Would reality tv be less loathsome if it weren't called reality tv?

[Bossy Monkey]

Say, reality-based tv. Or maybe surreality tv. Perhaps engineered programming not requiring us to pay actors? Or am I just being crotchety again?

[unblock]

1. how about "GAME SHOWS"

cause that's what they are. maybe "extended" game shows.

[Dover]

2. OR maybe if it WAS based on reality it might be more interesting

and provide some value. Something in the documentary style like PBS's Natural History of the Chicken (wonderful), or the situational experiences like you find on PBS's Frontier House, is more about reality than this slop the networks serve up.

I mean how many bugs must one watch a person eat before one can say they've seen enough? They have to keep pushing the envelope...and to what end?

[maggrwaggr]

3. how about "emotional gladiators"

that's what I called it when I fucking worked on it.

godawful experience.

the people that produce that shit are low-lifes.

[Salviati]

4. A turd by any other name would smell as crappy...

To paraphrase the bard...

[Old and In the Way]

5. And now that TV makes these people "famous", they are filling up

magazines now. I see some couple made People's cover....for what reason? Because they have recognizable faces.....a truly sad state that this country is sinking into...

[lazarus]

6. crotchety

Maybe if people understood the history of television, they wouldn't be decrying this fad.

Every hear of "Queen for a Day"? "This Is Your Life"? Aren't those reality shows?

The Dating Game is nothing but a one shot version of The Bachelor/Bachelorette.

As for reality tv's "dumbing down" of television, or making it too trashy, let's remember that shows like Springer pre-date the modern reality tv wave.

And that, in the '60s, we had shows about a talking car, a talking horse, and a man who had a genie who called him "Master".

Yeah, the Golden Years of high-class television.

You don't have to like reality TV, but accept that it is an old genre that's been around as long as any other. Remember the 80s, when sitcoms were everywhere? Or the periods we've had cop shows on every night?

TV shifts and adapts. This is just another fad, and it will cool off. But there will always be reality tv shows, just as there have always been.

[unblock]

7. agreed, but calling it "reality" is still perverse

sit-coms were called sit-coms. situational comedies. a very accurate description. game shows were called games shows. and that's exactly what they were. well, except when they were rigged (which i suspect is a problem with so-called reality tv shows as well but that's a topic for another thread).

but to call a show where a midget gets to pick a bride from among 25 stunningly gorgeous babelets of all heights based on only a few dates "reality" is odious.

and it's politically relevant, because this kind of orwellian misuse of the english language is the fascist stock and trade. it helps inure people to calling a greedy conquest "liberation" and calling dissent "treason" and so on.

[oscar111]

8. sado-masochism

Core of RW mind is

ANAL-SADISM

in which anal means anal-retentive, or greedhead... and sadism means sadomasochistic.

Reality tv is repellant because it fosters RW values... greed and pain giving and receiving.

ANAL SADISM promotes pyramiding of wealth and power, the RW mind ideal of society.

Reality tv is Republican tv at the psychological level. Just as dr. Laura is repub radio at the psych level. Oppose both.

[lazarus]

really?

That must explain why the one freeper ever to get on Survivor has since complained that everyone else on the show was a liberal.

It also helps explain why so many liberals on this discussion board like reality tv so much. We're all secretly Dr Laura fans! That's the ticket.

[lazarus]

10. really?

That must explain why the one freeper ever to get on Survivor has since complained that everyone else on the show was a liberal.

It also helps explain why so many liberals on this discussion board like reality tv so much. We're all secretly Dr Laura fans! That's the ticket.

[lazarus]

9. actually

as unfunny as most "sitcoms" are, calling them comedies is a travesty. :D

And it's just a label. The bigger problem is shows that don't fit neatly into any label, but get crammed in anyway. Was SportsNight a comedy? It had a lot of drama, but was only a half hour long. Didn't fit any genre.

Nobody actually thinks "reality television" is reality. Because it has the word "television" in the description, and most people are aware that television isn't reality.