With all the eality TV"" flotsam in network waters these days, I sometimes expect to turn on my TV and see a mirror image of my existence.
But the world I inhabit includes neither Joe Millionaires nor Celebrity Moles. These makeshift actors do their business in a place that's completely unreal to me.
Only one reality series has the guts to ""be real"" by giving the camera to the everyman in the street, or the airplane or zoo, as the case may be.
Hosted by Ahmad Rashad, and seemingly running on a constant loop on TNN (The National Network--I knew the South had something to do with this), ""Real TV"" takes home video clips sent in by viewers of people doing things that are supposed to inspire shock, mostly because they really happened without stunts or special effects. They show footage of things ranging from car accidents to suicide talk-downs and also lighter fare, such as wacky stunts that PepsiCo might consider ""extreme.""
Rather than ""extreme,"" or ""shocking,"" I'd call most of the things people do on these shows ""idiotic."" But if the title is to be believed, this is real to America's mightiest medium.
Reality, apparently, is doing things that hurt us and others--things that have no purpose. Trying to be killed--and more importantly, escaping alive--is the goal.
The most incredible examples of videotaped stupidity always come when people venture unnecessarily into the animal kingdom, perhaps riding a killer whale or urinating on a hornet's nest.
Narrator (tone denoting intensity): Watch as 30-year-old investment banker and new father Chad Wilson pokes this sleeping grizzly bear with a stick over and over. Now watch as the bear gets angry and bites him on the arm, leaving a mark. Now watch as park rangers shoot the bear while Chad looks for another animal to taunt.
But when no animals are available, people find other ways to jeopardize their lives. These clips usually involve taking one ""extreme"" activity and adding a slight twist.
I watched the other day as a man skydived--check this out--in a kayak. Never of course is it stated what exactly the kayak adds to the equation. Kayak or no kayak, when you jump out of a plane, you will fall towards Earth. It would have been the same if he skydived sitting on a set of encyclopedias, or combed his hair while he fell.
So ""real"" in the title or not, ""Real TV"" is the same as every other ""reality TV"" show. It shows people who we are supposed to think are just like us, doing things we also would supposedly do, thus connecting the audience to the participants.
But that fails, of course, since if each of us were dumb enough to do the things people do on ""Real TV,"" our species would cease to exist.
Next time I see a show with ""real"" in the name, I better see some normal behavior. Show someone behaving appropriately around an animal. Show someone driving a car in a non-extreme fashion. Show an unemployed person sitting in his or her underwear viewing ""Real TV."" These things happen every day.
Or better yet, let's just stop pretending that anything on TV is truly real. It isn't, except in the faraway world where people try to find new things to sit in while they skydive so that riding whales and taunting bears doesn't seem so boring.
