Television: the Beginning of the end.

The rise of reality TV. A glance at today’s TV listing shows that there has been a major change in television viewing habits. All the British channels – and many foreign ones – are dominated by something collectively called ‘reality TV’. We have watched ordinary people trying to pass a driving test, going on a date with a stranger, trying to survive some terrible endurance test such as living in the jungle or surviving life in a simulated earlier period of history. And while doing all these things, we have watched them like fish in a tank.

In many of the recent shows, a group of ordinary people are put together in a competitive situation and either the group members themselves, or the millions of viewers, decide – over a period of time – which person is eliminated each week until there is one eventual winner.

One of the most internationally successful formats has been Big Brother - a group of ordinary people living in a house for several months. There has also been a celebrity version of this plus desert island variation, Survivor and Shipwrecked. In addition Britain has had Popstars (a talent show where thousands of hopeful young singers are reduced to just five), Pop Idol (the same thing but looking for one solo singer) and Soap stars   where TV viewers selected a group of unknown people to be a new ‘family’ in the popular TV soap, Emmerdale.  

The Weakest Link general knowledge quiz show became a massive hit in many countries in the world partly because the format was based on the rudeness of the presenter. Competitors have to vote each other off the quiz for being the weakest team player.

The cult of the nobody. So what have they all got in common? The interesting thing, from a sociological viewpoint, is that all of these programmes seem to be looking for, celebrating, or often publicly mocking losers. Millions of people turn on their TV sets with a macabre curiosity to see how the week’s loser is going to take the bad news. The camera goes in close. Will the loser cry? Will the loser get angry? Will the loser go mad? What will happen afterwards to the loser and the loser’s family or partner? The tabloids write about these people by first name as if they are members of our own families. Within days of a loser being eliminated or having failed a task, we read that ‘Helen is dumped’ by her boyfriend, ‘Jason is seen drunk at a famous nightclub’, ‘Max’s girlfriend sells her story to the newspapers’, etc. Society seems to be desperate for celebrities. We don’t have enough famous people who are good at acting, singing, politics, etc, so a whole new breed of nobodies have to become somebodies for a few weeks. In addition, it is often the more grotesque, psychology flawed people who allow themselves to be chosen. They appear in the celebrity gossip magazines a few times and usually end up lonely and rejected, classified with the lives they had before the programme, but incapable of working in television or using any of the skills which they needed for their reality programme (e.g. being able to kill and eat a rat to survive on a desert island) in any other area of life.    

Celebrating losers: the new religion. Throughout history, people have always enjoyed races and contests and have enjoyed the thrill of finding a winner. However, the whole focus in the new breed of reality TV shows has shifted onto many losers rather than onto the winner. It not only shows people’s personal greed, it also shows the depths to which people will sink in order to get themselves a few minutes of TV time. In addition, new psychological research suggests that worship of celebrities by the public has begun to take the place of religion in many people’s lives. Our worship of celebrities does indeed turn them into the most powerful people on this planet – the equivalent of gods in our midst. Now that’s scary!

(Current, № 1, 2002)