The Reality Behind Reality TV
Word of the day: Schadenfreude
The grim reality behind “reality TV,” part one
In case you didn’t already know, the word schadenfreude means “taking pleasure in others’ misery or misfortune” – and it’s at the heart of why so many Americans watch “reality TV.”
Starting in the 1990s with the daytime talk-show trash-fests like the Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones shows, the trend in programming featuring real people in stressful or extreme situations ties into our culture’s every voyeuristic fantasy, no matter how common or perverse. But what’s the cost of reality programming? Not in dollars (although networks and production studios save millions by using real people instead of hiring actors), but in terms of the “human cost?”
Though I don’t watch much reality TV, as a commentator on pop-culture trends, I’ve followed their progression from lowest-common-denominator trash-talk programs to situational/competition dramas like the Survivor series to matchmaking shows (like The Bachelor) and finally “extreme makeover” surgery shows. And through it all, I’ve often wondered: What happens to these people AFTER the show?
Apparently, life’s not always roses for these folks after the cameras go dark. Recently, a contestant from TV’s The Contender, a sit-comp boxing drama in which the winner gets a title shot, killed himself in his car a short time after being bested in the ring by one of the show’s other hopefuls
And a few years ago (back in 1995), a male guest on the daytime trash-fest Jenny Jones Show tracked down and murdered a fellow guest who’d confessed on-air that he had a homosexual crush on the man. Though I didn’t see the show myself, one account of it I read said the object of admiration went completely nuts as the studio audience hooted their ridicule at him.
Of course, this doesn’t justify murder, but I have to believe that being humiliated on national TV could’ve at least in part been what pushed the guy over the edge. Can you imagine what people in his family – and even strangers on the street who’d seen the show – must have been saying to him in the 3 days between the episode’s airing and the murder? Currently, he’s doing 20 years hard time for the crime
Here’s my point in talking about all this: I’m trying to call attention to the fact that our culture has decayed to the point where not only is the TV killing us slowly by rotting our brains and fattening our bodies – but we’re literally living and dying by what’s on the tube. In the next Daily Dose, I’ll tell you about another disturbing case in point that might make you want to never turn on the tube again.
And speaking of reasons NOT to watch TV
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Big Junk Food’s Bad Apple of an ad
You already know how I feel about breakfast cereals: In my opinion, there’s almost nothing worse for kids than the “Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs” (or whatever) a huge number of them are swilling down with nutrition-less pasteurized 2% milk
And as if it’s not bad enough that these diabetes-inducing poisons are shamelessly hawked to children on Saturday morning cartoons and after-school TV programming, now some of these chocolate- and fruit-flavored junk foods are taking aim at REAL healthy foods in their ads!
Get this: Kellogg’s cereals has launched an ad campaign in which a cartoon character named Bad Apple is “sour” and grumpy – his home is even back in the alley with the trash bins. However, his cheerful, friendly foil is a cinnamon stick character whose sweet taste protects the cereal from sour apple flavor
The cereal, of course, is Apple Jacks, a product that contains little of value from real apples. And according to a recent ABCNews online article on the subject, at least one advocacy group and many nutritionists and dieticians are up in arms about the ads that apparently blatantly suggest that Apple Jacks cereal is better for kids than the actual fruit.
Of course, everyone knows this isn’t true – except the kids these ads are aimed at.
What’s really funny (in a head-hanging sort of way) is that the ads portray cinnamon as the protector of Apple Jacks’ sweet taste. Yet cinnamon isn’t sweet tasting. The thing that makes the cereal taste sweet is the same thing that’s in every other mass-marketed breakfast dessert
In the case of Apple Jacks, cinnamon is only an ad-firm-conjured straw man to keep parents’ attention focused on something OTHER than the gobs of sugar their kids are consuming with every mouthful of the stuff.
Never jacking around with reality,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
