Reality Television

After reading “The Reality of Reality Television” by Mark Greif, I can say that reality television in the 21^st century shapes how we as people interact and approach situations. It creates role models or shows what we as ordinary people see in our everyday life. Television shows such as “The Real World” or “Teen Mom” portray the lives of ordinary people experiencing hardships. In the real world, seven strangers are put into the same household and forced to make amends and teen mom shows the ordeals a young mother goes through with a child. Both “The Real world” and “Teen mom” show situations in real life and show how people interact and deal with adversity. The difference is that people on these shows are on camera and shown to the nation. We as a society choose to watch these shows and learn from them, but not everything we gain from television will necessarily be true in real life. In a sense reality television is surreal in that a camera in the show could influence a persons decision over rationale. In doing so, it is reasonable to assume that reality television isn’t always a beneficial influence to viewers, but does a good job at relating to someone’s ideals.

Reality television is also misconstruing actual reality by created ideas that people would “want” to do rather than what should be done. In shows like “Jersey Shore” the characters are constantly partying and ravishing the moment. People feed into this reality rather than their own substituting reality for entertainment.

The influences of reality television shows are powerful in that people do watch and experience the same situations. It is interesting to see people keeping up with the next “The Hills” episode rather than pay attention to problems dealing with politics and this nation. Television shows can make people more confident with themselves or cause controversy in a persons mind. Ultimately, a person should try to make decisions on their own accord rather than grasp what they saw on MTV. The development of Television continues to grow and the amount of viewers increases with it. Viewers should be weary of what they watch and how they want to perceive a show. In doing so, reality television could be helpful to people by building ideas and subconsciously shaping the society we live in today in a positive way.