by Troy DeVolld
I’m a basically happy guy, and only a couple of things ever really get to me in a way that messes with my default mood.
Dealing with the occasional insecurities of other people who need to tear others down to fulfill their own power fantasies is one of those, but what are you gonna do? It’s Los Angeles.
The other? The never-ending critical war on reality television.
I’ve been working on getting past both of these things, and I think it might finally be time to let it go. You can’t make anyone think differently than they do about shows they won’t even watch any more than you’ll ever be able to convince your mother to try sushi, another craft that takes years to perfect.
How do you know you won’t like what you don’t try?
I can share the findings of studies that show that girls who view reality television more readily see themselves as leaders and role models among their peers.
I can tell you that you haven’t seen anything until you see what goes on behind the scenes of artfully directed and choreographed live reality-competition broadcasts like Dancing With the Stars.
I can tell you that one of my favorite media scholars (one of the world’s most respected, in fact) has stated time and again that it’s about the audience use of the characters and that virtually no one is looking at the villains of any work on television and saying things like “I want to be just like that.”
But none of it is going to alter the opinions of people whose chief aim in life is to hate everything.
Thus, I withdraw from the battlefield and back to the business of just trying to figure out how to make the shows I’m on better than they might deserve to be. I’m going to keep my head down and apply my hard-won story knowledge to making sure that you can follow a story, cheer for your heroes and boo your villains.
I’m not going to resort to making the good guy always right or the bad guy always wrong to appease people in media who insist that reality shows have “too much conflict.” I might, however, point out your hypocrisy in supporting scripted shows chock full of violence, sex and language while you’re creating a big hullabaloo over someone throwing a glass of water or getting crafty to undermine someone they’re competing with.
I’ll close with this fun fact: No one who has ever used the Kardashians as a show emblematic of bad TV at one of my lectures has ever subsequently admitted to watching even one episode of any of their shows. Their full opinion on the family is reliant on TMZ and tabloid gossip.
Wait, did I say I’m letting all of this go? Maybe I’m not quite there yet. But I’m trying.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go for a barefoot walk in the grass and work on my breathing.
Troy DeVolld is a Larry Brody buddy and one of the masters of the reality TV genre. This article originally appeared on his Reality TV blog. And while you’re thinking about him, why not buy his book, Reality TV: An Insider’s Guide to TV’s Hottest Market?