To: Reality Television

Re: Forget the Haters

For many, the start of a new year means resolving to kick bad habits, to reconnect, to achieve. For those who care about popular culture, the start of a new year means the chance to complain about the Oscar nominees, breathlessly await the return of American Idol and chat about the hits and misses of the past 12 months. This year, reality TV seems to be the target of many critics who not only declare it a miss but accuse it of nothing less than the moral decay of western civilization. Mary McNamara, writing for The Los Angeles Times online, declares that reality television embraces the “utterly mundane” in a way that is less a transcendental celebration and more about an “ordinary life lived petulantly.” She argues that the point of Jon and Kate and others like them is “not illumination but reassurance” that mediocrity and banality are not really that bad after all. Put another way, if Jon and Kate can achieve stardom by doing nothing more than badly raising eight kids, maybe I can pretend my kid is trapped in a balloon or crash a White House party dressed in my best sari and be famous too.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg takes it to a social science level and suggests that a concept termed “ecumenical niceness” has created a moral vacuum in which reality show culture has “thrived.” The idea behind ecumenical niceness is that harsh judgments are not allowed to be made about the underclass or people with underclass values. For example,  it’s not cool to make fun of anyone who happens to be single and pregnant  so the result is that unmarried birth becomes “a happy lifestyle choice.” Or if you know what ‘the shore’ is, it’s not okay to criticize anyone who may refer to themselves as “the Situation” while lifting their shirt to show off their six-pack abs. (For a primer, see MTV’s Jersey Shore).

Here’s where McNamara and Goldberg get it wrong. The guilty pleasure of reality television isn’t about the reassurance that your boring life is okay and it’s not about political correctness gone awry. It’s about the comforting notion that your life, no matter how boring, is still nowhere near as messed-up as say, the gossips of the not really real housewives of big city USA. Reality TV is not the great equalizer. It’s elitism made easy. Making fun of its participants is its core appeal. Maybe you’re not the world’s best parent but you’re way better than those people that Super Nanny has to pay a visit to. Ate a little too much over the holidays? Relax–at least you don’t have to weigh yourself in public and see the numbers projected big enough to be viewed from Mars. You might be a loser but you’re not the biggest one.

Reality television works because it allows us to believe that “we” are not “them” and in this we are not only reassured but relieved.

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1. To: The Parents Television Council

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