Television: Why Reality TV Is Good For Us

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In Britain, where reality has ruled Britannia's (air)waves for years, TV writers are starting to learn from reality's success. The sitcom The Office uses reality-TV techniques (jerky, handheld camera work, "confessional" interviews) to explore the petty politics of white-collar workers. Now airing on BBC America, it's the best comedy to debut here this season, because its characters are the kind of hard-to-pigeonhole folks you find in life--or on reality TV. On Survivor and The Amazing Race, the gay men don't drop Judy Garland references in every scene. MTV's Making the Band 2--a kind of hip-hop American Idol--gave center stage to inner-city kids who would be portrayed as perps or victims on a cop drama.

But aesthetics aside, the case against reality TV is mainly moral--and there's a point to it. It's hard to defend the deception of Joe Millionaire--which set up 20 women to court construction worker Evan Marriott by telling them he was a multimillionaire--as hilarious as its fool's-gold chase can be. Even the show's Potemkin Croesus contends that producers hid the show's premise from him until the last minute. "The day before I left for France, I signed confidentiality papers which said what the show was about," Marriott tells TIME. "At that point, could I really back out?" Others are concerned about the message of meanness. "There's a premium on the lowest common denominator of human relationships," says James Steyer, author of The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media's Effect on Our Children. "It's often women degrading themselves. I don't want my 9-year-old thinking that's the way girls should behave."

So The Bachelorette is not morally instructive for grade-schoolers. But wallowing in the weaknesses and failings of humanity is a trademark of satire--people accused Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain of being misanthropes too--and much reality TV is really satire boiled down to one extreme gesture. A great reality-TV concept takes some commonplace piety of polite society and gives it a wedgie. Companies value team spirit; Survivor says the team will screw you in the end. The cult of self-esteem says everybody is talented; American Idol's Simon Cowell says to sit down and shut your pie hole. Romance and feminism say a man's money shouldn't matter; Joe Millionaire wagers $50 million that they're wrong.

The social criticisms of reality TV rest on two assumptions: that millions of other people are being taken in by reality TV's deceptions (which the critic himself--or herself--is able to see through) or are being led astray by its unsavory messages (to which the critic is immune). When a reality show depicts bad behavior, it's immoral, misanthropic, sexist or sick. When The Sopranos does the same thing, it's nuanced storytelling. We assume that viewers can empathize with Tony Soprano without wanting to be him; we assume they can maintain critical distance and perceive ironies between his words and the truth. Why? Because we assume that people who like The Sopranos are smarter, more mature--better--than people who like The Bachelorette.