HARSH REALITY
Popular shows exposing some ugly truths
Nearly two decades after the reality TV craze took hold, viewers are good at pretending the stars of these shows are only characters. Sure, we watch Lifetime’s revealing UnReal, skim juicy tellall books and read about how reality TV is really made. But when we see cast members onscreen in outrageous situations (with a heavy dose of editing, of course), it’s easy to forget these are actual humans.
However, this summer, several incidents have made this fact increasingly difficult to ignore, giving everyone a rare glimpse at what can happen to people’s psyches when they agree to live on camera.
There’s no better example than Rob Kardashian, the 30-year-old reality star who has become a tragic figure of his reality TVfamous family. Struggling with his own demons and health problems, he once shunned the cameras on the Keeping Up With the Kardashians franchise, only to reverse course last year and land his own spinoff with his fiancée, Blac Chyna. Rob & Chyna was a painful viewing experience that displayed all of the couple’s problems. The first season ended with the birth of their baby girl, and coincided with Kardashian claiming on social media that Chyna cheated on him and had taken the baby away. She denied this and urged him to get help.
On Wednesday, Kardashian had a stunning meltdown on Twitter and Instagram in which he posted nude images of Chyna, published a video of her kissing another man, accused her of drug use and many more lurid claims.
Even people with just a taste of fame can be affected. Last week, Big Brother cast member Megan Lowder disappeared from the show after two episodes. The 28-year-old military member trained in the Middle East as a Navy interrogator.
“I was taught to lie, manipulate and get into people’s heads,” she said in the first episode. “So I think I’ll have things handled in the Big Brother house.”
On the long-running competition series, which features 16 people in a house where they vote each other out week by week, Lowder was immediately put up on the block for eviction because, as one of the contestants stated, “I just don’t like you that much.” Later, Lowder thought she heard another contestant call an Asian woman “panda”; it was a misunderstanding that led to a blow-up fight.
Hours later, Lowder was gone because of a “personal matter.” Afterward, she posted a video online and said: “When I was stationed in Norfolk, Va., I was sexually assaulted and I got really bad PTSD from it. So in the house … I had a lot of guys yelling at me and attacking me and it started really affecting me and making my anxiety severe and I was starting to get physically ill.”
So fun and games until it isn’t — fans saw that lesson firsthand in mid-June, when E! reported ABC’s hit Bachelor in Paradise had halted production because of alleged “misconduct” on set. In the following days, conflicting details leaked out about an incident in a pool between contestants Corinne Olympios and DeMario Jackson. People magazine reported the show filmed “a drunk sexual encounter with a female contestant who may have been too intoxicated to consent.”
Olympios hired a lawyer and said she was seeking therapy. Jackson said he did nothing wrong and his character was being assassinated. About 10 days later, Warner Bros. said footage of the incident revealed no misconduct had taken place. Production has since resumed, and producers said they would implement changes to the show’s policies and procedures for safety. Paradise is notably all about drinking and hookups. Can it still be fun to watch?
New York Times columnist Jennifer Weiner, once a prolific Bachelor live-tweeter, wrote the only surprising element of the situation is that it took so many years to happen, as “we always want more drama, more sex, more fights, more tears.”
But only to a point. Weiner wrote: “There’s an implicit bargain that gets made at the start of every reality show’s season. We want our stars to suffer, and we’ll watch them drop 30 pounds while subsisting on a mostly rice diet on Survivor. We do not, however, want to watch them fall into the campfire and sustain second-degree burns. We want steamy hookups, drunken antics and tearful regret. We do not want to be faced with a woman saying she was too intoxicated to consent to sexual activities.”
After ABC announced that Bachelor in Paradise was back on, Olympios said, “My team’s investigation into this matter has now been completed to my satisfaction. I am also happy about the changes that have been made to the production ...”
Changes might be in place, but viewers are still left with the lingering memory of why they needed to happen.