Let's Loosen Our Grip on Reality

On Tuesday, July 1^st 1941, the TV airwaves of America were treated to the first game show: "Truth or Consequences” with host Ralph Edwards. The game show format (which lived in radio prior to the advent of television) offered viewers a very different type of entertainment. Viewers were allowed to see people who were not celebrities and not (necessarily) professional athletes compete for a prize. The competitors were real people in real, unscripted situations.

In the nearly 70 years that have passed as of this writing, the viewing public has witnessed people guessing prices, answering quizzes, and performing feats within an allotted time period. Competitors have won prizes ranging from cash awards to paid vacations to new vehicles. Some game show winners have even gone on to become celebrities in their own right. After all, nothing says role model like a man who can toss 50 porcelain plates through a bull’s-eye target in less than 60 seconds while the “Sabre Dance” is blasting in the background.

Sadly, the American public has been subjected to a sub-genre of television entertainment that threatens to insult one’s intelligent and morph one’s mind to a mound of mush: reality TV. All any viewer has to do turn the dial (or rather “surf the schedule menu”) and be treated to any one of the following reality TV premises:

1. People living together on camera 24 hours a day/7 days a week (condensed for allotted TV time slots). This could be taking place in an apartment, an incommunicado house, a drug rehabilitation center, or a deserted island (not including the sound and camera crews). Some of these shows award prizes. Some do not. Nonetheless, people from all over the world will submit videos for the opportunity for viewers to see them at their absolute worst.
2. Singers, actors, former child stars, or athletes allowing viewers into their world so that viewers can remove any doubt about their self-absorbed narcissism. To be fair, some of these celebrities actually want to be seen as “down to earth” as they feed caviar to their French poodle while sitting poolside at their multi-million dollar Beverly Hills mansion.
3. Singers, actors, former child stars, or athletes looking for a romantic soul mate. The subject may not even be a celebrity but, instead, a gazillionaire who owns a tofu empire. This usually results in the subject finding a partner, falling in love, breaking up, settling out of court with their new found partner, and starting the process all over again at the beginning of the next season.
4. Offspring, friends, and/or employees looking for the romantic soul mate of a singer, actor, former child star, athlete, or gazillionaire. The premise is that they are acting out of love. It’s quite possible; however, they are seeking someone else to be the one feeding the French poodle poolside at the multi-million dollar Beverly Hills mansion.
5. Lastly, viewers are treated to people from all over the world auditioning to be the next big singer, actor, former child star, athlete, or gazillionaire. The hope is that, within a five year turnaround, the winner can start their own reality show where they are searching for a romantic soul mate with whom they can share a life feeding a French poodle poolside at a multi-million dollar Beverly Hills mansion (which was formerly owned by a reality show celebrity who lost the house during a bankruptcy hearing).

Alas, the reality TV viewing surface has barely been scratched in the aforementioned list. Napoleon Bonaparte once stated: “There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous”. This provides a gross understatement in regards to reality TV. One cannot help but amazed at the hair-splitting differentiation that defines this sometimes senseless sub-genre of entertainment brings forth. If one sits in front of their TV watching a celebrity family having dinner, one is defined as a “reality TV viewer”. If the same person is watching a neighbor’s family have dinner from outside their window, they are defined as a “stalking voyeur”. The former requires little more than a TV remote and maybe some popcorn. The latter requires a good lawyer. In case you’re wondering, the charges were eventually dropped.

The Doctrine of Drama

My mother, Norma Jean McAfee, was a woman whom one would describe as “cultured”. She was a true steel magnolia in its finest form. I can remember many events over the years that my mother used as an attempt to broaden the horizons of her husband and three kids. My mother would expose us to movies that ranged from “The Ten Commandments”, “Gone with the Wind”, “The Hiding Place”, and “Jesus Christ, Superstar”. She took us to theater productions of “A Christmas Carol” and attended operas that told stories of a manically depressed clown, a barber in France, or a ghost ship. In short, my mother exposed us to works that were not only designed to entertain but educate.

Some of my mother’s influence stuck with me. I became active in the theater in high school and performed in several productions. I even briefly considered pursuing a degree in Drama and a career as an actor. Even now, as I type this, I remember going to see a musical with my sister at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, GA.

