So as the title says,
American reality TV being really great is what I'm going to talk for
the next few thousand words. Reality TV exists in basically every
country now and there must be a version of Big Brother for every
nation on Earth at this point. I can't stand to watch a lot of
reality television shows because for the most part, every day reality
and all the people involved in it really isn't that interesting. Here
in England, where the Big Brother experiment began, and then died
before being resurrected by method of cattle prod to dance in its
shameful death throes every night on Channel 5; reality TV is
actually quite boring for the most part. I know a lot of others find
it fascinating and can get into the stories of the idiots that have
signed themselves up to make a quick buck off the modern day freak
show, but it's just such a massive investment of time that I can't
see the point in even getting started.
As with any show, it
constantly has to push boundaries and every British reality show,
whether it involves desperate regular folks trapped in a house together or even more desperate celebrities trapped in a house together, has continued to
vamp up the formula by getting increasingly wacky individuals with an
increasingly uncertain grip of their mental stability, to argue and
fight and sing loudly in the vain hope that they might get picked up
for a record deal; for our amusement. Everyone who is doing these
shows now cannot in their right mind belief that this is a glamorous
and beneficial experience to have.
Everyone that now signs up for
these shows is for the most part a desperate arsehole, and it's only
through watching it for a prolonged period that the reality TV
connoisseur is able to sample and enjoy the varied forms of desperate
arsehole along the spectrum of desperate arseholeness from the
selection of desperate arseholes. It takes investment. The editing
isn't flashy, it isn't boiled down and most of the time you find
yourself watching reality TV with the annoying reality aspect getting
in the way at all times. Reality is slow, takes a while to develop
and most of the time turns out disappointing.
So what makes American
reality TV stand out then? Because when it comes to American reality
TV, all of my earlier criticisms about the shows being held back by
lack of editing, drawn out sequences and the dull nature of reality
are all removed. Unlike most dramatised shows, whenever you see
anything extreme happen, it's effect is lessened because of the
accepted premise that the show is fictionalised. But in American
reality TV, all of it is still fictionalised, but because there is an
underlying illusion of it all being set in reality, then the show
becomes all the more mind-blowing. American reality TV doesn't just
set out to show you reality, it sets out to remake it and mutate
reality into something genuinely stranger than fiction, whilst being
fiction the whole time.
Reality TV is a big
lie, and what makes lies so effective is that they change the way you
view the world. It's a shameful and poisonous tactic which is what
makes these shows so much better than any others across the globe.
And what makes reality TV in America so fascinating and constantly
rewarding is that unlike everywhere else, there are so many different
situations where this false reality can take place that there's a
flavour to suit every taste.
In England, most reality
TV is either set in a house where twats are locked up, or in a jungle
where celebrity twats are also locked up, all the while left to argue
and do degrading challenges for our enjoyment. But the problem is
that the twats can only ever get so twattish in each subsequent season and the
challenges can only get so degrading before they cross the line of
legality. But in America there are so many shows, and even channels
dedicated to showing every single facet of life, that there's always
some weird untapped subject to draw you back in and satisfy the sick
bastard part of your brain.
TLC, also known
ironically as The Learning Channel, has gone the History Channel and
MTV route of programming, in that it basically dropped the original
premise that it was named for in order to make more money. The
Learning Channel used to be mostly comprised of documentaries which
were educational and most importantly true. Now it's filled with back
to back reality shows that pose as documentaries that constantly
bombard you with weird people and their weird situations and it's
unfortunately a lot more interesting.
Take a show like My Strange Addiction, where each week we are allowed to follow someone with a
life debilitating addiction to something that isn't drugs. It's
probably just as likely to kill them and ruin their life, but because
it isn't drugs that means that it can be done in an entertaining way.
The closest the show comes to drugs is looking at solvent abusers and
even then it barely spends any time exploring their destroyed
livelihoods and instead spends most of the time with the lens pointed
on the addict taking their drugs and then saying all the wacky things
that someone off their tits on solvents would probably say. We only
ever hear how they're feeling from their perspective, which because
they're high as hell, is always feeling pretty good and unaware of
the damage they're causing, so we can watch the show feeling mostly
at ease whilst all the negative stuff is edited out to not scare us
away.
Also notice the subtle removal of the subtitle 'The Learning Channel' on the latest iterations of their logo. They seem to be taking the route of transforming TLC from being an acronym, to simply being letters that have meaning in and of themselves.
The obsessive and
repetitive shots as the person continues to indulge in their
addiction is something that is dwelled upon throughout the short
running time. And the weirder the addiction, the funnier it is to
watch for us. Take cat licking or sniffing a baby doll's head as an
addiction and you'll be able to better imagine just how odd that is
to watch someone do. The show then boils the addiction down into a
simple fact like “Teresa sniffs her doll's head 9 times a day”
before dialling it up to a larger period of time to show us a
bigger number version of that initial stat. So if Teresa sniffs her doll's head 9 times a day then
that's over 3240 times a year. Wow that's a bigger number, look how
much I'm learning. You can do that with anything of course. I piss
once a day, and if we dial it up then that's almost 3600000 pisses
every ten millenniums. Whoa. That's a lot of pisses right there.
