Just over a year ago, New York magazine predicted that “the boom days of reality TV are over.” Noting that the business seemed to be doing swimmingly — over 11 million viewers tuned in for the season premieres of both The Voice and Dancing with the Stars that week— the story went on to cite industry insiders who summed up the state of the genre with the word “fatigue.” One former network chief told the magazine, “There hasn’t been a really loud, innovative reality show in a while.”
What a difference a year makes. The 2016 presidential election was, without a doubt, a really loud, innovative reality show, starring a veteran of the genre: Donald Trump.
Is it fair to say that “coastal elites” and other such left-leaning optimists were blindsided by Trump and the hateful value system he espouses? I don’t think so. Good luck finding a person of color in this country who isn’t aware that our republic is still laced with racism, or a woman who doesn’t know that, though equality is closer than it’s ever been, misogyny has lingered here like a lush at last call. Marginalized people in the United States are likely not surprised by the confirmation that our home is lousy with those who would prefer we make our homes elsewhere (that we “go back” to Africa, to Israel, to the kitchen, wherever).
But there is something to the idea that not enough of us took Donald Trump seriously enough soon enough, and it is reflective of a broader failure to acknowledge that cultural forces we like to think of as frivolous have tremendous power. There is messaging in even the most mindless-seeming mediums. Remember, this was an election in which one of the most astonishing pieces of character evidence came not from 60 Minutes or somesuch serious program, but from Access Hollywood.
It’s been a while since insecure people who want to make sure you know how smart they are could confidently brag, “I don’t even own a TV.” Today, for the most part, even the snobs are aware that the best television has to offer is so outstanding it is almost more shameful to admit you haven’t watched it than that you have. And so the distancing-as-identity-declaration, by necessity, has become more specific. Not just “I don’t own a TV” (a meaningless fact in an age of mobile devices) or “I don’t watch TV” (that’s so 2005) but the unimpeachable door number three: “I don’t watch reality TV.”
This declaration is about as useless as it is unlikely: There are over 300 reality TV shows on the air, and the odds that anyone who isn’t living in Unabomber-style isolation has avoided every last one are quite slim. Besides, the “unscripted” category contains multitudes: Competitions of every variety (singing, dancing, cooking, designing, interior decorating, top modeling, cheerleading, apprenticing); families of widely ranging notoriety, size, and socioeconomic status; quests of all kinds (for adventure, for fame, for money, for true love, for kicks). Contestants lose pounds by the hundred and win money by the million. It’s a realm in which each stage of life in a woman’s conventional coming-of-age is represented: She is proposed to by The Bachelor, gets to Say Yes to the Dress, then it’s on to Real Housewives; or, alternatively, she is 16 and Pregnant and, after that, a Teen Mom.
It is fine, just fine, to think all but a handful of these programs ought to disappear from the dial. Wish for a world in which no one watches The Apprentice. But we live in a world where millions of people did. Fitting for an entertainment industry obsessed with reboots, Trump’s reality show is making a comeback. Only this time, it will air on C-SPAN, and also everywhere.
Reality television, like comic book movies and pop music, might seem frivolous or shallow, the sort of silly thing serious people are better off avoiding. But like it or not (and, really, you don’t have to like it at all) these are the stories that have a monopoly on our collective imagination. After all, the vision of Trump as a successful businessman is not one at which a person could arrive from looking at his actual life. He is a failed frozen steak salesman who has declared bankruptcy six times. He’s not a corporate powerhouse. He just played one on TV.
In the abstract, we’re all here for the thesis that art imitates life. We readily accept this when the art in question tells us something about ourselves that we want to hear. Hamilton, which before long will be the only place in America where you can still see a black president, is a perfect example of this. Look at where we are; look at where we started! But when the narrative is unflattering, we balk: We are unwilling to own the drunk belligerence of Jersey Shore, the near-Victorian gender roles that govern every Bachelor and Bachelorette contestant, the toxic narcissism of the Real Housewives.
We like to think that only the entertainment we seek out can impact our lives. But television is less like food — that is, only your consumption habits will affect your health — and more like cigarettes: Even if you don’t partake, the smoke gets in your eyes.
This is not to suggest that one’s limited leisure time is best spent wading into the homophobic waters of Duck Dynasty. But it seems like there are two kinds of viewers in this country: People who watch The Americans, and people who watch what most of the Americans watch. And it would probably be wise for the former to not be so eager to ignore the latter.
(For what it’s worth, available data would suggest that Republicans watch more reality television than Democrats. In November 2014, Entertainment Weekly partnered with a research firm to find out which television shows’ audiences “tend to skew heavily toward one political party or the other.” Of the 42 shows with a majority-Democrat viewership, only seven reality shows made the cut: What Would You Do? (ABC), Braxton Family Values and Tamar & Vince (WE tv), Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown (CNN), and Project Runway and Project Runway All Stars (Lifetime). The Republican list included 17 reality series: Five HGTV shows, two of Bravo’s offerings — Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Millionaire Matchmaker — along with A&E’s Duck Dynasty, The Amazing Race on CBS, Giada at Home (Food Network), The American Bible Challenge (GSN), Animal Planet’s Treehouse Masters, American Idol, The Voice, and History Channel’s Pawn Stars and American Pickers.)
There is no easier way to keep your finger in the proximity of the nation’s pulse than to check in, now and again, on what is most popular. Staying at least peripherally aware of mainstream pop culture is one of the easiest ways — no matter where you live, how homogeneous your community, how un-burstable your bubble — to get a sense of what matters to people who are distant from you, whether by geography or religion, race or class, political persuasion or sexual orientation. If we care, at all, about knowing what is on each other’s minds, it is this strain of culture — that guilty pleasure, delete it from the DVR before your date comes over for Netflix and chill, junk-food-total-trash TV — that we can’t afford to ignore. It is our national common denominator. At this point, declaring “I don’t watch reality TV” is practically like admitting you don’t watch or read the news.
In this way, pop culture is like climate change: It will impact your life, whether you believe in it or not. No promises that you’ll like what you see. But it’s worth seeing, just the same.