Is that what they’re calling cocaine now?
Comédie Humaine indeed.
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My guess is that once in a while a friend of one of the Happy Mutants gets a shot at writing a piece. It’s their pulpit so I’m not going to begrudge them lending it out now and again. Often they’re interesting, but sometimes the BBers make unfortunate choices. As an example of the latter there’s this dodgy character, who (to give you an idea of what breed of cat we’re dealing with) recently re-branded himself from “minimalist guy” to “cryptocurrency guru”:
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That’s a strange photo. Two women fully clothed and wearing mosquito netting and the third woman in shorts and seemingly not a care in the world? Maybe she’s had all of her vaccines? One of these things is not like the other.
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Breed of cat!!?? I-I say sir, I take offense to that sir! Cats are not to be associated with such low life opportunists!
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My thoughts exactly.
In this case, you can even feel the narcissistic entitlement practically oozing off the page. This person probably really believes, in their heart of hearts, that what they’re doing is somehow a positive cultural contribution.
The rest of us see them as a festering tumor.
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This minimalist guy… I just read the article.
“Does minimalism mean not having a lot of possessions?”
No, not at all. I think minimalism means having as little as you require.
By this defenition, Donald Trump is a minimalist. I suppose this explains his life philosphy on the subject. I would call him self-deluded… or a low life opportunist.
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Nice try. They’ll still be next in line after we’ve dealt with the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation’s marketing department.
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I’m a fan of historical references, too. And I’m a fan of entertainment being entertainment first and of not arguing which brand/type is better/worse. I like sci-fi, you like romance. I like novels, you like short stories. I like… you get the picture. And I understand that currently accepted forms of high(er) brow entertainment were once denigrated as worthless, bottom-feeding, youth-oriented tripe. Why are the kids reading this Dickens “novel” crap when they have Shakespeare and Homer? That’s all fine.
But we’ve had reality TV for far longer than the 25 years you mention. It just used to be called news, sports and variety shows. We had cooking shows. We had craft shows and fishing and camping shows and shows about cars and hunting. We had documentaries for “past reality” and interviews with prominent people as “current reality.”
And some of that has remained in some varieties of the current genre. Shows like “Project Runway” or “Cake Boss” or “Iron Chef” are arguably pre-set documentary/interview pieces with some conditions that create or at least promote drama (perhaps after careful editing).
But the “main course” reality shows like “Survivor” or “The Bachelor” are not “really” reality. They are a set up solely for the drama/melodrama/bathos that is at the heart of the entertaining pleasures of gossip and voyeurism, not information, news, education or even, really, narrative.
If you put odd, emotional, exciting (or, really almost any) people in an uncomfortable or tense or closely packed situation and film them 24/7 for a couple months, they’ll do some entertaining stuff. That’s true. And if you edit it properly, you can turn those moments into something resembling a narrative, or at least a juicy story.
Is there, on a case-by-cases basis, a moral problem with this? Like so many other “economic decisions,” the answer depends on the top and bottom of the moral/economic funnel:
Top of the funnel: Is it OK to pay people to live in a situation and record them, with their full consent, in order to generate, promote or edit them into entertaining situations? No. We haven’t broken a moral code there. These are consenting adults being paid or compensated to do a job. That fine.
Bottom of the funnel: Is it healthy/useful at the cultural level, to create a sector whose chief product is differentiated chiefly by voyeuristic and gossip elements?
The problem with the bottom of that funnel is that it boils down to the same “money first” argument we get from almost any conservative/libertarian: if there’s a market for it, we should do it. This is the argument that says any dollar of profit is the same as any other dollar. And that is, as we’re seeing and as you say in your article, something we’re seeing some actual consequences for.
Reality TV “normalized” Trump’s behavior as a boss on the Apprentice. Why? Because the trope of the hard-hearted, a**hole boss who gets things done is a narrative staple, and watching people get fired by a guy like that gives us a guilty gossipy/voyeur frisson. We don’t normally get to see people get fired. We hope that we don’t have a boss like that. 30 years ago, we’d experience that frisson across the back fence or at the church social or while bowling. “Did you hear about Tim? Yeah… He got called up by that Mr. Blankenship bastard and read the riot act! That bastard fired him right in front of his whole team and sent him packing! Can you believe that?”
By monetizing those “guilty pleasure” tropes as “reality,” we do two things that I think are bad at the cultural level. We set an expectation that the worst (or most entertaining) aspects of our society are OK/normal/profitable. And we anesthetize ourselves to the long-held moral point that enjoying the misfortunes of others shouldn’t be entertaining, even if sometimes it is.
Yes, the new French Novel used to be bad and now it’s good. But there are plenty of examples of entertainments that have passed away because we outgrew them or because they required more of a sacrifice than they were worth.
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There’s going to be a lot of salt here, but I’m not really here to admonish the author for working in reality television. The human race always has some annoying media trend its both flogging the best and worst thing ever. Reality television is just another example of a long series of such things.
It is not, however, “the New French Novel.” Positively comparing reality television to Balzac is, at the very least, desperately lacking in nuance. For one, Balzac was making social commentary, talking about the dominance of money, the nature of political power, “at the origin of every fortune lies a crime” and all that.
Reality television doesn’t provide commentary, it provides a spectacle. Some people might see that spectacle and come away with the impression that the behavior on display is unacceptable, but there are also a hell of a lot of people who see that and say, “that’s gonna be me someday!”
