A couple weeks ago, I saw the Truman Show for the first time. What caught my attention the most was the following that the show collected: Why was Truman a symbol of hope? What else was going on that he was "necessary"? And why did people care so much about a vaguely realistic person's confinement, over their own lives? By the end of the movie, I admit that I was more than a little disgusted that, even though I knew it was fake, so few people stood against confining Truman on an island and making his dad "die." There is also a good deal of fright: will America ever become so obsessed with "reality" that it fails to realize reality is not what is on the tv set, rather what is going on in the "real world?"
I've never been much for reality tv. It never seems real. Every emotion seems fake unless the shot is taken with a shaky camera and there's a lot of swearing going on (In Say Yes to the Dress--slapping, too). Reality is not what is on tv, so what is reality tv? Dictionary.com defines it as "a genre of television programming in which "real life" people are followed in a situation, game, etc." Of course people are real life-- very few actors can completely recreate themselves as a character. And all these shows, like Keeping up with the Kardashians, and the Lama one-- reality tv stars are proven to just be weirdos who happen to like having cameras in their face. This is bad news-- being a drama queen is now a profession.
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