Reality TV is something which so many people indulge themselves into watching, whether it be Jeremy Kyle, Love Island or Big Brother, these shows get huge viewership numbers every year and lead to some individuals creating large careers from the back of their stints on these shows. But the question has to be asked, are these shows negatively portraying the everyday regular people who live amongst us?
Take, for instance, The Jeremy Kyle Show, for non UK viewers, it is pretty similar to the Jerry Springer show, with guests appearing and attempting to solve their disputes and it can include lie detector tests and DNA tests. This is classic daytime television, with it being on throughout the day, usually around 10AM. This show in particular, picks the low class individuals and families and almost parades them in front of the rest of us, showing every negative aspect of them – from their teeth to their clothing. It is arguable that these people are simply being used for others to laugh at, more as a form of comedy than actual solving of their issues.
Every day individuals who live in low paying jobs or may even be unemployed, are being paraded in front of viewers on TV as a form of laughing stock, with people enjoying seeing them as they can say “at least I don’t live like them”. If you look at a show like Benefit Street of Can’t Pay We’ll Take It Away, then you see people who are truly struggling to live their lives be used as entertainment, with people laughing at their struggles. Would we do this with third world nations? With ill people? With people with disabilities? No, this wouldn’t be tolerated, but for some reason we allow this?
If you take this to a show such as Love Island, they throw dull, half naked, immature and unintelligible individuals on a screen for a few weeks and we are supposed to lap it up, to see who gets with who etc. This really is more a form of showing individuals that it doesn’t matter how clever you are or how hard you work, but that if you look good with next to no clothes on and can sleep with someone that you can become famous and earn millions. The lower class individuals are laughed at yet again and people just love to laugh at people who know less than themselves.
Is this something which needs to be tackled? Of course it is. There needs to be a fair representation of what regular individuals go through in their day to day lives, without making a demon out of them. The only reason this happens to lower class people and not higher class people is because lower class people don’t have power in the entertainment industry. Look at a show like TOWIE or Made In Chelsea, we sit back and watch the lives of privileged and wealthy individuals who have no idea how society operates for any regular individual, and are handed a TV show for simply being wealthy? It really makes no sense.
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