Dear Dr K, A new reality TV contest has a celebrity offering her hand in marriage to the winner. I’d love to participate and bag a famous celebrity wife at the end of it, but I’m not sure what this ‘reality TV’ is and how it works? Could you explain this reality TV to me, Dr K?
— Rocky Sauvant
Dear Rocky,
Many experts predicted that the TV was an indicator of the end of human civilisation, because it had the potential to draw us away from productive
activities and entertain us at the flick of a switch, in the comfort of our homes. Most importantly, TV offered us an
escape from reality, by taking us into the magical worlds of sitcoms, soap operas, and those most thrilling tales of fiction — the news.
I cannot tell you the number of times my pain has magically transported away by the humorous antics of Shaktimaan. This benefit of TV was realised by many people, most notably when a political party distributed free colour TVs to people. They were smart — they realised that colour TVs would be a much cheaper solution to the problems people faced, like unemployment and bad schools. Instead of actually solving these problems, they could keep the people happy by just distracting them from these problems with the magical powers of TV. These wonderful powers of TV gradually began to wane when people began to lose interest in conventional programming thanks to the arrival of the Internet and the absorbing pastime of banana classification.
TV was definitely not going to go out without a fight. The channels realised that in order to keep viewers hooked, they had to let their viewers escape from reality not into fantasy, but into a different reality. The concept was not an entirely new one — sports on TV has been around since the arrival of the medium, and allows viewers to forget realities like their financial troubles and family conflicts by making them worry about more important realities, like how far a man with a plank of wood can whack a cork sphere.
Reality TV, however, offers us a completely new kind of reality — a reality where we can watch complete strangers do the most idiotic things and go where human humiliation has never gone before, all for a sum of money that vanishes sooner than it arrived, or simply for the everlasting glory and fame of having been on TV, which expires approximately 24 hours after they go on air. This reality is simply terrific.
We all love it because, unlike scripted TV, these are real people who are less Tez than a paanchvi pass or are so desperate they’ll eat pig faeces. And
despite the fact that you won’t see these things when you step outside your door, we know that reality is actually what we see on TV. Since we’re so much better than those poor sods on Reality TV, we must be so much better than the rest of the world. We’re not depraved voyeurs; we’re civilised
observers of reality.
The show you mention sounds wonderful. What’s more wholesome than a celebration of marriage and family values? I must warn you, though, if you want to participate, you’re going to have to leave the world you’ve been living in, and enter reality. Go forth and save human civilisation!
Yours questionably,
Dr K
Kaushik is a student of humanities at an engineering college. He blogs at
www.nonsenseofkaushik.blogspot.com.
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