Train Wreck TV

Admit it: part of the fun of watching Reality TV is seeing how wild or weird people act. It’s a front row seat to endless lying, manipulation, backstabbing, unbelievable selfishness, and drama. It’s your chance to press your nose against someone’s window and watch their true problems emerge through strange, paranoid, depressing, bizarre, emotionally unstable, creepy, and sometimes frightening behavior.

And because we’re being so honest here, let’s admit another thing. Reality TV shows know we secretly love seeing all this, and that’s why they exploit the mentally ill.

Too harsh, you think? That second grouping is more obvious, maybe, but the first group is often ill, too. Technically, there’s a category of official diagnoses for it called Personality Disorders, which are used for people with serious problems relating to other people.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying everyone on Reality TV is mentally ill! But every show puts a few people on there purposefully who have serious issues. You can spot them right away and you know they’re there to shake things up. Talent shows especially capitalize on this during audition highlights episodes.

When did it become OK to stare and laugh at the mentally ill? Is it because we’re not doing it to their faces? If we talk about it online in places where they could very possibly (or definitely) read it, is that all right, morally? In some way, does it change the way we think of them in general?

I wonder if it goes back to ancient times when it was socially acceptable to gather and watch public floggings, hanging, burning at the stake, and stonings. Is Reality TV the modern version of the stocks, where we put people on display and hurl tomatoes (through blogs or message boards) at them? Families would bring picnic lunches to public executions in centuries past, but now we can just park our families on the couch and watch public humiliations on television while we eat dinner.

We can’t fight it; on some level humans have an urge to see misery. It’s what forces us to rubberneck as we drive past an accident—which is why we call it a “trainwreck” when we see someone’s emotional downward spiral. On Constant Chatter’s Britney Spears gossip thread, it’s even got the word “trainwreck”in the title! (But that one’s a whole other blog for another day.) It doesn’t matter if it’s a physical accident or a more deep-seated emotional unravelling, we can’t resist the macabre fascination of watching the destruction.

It’s a true guilty pleasure—so entertaining you can rationalize away any guilt you might feel. But you won’t see me turning off my vice of Reality TV any time soon. I’ll be tuning in, mixed feelings of guilt, pity, shock, and all. It’s too much fun to give up.

Scooter