Staff Editorial
The fall television season is in full swing and viewers can indulge in their favorite shows. Producers know that to maintain viewers, the shock value of their shows has to meet audience entertainment demands.
While popular series like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “24” rely on top-notch writing and plot lines to retain popularity, many reality television series have taken much less admirable approaches such as airing vulgar displays from trashy women, or separating ethnicities for on-camera competition, to stay in the game.
More than 17 years ago, MTV’s, “The Real World” established reality television’s popularity and set the foundation for future hit shows based on exploiting people’s lives in order to amuse viewers. Through the years, however, reality television has morphed in to a shameless pursuit to gain viewers by any means necessary, usually relying on questionable tactics for much of its success.
Some of today’s most popular examples of reality entertainment such as, VH1’s “Flavor of Love,” and the new season of CBS’ “Survivor” prove that producers and creators have crossed the line of good taste.
“Flavor of Love” is a sardonic spin-off of ABC’s “The Bachelor.” Because shows like “The Bachelor” are generally deemed old-fashioned reality television, VH1 producers created a more extreme version of “reality” to attract viewers. Instead of casting an ordinary (yet handsome and charming) bachelor, eccentric ex-rapper Flavor Flav takes the role of leading man.
There are no dates with single, respectable women or charming comments made to woo them (like in the original “Bachelor”) since Flav demeans trashy female contestants with nicknames like Bubblez, Cherry, Smokey, Deelicious, Buckwild and Bootz (among others).
VH1 portrays despicable events on this show as humorous. Such is the case with the disgusting actions of women like “Pumkin” who spit on “New York” in one of the last episodes of the first season. This petty cat fight is just one of the more minor demeaning representations these women create.
Occasionally the women stop bickering and opt for a trip up to Flav’s bedroom. Careful editing implies promiscuous sex. Bootz gets the boot because she wants to wait until she is married.
Anyone who has seen episodes like the one where one woman mistakes the carpet for the bathroom make it hard to say what events on this show actually occur (some are so ludicrous — one would almost hope they were made-up). Either way, these “reality” episodes that portray the lowest human actions imaginable are not only demeaning to the people involved, but they indirectly degrade viewers by subjecting them to such indecency.
CBS’s newest “Survivor” installment also exemplifies reality entertainment’s downward spiral. Like “Flavor of Love,” it has taken reality to a distasteful level. In order to put a new spin on an old series, producers decided to create competitive teams based on the contestants’ races. They have created a competition putting blacks against whites against Asians against Hispanics. Seeing as it is television, there is little surprise in doing a publicity stunt, but it still does not make it right.
Viewers can react with their remotes and choose more respectable TiVo options instead of shows like “Flavor of Love” or the new discriminatory “Survivor.” If you must, watch Flav and his trashy girls, plan one or two appropriate moments where you can turn to a friend and say something along the lines of “can you believe she just did that? How disgusting, how wrong.”
It will make everyone in the room feel better about spending a half an hour of their lives supporting a show that promotes promiscuity and trashiness.
After all, everyone seeks entertainment from different places and if you can’t get a laugh out of anything besides “New York” being spit on, that does not make you a bad person (it just means you have poor taste in TV).
Producers should also re-think the lengths they’ll go to just to gain viewers. There are better ways to increase ratings.
09-28-2006