PAtownhall.com
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
PAtownhall.com
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
by Peg Luksik
Prime time television is moving away from scripted productions and into what is billed as "Reality TV". Even before the writers' strike, the financial advantage of non-scripted, non-acted programming had prompted the networks to exchange their drama or comedy series for "real people" in "real-life situations".
So viewers get to see families, for a lump sum payment, open their doors to a nation full of voyeurs, each of whom is extremely happy that they are not as dumb, or mean, or nutty, or dysfunctional, as the family they are watching that night. Or viewers are treated to celebrity wanna-be's, who know that they can get their fifteen minutes of fame by being crude, nasty, obscene, or awful.
This isn't reality. It's television. The television industry is, first and foremost, an industry, and the outrageous attracts an audience and therefore sells commercials. When one of the reality programs found a particularly bombastic person who lost it on camera, they re-aired the episode for several weeks in a row, with generous promotions, to an ever-increasing audience. No matter that the person's family had to re-live a difficult and embarrassing situation on national television over and over again – the program brought ratings and therefore made money.
The difference is that when actors play those nasty and bombastic roles, it's not real. And everyone knows it. They go home to lovely houses and get fan mail telling them what a terrific job they did playing a villain. But in reality TV, a person with a problem just gets exploited.
So does the audience, especially the young. Our children don't have a counter-image to balance the extremes they are seeing on television. They don't have an understanding of the financial workings of the entertainment industry. They don't have an internal barometer to properly judge the behavior they are seeing.
To our children, the picture they see on television is American culture.
Even if their own family situation contradicts the television image. One young man, whose parents had been happily married to each other throughout his lifetime and whose mom stayed at home to raise him and his brother, came home from college during his freshman year and announced that his faith in marriage had been restored. Surprised, his mom asked him what he meant, since he had grown up in a stable, two-parent family. He acknowledged that, but continued that he thought he, and his own friends, were the only ones.
If the producers were actually interested in airing reality, they would wind up filming families that look more like Beaver Cleaver's than Ozzy Osbourne's.
Because the REAL American family is strong and vibrant.
It's true that we have single parent families, but so did the generations that sent men to fight and die in World Wars I and II. It's true that many of us struggle with financial challenges, but so did our depression-era grandparents. It's true that extended family ties are difficult as young adults must move to find or keep jobs, but so did those who traveled across a continent in covered wagons to build their lives.
None of the challenges facing us are unique to our generation. The institution of family has overcome every challenge. It will be standing long after reality TV has faded into the dust. So, for everyone's sake, let's turn off the television and have some actual reality.
