A woman I know was trying to convince her reluctant husband to be present in the delivery room when she was to give birth. The balking spouse remained unconvinced by all her arguments: no emotional, sentimental, marital or obligational rationale softened his resistance.
Finally the woman, desperate to minimize his queasiness, said, “It’s only a natural function.”
His reply: “So is going to the bathroom, and I don’t care to watch you do that either!”
Much as many women resent this man’s insensitivity to his wife, to his parenthood, and to his child, some realities should be private. Yet the very images that the man was trying to avoid may be Emmy Award nominees.
So-called “reality TV” has taken the country (and the planet) by storm. From Stockholm and Rio to Burbank, and everywhere in between, something called reality — however staged it may be — has glued viewers to their television sets.
Those masochistic enough to view this pap have seen everything from exhibitionist couples switching partners, to fools competing to drink a blender full of barely “edibles” (goldfish, pig eyes, hot fudge sauce, and Tabasco all whipped into a nauseating smoothie).
Mmmmm, now that’s great television!
Though I think the aforementioned husband ought to have made an effort to stand by his wife in the delivery room (even if he fainted after her first contraction), I’m not interested in watching someone make an ass of them self in public view. If I want to watch and hear people lying, arguing, insulting each other, and generally behaving badly, I can watch a congressional hearing on C-Span. (Now that’s reality, however sad.)
Television was and is supposed to entertain. Entertainment is, by definition, any spectacle that takes us away, however momentarily, from the daily grind of reality. If only the real world can capture our attention, we are thumbing our collective noses at the delights of fantasy, imagination, and creativity.
Choosing reality TV is like reading a computer instruction manual instead of a poem. It says we would rather see the world at its worst than imagine how it might be at its best.
Reality television is cheap to produce: that is why the flames of its popularity are being fanned so vigorously. Why spend money on beautiful sets, or exotic locations where creative scripts are read by talented actors, when the public is satisfied to watch four beer-drinking slobs play poker in a smoke-filled room?
We used to (wisely) avoid watching, in real life, the things we now love to see on TV. When the neighbors were having a brawl, we closed the windows and lowered the shades. When the kid next door ate worms mixed with peanut butter and threw up in the garden, we heaved and walked away.
Now, faced with similarly squalid low points, we tell ourselves we are being “entertained.” Worse, we buy the products of the advertisers subsidizing such garbage.
If televised surgery, infidelity, injury and mortification so satisfy the masses, is suicide or homicide for “fun” far behind?
