Reality Bites

Long before you could log on to Netflix to watch a hundred thousand episodes of reality television, Paris Hilton and her best friend Nicole Richie dressed up in cute little outfits on “The Simple Life” and did fun things like work in an airport or make artisan sausages (they also made fun of Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton’s assistant at the time, a lot.) A little before that, MTV’s “The Real World” set the stage for a groundbreaking era of television by moving seven strangers into a house in New York and filming their interactions with each other. Though reality-style television existed well before the 90s, the advent of consistent news coverage and celebrity overexposure hard-launched us into today’s world, where we check in to watch shows like “Perfect Match,” the main draw of which is that we get to see famous personalities from other reality shows compete for…love?

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The meta-reality of television shows like “Perfect Match” brings us to an interesting crossroads in the journey of reality television consumption. Thus far, reality television has developed on two fronts: the voyeurism of watching celebrities live their daily lives, and the realism of “ordinary people” joining reality television casts in the pursuit of fame. Both play into the tropes of celebrity worship: they offer us the allure of experiencing an unattainable life. The former, à la “Real Housewives,” “Bling Empire” and the “Selling” real estate series, thrives on creating the illusion of exclusive access to an inner circle of elite industry players, relying on a mixture of aesthetic and shock value, luxury lifestyles, and petty drama. Celebrity reality television is a grand exercise in public relations — Kim Kardashian built an entire career off of this promise of exclusivity. 

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Building, of course, is not exclusive to the wealthy. Our obsession with reality television also thrives with our desire for self-made heroes and stars of the entertainment industry. The success of these shows prove that reality television has become a king maker in a single season. My favorite example is Harry Styles, (who was once awkwardly dancing on the audition stage of “X-Factor!!!”), or recent Netflix dating shows like “Love is Blind,” where being unceremoniously left at the altar can catapult you into a successful career of social media influencing. 

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Slowly but surely, this desire to make a career out of being a reality star has morphed the characters of the shows. In the early 2000s, reality was about being real. If you weren’t Paris Hilton, you were probably just living your regular life on screen, wearing clothes you probably bought at Target. Today, reality television wardrobes are hotbeds for fast fashion advertisement and image branding. I think back to “Single Inferno’s” Song Ji-a, who fell into disgrace after it was revealed that she wore fake designer for the entirety of her stint on the Korean dating show, or Raven Ross on “Love is Blind,” who did all her confessionals in contortionist positions to promote her pilates business. Now more than ever, there seems to be a disconnect in the desires of reality show contestants and the audiences for whom they perform. 

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It’s also no coincidence that most of the popular reality shows today are love-based, and that  the premise of love on reality television is getting more tedious. Even shows that are set up to produce a more lasting commitment like “Love is Blind,” or “Married at First Sight,” can’t resist attracting fame-hungry, personality-deficient contestants. Filling a house with extremely attractive people performing the act of love has become the secret formula to hit reality television — whether or not that love is genuine. Streaming services and media conglomerates are competing for our Twitter mentions, and, in the race to provide the best binge-worthy television, are making fools of themselves. Netflix’s failure to produce a live reunion of the fourth season of “Love is Blind” is the latest saga in what has been a general discontent with the streaming services’ production of reality content. From a live stream that began an hour later than advertised, to the unsatisfying discussion from unsatisfying hosts, “Love is Blind” has fallen far from the magic that it sold us in the first season. What has become evident, instead, is that true love is now a marketing ploy, preying on our increased desires for genuine connection and true love, so it can hold us hostage without actually delivering anything. The recent trend of luxury real estate television is another prime manifestation of reality television promoting false desires. The characters, scenarios, and locations on “Selling Sunset” are so far removed from the everyday person’s reality that it almost becomes like gameplay to watch the show. 

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So what’s the verdict? Reality television has become obsessed with selling us a promise: that you can change your life financially by participating in a game show, that you can find love without ever seeing your partner. The onset of the internet and social media has expanded the horizons of what is accessible: there is unlimited access to visions of extreme wealth, beauty, and prosperity. Our desires for superlative realness are at an all time high. Social media has exposed us to the richest, most beautiful, and most successful. Watching lives that are similar to our own is no longer enough. Perhaps because real life is too depressing in the face of the bigger, brighter world around us, we want to see hotter people, more drama, and scenarios that we can live vicariously through. Reality television has evolved to match society’s main desire: to access an alternate reality. Its future will be based on the industry’s ability to cater to this desire without destroying the illusion of reality. And if shows like “Perfect Match” are any omen, they’re going to be pushing the envelope as far as they can.

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