What do you think the popularity of reality TV tells us about our culture?

Introduction

Today, many people have a problem distinguishing between reality and fictional fantasy. The severity of this problem is increasing at a substantial speed due to the abundance of reality shows in our society. Reality TV is becoming more and more popular because of its unscripted performance and cheaper production costs. Instead of watching actors and actresses memorizing lines and twitching face muscles in front of the screen, the audience can view people with real emotions facing situations that he/she can relate to. Reality TV is also cheaper to produce compared to other shows because it does not need a screenwriter, paid actors, or artificial settings. According to Scott Collins in the Los Angeles Times, "scripted series, which routinely run more than $2 million per episode" can be twice to four times the price of producing a reality episode. Besides being cheap to produce and unscripted in performance, many other reasons can give us some clues as to why these "favored children at networks" (Scott Collins) have risen to their popularity in today's media.

Discussion

There are several reasons that reality television has become popular today. The three that I will focus on are the concepts of money, instant fame, and the guilty pleasure phenomenon. The first catalyst for reality television being popular today is money. Today's shows offer huge sums of money to people who do not necessarily possess the career skills that would make them a productive enough member of society to amass such wealth through honest work. Simplified, dumb people get lots of cash. Now, some shows do in fact have, at least at first, a pseudo-intellectual premise. Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, for example, offered up to a million dollars to people answering a set of questions. The questions, however, differed from related shows in that they were usually trivia oriented. Also, the audience was involved, as well as calling a friend and so on, which added to the drama aspect. The lighting, music, and editing all were contrived to produce the maximum possible suspense surrounding rather innocuous pop culture subjects one might find in any game of Trivial Pursuit for Children. The promise of money and the vicarious joy at someone winning lots of money, or more commonly spectacularly losing said money, is what draws millions of viewers (Hasinoff 2008).

The second reason I ...