Societies are always falling. The world is always ending.
Human culture is always in decay. The darkest times in history are happening
right now, at least according to some people. Religious leaders, politicians,
kings and cult leaders proclaiming the nadir of human existence have popped up
all throughout history. The satirist Juvenal expected Rome to collapse order its
own weight during his lifetime, which was centuries before the empire fell.
Confucius denounced the centuries of warfare that engulfed his society and
created an ideal, based on a utopian past, which the Chinese have been chasing
for millennia. Saint Augustine predicted the world would end a thousand years
after the death of Christ, a date we passed two thousand years ago.
The point is, we always think that what we have sucks and
that what we are doing sucks and that this is the worst example of anything that
has ever existed. The grass is generally greener behind us, and if we walk a
few steps forward, we'll end up walking off a cliff.
Take television, for example. Deity some really great stuff
happening nearly everywhere, from the networks to cable to Netflix, large
numbers of people find the time and energy to lament the existence of the worst
example of television: reality shows. Honey Boo Boo and the Jersey Shore and
Celebrity Diving all suck. And, of course, their existence and their popularity
indicate just how shallow and cheap and capitalistic life has become in the
21st century.
These critics are right about a few things. First of all,
the shows do suck. By any aesthetic or objective measure, the Bachelorette (or
any of the other "real" or "unscripted" dramas on tv) is
just bad. The tension of the "dramas" is derived more from melodramatic
music cues than any of the relationships or human interactions that one might
expect to be the feature of a shoe about "real people."
And the fact that the shows exist at all is indicative of a
supreme level of greed on the part of producers and network executives. They're
extremely cheap to make. Find a pseudo-celebrity to host, stick a bunch of
angry people in front of a camera and hire an editor to work a little overtime
and you have a show good enough to anchor MTV's prime time lineup.
And the shows are popular, which obviously indicates that today’s
human beings are terrible creatures, who can do nothing but laugh as the
dimwitted members of the Amish Mafia and the self-obsessed housewives of
wherever are trotted out in front of them. Audiences are either delighting from
the exploitation of these poor souls or they are outright idolizing them,
either of which is a sufficient reason to call America morally corrupt.
There isn't much to say to counter these criticisms. The
shows are a blatant cash grab for executives, has-been celebrities and the
former telemarketers who star in them. The least that can be said is that, even
though things aren't great and even though things probably won't get any
better, it hasn't really ever been great.
Television has generally been horrible, as it appeals to the
unthinking least common denominator that is the average American. In fact,
there is an entire channel that serves as a testament to the terribleness that
persists throughout American television.
Have you ever watched the Game Show Network? If you aren't
an unemployed student or nostalgic retiree, probably not. But every one of the
shows featured on GSN is a monument to the types of cheap appeals to the amoral
common denominator that reality television is accused of being.
These aren't the game shows that we are used to today. There
is no regal Bob Barker (or Drew Carey) reminding us to spay and neuter our
pets. There is no chance to learn anything about 19th century novelists or
sharpen your word skills. It's just more glorification of stupid people.
The recipe to make a good 1970s game show is similar to the
2010 recipe for reality TV. First find a cheap set that can be reused over and
over again. Find as many desperate famous people to fill a panel or perform the
hosting duties. Then fill the rest of the empty space with guffawing dolts
willing to work for the chance of winning a prize.
Have you ever watched Family Feud? Ninety percent of the
show is Richard Dawson drunkenly kissing people. That's it. The rest of the
time is filled the families shouting out word and phrases that hopefully will
match with the popular responses of surveyed Americans. Or you could go on the
cheap, like Card Sharks did, and solicit answers from the prisoners of the San
Quentin County Penitentiary.
When the celebrity participants aren't making drunken fools
of themselves for a paycheck and a few more seconds in the spotlight, the
civilian contestants easily take up the slack. Talk about exploiting America's
stereotypes. Nearly every one of them is a fantastically long-haired, glazed
over hippie-type. It's either that of a bumbling blonde housewife, one of whom
thought bananas were orange. Don't you think they served the same role in
conversations then as Snooki and The Situation do now? With one part derision, one
part mocking humor and a little tinge of disgust.
It is not that television or society or life is terrible
right now, it's that it has generally been pretty bad.
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