Tuesday, December 14, 2004

The Amazing Race - 6x05 "Quit Following Us!"

Unbelievably jaw-dropping, because I couldn't really believe I saw Jonathan actually push Victoria, and so I did not react with immediate disgust. I just wrote a paper on the tendency in most reality viewers to think of what they on these shows as reality, but I had trouble accepting the plainly abusive behavior -- going past the psychological and emotional and into the physical -- as something that happened to a real person. Sampling some different forums, I seem to be in a minority, which actually seems to reinforce my conclusions from the paper, that people often take such shows without a grain of salt. In my case, whatever ends up on tv, aside from the news (and even then...) has an element of fictionality, that even though these shows profess to be situated in reality, their position next to fictional dramas and sitcoms compromises their integrity as wholly real.

There are more issues than I can rightfully address right now, so I'll return to this topic in the (near) future.

No comments: