By day, my “real” friend Jane is a sharp corporate professional; by night, she’s a reality TV groupie. Sad but true. As her imaginary friend, I’ve told her and told her she should be ashamed of her Neanderthal taste in programming. With all of the wonderful channels for intelligent viewing, I say--Masterpiece Theatre, National Geographic, Animal Planet, Investigative Discovery and some thoughtful news analysis to name a few.
“I want entertainment,” she snaps rather testily one night. “I wanna watch someone else feel pain and humiliation. I wanna escape. Besides there are some really talented people on these shows. Stop being so stuck up. It’s fun and you know it.”
Jane, girl, they’re cheating you, I say. Most of this stuff is fake, scripted. You’re being sucked into a vortex of unreality.
Despite her eye-rolling, I read my research on the topic aloud. “According to a Time.com article, ‘How Reality TV Fakes It’ by James Poniewozik, even savvy viewers who realize that their favorite reality shows are cast, contrived and edited to be dramatic may have no idea how brazen the fudging can be. Quotes are manufactured, crushes and feuds constructed out of whole cloth, episodes planned in multiact “storyboards” before taping, scenes stitched together out of footage shot days apart.”
By this time, however, American Idol is blaring forth. Jane’s TV tray holds chips, a zapped frozen dinner, a vodka tonic, and I’d better shut up or she’ll tune me out altogether. Like that time her parents called while Simon Cowell was berating some poor schmuck, and Jane hung up on them. I know. I was there hoping that her father wasn’t having a heart attack.
So, what’s up with this viewing phenomenon? Forget the networks and advertisers; they’re raking in the shekels. What about the just plain folks? Are people who guzzle this fictional mush living vicariously? Is life so dull that they can only survive by Keeping up with the Kardashians? Is mediocrity so rampant that one must be a Survivor, so deadened that Fear Factor is the only solution, so bored that one must be Lost?
But then again, imaginary friends only have so much pull, so I drop the subject and drift into the next room where the little television flickers in the dark. As I settle at the kitchen bar, I feel so righteous, hoping that this sinking into the quicksand of worthless television will end and…wait a minute!
Don’t tell me she’s chosen that bimbo as her new bestie, her new BFF! No way. What was Paris thinking anyway?
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