It’s also important to make note of the fact that there weren’t countless corporate entities literally beaming “La Comedie Humaine” into people’s houses. A person had to become literate and seek out those works to actually absorb them, which was a much bigger feat back then. It’s 2018 now. A toddler, with the touch of a couple of buttons, can be watching The Real Housewives of Wherever, or The Bachelor, or any one of countless shows that exist to deliver spectacle without context to whomever is willing to sit through it.
Many of those people happen to view those shows not as social commentary, or the human race being frank about its ugly, shallow tendencies, but instead as justification for the behavior they see, regardless of factors like age. The president is a perfect example of that, it’s not that he’s impressionable like a child (although that does appear to be the case to an extent), it’s that he’s a petty, selfish man, the kind of stuff used once in parables about the dangers of isolation caused by power and wealth in different circumstances. The world of reality television justifies, rewards, even glorifies that kind of thing. He walks away feeling validated, and his supporters cheer him on because they’ve accepted that kind of behavior as normal and desirable.
I get that the author enjoys their job, and I get that this is the best, and steadiest money they’ve made, but that justification isn’t really on the same scale as the thing it’s being used to justify. There are a lot of people out there who make lots of steady money and enjoy their jobs as things like heroin dealers, mercenaries, etc. It’s just a very weak argument.
Finally I’d like to add that I have watched about five episodes of the Bachelor over the entirety of its run. It in no way resembles entertainment to me. I’m not a “script snob” or whatever, I watch and enjoy some genuinely terrible media partly because it’s so terrible. I just don’t find reality television in general to be terribly entertaining, whether it’s making making a laughing mockery of an institution that some people, including myself, fought tooth and nail to see afforded to LGBT folks while the same people who watch shows like “The Bachelor” shrieked like banshees about the sanctity of marriage, watching the grotesque exploitation of people who literally risk life, limb, and the stability of the environment itself so that some bourgeois suit living a thousand miles away can eat crab cakes for lunch, or just flat out laughing at people who are so poor and/or desperate that they’re hawking their shit at a pawn shop.
Again, not personally admonishing the author for working in that part of the entertainment industry, I’m not trying to deny them a living, or deny them the sense of self-actualization and psychological comfort that the job has afforded them… but comparing reality television to the likes of Balzac or Zola? That justifies a harsh reality check. I mean, “After all, The MOST SHOCKING MOMENT IN BACHELOR HISTORY” was just a guy being a fickle, attention-seeking, privileged asshole. If that’s what the author considers “shocking”–a fickle, attention-seeking, privileged asshole acting like a fickle, attention-seeking privileged asshole–then I think that might justify calling their judgment elsewhere into question.
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first, you have to find someone who’s read Balzac
Well we know Shirley Jones has
Source - The Music Man
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I don’t watch reality TV but I don’t sneer at it either. If people find it entertaining, let them enjoy it and let people enjoy making it. Lots of people devote their lives to far more frivolous activities. I’m not exactly curing cancer over here myself.
But in defending reality TV, this article highlights the major reason I don’t enjoy it. It bills itself as “reality” and this article takes pains to argue it is unscripted. But at the same time, the writer talks about how reality TV has taught him about “landing a joke, or setting up and paying off conflicts”. It may be unscripted but the final product is a carefully produced narrative. It has more in common with professional wrestling than reality. The writer admits you can’t just point a camera at a train wreck, but then they sell it as “we pointed a camera at a train wreck”. And that always nags at me when I do watch reality TV, because I feel like I’m being lied to. Like I’m being sold “real people and real problems”, but what I’m actually getting is manufactured drama. I can’t shake the feeling that somewhere there is a room full of producers laughing at how they tricked the viewers this week.
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“In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.”
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (1969), first thesis (translation Ken Knabb).
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The Great Brittish Baking Show/Bakeoff is wonderful, specifically because all of the contestants and hosts are wonderful and loving toward one another, and it makes you want to bake more. It’s the opposite of most American reality shows.
I like Terrace House because I like Japanese culture and get to observe it without the weeb filter. Watching young Japanese people be polite to each other (and sometimes socially awkward) is lovely. I’m also trying to watch it without subtitles to work on my Japanese comprehension.
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Came here for that!
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I need to push that higher on my reading list. I’ve not read much of Debord’s work, but I am an anti-authoritarian Marxist, so I really probably should.
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A reality TV producer. Nuff said.
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I always thought reality TV was primarily where the participants were not actively and deliberately making a programme / talking to camera. Mythbusters is not reality TV. ‘Big Brother’ and umpteen other allegedly ‘fly on the walls of real people (who may have been egged on, or even scripted) doing real things’ shows are what count as reality TV for me. And I won’t watch a single one of them.
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After reading this post, I feel as dirty and ashamed as if I were to actually watch this Bachelor that the posts author keeps spewing about.
Go where the money is. Sure, you can do that, and you got lucky here, former dead tree media guy. There are just as many dummies in the flyover states as there are in NY (not sure I understood that comparison, btw; and btw, you brought it up).
I hated Survivor when it first came out. Cops, supposedly another in this ‘reality’ genre, is another show that demonstrates to me how stupid people are. And my opinion is that you and your friends are stupid for being involved in that crap. Congratulations, you got rich off stupid people, BFD.
At least I know who to blame for making television stupider than it was (how long did he say?) 25 years ago. Big reason I don’t watch anything except pbs I guess is you, Marc.
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