Reality and Television

Over Easter break my mom introduced me to the show "Dancing With The Stars”. This is a show that airs on Monday’s at 8:00 pm on ABC. It is a show where “Stars” learn how to ballroom dance with professional dancers. The “Stars” range from football players to actors. I really enjoyed this show because I always wanted to learn how to ballroom dance. Watching athletes learn how to do it made me want to do it more. In reality, when am I going to be able to sign up for dance lesions with professional dancers who have won plenty of awards? Probably never. And if I do get this amazing chance, will I be able to quit school or my job for months to really learn? I don’t think so.

I really enjoy watching the “Hills” that comes on at 10:00, Monday nights on MTV. I was thinking about this assignment and thought this would be a good show to look for things that I normally wouldn’t experience in my life. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I would never get to experience the situation Lauren and Heidi are in. These are 21-year-old girls living in an amazing apartment in California, driving the nicest cars known to man, wearing beautiful clothes and going out to clubs every night. It is amazing how they can afford all of this from an internship or working at a club. I understand that their parents are wealthy, but I will never experience this type of life style unless I hit the lottery. It’s crazy that how watching these shows that we base our lives off what they have. We have to have the new cell phone that LC carries around or the new outfit Heidi has on.

Lastly, I really got into “Deal or no Deal” that plays at 8:00 pm on Monday’s. This show is very addicting because you enjoy watching people make a lot of money or screw up and lose a lot of money. You cannot stop yourself from saying that you would just take the money and not risk it. This is not something you would normally experience because you would have to get on the show first and then be the lucky person to play. I will never get that chance in my life. That is why I bought the game so that I can play and pretend that I am winning the money.

This leads into what Jean Baudrillard claims, which is that while watching television people are watching something more then reality. This is a theory called hyper-reality. People view something that is false or non attainable to the average person and this can change peoples view of their world. Is the world that we live in the same that is portrayed on television? I don’t think that it is. I can’t think of anyone who has danced on stage with stars, lived in a nice appt. in L.A. while living the party life, or won millions of dollars on a show. “Joshua Meyrowitz argues that the very existence of television is an influence on society because it breaks down the physical barriers that separate people.” (Hanson pg. 256) He believes that television gives everyone the same view of the world, but if we are watching shows like the ones I watched above this is not true. I think we should not base our lives or believe everything we see on television.