I’m not a massive fan of reality programs. Fame hungry wannabes trying their hardest to be the next big thing. I’m not a fan of TOWIE, Made In Chelsea or Geordie Shore (not a fan= don’t watch them), I don’t even get what the hell’s going on with Desperate Scousewives or Big Brother but somehow everyone and their nan’s cat seems to have an absolute obsession with knowing if Jimmy dumped Aggie for Billie’s little sister Lily and if they’re all going to hang out at Mahiki or Movida rather than Amika because the bouncers look friendlier and the chances of seeing a pissed Katie Price falling out of a club is an opportunity one can’t miss. I just want to know what the big deal is with it all. Big Brother is on its what, millionth episode and screened on Channel 5 now instead of Channel 4 because well, don’t care, but it’s boring. Not just a little boring but rip your hair out boring. It’s that boring. You get me?
Ok see this as me ranting. Ranting away about my hate for this so-called ‘Must See TV.’ To some it’s a guilty pleasure, a little bit of heaven or escapism away from the norm. But majority of these programs are in fact… dum dum duuuuur… FAKE. Scripted. Oooooh. Reality television is one of the worst things to happen to this countries entertainment industry. There isn’t a day that goes by when you open a newspaper or magazine, or see on Facebook or Twitter etc that one of these new ‘famous’ people are spread across with all their latest celebrity gossip. The bottom line is that if you don’t entertain typical tv watchers, they will get bored. All we see is actors that are trying to ‘get theirs’ by ‘acting normal’. How do you act normal ? It’s impossible, so there is the problem. Once a camera is on them, they are not themselves. Although after the TV series ‘The Hills‘ admitted it, a lot of others followed suit, they’re scripted. If they don’t provide a certain amount of entertainment at the right times in the right amounts, then the show would be canned due to lack of interest. So, reality tv is not reality or going to be aslong as the watcher demands to be entertained in order to validate watching the show. The producers know the ‘demands’ on them from viewers due to history stats and viewer stats.
So the question is, how much reality do we watch in reality shows?
Have you ever seen the movie, The Truman Show, starring Jim Carrey?
In the movie, Truman played by funnyman Jim Carrey who is a man whose life is a fake one… Imagine yourself in the following situation: More than 5000 cameras are filming you – 24/7, at all times 365 days a year since the day you were born. The place he lives is in fact a big studio with hidden cameras everywhere, and all his friends and people around him, are actors who play their roles in the most popular TV-series in the world: The Truman Show. Truman thinks that he is an ordinary man with an ordinary life and has no idea about how he is exploited. Until one day… he finds out everything. He is desperate and tries to escape from the fictitious world he lives in. All the people watching the TV series are totally captivated and can’t take their eyes off the television. They have done nothing but watch the series for a very long time, and have seen Truman growing up. When he finally manages to get to the real world, they are happy on one hand, but on the other hand, they seem to have lost their purpose in life. This is the reality that I see with a lot of my friends and some of my family and all over the internet. The need to know what’s going on with someone else’s life however boring and shit it may be. That’s TV. Everyone talks about it. Everyone. Even if you don’t watch X Factor, I’m a Celeb or Big Brother, everyone still manages to somehow chat about it. We talk about everything from their weight, their diets, how little or how much they’ve eaten, who’re they’re dating, sleeping with or cheating on with, what club they’re falling out of, how much they’ve drunk this week and every aspect of their personal lives as if we are the viewers in the movie watching Truman’s life every step of the way.
It’s shocking especially when teenagers look up to these nimwits and see them as role models. This whole ‘No Carbs Before Marbs‘ crap by the girls from TOWIE show young girls being stick thin is the way to go and having bum, boob and lip implants with enough spray tan to even shock an oompah lumpah to death is the way to get a guy. Snazzy. Speaking to one of my friend’s little sister she said she watched these programs because they make her feel better, they give her a sense of a reality that she’d never experienced, an insight into a world she’d never be part of. When you think it like that, a 14yo should not be thinking like this. She’s too young.
The consumer is the most powerful player in the economics game. ALWAYS. If the viewers don’t watch it, eat it, buy it, rent it then it won’t be on the market because the seller needs to make money off it in 99.9% of cases. If you go to most stores, supermarkets and your local newsagents you’ll see the evidence there. X Factor magazines, stationary, random crap that we the consumer won’t hesitate in buying to fuel this mahoosive empire.
If like me you haven’t tuned into these shows just coz you’re normal and want to know what all this fuss is about, read on if not, scroll down a little bit more!
TOWIE aka The Only Way Is Essex
The BAFTA (I know, WTF?!) nominated semi-reality show based in Essex follows the lives of young adults: Kirk Norcross, Mark Wright, Jessica Wright, Lauren Goodger, Samantha Faiers, James Argent, Lydia Rose Bright, Harry Derbidge and their friends, family and acquaintances. The show is primarily filmed in Brentwood, Buckhurst Hill and Chigwell, near London. According to The Daily Mail last week, ‘Brits have slammed TOWIE for fostering a nation of bad taste and tackiness according to new research.Fake tans, exaggerated boob jobs and visible hair extensions were listed as some of the most offensive trends sweeping the country thanks to the hit reality TV show.Meanwhile low slung trousers, revealing inches of flashy underwear was seen as the most offensive fashion.’ Prime example of ultimate boob-plastic-fantastic is non other than Chloe Simms who insists to the nation, wanting a butt-enhancement job is perfectly normal for someone her age-she’s like 28.
