Enough Reality Already! - television criticism - Brief Article

There is a great line from a Simpsons episode when Bart and the gang are stranded in Tokyo and are attempting to win tickets home by becoming participants on the Happy Smile Super Challenge Family Wish Show. "American game shows reward intelligence," they are told by show's host, Wink. "In Japan, we punish ignorance."

No, Wink. We, too, punish ignorance. And this is no more apparent than with the first contestant to get shoved out of the Big Brother home. William Collins is a youth counselor in Philly (cheers and smiles) and member of Khalid Abdul Muhammad's New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (shock, horror, confusion). According to ABC.com, Collins told the Television Critics Association meeting in Los Angeles, "I believe in my God, and I believe in my gun." His beliefs, along with his temper, evidently got him booted by his housemates. I ask the NRA, where's the love for this guy?

Collins's ignorance was going on television with nine other hopeless people under the misguided notion that a half-million bucks is worth having your life on display for all to see. For three months of around-the-clock surveillance, contestants on Big Brother are locked away in a house with no contact with the outside world. Every two weeks, the cast members pick two housemates to be held up for the viewers who spend ninety-nine cents to call--I kid you not--the "Banishment Hotline" to vote on which one they think should get tossed. It's so interactive.

I'm sure it wasn't George Orwell's intention that Big Brother would be turned into a silly TV show to enrich CBS. But the TV execs can turn even high-brow political satire into low-brow fare.

In America, TV punishes intelligence, too. Our own.

Take Survivor. Sixteen strangers voluntarily move to an island, where they pit themselves against Mother Nature and each other. The audience doesn't get a say in who wins and who loses on this show. No, our hearty band of adventurers--laughingly called The Tribal Council--vote each other off the island by secret ballot. And here's where it gets totally stupid: The show's producer extinguishes a torch to signify that the life of the contestant--at least on the show--has been snuffed out. It takes a village to raise a child, but it takes a nation to accept this sort of idiocy as entertainment.

While we're on the dreary subject of reality TV, there's always The Real World. This MTV classic is the granddaddy of 'em all, having been on the air since 1992. Each year, groups of well-dressed, fresh-scrubbed, potential Gap cover models live together in a furnished apartment somewhere in America. The big controversy this year revolved around Brigham Young University student Julie Stoffer, a Wisconsinite Mormon amongst the heathens in New Orleans. Stoffer is seen sitting on a bed with a male housemmate, which is a violation of BYU'S Honor Code that apparently stretches way the hell past the borders of Provo, Utah. They were talking, not getting buck wild. But she's been booted out of BYU. The officials at BYU may be within their rights. But anyone remember former BYU quarterback Jim McMahon? Don't tell me he was a choirboy and didn't become big and bad until he entered the NFL. Double standards anyone?

Note:

The jewel this summer has to be the documentary The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg. Even if you're not a baseball fan, it's hard not to fall in love with the Detroit Tiger great who was baseball's first Jewish star. For the one or two of you who just smirked, there have been others, including Dodger ace Sandy Koufax. To see older Jewish men reflect on what Greenberg meant to them reminded me of how men of my father's generation were inspired by Jackie Robinson. Director Aviva Kempner, who is also credited as writer and producer, follows Greenberg from his youth in the Bronx to his heydays in the majors during the thirties and forties. Just hearing Mandy Patinkin singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in Yiddish is worth at least half the price of admission.

Fred McKissack is a writer based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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