We don’t watch a lot of TV. This isn’t some snobby thing for us, like “Oh, we don’t watch a lot of television…it’s just so gauche.” No, we just don’t have much time at home. Our TV time is spent watching things we DVR so we aren’t prisoners to whatever is on when we get home at 10 or 11 at night. And I hate to admit this, but we watch American Idol, aired on the Fox network. I can’t help myself…I am addicted to this prime-time talent search. I love to see some kids get a shot at their dream, and some of them actually make it happen. That does my heart good.
The great thing about a DVR is that you can fast-forward through the commercials. Unfortunately, though, our timing isn’t always spot-on, and sometimes we suffer the slings and arrows of whatever is currently being pushed by the ever-so gentile Fox. Their current push is for “The Moment of Truth,” a show that offends me down to my bones.
I haven’t watch this show, and I never will. The premise appears to be to put people intimately involved in each other’s lives (husband/wife, brother/sister, father/son…you get the gist) and ask them intimate, offensive, and potentially relationship-damaging questions, all in the name of “truth.” They ask questions like asking a wife if her ex-boyfriend wanted to get back together with her, would she leave her husband (with the husband present and watching the answer). She’s hooked up to a lie detector, and her real feelings will be revealed regardless of how she answers the question. If she lies, she loses all the accumulated winnings. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Of course, anyone who would subject their relationship to such nastiness in the hopes of winning some money is either financially or morally bankrupt.
What a pile of dung. Truth, Fox, really? I think they are confusing truth with a lack of common decency. This is the same “truth” that we see too much in our society where a total stranger will make comment to someone about their weight, or hair, or makeup. Honesty is not a lack of grace and courtesy, it is ”the human quality of communicating and acting truthful and with fairness, as best one is able. It is related to truth as a value. This includes listening, reasoning and any action in the human repertoire — as well as speaking” as defined by Wikipedia. “Value” and “fairness” being key words here, people.
Honesty is not revealing the most hurtful thing you can think of…kindness and fairness should always be brought into consideration when “honesty” is in play. Somewhere in our society, we took a wrong turn and are confusing cruelty with honesty. Shame on us. It says something about our society as a whole that a show like this is even tolerated.
So join me in my boycott of this offense to humanity. Show the networks that we don’t always want to see the ugly underbelly of society. I’d rather watch the sappy, good-hearted Extreme Home Makeover that tugs so obviously at my heartstrings than tolerate for one moment a show that promotes visciousness of the lowest sort.
It’s not just Fox, it’s the whole writer’s strike (thank your deity of choice that it’s over now) forcing us to consume a steady diet of bad to extremely bad reality shows. For example, NBC’s “My Dad is Better than Your Dad” is shockingly horrible. To think NBC used to be so unstoppable!
Anyhow, the DVR has changed how we watch TV (and when) and I couldn’t live without it. It’s a work of pure genius!
Yes, I love my DVR. But do you really think it was the writer’s strike? We’ve been getting fed a steady diet of bad “reality” shows for awhile now. Frankly, I think it’s the networks way of exploiting people naive or extroverted enough to want to be on one of those shows. Cheaper than actors and writers, right?
On a similar and interesting note, we just watched a show on the Sundance channel called “Before the Music Dies” that talks about the changing face of the music industry due to the internet. Basically saying that people are fed up with the way the record companies have homogenized music, and that people don’t believe them when they say that a band is the next big thing, etc. People are going to myspace.com and other “underground” sources to find bands and musicians.
It all comes down to this…people are smarter than the media and other mass marketing sources give them credit for. The giants think they can sell ice to eskimos, and it’s just not the case. The people who are succeeding are those who are giving people credit for intelligence and the ability to discern good from bad.
I agree completely, 99.99% of reality shows are complete crap, exploitative and a platform for under-noticed exhibitionists who need an outlet. I do think the writers strike made it worse though — I’ve noticed more and more reality shows and game shows over the last few months (why the hell did they think American Gladiators should come back to life?) and am hoping that it will start to subside. The funny thing is, I’m convinced the reality shows are just as scripted as a drama or comedy, it’s just all done under the table.
Agree completely on music, too. But you are preaching to the choir on that one… I can’t stand most mainstream music, especially cookie cutter top 40 junk!
Yeah, I’m sure you’re right about the scripting. Or at least suggestive egging on of the “contestants” in ways that they believe will create conflict and thus, ratings.
It’s so interesting about the music particularly. Since we’ve been looking for musicians and bands, we’ve found so many GREAT local musicians that I’m amazed don’t have a record deal. But they’re also not very mainstream, whitebread, top pop 40, either. I don’t know what happened to the people who search out talent for the record companies. Is it a yes-man kind of thing…well, this type of artist is in right now, so let’s go find our version of them to go up against the competition?
I know the evolution of music is too kinetic and has too much life in it to succumb to this milktoast approach.
I came across this today:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/showbiz/2008/02/28/sbt.moment.truth.cnn