It’s one of Binghamton’s seven nice days of the year and instead of going outside to enjoy the weather while it lasts, you find yourself glued to the couch watching a “Real Housewives” marathon. Suddenly, it’s five hours later and you haven’t moved an inch.
This is a common occurrence in this day and age of increasing reality television. Reality TV started with the noble intentions of depicting life as it really is — season one of “The Real World” was a social experiment to see how people from different backgrounds interacted with each other in real world situations. But how did this initial concept morph into the explosion of highly scripted, edited and fake “reality” shows that are on television now?
Ryan Vaughan, a Binghamton University English professor, thinks that the problem with reality TV is that once a concept has been done on TV and watched by the public, any further attempts at the same idea are not going to be real anymore.
“The term is a misnomer,” Vaughan said. “Once something has been done it can’t be real anymore. And when someone knows there is a camera they are going to present themselves in a certain way. ‘Real World’ season one was a great idea. It combined different cultures and experiences to see what would happen. It was an honest discussion of race and important issues. But even in season two, you can see that people are already starting to play a role. They weren’t being real.”
Reality TV personalities began to realize that the crazier a person acted on a show, the more attention he got from the public. The more outrageous the idea and the people, the more popular the show.
“It’s like incest,” Vaughan said. “It was a good idea that fucked itself into a mutant. You can see it in ‘Survivor.’ Season one was huge. It was a cool idea. Richard Hatch invented the alliance. Season two, though, they were making alliances on day one. The game had changed.”
Kirstie Caesar, a junior engineering major, has watched every season of “Survivor” and said that while the show has drastically changed, not everything is for the worse.
“’Survivor’ has actually gotten better,” Caesar said. “There are more twists. It’s not as realistic, but it’s more entertaining. They put crazy people on for more drama. Now it’s not about playing the game as much, but playing the people.”
Vaughan said that all of the different types of reality TV start with some kind of original idea that spawns dozens of others.
“You had ‘Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?’” Vaughan said. “Then you get ‘The Bachelor,’ ‘The Bachelorette’ and ‘Joe Millionaire.’”
Then someone comes along and changes the game. “The Osbournes” was original and then comes “Hogan Knows Best” until every D-List celebrity has his own show.
“It’s like they say, ‘My life is awful now. Let’s film it,” Vaughan said. “It’s all just a creepy uncle banging his niece until you get horrible, dysfunctional, semi-retarded children.”
The question remains, however, why do these shows keep getting made? And perhaps more importantly, why do people continue watching them? The fact is, reality TV is inexpensive for production companies. The actors are unpaid, there is no one to write the script and the sets are far cheaper than filming on a sound stage.
“The allure,” Vaughan said, “is that it takes very little money, comparatively speaking, to make reality TV shows. That, and people are watching it. Executives are saying to themselves, ‘If people are going to watch it, I’m going to put it on TV.’”
Marissa Mayer, a junior psychology major, does not like the turn that reality television has made.
“It’s like a train wreck,” Mayer said. “It might be awful, but people are going to stop and watch.”
Gabby Roberts, a junior linguistics major, prefers reality TV to drama.
“I’d rather watch Khloe Kardashian bring cocaine to her job than fictional doctors overdose on Vicodin. If I want to learn something, I’ll read a book.”
Vaughan said that people watch reality TV for the same reasons that circus freaks exist.
“People want to see others who are worse off than them,” Vaughan said. “On one hand they ask themselves, ‘How can people be like this?’ Or think, ‘Thank God that’s not me.’ Or even sometimes, ‘I wish that was me.’”
For better or for worse, people are watching reality TV regardless of how real it actually is.