(identity 'myron)

Tue, 01 Mar 2005

The Bachelorette [/personal]

I admit it. For the past few months, I've been completely captivated by the TV show, The Bachelorette. They set up the perfect romance and it's almost impossible to look away, because it plays out the exact fantasy I'm sure we've all had at one time or another. Being the fantasy it is, we take what we can get, even if only as a vicarious experience an hour per week.

The thing is, watching this, it's all too obvious how low a level we've—or at least I've—allowed the desire for entertainment to sink us down to. Politics has its Nineteen-Eighty-Four, genetics has its Brave New World, and I always thought that entertainment had its extremes in something like The Truman Show. But lo and behold, we've made that extreme a reality, and we've probably taken it even further than anyone could've imagined when that movie came out in 1998.

So what? We've had reality TV for years now and I'm just now proclaiming how sad it is? What's sad is the line we've crossed, one that I didn't know we'd crossed until tonight. When the TV couple didn't give a straight answer about the choices they made, what happens? We reach for low blows like questioning their sexual lives. I mean, we no longer even question whether or not we should have cameras in such intimate moments between people or what business we have of watching them, it's now just about meeting our insatiable desire for entertainment.

So here it is, I quit reality TV cold turkey. I would continue watching if maybe I could keep a critical eye on what I'm seeing, but it's just too easy to shut my brain off while I watch a camera follow the lives of complete strangers. In some ways, I think reality TV is to our culture as gladiator combat was to Rome, only we can't be captivated by violence alone anymore because of how desensitized we are to it, so we came up with more inventive forms of competition in its stead. Maybe it's time to read up on Roman history.

// posted at 00:37. permalink   comments