Modern reality TV turns five

Reality television is the talk of the nation, filling airtime on television and radio, in print and online, giving birth to new groups of friends who gather around their keyboards to share their reactions. It’s the new rehab for celebrities whose careers have faded. The genre has also unleashed a whole new group of celebrities, known on a first-name basis, who now populate the covers of gossip and entertainment magazines and share media coverage with movie stars.

Reality TV has also taught us a lot about ourselves. The people viewers met on these shows have publicly done everything from lying to crying, and some have even died. The reactions people have in their everyday lives (on “Airline” or “Laguna Beach”), in artificial, alcohol-fueled environments (“Big Brother” or “Paradise Hotel”), or in foreign situations (“The Amazing Race” or “Survivor”) are instructive, fascinating, and, most significantly, entertaining.

Reality TV as whipping boy
Real people have been on television since the early days of television, and shows like “Cops” and “Candid Camera” proved that real people can be interesting, although they never really allowed us to get to know their stars. In 1973, however, long before “The Real World,” entertaining, episodic television featuring real people came to television. That’s when WNET and PBS aired “An American Family,” a dramatically edited nonfiction show about a real family. The show was both embraced and castigated, as the public and media reacted strongly to its participants and to this new type of programming. As Jeffrey Ruoff writes in his book “An American Family: A Televised Life,” “critics saw nonfiction TV as a dangerous, shadowy substitute for reality.”

Sound familiar? Even today, some critics deride reality television as the genre that shall not be named. And bashing reality TV has become the new whipping child for people desperate to prove their alleged intelligence and superiority. Certainly, some reality TV exists just for shock value, or as blatant ratings-whoring; other shows are produced so cheaply or incompetently that they insult viewers. This is nothing new; network television has frequently offered idiotic and inferior programming.

A lot of reality TV is obnoxious, reprehensible, or both.  But every time someone sees a horribly bad movie, one that causes instant regret that they didn’t set fire to their $8.50 instead of buying a ticket, do they immediately dismiss all similar forms of entertainment? “Oh, those movies! Films suck so much.” Such unrelenting, categorical rejections of reality TV, a genre with many different subsets, is ridiculous and simple-minded.

The genre has suffered mostly from its name, which offers its critics a gigantic target. Reality TV is entertainment crafted from real people’s interactions in both real and artificial contexts. If reality shows were documentaries, we’d call them “documentaries” and fall asleep to them. Actual reality is what you see when you look at yourself in a mirror, and there’s a reason people turn on the TV instead of watching themselves for 44 minutes at a time. Unfiltered reality isn’t always that interesting.

Reality TV is incredibly fun to watch—and to destroy. We love to build people up and tear them down, and reality TV is our sandbox. That’s part of its appeal: Viewers are engaged and inspired, and aren’t just passive consumers. We feel like we’re a part of the entertainment we’re consumed by, which explains why many people find themselves more engaged with reality TV than with, say, politics or their actual lives.

As this latest wave of reality television turns five, the genre is really entering its teenage years. Although it will certainly evolve and change, ebb and surge, reality TV will certainly give us something to talk and think about.

Andy Dehnart is a writer and teacher who publishes reality blurred, a daily summary of reality TV news.

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