Unreality TV!!!

I turned one baleful eye towards the TV as Britney Spears gyrated her bare midriff to one of her new songs. As midriffs go, you'd really be hard pressed to find a better one; hence my reluctance to turn the television off and concentrate on reading my research paper. But turn the TV off I did. After all, there's so much skin going around (thanks to J Lo, Christina Aguilera et al.) that it hardly matters if I don't get to satisfy my vicarious voyeuristic urges for a couple of hours. Mind you, I don't really have much in the way of voyeuristic urges, especially compared to the average American. Be it Britney's breasts or J Lo's back-side, anything will do as long as the media can make an event out of it.
It's this compulsive need of the American viewer to delve into the lives of other people that has caused the amazing surge in 'Reality TV'. If you thought Jerry Springer was trash TV, buddy, have I got news for you!!! Here's a taste of the kind of viewing on offer for the 'discerning' audience...

1. Temptation Island: Want sex?? HELL YEAH!!! Just tune in to this show about a glorified brothel...young and very pretty 20 and 30 somethings thrown together on a desert island. Their mission: Have sex with as many people as possible, coz thats what brings the ratings.

2. Survivor: Hungry? How about some yummy maggots? Oooh, I'm already drooling. No thank you, I'd rather have raw fish. Wait, there are cockroaches on the menu. WOW!!! Who'd want to miss that? And to top it off we have love triangles happenin' on the show. No Cindrella story this. Its ugly people making out with each other, warts and all.

3. Joe Millionaire: A bevy of beauties(?) vying for the love(?) of a man who just happens to be millionaire. And we are supposed to watch with bated breath every week to see who Joe is going to kick off this time round beacuse she just didn't have what it took. But wait! There's a catch! Joe is not really a millionaire, its just a gag. Oh yeah, now we'll know if it was really true love (yeah, right).

4. The Real World: MTV's version of Reality TV. It has guys and girls barely out of their teens all living together and.....guess what.....yep, having sex. Not your normal, run-of-the-mill one-on-one guy takes on girl. Oh no, theres a bathtub, then there's a slut, oh, and a reluctant goody-two-shoes guy, and a goody-two-shoes girl who's in love with the guy. And all three of them have sex in the bathtub, then on the bed. Did I mention the handcuffs? Did I mention MTV is watched predominantly by teens and pre-teens? Is this reality??

5. American Idol: I admit it. I watch American Idol. Why? Beacuse its squeaky clean, and because its a talent show, and because I can vote on who has the best voice. Yep, its a show to find the best singing talent in America and it works. It is also so devoid of sex and violence that you have to wear freshly laundered clothes before you sit down to watch, lest you send out bad vibes. Its that clean.

This is just the start though. There are a host of other Reality TV shows and new ones crop up every day. People say its not really Reality TV. Nobody is really like that. Right? You know what, everybody really is like that. This country probably has more people who only think about their 'image' and how they can use it to their own advantage, than the rest of the world combined. Admittedly, I don't know much about the rest of the world, but if it had been like America, we'd be living in anarchy.
Sure, Reality TV isn't really real.

But the world we are living in is so unreal.