Ship of Reality Fools TV
The monetization of suffering
The ship of fools is an allegory satirizing the human comedy as a voyage of frivolous or oblivious people without a leader or pilot, each one seemingly of the belief they are the savior. The concept is framed in the 1484 novel Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brant, and later by other writers including novelist Katherine Anne Porter (1962).
In Porter’s novel, each character is an archetype representing human vanities. She makes use of the Jungian archetypes such as the Hero, Scapegoat, Outcast, Devil, Earthmother, Platonic Ideal, Temptress, Unfaithful Wife, Star-Crossed Lovers, etc., and situations including the Quest, Fall, Task, Initiation, Journey, and so on. The way so-called Reality TV serves up these heavily-edited and therefore unrealistic segments varies only slightly between shows. There is always the one I like to call Grim Executioner. This is ostensibly the show’s moderator (speaking dialog spoon-fed from behind the curtain) whose job it is to deliver the bad news with a hatchet face.
The Grim Executioner is in love with Schadenfreude, or ‘enjoying the suffering of others.’ This the Grim Executioner’s daily diet, and the producers make sure there is enough drama and suffering to go around.
The suffering of others is also the staple of millions of viewers who tune in from squalid rooms and palaces alike to watch someone besides themselves become the latest humiliated outcast.
Larry Wilmore, who created Reality Junkie for Fox, said, “It’s like watching a car wreck… the drama of it… because there’s so much cruelty and tearing people apart. I feel like I need to take a shower when I watch that.”
As the producers of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? quickly discovered, reality TV is incredibly cheap to produce, and collects better market share than scripted dramas, soaps or sitcoms. That is putting pressure on scripted shows to reduce budget, which is not going to add literary value to our life and times.
Because the brain is malleable to the way it is used, and because sensory tolerances develop, it is inevitable that audiences will become jaded on current fare, and require more extreme and exotic reality entertainment. Just consider that about 1/4 of Web servers worldwide are devoted to porn, and you’ll get a sense of where the ship of reality TV fools can really take us.
One possible destination was illuminated at least as far back as 1958, in the short story Mr. and Mrs. Saturday Night by Robert F. Young (1915 – 1986). The story depicts a lottery in which a lucky couple is chosen to be on television from their own home, for the entertainment of millions. Crews come in and wire the whole place for video and sound. The couple’s elation turns to dread when they realize they are supposed to spend the entire evening in their bedroom. But the year 1958 provided a very moral setting: they were, after all, married to each other.
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