Reality TV: Watching Our Culture Die in High Definition
Kim Kardashian, Heidi and Spencer, Snooky… More Americans can tell you about these reality television stars than they can about their own local representatives, the President of the United States, or even the city in which they live. What’s happened? When did this vapid, voyeuristic obsession with reality tv become the national past-time? Move over baseball, The Real Housewives of Orange County are here and you can watch them inject botox, get lipo, or have some other elective surgery currently in fashion this week, in vivid color on your flat screen HD tv.
How did this happen? When did our priorities as a culture take such a seismic shift? Though, it is still possible to find quality programming on our big screen, high definition televisions, one need only look at the ratings to see that most are choosing not to. Scenes of personal depravity and utter stupidity are now cheap entertainment for the masses. Meanwhile, PBS (The Public Broadcasting Station), which brings our children educational classics such as Sesame Street, levels class barriers by making classical music and operas such as Aida available to everyone and still attempts to inform us with hard-hitting news shows like Frontline, loses more and more public and federal funding every year and is fighting for its very survival.
To make matters worse, satellite television now broadcasts the very worst our country has to offer to millions of viewers around the world, airing our dirty laundry for everyone to see. For years, Europeans have thrown our McDonalds burger and fries, fast-food way of life in our face as proof of our lack of culture, but we’ve been able to balk at the accusation and label their slander as snobbery. Now, however, with the rise of seemingly talentless people becoming famous for no other virtue than their desire to become famous, and our apparent lust to watch them achieve this not so illustrious state, one has to wonder if our accusers may have a point after all. What is the cultural relevance of watching people curse at, backstab, and cheat on each other? And, what kind of cultural legacy are we leaving for the generations to follow?
It feels like such a long time ago when sports were our obsession. That too, may seem to some to be rather shallow. At least, however, with sports we cheered for the very best in very talented human beings. We revered their excellence. Now, we applaud the very lowest in human beings who obviously don’t expect much more of themselves and have reverence for their low expectations.
Perhaps one day people in this culture will turn on their HD tvs, scan the 100+ stations available to them via satellite, and choose something other than Keeping Up With The Kardashians, The Hills, or The Jersey Shore to entertain them. Maybe, PBS will make a comeback. Maybe, one day people will pay as much attention to their local elections as they do Heidi Pratt’s plastic surgery. Maybe, our little love affair with this so-called reality tv will end and a more interesting and intellectually challenging cultural phenomenon will appear.
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