This video calls into question what we are willing to accept as reality. If we are willing to accept unreal beauty as something that we should strive for, what else will we accept? Do we have unreal expectations about money, politics, and love?
It is my position that entertainment is the driving force for the acceptance of unreality as reality. The reality shows of Cribs and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and even sitcoms such as How I Met your Mother and Two and a Half Men show us a distorted view of reality, but asks us to believe that it is real.
For the vast majority of us, there is no amount of hard work that will allow you to buy a 100 million dollar home. But even worse, most of the homes and cars displayed on Cribs are leased for the amount of time when the superstar is a superstar. Not even the most famous of our American celebrities can maintain an overly extravagant lifestyle for life.
Extreme Makeover seems to distort our concept of reality even further, though. It asks us to believe that if something bad happens to you, you will be repaid by the benevolent hand of a TV executive. If you lost a loved one to a long battle with cancer, you will receive a large house in return. This is not the case, no matter how much we may wish it were. Bad things will happen to all of us, and it is our responsibility to deal with them and work through them. No one is going to do the grieving for us.
As for the overly sexualized and stereotypical sitcoms that are on this season, reality seems to be the furthest thing from the minds of the writers for these shows. They are dedicated to bringing an escape from real relationships with actual emotions behind them. Instead, they show a flimsy and fake “dates” with multiple partners in each episode. It may be funny, but it certainly is not reality.
I know that I have not fully explored this topic, and this is for a reason. I hope that one of you will take up this idea and build upon it, either in support of my thesis or against it. I would love to start a great debate on the unreality of American entertainment, and this is my way of throwing down the gauntlet.
