This is NOT real life.

Reality television is a fairly recent phenomenon that went completely viral. With the extremely large amount of reality shows now being broadcast, it is impossible to avoid watching.

MTV used to be a station that actually played music, but now it is majorly comprised of reality shows. People are no longer as interested in fictionalized stories but would rather be engrossed with the “gruesome truth” and “uncensored” lives of reality television stars. I hate to be the one to break the news to you if you hadn’t already heard, but reality shows are just as scripted as normal television programs. GASP! Now I hope this isn’t nearly as traumatizing as the truth about Santa or the Tooth Fairy, but audiences have a right to know what they are watching. 

A few years ago a reality TV show called Laguna Beach aired on MTV that surrounded the lives of a group of wealthy teens living in an elite community in California. If you think this plot sounds dangerously familiar, and you have never heard of Laguna Beach, you are still correct. The OC was a fictionally created show that aired on FOX the year before with generally the same plot. Laguna Beach’s whole appeal was that it was supposed to show the real lives of people that mimic characters similar to The OC. I was always an avid fan of LB, but knew there was absolutely no way this show could be entirely truthful. I loved Laguna Beach and The OC, but it had nothing to do with reality or not. Perhaps it was the fact that they never blurred the license plates like they were supposed to, or maybe even something more obvious such as how the two people not speaking to each other happened to end up in one of the several nails salons in the area at the exact same time; I refused to be conformed into thinking this was real despite all my middle school friends saying “It is reality because MTV says it’s a reality show.” For some reason I just couldn’t figure out why that justified things.

After Laguna Beach ended, another reality show by the name of The Hills also aired on MTV with some of the same characters. Although I never watched this show for its six seasons, I decided to randomly watch the end of the finale once I heard mass chaos and an uproar about feeling robbed etc. For those of you who don’t know, the finale’s final scene ends with two characters saying goodbye to each other and going their separate ways. When the camera shoots back to one of the characters, the Hollywood sign in the background begins to scroll away and it is revealed to the audience that the actors are actually on a set. This was a big moment for the devoted Hills fans who truly believed what they saw on TV was truthful for the past 6 years. In interviews after the finale, the main characters admitted that certain relationships were exaggerated or even nonexistent off screen. The purpose of the finale was to keep the audience wondering what exactly was real and what parts were fake.

So why have I been rambling on about MTV reality television for 3 paragraphs now? The point to think about here is the concept of weak audience as discussed in last week’s reading, “The Invasion From Mars” by Hadley Cantril. Cantril’s work discusses how Americans went into complete chaos for absolutely no justified reason because of a horror story that became skewed into a threat to the public. In some cases, the public will believe almost anything they hear. In examples such as those from the reading, the expression “monkey see, monkey do” takes new meaning. The media has even more power than some people may assume. Media is able to establish a relationship of trust between the public that people are heavily reliant on. In the situation of Laguna Beach or The Hills, when it turns out that media has been lying to us all along, people are so passionate in one direction that they actually feel betrayed. For this reason, as a viewer of many different mediums, I try to develop a guard that does not make me as easily susceptible and as an individual be a stronger audience.