Bigger number equals more interesting fact.
But aside from making
their reality shows a lot more extreme and dialling everything up,
the producers of the show will also construct events to make it all
ever the more ludicrous. One guy named Cameron was on the show for being in
love with his car. It was affecting his personal life and so the producers felt that the best way for him to handle this was to tell his dad that he was sexually attracted to his car, whilst washing it
down. This is basically the equivalent of asking someone to break to
their parents that they're gay whilst lubing up the anus of a man
bent over submissively before them. On another episode, a woman
addicted to butt injections to increase the size of her ass, has a
meeting arranged for her by the producers to discuss her problem from
someone who has had a hell of a lot more butt injections. So they sit
the butt injection addict down with an ex butt injection addict who
has the biggest swollen ass that has ever been conceived by mankind and
take slowed down profile shots of her ass before sitting them in a
cafe to talk about their swollen asses.

There are several shows
that focus greatly on the daily lives of pawn shop owners. My
favourite of these is Hardcore Pawn, which details the working lives
of two children and their sleazy father Les Gold, who manage a pawn
shop along the 8 mile in Detroit. Every episode, without fail, the
family argues several times, has a series of increasingly ridiculous
and angry people storm into the shop and start arguments for
literally no reason, before ending with a cliffhanger that will usually involve a dodgy sale or a theft that will be tied up in next
week's episode. Now my question whilst watching this is, how often
does stuff like this really happen? There are over 30 episodes of
this show a year and each one has several ridiculous things happen in
it. I just can't believe that one shop could go through so many
insane customers and be wrapped up in so many interesting and winding
narratives. And yet this show has tens of hours of stories to show
without fail.
Most of the time you
can tell it's set up just because of the camera placement. The camera
is never hiding outside the door and catching an argument in the
latter half. The camera, sometimes several cameras is always set up
at the start of the fight or argument and captures every second of
it, all perfectly framed and shot. The cameras in this show never
miss a beat of these people's lives. People in the store also
strangely never ask why there are cameras inside the store, even
going to the point of being so oblivious
to their presence that they will shop lift or vandalise the shop in full view of the camera and then argue that they didn't do anything wrong.
to their presence that they will shop lift or vandalise the shop in full view of the camera and then argue that they didn't do anything wrong.
Perfectly framed reality
Most people who watch
these will be able to switch off and forget that the camera is a
physical thing, but instead belief that they are just viewing these real
life moments through some ethereal inter dimensional glass window
that sits in the middle of their television capturing all of life's
wonders in its mysterious omnipresence. But anyone who thinks about
it for a second will immediately see the guiding hand behind it all.
The construed events, the forced reactions, the set ups, the egging
on of people to make a scene in front of an audience for a short
moment in the spotlight. It's all so obviously fabricated.
And yet, it isn't.
Because it's reality TV. It's true, it's visceral and most
importantly it's real. Why wouldn't it be? Why would they lie to you? They have no reason to. And that's what sucks you in about American
reality TV. It hides behind the premise of reality and in doing so
reshapes reality for the viewer. It doesn't make you watch boring
idiots argue from a fly in the wall perspective, but gives you close
up shots of fighting and screaming from a circling vulture
perspective. Reality TV in American rebuilds reality to the point
where you can't tell that it was any different and in doing so, that
becomes your reality and an accurate representation of the world you
live in.
And that's why I think American reality TV is the best.
I once saw an episode of Big Brother where everyone was just asleep. TV at its laziest.
ReplyDeleteAnother romp through the ridiculous, H. 4 stars.
Glad you enjoyed it.
DeleteYeah I went through a phase of watching big brother live on E4 at night. It was strangely relaxing. Think it was around the time that my first ps2 broke, which would explain it.
That inflatable dinosaur is a real cutie. Has she got a friend?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately only the bloke next to her
DeleteI like the speedy response here. I request and it is done.
ReplyDeleteNow can you put £10,000 in my bank account? Details to follow.
Good article, sir.
I told you it has to correlate. This time, not so much.
DeleteWhen a shy retiring football phobic bride to be is happy to get married on a football pitch at half time in an FA cup match the suspicion that she was a spurs supporter all along has to grow. Back stoyr: the whole thing is paid for as long as I look aghast.
ReplyDeleteWell put, Billy B.
I could write an entirely separate thing on wedding day reality shows. Some people will squander absolutely anything for free shit and publicity.
DeleteLiking your new schedule, guys.
ReplyDeleteHarvey on top form again.
Glad you enjoyed it. I too like the new schedule. Just hoping that my handful of random subjects that I think of during the week dont dry out too quickly.
DeleteI hope Judge Judy isn't staged. Her biting assessments are so amusing to watch.
ReplyDeleteA bit like here really.
lol as much as I like to think it's not, Judy goes down such personal roads of insult that I can't believe for a second that it is a valid court of law.
Delete