Reality TV makes the soul ache
The Bachelor NZ dunked young women in ice water, with whoever suffered the longest winning a date with this year’s bland hunk of muscle.
Ex On The Beach maroons ‘‘suspicious singles and explosive exes’’ on a Bali beach, adds alcohol, and waits for sparks to fly. In between relentless product placement advertising, The Block NZ invites viewers to quite literally watch paint dry.
Real Housewives of Anywhere encourages bitchy rich women to enact loosely scripted arguments between glasses of Champagne.
Dating Naked pours booze into exhibitionists and swipes their clothes. And if you want to witness tiny kids developing anxiety disorders, there’s always Dance Moms.
These days, reality TV feels increasingly like a window on to the least appealing facets of the human soul.
Everywhere you look, mean-spirited reality shows dominate prime-time, with many of them endlessly promoted via other media. And an uncharitable phrase floats up from my subconscious: ‘‘The rise of the idiots.’’
It’s a notion lifted from British sitcom Nathan Barley, a cult 2005 series co-written by Brass Eye and Veep director Chris Morris and Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker.
An elaborate satire of hipster culture and the modern mass media’s race towards the bottom of the barrel, the show’s cast was packed with gifted young actors on their way to being stars, among them Richard Ayoade (Gadget Man), Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt (The Mighty Boosh) and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Lead idiot Nathan Barley calls himself a ‘‘self-facilitating media node’’ and gets around London on a tiny BMX bike, pranking his mates and filming their distress. Everyone else is a web designer, a film-maker, an ‘‘edgy’’ magazine journalist, a posing scenester. Their every thought and utterance, no matter how banal, is streamed online, and they delight in meaningless catchphrases (‘‘Keep it dusty!’’, ‘‘Totally Mexico!’’, ‘‘That’s well futile!’’) and over-complicated hip hop handshakes.
Eventually, one character writes a scathing magazine story called ‘‘The Rise Of The Idiots’’, calling out his contemporaries for their unchallenging acceptance of even the most vacuous titillation.
Of course, television has always showcased the shallow, the flashy, the exploitative. Much of modern pop culture is built around big dumb fun, and for the most part, I celebrate that fact. And some reality TV can be inspirational. Hell, RuPaul’s Drag Race is one of my favourite shows.
But many recent reality shows have plumbed new depths of audience-baiting cynicism and emotional cruelty. Just think how much time, money and media attention was lavished upon The Bachelor NZ, a defiantly antifeminist show predicated on the ritual humiliation of women.
Shows like this make my soul ache. I can no longer watch them for cheap laughs and irony. They just make me feel worse about my fellow humans.
The Guardian published a story last year noting the shallow, apolitical and narcissistic ‘‘rise of the idiots’’ entertainment style outlined in Nathan Barley was now very much a reality. Co-writer Charlie Brooker was asked why he’d only written one series of this prescient media-parody show. His reply: ‘‘Because real TV programmes were becoming more stupid than any I could make up.’’
Everywhere you look, meanspirited reality shows dominate primetime... 'The rise of the idiots'.