Studies show that more Americans watch reality TV than not, and about half of all TV shows are unscripted, despite the negative connotation attached to vulgar entertainment. Media studies have long demonstrated the influence of television on our attitudes, values, and beliefs as well as our behavior and movements in the real world when cool people like reality TV.
Since cool people like reality TV and it has the ability to magnify or caricature us, I view it as a type of fun-house mirror. The genre amplifies and exposes some of the worst aspects of society, including materialism, classism, racism, and misogyny. But in its inventiveness, it also reveals the best sides of us. For more, check out the best reality shows on Amazon Prime, Peacock, and more!
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Reality TV History
Even though reality television has been a major cultural influence from the year 2000, it wasn’t until the early 1990s that it became its own separate genre. The Real World, an MTV series, made its US premiere in 1992. The show chronicled a group of young adults who were continuously videotaped while they shared a single, short-term residence in New York. The show was revolutionary in its early years for highlighting different viewpoints on sex, racism, abortion, politics, and addiction, and it changed cities with each new season.
There were other reality shows before The Real World. An American Family, which aired in 1973, exposed ten million people to a day in the lives of a typical American family. However, filming strangers in a fake setting was innovative and signaled the beginning of the phrase “reality television” becoming more often used, making for the fact that cool people like reality TV. The Real World was a “huge” event in her friends’ lives, according to Variety Editor-at-Large Kate Aurthur. “Seeing Norm Korpi – the queer member of the cast – felt to me like change was coming.” And it did. Pedro Zamora, a gay man with AIDS, was featured on The Real World two seasons later.
The next major reality TV craze to hit American television at the turn of the 2000 was Survivor. The show, which debuted in 2000 and is currently in its 41st season, centers on “tribes” of individuals engaged in conflict in isolated areas. 51 million Americans watched the first series’ conclusion, which featured 16 Americans in Borneo.
Professor of media studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and author of the 2015 book Reality TV, June Deery, highlights a passionate statement made by Sue Hawk, a campmate from season one, in which she calls her co-stars “snakes and rats” as the first instance of reality TV going viral. “Her sincerity and moral directness stuck in people’s consciousness and brought reality TV to everyone’s attention,” adds Deery.
When cool people like reality TV, Big Brother debuted on both sides of the Atlantic in the same year. It cleared the path for reality TV to emerge as not just a genre on television but as the one that defines our era. “Nasty” Nick Bateman was dramatically expelled from the inaugural series in the UK after breaching the rules. Watching the house confront Bateman for plotting against them drew in millions of viewers.
Because cool people like reality TV, the program also found its own heroes, as openly gay men and women Brian Dowling and Nadia Almada, respectively, won the 2001 and 2004 series with overwhelming popular support, demonstrating how reality TV could support LGBTQ+ representation that went beyond most scripted TV at the time.
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The Reality TV of Today
The influencer era of today was made possible by a significant shift in celebrity culture, which was facilitated by reality series like Big Brother. Be it acting or singing, a traditional “talent” was no longer a must to be in the spotlight. Their biggest selling point was the “rags to riches” story, even with purportedly talent-based reality shows like American Idol and The X Factor, which are singing competitions. “Normal” people, at the whim of the electorate and the media, would provide moving backstories of how their lives had changed.
Viewers were first pitched several reality TV programs as a “social experiment”. But as the genre has come to accept blatant contrivance, that pretense has been abandoned more and more. As cool people like reality TV, ten or so years ago, the term “structured reality” gained popularity for programs such as Made in Chelsea, which featured “real” individuals but also featured complex camera work, storyboarding, editing, and disclaimers indicating that certain sequences were staged for entertainment value.
“[At the time] Made in Chelsea was different to most other reality shows because it was shot in a completely different style,” Laing recalls. “Everything was filtered and looked fantastic; it was filmed like a play. Something had never been seen in a reality show before.”
Simultaneously, viewers’ sophistication has increased as cool people like reality TV. The majority are content that “reality TV” is merely a product being marketed, with its “reality” being flimsy at best. This conflict between the manufactured and the actual is what Deery refers to as “staged actuality”.
“There is a coyness about reality TV’s faux authenticity that encourages people to think about how content is made and for what purpose,” the author claims. She believes that part of the appeal of reality shows is their fakeness, or figuring out which parts are true as we watch. It is true that even after The Hills, the breakout hit of the subgenre, famously hinted that the show was scripted in its last episode, the structured reality genre continued to grow quickly.
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Why Do Cool People Like Reality TV?
Because cool people like reality TV, even though these portrayals haven’t always been good, historically, reality TV has shown people of color and LGBTQ individuals in a more diversified manner than other media. Reality TV shows how much society has changed while also highlighting how traditional it is.
