Something of a misnomer?
Now I know that we all love reality television, especially Kingspawn, but is reality television anything close to reality anymore these days, and was it ever? I don't know much about my readers, but I know that I don't enter 3-week long cooking competitions (Top Chef) or agree to spend 40 days on an island in the South Pacific with very little food and water (Survivor). Once a year, however, I do spend a few months living in a completely new city with a group of six 20-somethings who are complete strangers (The Real World). That's why that show really resonates with me. But I digress. Reality television isn't about real people in real situations. It's about very specific people in contrived game show-style situations. And it's often highly entertaining (although often not). Maybe it's just easier for everyone to call any show without trained actors a reality show, but I wish that there was a better name. Thoughts anyone?
Rich, come on. This post is ridiculously nit-picky.
ReplyDelete"Reality TV" is a perfectly good name for shows that (appear) to feature people who aren't actors and dialogue that isn't scripted. There is no point in asking whether reality tv is or was "close to reality," because a) it's impossible to make it even remotely close to reality when the people involved know they're going to be on tv, and b) reality is a ridiculously boring montage of nit-picky blog posts and almost equally nit-picky blog comments and so mimicing it was never the stated or unstated goal of reality tv.
This having been said, I cannot fucking WAIT for TOP CHEF!
but come on, wasn't that Real World joke good?
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