Bridging the Gulf Between Critics and Viewers
Hirschhorn notes that most respected television critics automatically debunk/expose the role of reality TV in our culture and the quality and appeal of subject matter. In your own opinion, what accounts for this disparity/difference between critics and the viewing public?
Reality TV affects the moral values of a society in one way or the other hence changing their culture. According to Hirschhorn, they promote bad values and qualities among people by affecting their culture as they disguise to be entertainment. This leads people to personification for the quest to fit in the society and resemble the characters who they watch on the TV without considering that they are tactfully selected just to fit the shows. The reality TV satisfies the ghoulish trend in viewers and also their poor choices by seeing the contestants do the normal things or the things they wish to do. People tend to take pleasure in the failures of others and it has made the culture of most societies to depend on the entertainment industry to shape their attitudes, opinions, and social morals. It is in the reality TV where the contestants pass through situations and later come up with ways of handling them and this may be a hint to the viewers in case they pass through similar situations. While the critics view this as a way of interfering with the culture and demoralizing the people’s ability to make decisions, the viewer’s love them as they represent the day-to-day happenings hence they take it as a means to gather some ideas on how to handle similar cases.
Hirschorn features the Real Housewives show to graphically represent the spiritual decay of life in the gated communities, where unraveling families, financial concerns, and fear of aging leaves the residents clutching for meaning and happiness as they steer their Escalades across the featureless landscape. Lou and Tammy also make a lot of money although the means through which they get such money is not clear. This can promote greediness and the zeal to acquire money regardless of the means hence destroying the moral values. Lou has personally selected the girls and left out one because of tattoos and physical unfitness. While to the viewers, they see the actors as beautiful girls and would wish to resemble them, the reality is that discrimination against the physically challenged people is present and in reality, their existence cannot be ignored.
Discuss two supporting points of either piece that you feel are either effective or ineffective pieces of information and explain why.
One of the ethical problems of the reality TV is the fact that it is not as real as it seems to be. This is true because the way the reality TV are represented nearly occupies the minds of the viewers to make them perceive it as a real situation and try to apply it in the real-life situations. This becomes a problem because while the contestants are merely acting to promote their shows and make money, the audience takes them seriously and may end up imitating them hence making serious life decisions and mistakes.
The producers are also insensitive to the human feelings and decency rather they are concerned about making more money. Although not all shows are meant to be educational or scholarly, they should be considerate of the fact that the audience includes people of all ages, races, and cultures hence should not attempt to affect any of these. Some shows, for instance, humiliate the human nature and scare them by instilling fear in them. Some viewers include small children and when they watch life-threatening shows, they become spiritually and mentally affected and may even affect their career lives.