Additionally, there has been a deliberate attempt to make even these more ostentatious and deliberately staged reality shows more representative of the real world. In its US and UK franchises, Drag Race has welcomed transgender and cisgender women as competitors.
Because cool people like reality TV, in reaction to recent national reckonings on race and politics, Bravo, the US network behind Top Chef, Project Runway, and Real Housewives, in particular, has diversified its hitherto predominately white casts. This has had mixed results: due to racial tensions, some celebrities have lost their jobs and shows have been canceled, but crucial on-camera conversations regarding misogynoir and colorism have also occurred.
It will also keep having a significant effect on that actual reality as cool people like reality TV. The best reality TV shows, despite their initial frivolity, challenge the existing quo in some way both inside and outside of the TV industry. For example, the Great British Bake Off has shown that kindness and friendship can win out over fierce competition. Going forward, more of this is to be expected. “One of the remarkable things about reality TV is its tenacity,” adds Deery. “What was first thought of as a temporary fad, a low-risk way to fill summer schedules, has led to some series that are among the longest running and most successful in television history.”
RuPaul’s Drag Race is appealing to me because it highlights the ways in which gender roles are acted out in daily life, another reason that cool people like reality TV. The Bachelor, with its emphasis on marriage and inflexible gender norms, is a prime example of how deeply ingrained notions about courtship continue to shape our attitudes and actions. The Real Housewives series delves into group dynamics and fascinating character studies, while Keeping Up with the Kardashians highlights the power of the family.
There is voyeurism in reality TV. Even though cool people like reality TV and we are flawed in our own unique ways, we prefer to remind ourselves that we are not the train disaster by observing the “train wreck” figure. We may feel conceitedly better than the characters on these shows. This voyeurism also has a freak-show element to it. As in the instance of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, where the main family is portrayed as buffoonish and stereotypically lower-class, marginalized groups are sometimes the targets of scorn.
Because real people are supposedly reacting to real-world situations on reality TV, we can empathize with the participants and get glimpses of ourselves as cool people like reality TV. Broad character tropes, such as the “smart one,” “shy one,” and “athletic one,” are common in this genre. You can typically identify with someone and declare, “I’m a Bethenny,” “I’m a Ramona,” and so forth. Another distinctive feature of reality TV is how it promotes viewer interaction. We interact with the stars on social media and even cast votes for episodes of The Voice and Love Island.
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Final Thoughts: Cool People Like Reality TV
I find that watching reality TV on binge can have a numbing effect. To appreciate and relate to these shows, viewers do not have to view them as perfect reflections of real life. Producers create them, as we know, and some moments might even be faked. For me, I prefer to hunt for the “really real” moments, the smudges in the gloss, like when the Housewives pull out old text messages from each other to read during reunion shows.
Numerous habits have been linked to watching reality TV, according to studies; those who watch a lot of the show had higher odds of drinking alcohol, getting false tans, and using hot tubs on dates. Although correlation does not imply causation, a well-known study found a connection between lower incidence of teen pregnancies and viewing of 16 and Pregnant.
Numerous people who began their careers in reality TV went on to achieve success. For example, Cardi B first came to the attention of the public in 2015 when she was cast as an aspiring musician on Love & Hip-Hop: New York. She has now ascended the popularity ladder and won a Grammy for her work as a rapper.
A few reality stars have even ventured into politics; Donald Trump is the most well-known example. Had he not gone on The Apprentice, where he was portrayed as a powerful man in a suit, giving commands from behind a desk, and always being correct, would he have won the presidency? Although we can’t be certain, it makes sense to assume that reality TV aided in his ascent to the presidency.
It’s possible that the media’s portrayal of Trump’s presidency evolved into its own reality show; in 2018, for example, several prominent news organizations reported on Kim Kardashian’s visit to the Oval Office. In order to better appreciate how reality TV both reflects and shapes culture, Trump is a crucial piece of information. His presidency taught us one thing, if nothing else: the impact of unscripted programming is something that’s “really real.”
Even with this success, reality TV in general is still viewed as being of low quality, and the majority of reality shows have not received high praise from critics. Even though cool people like reality TV, this is unlikely to alter as long as the genre’s weakest works are still used to critique it. It’s possible that some of the skepticism regarding the medium stems from the unease with how swiftly reality TV has altered the world, both positively and negatively.
When cool people like reality TV, we have witnessed how readily it can serve as a mirror for us, which may both hasten constructive change and accentuate or even glorify social evils. The finest reality TV should be given more credit than it receives for exercising such power while negotiating the complex ethical issues of working with actual people.