bobby stated that after the show finished filming, he never saw or heard from Tila again and he never even got her number.  Obviously, she wasn’t in love with him; less than a year later, season two aired. 

 

These “compete for love” shows make love seem like it is nothing to its viewers.  Contestants hook up with other contestants, the person looking for love, and even random people off of the street.  A majority of these hook ups are meaningless encounters where the two (or more) people involved don’t care for each other.  These actions of meaningless sex make it seem acceptable for its audience to have negative, non-personal relationships.  It is almost encouraged. 

 

The thought process of a normal teenager goes somewhat like this: monkey see, monkey do.  Teenagers see people on the shows the love hooking up and having sex, therefore, they must too.  Partying and having sex often leads to the one thing dreaded and feared by all teens: pregnancy.  The numbers of teen pregnancies has risen so much that documentary style reality shows were made to follow pregnant teenagers around.  These shows such as “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” were supposed to show the hardships of having a baby at such a young age.  What started out as that, soon turned in to a one way ticket to fame.  The girls on these shows are mostly doing it for the fame, not for the sake of helping and informing other teens in the same situation.  60% of teenagers have either watched or follow these shows and are being sent the wrong message.  Most of what is shown of “Teen Mom” now is all drama between the mother and her new boyfriend, the mother and her own mother, or the mother and school.  The main focus has become the mother, not the mother and the child.  Every teenager goes through hardships like these; these shows make it look like having a baby while still in high school is no big deal.  They make it look easy, acceptable. (Obviously we know it’s not.)

 

Reality TV shows, over the years, have lowered the values and morals of today’s society.  Not only with relationships and sex, but.  Since the target audience of these shows is particularly young, they will catch on much easier to what the show is selling them.  Shows such as “Jersey Shore” or as previously mentioned “Tila Tequila: A Shot at Love,” have the cast/contestants going out and drinking every night.  It is seen as one of the only activities (besides hooking up) that is fun.  Reality TV shows drinking and getting drunk as normal but only sometimes shows its severe consequences such as alcohol poisoning. 

 

Violence is also another big criteria needed for reality shows.  The arguments and back-stabbing may claim to make the show more interesting, but really, it is just teaches its audience how to be mean.  The children and teenagers watching these shows are slowly becoming desensitized to all of the violence.  By the age of 18, most children will have seen over 200,000 acts of violence of TV alone.  All this is doing is teaching our future aggressive attitude and to believe violence is ok.  Furthermore, it is proven that the violence and drama on reality TV stress the audience out.  Because people watch these shows so much, it is causing people to have high blood pressure and sometimes it can even lead to a stroke.

 

Many of the reality shows that are not the competition type, have more to do with beauty.  They consist of people getting makeovers, losing weight, having plastic surgery done, and even changing their entire wardrobe to look ‘hot’.  For example, let’s look at a reality TV show hit, “America’s Next Top Model,” or ANTM for short.  The girls on ANTM have more in common than just aspiring to be models; they are all super skinny.  The millions and millions of girls watching these insensitive makeover shows are brainwashed to believe that the models are what they are supposed to look like.  This causes many girls to lose weight and change their appearance in a drastic way: eating disorders.  Reality TV doesn’t much about how destructive eating disorders are though.  During a season of “The Real World,” one of the girls in the cast admitted to having bulimia.  The airing did not stop though most of the cast agreed that it should to allow their housemate time to get better. 

 

Reality shows never seem to show the harmful effects of the cast’s actions.  One many makeover shows, the person being made-over is often done so by plastic surgery.  Although the odds of something going wrong during the surgery are very slim, complications still do arise.  On these shows, all of the surgeries go perfectly and don’t even mention the side effects or the things that could go wrong to the patient.  Makeover shows are partially responsible for the increase in number of plastic surgeries.  These shows give off the message that you will only feel good about yourself and be like if you look like ‘this’ (insert picture of model here).

