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April 17, 2005
Reality TV and Paranormal Movies
Reality TV is the ultimate expression of society's exhibitionistic and voyeuristic tendencies. Audiences watching so-called unscripted television in the U.S. have chosen a couple to get married (Married By America), or even watched a girl find her biological father from among a group of middle-aged men consisting mostly of impostors (Who's Your Daddy?). No doubt, reality TV has its attractions. Much as changes in media, bandwidth and connectivity have brought software development to the masses with open source and journalism to the masses with blogging, reality television has brought opportunities to be on TV to the masses. In the past, every loving housewife would tell her son he could one day become President. Today, every loving mother probably tells her child that it can one day be on reality TV.
Even talent-searching shows like American Idol, which have little to do with reality television at their core, try to blend in some elements of reality television to attract audiences. They try to take you behind the scenes of a talent search and even try to dramatize minor disagreements between the judges on that show. Believe me, I am not trying to see reality television in every show on TV. I have seen my share of talent shows in India, such as TVS Sa Re Ga Ma and Meri Awaz Suno during the cable TV explosion of the early 90s, which were utterly devoid of reality TV content.
The initial draw of reality TV was that characters on pre-reality TV behaved in a too-scripted way and seemed completely unreal. Although it beats me how putting a bunch of backstabbing Type A personalities on an island with limited resources is any more real, reality TV made audiences feel they could look into other people's lives in a way never before allowed by television.
There is a problem -- unscripted 'real' reality is mind-numbingly boring. I would argue that there have been many shows about real life on TV before the first season of Survivor. America's Funniest Home Videos and Judge Judy come to mind. However, they never whipped up a frenzy like their more recent reality TV cousins, because they were truly about real life and real people. The more recent incarnation of Reality TV is so successful because it places real people in wildly unreal situations. Any such transplantation of characters necessarily involves some artifice, some script. The simple truth is this: there is absolutely no way truly unscripted television can continue to draw audiences unless it is scripted in some small way. A script for reality TV may not be conceived on a scriptwriter's desk but may be constructed dynamically as the show and its characters evolve. A script, however, it still is. Much as some audiences would like to believe that reality shows, like World Wrestling Entertainment fights, are unscripted, any such belief would be far from the truth.
I was recently reading an excellent piece on Slate about how the face of reality television has changed recently. Before, you would have to be athletic or otherwise highly competitive to appear on hit reality shows like Survivor or The Apprentice. The new wave of reality television features apparently more 'real' people who are in some way pathetic enough to be on TV. People with weight problems, drug problems or financial problems that prevent them from renovating their shabby houses form being renovated are the heroes of this new wave of reality shows. Nothing -- people's personal lives, their privacy, their financial problems or their psychological problems, is sacred anymore. Almost every aspect of a TV viewer's life has a scripted reality show about it. Now how would average Joe react if all he sees on TV is other average Joes masquerading as unscripted characters about some ordinary aspect of his life? What recourse does average Joe have? The big screen.
The Ring 2. White Noise. Boogeyman. Constantine. Alone in the Dark. The Jacket. The Amityville Horror. The Grudge.
Movies removed as far away from reality as can be. What's even more surprising is that these movies are consistently rated low by moviegoers. Most of the reviews say that an underdeveloped storyline is camouflaged with creepy audio effects and spooky visuals. Yet, most of these movies appear on the list of 'most popular' movies on IMDB -- movies that received the highest number of votes. Of course, most of these votes were down-votes, left twisting in the wind like warning markers, saving other moviegoers from going down the same trail. There is a sudden onslaught of bad motion pictures dealing with the paranormal or supernatural. More importantly, as evidenced by the sheer number of these votes, people keep going to these movies only to keep rating them badly. I am convinced that this is a form of escape for average people, whose lives have been taken over by reality television.
Posted by Vishy at April 17, 2005 11:58 AM