I feel bad. A girl who I barely know sits near to me and watches “Rock of Love” every day on VH1. Today I decided to make fun of it because, well, I’m a jerk.
It didn’t go well.
She seemed genuinely upset that someone could find her program to be so…how do I put this delicately?….filled with the kind of mind numbing drivel that is ruining America.
Really, though…it’s a terrible show.
At what point did we decide that TV has two functions: to tell us how much we suck for not being millionaires; and to show us that we shouldn’t be upset because we suck for not being millionaires because millionaires are miserable too.
I feel as though far too many Americans use television to validate their existences by showing us examples of people who have it worse than us. It started with Jerry Springer and the day-time talk show syndicate, where they would take the dregs of society and parade them for us to ridicule. When they ran out of the genuinely miserable, they started to fabricate that misery. I have a good friend who still tells a story about the time her and her friend were slated to appear on an episode of Jenny Jones under the heading “My Boyfriend Cheated on me with my Best Friend.” Unfortunately, the guy that was supposed to be the boyfriend of one of the other couples couldn’t make it, so one of the producers asked them if they could do “Lesbian Love Triangles” instead. They happily complied.
However, our obsession with the misfortune of others has evolved in to a wholly different and (if possible) scarier entity with the onset of shows like “Flavor of Love” and the like, in which we get to witness people so corrupted by greed, false standards of beauty, and celebrity worship that they will debase themselves almost limitlessly.
The scary part is that greed, false standards of beauty, and celebrity worship have, for so long, been the very ideals that TV has set as the pinnacle of American existence. “Get skinny, get rich, meet an actor, live happily ever after.” My co-worker accused me of thinking like an old man and maybe she’s right. Maybe I just remember all too well being encouraged to pursue those ideals, and thinking at the time “man, this is not going to end well.” So maybe my problem with shows like “Rock of Love” is that they prove me right: these are the sad results of the kinds of people who followed those shallow dreams.
But what do you do? Television remains the true opiate of the masses, providing short-cuts for babysitting, teaching, and moral, ethical, and political guidance. When my co-worker exclaims “it’s entertaining!” she can’t be wrong – this schlock obviously entertains her – but I guess that’s what upsets me the most. Maybe my problem isn’t that TV panders to idiots, it’s that there are so many idiots that need to be pandered to. Maybe I am repulsed by “Rock of Love” not because it’s terrible, but because it’s popular. I mean, no one bothers to rail against the White Power candidate, because no one’s going to vote for him. When he carries
To be fair, it’s not just crappy talk shows and reality TV that’s the problem. The nightly news appeals to the same demographic. I screamed a newswoman off the grounds of the dormitory I lived in in college because her and her carnivorous ilk were all over us about a student who had died there due to an alcohol related incident. “Where were you, you fucking vulture,” I yelled “two weeks ago when one of our students became the first woman in this university’s history to be awarded the Rhodes Scholarship to go study at
So maybe she’s right to be offended. Maybe she knew what I did not – that by saying “your show sucks,” what I’m really saying is “it upsets me that you’re such an idiot that you enjoy this crap.”
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