Reality in America

Reality in America

According to Lee Siegel's essay "Reality in America" far from being 'more real' than episodes of the Sopranos or other examples of gritty but ostensibly fictional television like Oz, most examples of reality TV are in fact a respite from such "grimy" psychic realities (Siegel 173). Reality TV is a confection, chewing gum for the mind. It also exemplifies America's inability to deal with 'the real,' an obsession according to Siegel that extends all the way back to the origins of the media in America. In America, it is feelings, not fiction that is the real "final frontier" (Siegel 173). In reality TV shows, a prize awaits every finalist. The shows shy away from depicting the messier and ambiguous questions of who wins and who loses, questions that plague real people, in real life. With reality TV, like television game shows, the purpose of life is reduced to winning and losing in a kind of zero sum game. Modern reality TV shows like American Idol are the Jerry Springer show meets Let's Make a Deal, not real attempts to accurately depict social and economic problems faced by ordinary Americans. These aspirations are more often seen through the medium of television fiction, not televised reality TV.

Siegel paints a picture of modern television in America as childish and escapist, and controlled more often than not by capitalist influences that sponsor these shows and use them for profit. Significantly, most of the shows praised by Siegel are on for-pay television stations like HBO. True, with reality TV, there is some rough democracy in the way that celebrity is deglamorized, that everyone with talent can seemingly become a singing idol with enough votes. Reality TV also shows what aspirants to becoming a top model look like without their makeup. But ultimately by rendering inner experience in a superficial way, merely because the participants are supposedly 'real people,' reality is in fact subverted by reality TV. Unlike a drama that aspires to show the inner life of a character, reality TV shows only surfaces, but it presents the illusion that it is real, simply because the participants go by their 'real' names. However, the shows are just as scripted, choreographed and carefully lit to create an effect as a manifestly unreal drama or comedy like Dynasty or Seinfeld, which are at least honest enough to openly admit their lack of 'reality.'