The realness in reality

I'm not sure that I'm qualified to write on reality shows. In fact, I'm sure I'm one of the least qualified people in America to do so, because I have barely watched them at all. Sure, sometimes while flipping through the channels I've caught 5 or 10 minutes of The Biggest Loser or The Amazing Race, but the last reality show I purposely watched was also the first-- the first season of Survivor, way back in 2001.

In this unassuming little summer show were the seeds of every reality show to come-- the forming of alliances, the double-crossing, the bizarre product placements, the pointless but dangerous challenges, and the endless talk. It was all fresh and new, then, and nobody knew what to expect. Whether they knew it or not, those 12 people cast away on a remote island were setting the rules for a whole new genre, and they were doing it innocently and in good faith. (And even when they acted in bad faith, it was done in good faith, in the sense that they were following their own instincts and not some idea they had of how people were supposed to act on a reality show.)

I remember being blown away by Susan's famous "Rats and Snakes" speech during the last tribal council, and what fascinated me at the time was the amount of emotion she showed, yet when I viewed it again right now, what impressed me instead was her sincerity. She really believed that people's actions on the island reflected their personas in real life, and she was entirely willing to judge her fellow competitors on the morality of their behavior. That seems like such an innocent stance to take now.

The state of reality shows right now is much more confusing. Sometimes we, the viewers, want to believe that everything we see on a reality show is really real, that the couples that find true love will live happily ever after and that the people who get hired to work at a company will have long and fulfilling careers there. Yet at other times, when there is conflict involved, we fall back on the notion that it's only a game, that the things that people say and do to hurt each other aren't real, and that they are all just actors going through the motions and trying to make it seem convincing, in the same way that professional wrestlers do. We want to have our cake and eat it too.

Susan's speech is the reason I've never watched another reality show, because I realized that watching real people hurt each other was not my idea of entertainment. I remain devoted to fictionalized worlds that let us explore conflict in a safer way, without ruining the lives of real people. I hope that in time the rest of the world will join me.