Made In Chelsea
Made in Chelsea is a British reality soap set in the wealthy Chelsea district of London, although some cast members have admitted they’re not even from Chelsea. The show follows the lives of: Ollie Locke, Spencer Matthews, Fredrik Ferrier, Francis Boulle, Hugo Taylor, Millie Mackintosh, Amber Atherton, Alexandra Felstead, Francesca Hull, Rosie Fortescue, Caggie Dunlop and Gabriella Ellis.
The cast of MIC is basically a semi-reality doc series following rich kid brats rah rah with each other, mwah mwah with others, down champagne and talk about so and so fancying so and so’s boyfriend but because so and so has a boyfriend we must not share it apart from the audience tuned into their pointless convo’s on the King’s Road. You could say it’s a posh version of the Essex series but the plots are awful if not worse.
Geordie Shaw
Aired by MTV and a British adaption of the American ‘hit’ Jersey Shore, Geordie Shore is a reality television series. In a column for metro.co.uk, Christopher Hooton described the show as “a gaudy kaleidoscope of six packs, shots, fights, simulated fellatio and exposed breasts,” but said that criticism of the show was futile given its intent, noting that “being shocked by the lasciviousness ofGeordie Shore is like being shocked by the lack of nutrition in a Pot Noodle.
Desperate Scousewives
In a world revolving around football, fierce fashion, and that famous WAG style, Scouse girls and boys are all about having a boss night out on the town. But looking good is a 24/7 job as the ladies dress to impress to bag themselves the man of their dreams.
The girls spend every hard earned penny making sure they stand out from the crowd. And the boys of Liverpool have to work hard to keep up with them, woo them, and win their hearts. But they’re not adverse to a bit of premiership style preening themselves; some of Liverpool’s most handsome and sought after guys are pros at living a footballers lifestyle, even if it is just off the pitch.
In a world where make up and wags is all that I’d say this is prob a step up from TOWIE and Made in Chelsea but still just as irritating to watch. Turn off for me.
Chloe Simm’s should go on there. She’d fit in perfectly.
Just saying.
I’m a Celebrity
I’m a Celebrity is a reality television game show series in which 8 to 15 celebrities live together in a jungleenvironment for a few weeks. They have no luxuries, and compete to win a cash prize. The first programme aired in 2002 and is presented by the lovable Geordie duo Ant & Dec. I’ve watched an episode here and there and the most recent one is doing my head in thanks to one particular pain-in-the-ass contestant, Simon Cowell only knows too way and somehow put up with her, none other than Sinitta.If you remember that day when Cowell introduced his ex Sinitta as his help at the judges house stage and she came out it that palm leaf shocker of an outfit? Her.
Sinitta is plain and simply this year’s Gillian McKeith. Last year scrawny foodie GM was the nightmare of the Jungle being fearful of everything within arm’s length from flies to ants and eating spiders. This year GM is Sinitta. Throughout all the Bushtucker Trials, the audience have done their best to help the twit get over her fears but instead she screams and goes mental when a creepy crawly moves near her. Fun to watch for like 5 seconds then I wanna throw my shoe at the TV. I think Sinitta is worse than Gillian, to be honest I haven’t a clue why she entered! Did she think it would be like Buckingham Palace or something?
Big Brother
BB is a television show in which a group of people live together in a large house, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras. Each series lasts for around three months, and there are usually fewer than 15 participants. The housemates try to win a cash prize by avoiding periodic evictions from the house. The idea for the show is said to have come during a brainstorm session at the Dutch production house of John de Mol Produkties (an independent part of Endemol) on 4 September 1997. The first Big Brother broadcast was in the Netherlands in 1999 on the Veronica TV channel. It was picked up by Brazil, Germany, Argentina, Portugal, the US, the UK, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland and Italy the following year and became a world-wide sensation. Since then it has been a prime-time hit in almost 70 countries. The show’s name comes from George Orwell‘s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, a dystopia in which Big Brother can always spy on the inhabitants of the dictatorship he heads through their television sets, with the slogan “Big Brother is watching you.”
We don’t find reality in reality TV but so many of us see it as a point of escapism. In all these shows the producers have control. We may vote, we may ‘decide’ who stays or who goes but they are merely just puppets controlled by the big guys. We don’t watch it for average storylines we watch it to gossip, to complain about, to bitch about to discuss and spread the word about. Using Word of Mouth to the best of our advantage whether that be via magazines, social networks or with your girlfriends at the local wine bar. Interesting storylines is what makes it. It’s the same as EastEnders and HollyOaks.If you’ve seen any of the recent episodes of either in the past few weeks you’d understand. The drama that seems to unfold just from one family to the next in 1 soap is enough for my entire county to possibly go through but not in 1 square. Last week’s story had lovable Alfie say to Kat he loved her too much to turn a blind eye if she slept with other people whilst Billy’s granddaughter pretended she was pregnant just for attention and not to leave school. Phew! The producers wouldn’t be able to pass off my life as anything particularly entertaining no matter how much me myself and I can relate to it. Drama is what we buy into. Having their personal lives changed to be a bit more interesting, intense etc so we can all participate some way or another. Phew.
Rant over. I promise.
Random Ramblings Of Me Dingo 