The shame game: legacy of reality TV shows

EVERY year it rolls around, and every year, despite the intellectual abasement, the blatant psychological abuse of ill-educated individuals, not to mention the exploitation of the psychiatrically unsound… regardless of all these factors, people tune in in their millions.

Channel 4, a broadcaster that once prided itself on being left-of-centre, prepared to give airtime to challenging, shocking or unusual programmes that would not see the light of day on other stations, more or less hands over the schedule to this slice of “reality” TV.

The most mundane, mind-numbingly boring drudgery will be microscopically picked over by psychologists, people-watchers and so-called experts. You can view the housemates 24 hours a day if you are so moved, between the TV shows and internet webcams. Why anyone would wish to watch a room of people sleeping is utterly beyond me, but apparently there is a market for it.

We will marvel at the political game-playing, the alliances that will form, the inherent bullying, the (usually fairly guileless) sexual frissons that occasionally occur, and of course the moments when some carefully chosen bimbo will realise she is not getting as much attention as she deserves, and decides to go topless.

That Big Brother (named after the fascistic leader of totalitarian Oceania in Orwell’s novel 1984) has become such a cultural phenomenon speaks volumes about our society. The concept has spread across the globe like a poisonous cloud, turning up in ever-more extreme formats in almost 70 countries.

Last year the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, called for the Antipodean version of the programme to be pulled after a particularly sordid episode involving three of the housemates, but his request was ignored, and the show continued. All Howard’s outburst seemed to provoke was even higher ratings.

It seems that there are no depths of human depravity that cannot be broadcast as entertainment in our post-modern world. In the US, the reality adoption show, 20/20 caused an international controversy when it became apparent that the programme would involve couples competing to adopt the infant of a 16-year-old single mother. Hosted by television icon Barbara Walters, the backlash was so strong ABC watered down the concept, choosing instead to follow a number of couples through the adoption process.

ABC were not the only American network to plough the furrows of bad taste. Fox came at it from the reverse angle, though, with the abysmally ill-conceived Who’s Your Daddy?

This show involved contestants who had been adopted from infancy, and who were unsuccessfully searching for their biological parents. Fox found the missing parents for them, and then paraded them before their offspring, hidden among eight other Moms and Dads. The game was that the adopted child had to pick out the real father or mother from the lineup.

In more recent times, Dutch TV has proposed the Big Donorshow, in which Lisa, a 37-year-old woman dying of a brain tumour, must choose who will receive her kidney from among three contestants.

Despite massive opposition from doctors’ and patients’ groups, the show is to go ahead.

When brought before the Dutch parliament, it was felt that the shortage of organ donors needed to be publicised, although there was some disagreement if a reality show was the best way to do it.

The simple fact of the matter is that human misery — real, genuine embarrassment, desperation and pain — has become the currency of television producers.

Does this state of affairs herald the death of good taste? Is it the beginning of a new age of gladiatorial entertainment, albeit outwardly bloodless? Or are we viewing the post-modern equivalent of PT Barnum’s Freak Shows? Remember, many of Barnum’s “exhibits” became very wealthy, and were celebrities of their day. The Victorians had Randian, the Human Caterpillar, and Jo Jo the Dog-faced Boy. We have Jade and Chantelle.

However, in these allegedly more civilised times, we look back on Barnum’s usage of the physically and intellectually disabled with shame. Will future generations look at Big Brother and its related family of reality shows, and their exploitation of the sick, the unbalanced and the distressed in the same way? I suspect they might.

Shane Dunphy is a sociologist, child protection worker and lecturer. He is the author of ‘Last Ditch House’.