 

The last type of reality shows that are ruining today’s society are ‘stunt devil’ shows.  This has a huge phenomenon since the beginning of “Jackass” in 2000.  What started out as a television series soon turned into a blockbuster hit.  The show consists of the all-male cast running around and hurting themselves for fun.  There have been many spinoffs of this TV/movie series including “Viva La Bam” and “Nitro Circus.”  I’ll admit, when I was younger I would try to recreate some of the stunts that these “professionals” did.  (Never too the point where I was seriously injured though.)  Some people take their reenactments way too far.  Jason Lind, only 13 years old, was hospitalized in critical condition after he poured gasoline all over himself and caught fire.  He was trying to recreate a stunt where “Jackass” star Johnny Knoxville turned himself into a human weenie roast.  There are many many other reports of these kinds of incidents, some even ending in death.  Shows like this are encouraging dangerous behavior and make it seem like they are safe to do. 

 

Though easy to see what kind of horrible morals these shows provide it's audience, some people still believe that they are not harmful in any way; they are just another form of entertainment much like any movie or song.  Many of the shows younger viewers claim to not live their lives by the examples the characters give them.  One instance of this is a younger teenager, Marlena Roman, who is 16 years old.  "It's basically real life, like if you were in the real world. It shows how your friends would disobey you and betray you with lies and deceit."  For Marlena, it's pure entertainment. She doesn't go out and stab friends in the back as a result of watching the show. (Cleveland)  If this is so, then why are the incidents like teen pregnancy, alcohol and drug use, casual sex and violence that are shown on reality TV becoming more and more popular and a regular part in everyday life?

 

With every new reality show that’s aired, society’s morals, values and beliefs go a little further down the drain.  If we have any respect at all for ourselves and hope for the children of the future to amount to anything, something needs to be done to stop the sending of these horrible messages that reality shows give.  As a way to possibly eliminate these effects caused the misleading content of reality TV, I propose that cable companies start treating these shows as special presentations. 

 

Personally, I believe that most reality shows should be banned from television for good.  When I say most, I mean the ones that I have previously talked about that provide bad morals as well as the ones that are similar.  Certain shows like “Dancing with the Stars” and “American Idol” provide no harm whatsoever but I do think they have overstayed their welcome and have encouraged too many other shows to be made such as “So You Think You Can Dance” or “America’s Got Talent.”  Now I know that these as well as other reality shows will never be banned from television all together, but there is a way to get them off of cable television where people of all ages can see them.  I suggest making special pay per view channels devoted solely to reality shows.  Many many programs on pay per view channels are as popular as programs on regular cable channels, even though the viewers are required to pay extra to watch them.  People pay up to fifty dollars just to see one UFC match and sixty dollars every month for channels like Starz and HBO.  Clearly, these channels are comprised of shows that people really want to see.

 

Since reality shows are so incredibly popular, being on a pay per view channel shouldn’t matter much.   A sixteen year old girl said this about reality shows: “It's addicting, it's exciting to know what happens next. You can think about it, if you were in that person's shoes." (Cleveland)  This is how the majority of the people who watch these shows feel; they are simply addicted.  The need to see what happens next is much like the need for nicotine.  If people will pay ridiculous amounts of money for a box of cigarettes because they are addicted to them, people will pay ridiculous amounts to watch reality shows because, likewise, they are addicted.

 

Putting reality shows on a pay per view channel will eliminate a lot of vulgar content on every other cable channel.  The cable networks that have given most of their time slots away to reality shows like MTV of VH1 can go back to what they are supposed to be showing: music.  I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a music video on MTV and incorporating music back into television would greatly improve the music scene and give hope to all the young musicians and bands out there. 

 

Also, many a great shows on channels such as ABC like “Ugly Betty” or “Detroit 1-8-7” have been canceled and their time slots replaced with reality shows.  No doubt that these shows were popular, “Ugly Betty” was nominated for 27 Emmy awards and America Ferrera won the award ‘best actress in a comedy.’  Clearly, people still like shows that are scripted and tell a good story.  Eliminating reality shows on cable television will give these shows a chance to make a comeback; some shows that have been canceled may even be signed to make another season.  Having more of these ‘regular’ shows back on cable will increase a need for script writers and actors/actresses.  As many people aspire to have these professions, this will allow them to actually find a job and most likely keep it. (Instead of spending thousands of dollars to go to a fine arts school in New York and then work as a waiter because of the lack of opportunities available.) 

           

Although reality ‘stars’ will get paid extra money for having their shows on pay per view channels, I believe the switch is worth is.  Let them go spend their money on big hair, tan skin, gaudy clothes and other useless things.  At least we don’t have to see it anymore.  In this case, the benefits outweigh the cost.  Big time.  

 

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