Essay about Reality Television Damaging the American Mind

The evolution of television content is currently steadily moving towards reality television shows. The shift from interest in fiction drama series to reality shows has turned the regular television viewers into addicted voyeurs. There have been diverse views on the effect of reality television shows ranging from support to criticism. George Will, in his article “Reality television: oxymoron” believes that reality television is making ordinary people degenerate morally and act stupid in the effort to please a disinterested audience. Reality TV shows are relying heavily on building extraordinary characters or events out of the norm and attract the attention of the audience. Kellner argues that the audience is enticed by “media constructs

Motive of Author: To analyze the evolution of reality television as a genre. To discuss the various methods that reality TV invokes in order to entertain its audiences. To discover the definition of reality TV through examining several generations of reality TV over the years.

In Cassie Heidecker’s paper, The Real, the Bad, and the Ugly, she exposes that reality television’s charm is the characters have real, normal lives like the audience’s lives. While the producers’ editing causes regular episodes of reality TV shows to differ from a viewer's normal life, it also generates larger audiences with every episode and the ratings continue to rise. Moreover, the shows follow a predictable formula so that even Heidecker, who regularly watches reality TV, realizes the shows are predictable; yet Heidecker continues to laugh, cry, and enjoy the predictable moves the shows make. Since the ratings of reality TV continue to rise, more people than just Heidecker still enjoy the shows, even though they are predictable. Though the shows are

There are many different opinions when the subject of reality television is discussed. Although reality television shows are thought to be negative they really are just mindless entertainment. Many can argue that these shows are misleading and disturbing. On the other side of this, people merely use these shows for entertainment and allow people to forget about stress in their lives. The cause of these different opinions is a result of different age, gender, religion, and race. The main purpose of these shows is simply to allow people to live vicariously through the characters. This excitement of being in other people’s lives is what makes reality television so addicting to people.

In order to fit in to society, some people may modify their own actions based on the perceived reality of the TV show. It is easy to reality TV programs and the way they are perceived, could affect society as a whole.

Some of the most popular television shows in today’s society are The Biggest Looser, Jersey Shore, and Big Brother. These programs and many others are classified as reality television. Reality television’s main purpose is to attempt to portray ordinary people in unscripted situations. Recently, however, many of these shows have achieved in creating the complete opposite, and have earned an immense amount of criticism as a result. Reality television programs are detrimental to society because they influence bad behavior among teenagers, do not produce authentic real life situations, and they humiliate many of the characters.

Television was not at its best a decade ago, producers were struggling trying to figure out how it can reach to a broad audience and have them stay. Thanks to reality T.V, the television industry has not been the same ever since. Reality TV always get its viewers on the edge of their chair, from shows like The Bachelor, to other shows like Intervention, “all of them make you sit up and pay attention” (Poniewozik 1). Reality TV shows will do whatever it takes to get people to watch them. From a simple show called The Bachelor talking about love stories, to a show where they show a life of drug addict. They all presents a stories within, and sending a message to its viewers. What makes the viewer watches the show is the messages that the reality tv show trying to reach to its viewers.

Do you know the guiltiest pleasure of the American public? Two simple words reveal all—reality TV. This new segment of the TV industry began with pioneering shows like MTV’s The Real World and CBS’s Survivor. Switch on primetime television nowadays, and you will become bombarded by and addicted to numerous shows all based on “real” life. There are the heartwarming tales of childbirth on TLC, melodramas of second-rate celebrities on Celebrity Mole, and a look into a completely dysfunctional family on The Osbornes. Yet, out of all these entertaining reality shows arises the newest low for popular culture, a program based on the idea of a rich man or woman in search of

What pleasure do you get from watching a group of people humiliate themselves in the name of television? Media both in the UK and around the world seem to have "discovered" that so-called "reality" shows are very profitable, resulting in a growing string of such shows in recent years. Although not all are successful, many do achieve significant popularity and cultural prominence. That does not mean, however, that they are good for society or that they should be aired. Can you honestly say, that after absorbing the reality rubbish, you have learned something?

