Geoff

"Stardom Contests and Reality Shows... Where's the remote? or. Are you watching?"

Isn’t television supposed to be an escape from reality? Not that most “reality” TV shows are even remotely representative of the reality most of us exist in. I’ve only seen one episode of Survivor and based on its “Lord of the Flies” nature I should be a fan, but it’s about as real as that styrofoam “boulder” that Jack’s tribe dropped on Piggy’s head. When in reality do 16 of the most pretty, wanna-be actors that the network’s top casting directors can find, get marooned on a tropical island, play games with the host of Rock ‘n’ Roll Jeopardy, and get to win a million bucks? And I should probably check out Big Brother too, I hear it’s like “Oz”, but without a script and when some chick get shanked in the neck she actually dies. If people want to be entertained by people locked inside a house the producers of Big Brother should just set up cameras in a college dorm. When I went to Textile there was sex and violence almost every night and those dorms were locked down so well after 10pm that even the roaches had to carry ID. I had better copyright my college dorm reality show idea, you know someone in Hollywood would sell their first born for the rights to that one. And a show like American Idol (another show I’ve never seen) seems to me like it would only serve to piss off musicians who have had to work their asses off to get where they are. As much as I hate to say it, even Brittney Spears, Nsync, and Christina Aguilera had to work through their 7-year indentured servitude to the Disney channel before they got famous. What do they say when they find out their opening act is only famous because he won 1st prize on a game show? Even the Real World, the grandfather of the reality show craze, is about as real as arky Mark’s cock at the end of Boogie Nights. The Real World was cool for the first season because it wasn’t until the second season that you could see the formula used to cast the show. Every season had the same characters played by different jackasses hungry for their 15 minutes of fame. The pretty-boy, the fish out of water, the homo, the angry black man, the freaky one, and the one who got kicked out were on every season.

I prefer the reality shows that are really real. In fact there should be a channel that shows nothing but the World’s Bloodiest Car Crashes. Better yet, there should be a Faces of Death channel. I could sit and watch When Animals Tear Off Your Nutsac and Piss on Your Rotting Corpse for hours. And my favorite show has to be When Morons Die By Their Own Stupidity. If the Darwin Awards was a televised event you can be sure I’d be parked in front of my TV for 17-hours beforehand watching Joan and Melissa Rivers’ pre-show coverage on E! Celebrity Boxing would be a hell of a lot more entertaining if they matched up celebs that REALLY hated each other. What kind of beef could Darva Conger really have with Olga Corbut? And forget Celebrity Boxing, bring me Celebrity Ultimate Fighting Championships! Two celebrities who really hate each others guts (maybe Fred Durst vs. most of the music community) beating the piss out of each other, no holds barred in the Octogon. Even fucking Dick Clark’s TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes is more real than Meet My Folks.

The fact that so many people love these ridiculous “reality” shows is actually kind of scary. How long will it be before there’s a real version of EdTV? Can a Truman Show-type of series be far off? Pretty soon they’ll be cloning people just to follow them around with cameras all the time. And then they’ll find a way to connect cameras to people’s optical nerves so you can see exactly what they see 24-hours a day. Privacy will be a thing of the past. At any time you can flip on the TV and see what Sam Yun is up to. Too boring? Try the Geoff Schwartz channel. Not enough movement? Pick anyone on the planet, they’ll all be wired for their own show. Big Brother doesn’t need to watch us, we’re already watching ourselves.