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Monday, May 16, 2005
Amante: Reality check
By ISOLDE D. AMANTE
CONFESSION: I watch reality TV shows. Someday I will learn to use my time more meaningfully, learn to read Murakami in Japanese, write a sestina in my spare time, or build huts for the homeless. But I can’t seem to help myself for now.
Last week, while suicide bombers blew up shopkeepers and children in Iraqi markets, and religious leaders pondered the ancient rifts between churches, my most fervent hope was that Anthony Federov would, at long last, leave “American Idol.” (He did.) Or that Rob and Amber would finish first in “Amazing Race.” (Sadly, they didn’t.)
Media critics haven’t run out of their cautionary tales for viewers like me: base voyeurs whose idea of rational discourse is limited to whether contestants on “The Apprentice” should flash some skin to make a quick sale.
But there’s just something so fascinating about watching people responding to stressful situations. It’s like watching a psychological or sociological experiment, with fancy lighting and “no make-up” make-up.
I wonder, for example, why those women on “Survivor” never manage to kick a man out of the game, even when the numbers are in the women’s favor. Or why Jackie took so long to realize she couldn’t rely on stereotypical cues to figure out who she could split US$1 million with and who, on the other hand, was just “Playing it Straight.”
Maybe part of the thrill is the idea, seductive but unsustainable, that all human behavior can, in the long run, be predicted.
Even researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) think it is possible, using “limited observations of present behavior”, to accurately predict how people will respond to future stress. That a model of sorts can be created for human life, beyond the bare bones of birth, maturation, decline and death.
That’s a balm right there for my persistent case of reality TV viewer’s guilt: the idea that one’s couch-potato observations on “Starting Over” and “Elimi-date” are but a low-brow translation of those MIT geniuses’ Eigenbehavior analysis.
Unfortunately for us reality TV viewers, certain media critics do have a disturbing point. What’s egregious about reality TV, says the communication studies professor Mark Andrejevic, isn’t that it perpetuates the fantasy of ordinary viewers getting a chance to be stars. Or that it encourages our shallow obsession with fame and wealth.
The problem with reality TV, says Andrejevic, is that “it pretends to give viewers more control, while in fact subjecting them to more sophisticated forms of monitoring and manipulation.”
I should really get started on that sestina. As soon as I get over the poetic possibilities of Bo Bice’s hair.
(ida@sunstar.com.ph)
(May 16, 2005 issue)
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