Reality TV is known as exciting entertainment because the audience never knew what will happen next as it is with no strings attached and even have the freedom of speech. Despite the entertainment it can bring, the content of reality shows are actually degrading the society. Our pop culture and civilization have been affected by the reality programs in a bad way. Indeed, reality TV is promoting bad social value to the

For close to a decade, the ethics behind the existence of reality TV have been questioned. While there are ardent viewers of reality TV, researchers and other scholars disapprove them, and claim that the world would have been in a better place. Reality TV shows, especially in America, are extremely profitable to media owners, and this has increased their popularity in the recent years. The main target audience for these shows are teenagers and women, who spend a lot of time discussing about them, even hours after the shows. Most of the reality shows in America and other parts of the world have common ideas. The most fundamental aspect of most reality TV shows is that they display people who go through embarrassing, painful and humiliating ordeals. This is what the reality shows expect their audiences to be entertained, and presumably laugh at the situations the people go through. For this reason and many more, it has been found that they are more detrimental than entertaining to the society, and therefore, the world would be in a better place without them (Pozner 89-91).

1. Most girls will do whatever it takes to be skinny and look like the stars that weigh 100 pounds "...the media influence on the cultural phenomenon of dieting and the perfect body. “Commercials and reality TV shows make you feel bad about yourself so you buy into the fad," Cohn said. The diet industry earns $50 billion each year on diet pills, and $8.4 billion is spent every year on cosmetic surgery. Women -- and men, Cohn stressed -- want to be thin, because large men and women are ridiculed" (Demmel). Eating disorders continues to be problem among young girls because of their role models. Girls on reality TV shows have that 'perfect' body and girls what to be everything like them.

The cultural phenomenon ‘Reality Television (TV)’ has become an increasingly popular genre of television since its paroxysm onto the airwaves in 1945. The term ‘Reality Television’ can be defined as the genre of entertainment that documents the lives of ‘ordinary’ individuals through the exhibition of allegedly unscripted real-life scenarios, despite inquisitive inquiries disclosing Reality TV to entail facets of script. The primary objective of Reality TV is purely to entertain the audience. This genre of television is appealing to viewers due to its entertainment principle/value, the audience’s competency to correlate to the characters and their situations, and the contingency it presents for escapism and voyeurism. We can capitalise the Australian appropriation of the American popular dating Reality TV show ‘The Bachelor’ as a tool to further comprehend the purpose and appeal of Reality television. The postulations of media’s obligations to society in contrast to their current actions and media as a mirror to society - the normative theory, can also be utilised as an implement to apprehend Reality TV. Through the strict analysis of ‘ The Bachelor’ and the employment of the normative theory, the purpose and appealing factor of Reality TV can be deeply examined.

Today’s audience grabs hold of reality TV now a day. Looking forward week to week to watch these unscripted real life situation shows. In a way it 's becoming increasingly hard to avoid not watching. Some viewers see the TV show and tend to be attention seekers, and reality TV allows them to fantasize about achieving status through instant fame. Too much reality TV may lead viewers to idealize real world situations, like romanticizing dating. Like when Truman saw the girl in the library who was an actress and a fan of the show. He wanted to take her out sometime later that week, but she said it couldn’t happen because she knows what’s going on, but she had true love for him and asked to go out with him right then on a little date to the beach. As they went to the beach she was going to spill the beans and tell him everything. Then a man of the show in a car drove there to stop her acting like her father to get her before she ruined the show. It’s like most reality TV love shows on today people who audition for a show and know it’s scripted, but end up actually having a real feeling for the person.

There has been a huge increase in “reality” based television over the last few years. From Survivor to Big Brother it seems that we are constantly being bombarded with a new type of reality television program. But why do people watch these shows? What makes these shows so interesting? One theory brought up in an article in Psychology Today by Steven Reiss Ph.D. and James Wiltz, a Ph.D. candidate at Ohio State University, is that, “reality television allows Americans to fantasize about gaining status through automatic fame” (Reiss and Wiltz, 2001). This is the American dream, acquiring fame with little to no work at all. And what better way to do it than on television?