You are what you watch! Essay -- Media, Television Shows

Imagine a distant post-apocalyptic future in which a large silver corner has just been excavated from the ruins of what was once Los Angeles, a box that contains stack after stack of DVDs with titles like Survivor, The Bachelor, Biggest Loser, The Swan, existing World, The Apprentice, and Hells Kitchen. What might anthropologists conclude about our 21st ampere-second society if these shows were their that glimpse into how we lived our lives? Francine Prose ponders this same motion in her render Voting Democracy off the Island Reality TV and the Republican Ethos, in which she asks not only what future anthropologists might deduce, but, for that matter, what contemporary TV-addicted children and adults might stool if they were to to a greater extent closely examine their motivation for card towering these shows (22). Salman Rushdie, in his phrase Reality TV A Dearth of Talent and the Death of Mortality, suggests that we contend to examine reality television closely because it tells us things about ourselves, and even off if we dont think it does, it ought to, a claim that suggests that if we merely sponge off reality television as a fad, we might be missing something inherently valuable about our nature (16). In her essay, The Distorting reflect of Reality Television, Sarah Coleman suggests that reality television offers a distorted reflection, a mordant view of humanity in the guise of light entertainment, a friendliness that asks us to see who we are in this distorted reflection of our value (19). The question then is what do we see when we see ourselves in this dime-store reflect (Reality TV 16)? Whatever the answer to this question might be, the question itself suggests that there is something inherently human about our fascination with r... ...way and be the master that it is okay to betray others because winning is e verything that annoying, conniving, hysterical liars are far more interesting than honest, conscientious, selfless peop le and that we are not really a nation of communities but a group of individuals fighting for ourselvesall of which suggests on a very deep level that we feel better when we watch people who we deem to be worse off than we are. The saddest lesson, however, might very well be that we are starved for this kind of inherently inhumane entertainment because our own lives seem so much duller in comparison, an observation that suggests that what we can learn from Reality TV does not necessarily only apply to our generation, but to those that came before us and those that will followincluding these vatical anthropologists who are watching these shows to better understand us.