It is no secret that I am a fan of television. While other children spent their time with friends and loved ones developing “social skills,” I spent my days on the couch with my friend cable TV, developing what doctors would later refer to as “bed sores.”
As I grew and developed into the well-balanced, virtually sore-free man I am today, I never forgot how TV was always there to entertain me, like a drunk uncle, or softcore pornography.
Lately, however, I fear my old friend television has taken a turn for the worse. I am talking about the current state of a once beloved form of programming: reality TV.
Motion picture was originally invented in the early 1870s, but the creators feared the American public was not ready for this new “reality” and so they decided to bury the plans deep beneath the earth entombed in a golden chest, only to resurface more than a hundred years later when the Earth and Mars would once again align. Don’t quote me on that.
Despite its mysterious origins, reality television started off big with shows like “Cops” offering people the opportunity to escape from the crime and depravity surrounding their everyday lives and sit down and enjoy the crime and depravity surrounding other people’s everyday lives. A golden age of television had begun. All different types of reality shows soon became available. Game shows (“Survivor”, “Fear Factor”), talent competitions (“American Idol”), and extreme makeovers (“Extreme Makeover”) dominated the scene with their honest and original programming. Currently, reality television has slipped into a dark age of programming known as trashy dating shows.
Trashy dating shows such as “Flavor of Love”, “I Love New York,” “Rock of Love,” and “Shank of Love featuring Skylar Shankman” (pending VH1 approval, fingers crossed!) have begun to trade in much of their “reality” for scripted fights, nudity, and whatever the hell you’d call what Flavor Flav does. Now before all you “New York” fans out there start to finger paint angry pictures or whatever it is you do to communicate with normal people, let me clarify.
It’s not that I don’t find these shows hilariously entertaining, it’s just that I can’t believe television executives are still trying to pass these shows off as “reality.”
While it has been a while since I’ve been with a “woman,” I sincerely hope the world of dating is in no way represented by these shows. I don’t know if I could handle competing for all my dates with five other men in some sort of pie-eating contest or potato sack race. Even if I would totally rock that pie contest.
In any event, these shows are being falsely advertised to us, and enough is enough. Television producers, these shows are not reality. We know it, you know it, we know you know it, and you know we know you know we know it. So, for all our sakes, lets just drop the charade. We promise to continue eating up whatever crap you put out, as long as you promise to be upfront about feeding it to us. After all, if you can’t trust your own television, who’s left?
-Skylar Shankman is a sophomore photography major.
