How Real is reality TV?

Celebrities sell things. They seem to be really good at that. Those Geico commercials that floated around a while back show this concept (or maybe they are satirizing it) really well.

I don’t know if you noticed, but Little Richard didn’t say anything about car insurance or Geico in that commercial. But it apparently helped sell the product because he was a celebrity. Maybe it was just for comic effect, like a lot of their other Geico commercials. But it seems like whenever people run out of ideas, they just say, “Lets just get celebrities to do the same thing that we have been doing.” And it totally works. And I don’t get it.

The Apprentice went on for 6 seasons and even had a spin off with Martha Stewart. Then they started doing The Celebrity Apprentice. Celebrities compete in doing slave labor for Donald Trump, and then they donate to charities at the end. This is obviously much better than regular people replacing Donald Trump’s staff and then having one of them win lots of money and a job. How selfish of those people.

It seems like there are so many of these shows. One of my favorite reality shows was The Mole. It featured several contestants that would compete together in challenges to earn money for a “pot” that the winner of the game would win at the end. However, one of the people was “The Mole” and was trying to sabotage all of the challenges so that they wouldn’t earn more money. The way that a person would win the game is by figuring out who the mole was and then keeping track of the things that they did. It was a great show, that didn’t last for very long. But before the show died, there were a couple of celebrity editions of it. That really didn’t make a difference to me, because I had no idea who the celebrities were. But apparently watching celebrities be a suspicious and back stabbing in “real life” just like in their movies made it somehow more attractive to people.

One show that I would love to see have a celebrity version is Survivor. It makes sense; celebrities and drama go together like an addict and drugs. But I just think it would be so much fun to watch the spoiled rich celebrities try to live on an island, eating bugs, and sleeping next to a fire. It gives me a really interesting mental picture. But after thinking about it for a while, it may not be as entertaining as I imagine it being. “Oh, I only get this bandana to wear? That’s fine, I usually wear a lot less than that.” “What’s for dinner? Nothing. Oh good, my favorite.” “No blankets to sleep under? It’s ok, I’m used to sleeping with people.” It really might just be them complaining about the lack of air conditioning, and not much else.

I was hoping this show would be like Celebrity Survivor, but it really wasn’t, and it didn’t last long:

So what does this say about our culture? Why do we want to watch celebrities do things that are supposed to be imitations of real life? I don’t think that reality TV is realistic at all, and getting people who specialize in acting to be in these shows don’t really help. We have shows that follow celebrities around to show how normal they are, but that only makes them more famous.

Do people watch celebrities because they elevate these people to a higher place? It’s almost a form of idol worship. It seems a bit extreme to say that, but that’s what it seems to boil down to. Are celebrities bad? No. But it’s not right to hold them in such high esteem. If a crappy reality show suddenly has celebrities, it doesn’t make it any better or different.