Reality Check

TILA TEQUILA

I was going to write about my drunken exploits from last weekend, but the story sadly seems familiar. Friday night, getting ready to go out dancing, little food, cheap drinks, and a night ending with me being aided to a cab by Denise and 3 body guards sick as can be. Embarrassing, embarrassing, embarrassing....but I'm not going to write about that.




NEW YORK (yes, that's her name)

Instead, I have decided to ponder what seems to be a strange addiction of mine which I can't quite seem to get a handle on.... my addiction to really bad reality TV. I just can't explain it. My scholastic, philosophical side is confused by the ridiculous episodes I subject myself to. My constant awareness that instead of reading Sartre, Dickens, or even David Sedaris to enrich my mind and emotions, I'm sitting in front of a television fixated on the gender stereotypes being perpetuated by Tila Tequila or the latest smack down between two men trying to win New York's heart.



The list of reality television that I watch is too long for anything other than a master thesis, so I'll name one that I have recently become infatuated with, and a few old standards that I just keep going back to.



A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila

When I first saw promos for this show I thought, "Ugh, you have got to be kidding me." I should have known then that I would end up watching the show, because this is generally my initial reaction to things I end up becoming addicted to. This shows basic premise is that Tila Tequila, who is a former Maxim model and most famous Myspace personality (see has like 2 million friends!), is bisexual and has brought on men and women onto the show to compete for her love. The kicker is, none of them knew this going in. In the first episode, Tila meets with the men first, and then with the women, each group thinking they are just competing against their own gender. However at the end, Tila throws a pool party (of course) and invites the men and women. The men arrive first, hooting and hollering at Tila Tequila ready to get this party started. Just as things start to get worked up, the women walk in. Both groups look totally and utterly confused. Tila then announces she "is a bisexual" (which as many bi/lesbian publications have pointed out a bisexual would never say, she would say "I'm bisexual," but I'll just overlook that detail). As you can guess, since then the show has been filled with ridiculous "bonding" activities for Tila and her suitors, PLENTY of drama, fights, gratuitous making out, and "fondling." It is for lack of a better word, insanity.

I Love New York 2

Yes, you read that correctly, this is the second installment of I Love New York. Ms. New York believed she had found love last season, until the man she chose saw a video of her bashing his mother, and "his love for New York" turned into an enraged bitch fest on national television. New York was back to the drawing board and has invited a whole new batch of men on this season to win her heart. Every episode there is a competition for the men to prove themselves to New York, as she sits back with her fake boobs up to her chin sipping a glass of champagne. The men fight each other, degrade each other, and even, as indicated from a preview, spit in each other's faces. Priceless.

Little People, Big World

Little People, Big World is most certainly not some drama filled love fest with little people, but is instead a wholesome show about The Roloffs. The Roloffs are a family who live in Oregon on acres of land covered with ghost towns, tree houses, and a pumpkin patch. The parents, Amy and Matt, are both little people (formerly known as midgets or dwarfs for the uninformed:) who have 4 children. They have twin boys, Zach and Jeremy, but one is little and the other is average height. Their two other children, Molly and Jacob, are average height as well. The show basically just chronicles their everyday life. Family vacations, the kids struggles at school, Amy getting pissed at Matt, Matt's work, life on the farm, and on and on and on. You watch this family have the exact same issues as any other family, the only difference being that some of them are little. Seems exciting?! Not really, but I am glued to that television every Monday (and have been for the last 2 seasons) to watch what the Roloffs with do next. At one point there was a tragedy with a pumpkin throwing apparatus Matt had built, and I felt like members of my own family had been injured (ok, maybe that's a bit extreme, but I was saddened.)

These are just a few of the shows that I consistently watch, and feel the need to tape if I am forced to leave my house on a week night. Why do I care? What possibly drives me to keep watching this idiocy over and over again? Is there ANY value to television shows like this? These are the questions I ask myself over and over again.

Perhaps this is rationalization, with a hint of delusion, but I really think there is something I gain from watching these shows. For one, they are a major stress relief. I do not need to use one ounce of my brain power to watch these shows. I sit back with a glass of wine, and wait for the lunacy I'm about to see with a strange feeling of anticipation. Once it begins, I laugh, shake my head in disbelief, and am constantly shocked at the actions/words coming out of these people's mouths. Which leads to another point, the study of it all. I almost feel like a sociologist watching some elaborate experiment which constantly brings new insight into human interaction. Whether I'm learning what happens when you place a group of people competing to gain the heart of another in one house, or just how families interact on a daily basis, I feel like I'm gaining secret access into people's lives. The reality is I'm sharing this experience with millions of others, but it feels intimate none the less. Finally, these shows really make me realize just how many idiotic people there are out there living in this world, and I appreciate the semi-normalcy I have in my life. It makes any kind of family issues I may have seem like a cake walk, and that is a nice feeling.

All in all, are reality television shows essential to my life? Of course not. Still, I don't think they are going anywhere, and instead seem to be increasing exponentially. I think the reason is simple, people love to watch other people's shit go down on camera. So, enjoy the ride. :)

Feel free to comment with any reality shows you just can't seem to do without.