Line Blurs on Reality and TV
COMMENTARY
By LEONARD PITTS JR.
I ran smack into the Zeitgeist on Page 60 of the TV Guide, in a breathless “Where are they now?” feature on a bunch of reality-show contestants. This includes Ryan Sutter and Trista Rehn, who became America’s sweethearts after falling in “love” on an ABC reality show called “The Bachelorette.”
On page 60, we find Sutter, a firefighter and paramedic, complaining about the cost of fame. By which he means fans who approach while he’s on duty. “For people to come up and tap me on the shoulder while we’re treating someone, it’s rude. And very inconsiderate of the person who’s sick or hurt.”
Gee. Ya think?
I mean, let’s get the picture here. You’re lying on the pavement in pain, bleeding. The paramedic is maybe looking around for your missing hand, telling you to hang in there. And suddenly up rushes some giddy teenybopper in full gush. “Omigod! You’re Ryan! Can I, like, have your autograph?”
Could there be any more perfect a sign of the times?
Andy Warhol predicted that in the future, everyone gets to be famous for 15 minutes. But Warhol also made a less famous observation: Movies run our lives. “They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it.”
All of which is even truer of the small screen.
We invent television and television invents us, tells us what to want and who to be. It’s an endless cycle that has spawned a pop culture brimming with shallowness, emptiness and a stupidity so profound as to be unprecedented. I say this as someone who’s seen every episode of “Gilligan’s Island.”
The difference between that era and this one is that then, you usually became famous for something you did acting, for instance. But these days, you’re just as likely to become famous for something you “allow,” for your willingness to let a TV camera poke into the most intimate regions of your life.
Want me to go on “Maury” for a DNA test to determine which of my bed partners fathered my child? Sure. Want me to hash out the details of my nasty divorce before a national TV audience? Fine. Want me to bed a perfect stranger or marry someone picked out for me by my kid? No problemo.
If there is any reticence in these people not to mention privacy, dignity or self-worth it’s not readily apparent. What is apparent is our Pavlovian relationship with the television camera. Some of us seem to think being seen somehow validates us, makes us matter more than we otherwise would.
So if you can’t sing or dance, just talk about committing incest with your brother. It’s the same difference, right?
Small wonder modern pop culture is shot through with counterfeit celebrities, nobodies who became somebodies through their sheer, desperate willingness to open themselves wide. Private becomes public until the line between is erased, until people can’t tell where the one ends and the other begins. Until you wind up with some clod standing over a paramedic asking for his autograph.
I won’t ask you to feel sorry for Ryan Sutter who, after all, made a lot of money for making his life a show. I will ask you to feel something for the guy who lies there bleeding while Sutter shoos away the fans.
And to pity all those who fell through the screen, lost themselves and forgot that reality is not a show.
Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist with the Miami Herald. Business Journal editor Mark Lacter is on vacation.
