trash tv

another journal entry


I saw an advertisement for some trailer park trash entertainment tonight. I can’t remember the name of the show but it was essentially about some loser family that could not control its kids…and inexplicably decided a pop culture nanny sponsored by a major television network could solve the problems they had developed as a family.
The sad thing about the show is I have no doubt I could find out everything that happened on the program simply by asking the right portions of my circle of friends. I am sure that a train wreck show like that will thrill more than one of them. In fact, there are people I work with who actually take time out of their day every Friday to discuss the events on Survivor. I have never seen a single episode of that show, yet the discussions of it are so omnipresent that I can hold a somewhat informed conversation on the topic.
The real irony is how much I hate virtually all so-called “reality shows”. I am not sure what reality they allegedly represent. I suppose if someone was doped up, strung out, or drunk all the time they might think it was normal to quit their job for a few months, live in an “exotic” location, eat grubs and live in their own filth for a few months while backstabbing “friends” they had just met in the pursuit of a million dollars. That is no representation of reality to me.
I wonder what people are thinking when they sign onto these shows. Every one of the shows advertises the disaster elements of the show. Any person who is not deaf, dumb, and blind who does not understand that appearing on one of those shows means humiliation and them being portrayed as complete idiots is, by definition, an idiot. The shows are founded on “twists” which always remove the possibility of a “perfect” ending.
Every person has to make their own choice, of course, but from where I sit the phenomenon of “reality” television is an appeal to the worst the United States society has to offer. I hope that someday the average television watcher figures out how big a strain on their intellect those shows are and stop watching them. It is no secret that ratings drive the advertising and if a show gets no ratings it will go under.
Sadly, I am not convinced the average U.S. citizen is smart enough to realize exactly how pathetic those shows are. Maybe we can send a nanny to every house to turn the television off for them.