How low can it go?
Reality TV turns 20
BY Lisa Whttington-Hill
Photography courtesy 20th Century Fox
This year marks a dubious milestone in the history of television: reality TV is celebrating its 20th birthday. The modern reality show debuted two decades ago when the Fox network first aired COPS to fill empty programming slots during the 1988 writers’ strike. Ever since, it has been showing “bad boys whatcha gonna do ... when they come for you,” as its theme song infamously says.
While it’s COPS that marks the milestone, the true reality pioneering came four years later when MTV launched The Real World. Initially conceived of as a scripted series, The Real World stuck seven strangers, instead of actors, in a loft in New York’s SoHo neighbourhood and started taping their daily lives. The footage was edited and broadcast weekly in a format that was part documentary, part soap opera. The cast ranged from aspiring hip-hop artist Heather B to 18-year-old Julie, whose trip to New York was the first time she had left her Alabama home.
Two decades on, reality television—or “unscripted drama,” as the Hollywood types have started calling it—has become a big ratings draw and a huge source of revenue for TV networks, but the genre keeps reaching new lows. Just check out The Moment of Truth—a quiz show involving embarrassing personal questions and a polygraph test before a live audience—or the return of ’80s sitcom star Scott Baio to prime time on his show Scott Baio Is 46 and Pregnant.
To a contemporary viewer, those Real World episodes from 1992 would look remarkable: it was a show that openly discussed race, class and sex, and exposed the issues the network’s young viewers were dealing with, from eating disorders to coming out. Today, The Real World is more spring break than Sociology 101. Watching boozy tantrums about who left their dirty dishes in the sink can still be a guilty pleasure, but it’s hardly the groundbreaking social experiment The Real World once was. But even at their most vulgar, hysterical or banal, reality shows represent a snapshot of TV viewers’ fears, desires and aspirations.
Dramas and sitcoms have been replaced by the likes of Survivor, The Bachelor and Dancing with the Stars. (While many, like Survivor, are simply gussied-up game shows, the focus on clashing, outsized personalities is the unmistakable sign of a reality show.) There is now a television network devoted to 24- hour reality programming, launched by Fox—who else?—in 2005.
We have picked top models, top chefs and top fashion designers. We can watch people get a date, a job or a makeover. CBC recently launched its own high-minded reality fare with The Week the Women Went, about what happens in the small town of Hardisty, Alta., when the women leave home and the remaining men are forced to look after the house and kids. Reality shows are cheap to produce, which has meant smaller television industries like Canada’s have been able to duplicate the success of American imports with their own national franchises, such as Canadian Idol and Canada’s Next Top Model. Even war-torn Iraq recently got its own home-makeover show.
Reality television’s unscripted, confessional style has helped pave the way for the growth of YouTube culture and reinforced the widespread but misguided belief that anyone can be a star. Class voyeurs have never had it better, able to watch drunk trailer-park catfights one night (on Rock of Love) and the teen dating drama of wealthy blond brats the next (on Laguna Beach).
Sure, reality TV is full of gimmicky premises, outrageous personalities and trick editing. But so is most TV. These shows appeal to their narcissistic participants, who want be on TV at any cost, and to voyeuristic audiences, who can pick favourites and mock the hapless stars of these shows. The painfully earnest generational angst of that first episode of The Real World is gone, but as escapist entertainment, reality TV is a powerful and popular force, and people want more. A show scheduled for the fall will feature contestants sealed in self-contained pods and subjected to cruel endurance tests (previous seasons featured beds of nails, starvation and sleep deprivation). Not psychologically damaging enough? Check out Paris Hilton’s new reality show, in which the heiress attempts to find a new best friend. How low can this genre go? I’ll be on my couch, waiting to find out.
