Andy Warhol once said, "The day will come when everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." Oh, Andy, how surprised you'd be today.
When Warhol uttered these soon-to-be prophetic words, I'd like to believe that he meant that each of us would someday achieve some noteworthy accomplishment, and that we would be heralded, praised and otherwise noticed by the world for what we'd done. I, for example, am a composer. By Warhol's standard, I should get fifteen minutes of people listening to my music.
Nowadays, people don't actually have to accomplish anything to be noticed. In fact, they don't even have to be noticed. The world of "reality television" buries its viewers in an endless heap of new famous people, be they famous for singing badly, for acting stupid, for volunteering to be submerged in a tank of live scorpions. All we have to do now to become famous is be willing to be a complete moron for fifteen minutes. Or, if we're lucky, for twelve half-hour episodes.
I can't quite comprehend why there's so much popularity around these so-called reality shows. There's the reality of the entertainment industry, with things like American Idol, where we learn that one doesn't actually go to school for training within the field of acting, singing, or dancing. There's the reality of how many worms one woman can eat without throwing up, because we all know how often worm-eating comes up in real life. And then there's the reality of finding true love in the world, because most of us face the trauma of choosing one person from a group of twenty or so hot potential partners we don't know (the slate of potentials, also selected by people we don't know), and need the opinions of other people we don't know or care about in order to decide which one of the hot potential partners to choose.
Of course, what do I know about the reality of finding true love? Talking one-on-one hasn't been the best routine lately; hanging out at bars and parties just gets me drunk; and the only thing internet personals prove is that people can be just as boring through email as they can in person. Truth be told, I might fare better with my own love life if someone were to present me with a group of twenty eligible women, and told me that, with the help of my friends or perhaps ten million strangers, one of those women would be mine to take to dinner in eight weeks' time.
So I decided to give up an hour of my busy schedule to watch the season premiere of Meet My Folks. On this television program, a young man meets eight young women, the goal being to take a trip to Europe with one of them by the end of the week. Of course, it's not up to him which girl gets to go with him – no, that's up to his parents. Mr. and Mrs. My-Son-Is-An-Unopinionated-Bachelor put these poor women through a horrible series of ordeals, each set up to trap them, to trick them, to humiliate them, not only in the public eye of the man they're all trying to woo, not only in the public eye of this young man's parents who they need to impress, but of course in the public eye of millions of viewers nationwide. These girls are asked questions which, if answered honestly, would prove them to be less desirable – so the girls lie to cover up, and then are revealed as liars through other dirty tricks. The end result turns out to be: which of these horrible, lying, cheating, back-stabbing, reckless, ruthless, spineless women is the least horrible? That one gets to go to Europe.
No doubt, they (the television producers) choose the girls based on who has dark secrets in their past. No doubt they choose the girls based on who they think will cause some sort of on-set catastrophe, or create drama simply from being put in such dire circumstances. God forbid this young man – who, so far, hasn't been exposed as some equally horrible person – should get to choose a girl himself, or get to at least choose from a lineup of respectable girls, a group of women who don't cheat on their boyfriends, who don't use drugs and lie about it, who don't shoplift, who don't cheat on exams, who don't sleep around, who don't squeal on their friends, who don't...
... ah, but there true reality actually steps forth. In this glorious country of ours, can we actually find eight single women who don't do all of those awful things?
(If there happens to be a nice, normal woman reading this article, I apologize for the grand generalization, and suggest that you email me so that I can take you to dinner and try to make up for it.)
On one hand, there are probably too many people all trying to reach stardom by striving for the same goals. I know that there are countless other composers out there who want to eventually win an Oscar for scoring a great film. So maybe the uprising of shows like Fear Factor, Blind Date, and even this god-awful new idea, My Life is a Sit-Com – maybe these will help weaken my competition in the old-fashioned goal-achieving method of notoriety. On the other hand, maybe the fascination the general public holds for the reality television shows will simply weaken the importance of actually doing something.
My final gripe about all this has to do with the fact that people actually like these shows. Why the hell do we have to care so much about people we don't know? We're progressing toward the point where the day-to-day lives of the Osborne family is more interesting than the day-to-day life of our own family.
"Well, we --"
"Never mind, let's see what the Osbornes have done at home all day."
Sure, everyone has voyeuristic tendencies. For example, there's this Chinese woman who lives across the street from me, and from my living room window, I can see into her bedroom (when her curtains are up), and because four years ago, I saw her there naked, I have always since glanced over periodically. Granted, I do so in the hopes of seeing her naked once more, but even without the desperate sexual fantasies, everyone likes to spy. But we're even cheating ourselves with the television shows. As soon as these people know they're on television, it's no longer reality. People behave badly because that's what gets ratings. People eat dismembered pig rectums (not a joke) because that's what gets ratings. The most outrageous thing I've ever seen the Chinese woman across the street do was fold her laundry.
Are we moving toward a society where doing things becomes meaningless, yet sitting at home and watching strangers do nothing is what matters? Perhaps the whole thing is coming full circle – the guy who created American Idol has recently done the talk-show circuit, and now he's becoming famous for inventing the show that helps untalented losers become famous. Better yet, tune in for this ad: Fridays on Fox – Watch the Miller family watch Survivor!
Let's at least recognize that "reality television" isn't actually reality. Let's try to stay aware of the fact that these people are amateur actors, even if they claim to be architects and college students. Let's try and get the reality off the screens and back in the house where it belongs.
This has been a reality editorial. Thank you for your time.