Cerebral Suicide: Death By Reality TV

Business is business... This is as simple as supply and demand. If there is no demand, there will be no supply. The sociological question asks why do we as a culture like watching "train wrecks, murders, assassinations, etc?" Our culture, our media culture specifically has become what Paddy Chayefsky alluded to in Network. I don't think it's just a "Black thing," it's also a profits thing. Reality TV operates as a cheap revenue stream, which 9 times out of 10 is staged reality. Television news is more entertainment and pushing product today in comparison as it was back in the 70s and 80s. TV news then was more investigative, ferreting out corruption and keeping the public in the know about politics, civic engagement, and in general forcing society to be better by acting as a "watch dog." Now, what makes the news is Kanye and Kim's baby announcement, or which politician got caught with their pants down. Personally, I would love to watch a reality TV program where corrupt politicians, local and national are busted because there is transparency. But why is it that we see this overwhelming of reality tv programs where the socioeconomic marginalized are the unwitting partners in their own social capital devaluation? "Honey Boo Boo," is just embarrassing and exploitative on so many levels, but there is an audience. Basketball Wives is rife with negative stereotypes about women, African American women in particular, yet there is still an audience. As an audience, our media IQ is negative 5 and folks with products to sell know this. What brings in the revenue, is going to be on commercial television. If we really do protest this cycle of post modern Blackface on television, then I agree with the writer, we have to stop being complicit in this cerebral suicide called reality tv. Less tv; more human interaction.