Now I have heard President Bush II (or more correctly Karl Rove) blamed for a great many things, but this one takes the cake - Bush is at fault for Reality TV. In her essay in the March 2004 edition of Harper's Magazine entitled "Voting Democracy Off The Island: Reality TV and the Republican Ethos", Francine Prose argues that Reality TV reflects the same mentality as the Republican Party:
[...] Observant readers may already have noted that the guiding principles to which I've alluded - flinty individualism, the vision of zero-sum society in which no one can win unless someone else loses, the conviction that altruism and compassion are signs of folly and weakness, the exaltation of solitary striving above the illusory benefits of cooperative mutual aid, the belief that certain circumstances justify secrecy and deception, the invocation of a reviled common enemy to solidify group loyalty - are the exact same themes that underlie the rhetoric we have been hearing and continue to hear from the Republican Congress and our current administration.
Let's deal with these (I will ignore the obvious oxymoron in the title, as Prose may not have written the byline).
Flinty individualism: I thought this was the religion of the left - imagine there's no heaven, its easy if you try. Or to be fair, individualism is at best a saw off between the left and right.
Zero-Sum Society: I thought that was Robin Hood taxation.
Folly and Weakness of Altruism and Compassion: Especially if you happen to be Christian.
Secrecy and Deception: Only allowed if you are playing hide the cigar in the Oval Office.
Invocation of the common enemy: I thought that was the two-minutes of hate I alluded to earlier with regards to President Bush.
[...] Among the notions of reality that the designers of those shows appear to hold in common with the participants in the corporate strategy session - or, one presumes, the Pentagon or Cabinet meeting - is the vision of the world as a vast human-behavior laboratory. Its population of lab rats can be coolly observed by the research scientists (the market analyst, the politician, the TV viewer), who can then draw profitable lessons from their subjects responses...
...how the citizens of the Middle East deal with their altered circumstances when we change their regimes and encourage them to adopt Western values.
Like everything was fine in Iraq and Afghanistan before the Americans went over there and screwed everything up. But I guess democracy was voted off of those islands long ago.
Some of the programs that Prose references are Real World which began in 1993, on MTV, the great purveyor of Republican values and 1995's Eco-Challenge by Mark Burnett, which of course lead to Survivor in 2000. Even though all of this pre-dates the election of George W Bush, it is of course part of then-House Leader Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" and the vast-right-wing conspiracy. Especially the ultimate capitalist secret agenda, the one where success breeds imitators.
But let me ignore all of that and assume that this Reality TV is truly bad (well, actually I enjoy several of them myself, but I am a right-wing nut-job). The next logical question is worse than what? Seinfeld? The great bastion of altruism, compassion and cooperative mutual aim. Everybody Loves Raymond? Now there's family values. The Pratice? No flinty individualism, secrecy or deception there. Let's go back a bit further - Melrose Place, Beverly Hills 90210, Knot's Landing, Dynasty, Dallas. I miss Family Ties and the Cosby Show as much as the next guy but let's not kid ourselves into believing that the debasement of TV values is a recent phenomenon.
Blaming President George W Bush for the poor state of television is hardly convincing. But as Prose herself admits:
[...]For this reason alone, even those who take pride never looking at TV, except for the occasional peek at PBS...
She is too much of an elitist to watch it anyway.
