reality TV
...ipt but they know that they were picked because they could full-fill some caricature and they play up to this role they were given. We get pulled in and become curious to what is going to happen next. We want to see our character and what they do next or what is in store for them. You could almost say that we become addicted to the television shows. Not only do we watch these shows for real life comparisons but we also watch them because they are just entertaining and fun to watch. Sometimes the stuff that happens is so far fetched that you just have to laugh at the thought of it actually happening. People like these shows because they can laugh at the situations being portrayed and know that they don’t have to deal with them themselves and because it isn’t happening to them. These shows offer an alternate sense of reality where there seems to be no consequences or the consequences seem “fake” or staged because it is a television show. What do people think of when they hear the word normal? What is normal? Are the people on Temptation Island and Real World normal people or do they full-fill some role that the producers want portrayed? Normal as depicted in the dictionary says that it is conforming with an accepted standard or norm; natural; usual. How then, do you determine what is the accepted standard? Is it being skinny and a size two or is it a size eight? Is normal having lots of money and being famous and being driven around in a limousine or having a house in the suburbs and owning your own business and driving a mini van? You can interpret something to be normal numerous ways. I think that the “reality shows” take what they think is normal and broadcast their view all across the nation. Temptation Island for example does not have any obese men or women. They all have nice, muscular bodies and respectable careers. What does this make the younger viewers that these shows have been targeted at feel about how they should look? Is this what reality is all about? These people in these new shows are people like the rest of us but they change the minute they get behind a camera. We might be looked at as boring but they could be just like us, just not perceived as boring because they are on this “reality” television show. Are these shows so popular because it is stressed upon us that the individuals in these shows are normal so we are supposed to be able to relate to them better because they are more like us rather than a so-called celebrity? a big part of th...