However, there is another genre of entertainment that my mother also enjoyed. A genre that, in light of the exposure to classical music, opera, musical theater, and ballet; seemed incongruent. I am, of course, referring to the soap opera. Viewers call them “soaps”, “stories”, “serials” (by those old enough to remember their origins in radio), or as one nice woman in Alabama called them: “sope uppers”. The viewing demographic of the soap opera is primarily women ranging in age from 12 to 120 as well as men who loathe admitting publicly that they watch them in the first place. Soap operas offer a world of inner social circles and outside love triangles. Viewers are offered a 5 day a week ritual and the feeling that missing a single episode is roughly equivalent to missing your child’s first steps or forgetting to show up for your own wedding. I know this because I have seen my mother, sister, wife, daughter, and nearly every female friend I have known (and a few male friends in denial) drawn in by the tractor beam that invisibly emanates from the television between 12:30 PM and 4:00 PM Eastern US time.

One may choose to enter the world of soap opera viewing. Some do this out of curiosity or simply wish to occupy the same room as the television. A few cardinal rules MUST be observed:

1. Viewing a soap opera demands more silence than a nun in a library. Attempting to engage a viewer (or anyone else in the room) in conversation will result in either an abrupt SHUSH or the viewer grabbing the remote to raise the volume to the level of a KISS concert. This observance lasts throughout the entire 3 ½ hour viewing ritual 5 days a week. The only exception is when the topic of discussion revolves around the storyline. This is because there is usually one person in the room who has missed that one episode that has thrown their respective world out of alignment.

2. Bear in mind that soap operas are broadcast across several different networks. For example: one can view “As The World Turns” on one network, “General Hospital “ on another network, and “Days of Our Lives” on yet another network. Soap opera viewers have an allegiance to ONLY ONE NETWORK. It would be a tremendous faux pas to speak of “The Guiding Light” and “All My Children” in the same conversation. This will either get a confused stare or a snobbish look of contempt from the viewers in the room. One who watches the daily goings on of Reva Shayne-Lewis-Cooper-Spaulding-Lewis-Lewis-O’ Neill have no clue about the daily goings on of Opal Sue Gardner-Purdy-Cortlandt.

3. If you have a Digital Video Recorder (or DVR) in your home, you should dispense with any thought of your own viewing pleasure. The DVR merely allows the soap opera viewer to do other activities during the day (such as perhaps a full time job) and view the soap opera in the evening in place of other trivial broadcasting such as the World Series Game 7. My wife does this routinely. Few things amuse me more than watching my wife’s thumb constantly in motion, hovering over the DVR remote so she can quickly fast forward through the commercials that were recorded along with the soap opera.

4. Abandon all sense of reality all ye who view the soap opera. Legend has it that when Hank Williams, Jr. recorded “This Ain’t Dallas, This Ain’t Dynasty”, soap opera viewers worldwide surrounded his house with pitchforks and torches. You can watch multiple soap operas across several networks and time slots. During the viewing experience, you can witness any or all of the following:

a. A character who has revealed him/herself to be the long lost (or unknown) twin, parent, or child of another major character.

b. A character that has died and come back from the dead. It can also be revealed that this character never truly died but was in hiding somewhere in Europe. After all, let’s not make a travesty of the story line.

c. A female character who, over the course of the character’s lifetime, has married several men ALL FROM THE SAME FAMILY. This would include the father of her former husbands. Often this character will hear of a young man from this family reaching adulthood and immediately begin setting up a wedding gift registry.

d. All characters, male and female, are dressed to the nines in outfits that would cost the average viewer a week’s wages. All male characters of any adult age have the physique of an Adonis. All female characters of any adult age have a figure that would require me to use an explicit label if I described it any further.

e. Someone in the town has been murdered. This character usually has enough enemies that a list of suspects would require using database computer software.

5. Lastly, one must bear in mind that the soap opera is not a passing fancy. Unlike, “CopRock” and the Macarena, the soap opera is here to stay. “The Guiding Light” has its origins in radio and has been around for more than 70 years. It is wise to resign to the fact that the soap opera is not going away. Now, that the five cardinal rules of soap opera viewing have been stated, one can choose to assimilate to the environment or cautiously avoid the tractor beam. Once drawn in, you can never truly leave the soap opera realm permanently. Just today, I overheard a woman say she was grateful she lost her job so that way she could “catch up on her stories”.