Reality TV Mattered, and We Should Have Realized It
The genre changed much more than entertainment
It’s just a TV show. It’s just a song. It’s just a movie. I’ve made these excuses to protect my faves and guilty pleasures; there is content I enjoy that I know isn’t particularly wholesome. But while I don’t think escapist entertainment needs to pass a purity test, I do believe our entertainment choices matter. Giving attention to people elevates them, their points of views, and their values.
Like many others, I’ve written about the mud-wrestling match between Donald Trump and Omarosa. I mused that if fewer people had watched The Apprentice, perhaps America wouldn’t have taken this path into the darkest timeline. When it comes to national politics, name recognition is half the battle, and popularity—no matter its source—is a plus. Notoriety can take you places. And there’s no industry that spins out more shamelessly notorious people than reality TV.
I’m old enough to remember when the reality TV boom started with The Real World on MTV. Except we didn’t call it “reality TV” then. The program was filed under “documentary,” a label that didn’t quite fit, even then. The Real World cast people with different backgrounds and political views in the same house hoping for fireworks, and they got them. And it was raw: No one knew what was…
