When asked my opinion of talk
shows, I could take one of two approaches. I could state the obvious by
pointing out the fact that they are
mediocre and do not pertain to the current situation or myself at all. Or I
could praise them for allowing wealthy people who are devoid of all worldly
problems to sneer at the lives of the less fortunate. As you can probably tell,
I am not too fond of them. I believe that talk shows only succeed in promoting
more problems in the world. If a person can get up on stage without any talent
at all and talk about how screwed up his or her life is, then they have
accomplished something great. They not only succeeded in notifying the entire
world of their problem, but they also padded their pocket with some extra cash;
I digress. Barbara Ehrenreich wrote In
Defense of Talk Shows to provide her audience with reasoning behind our
society’s new social addiction; talk shows. She concludes that talk shows are a
means of class exploitation. I would like to further that idea and call them a
means of self-exploitation. Allow me to explain; the case of Susan on Montel Williams was of a woman who
ultimately lost all self-control and destroyed her life. Montel and the
therapist both rail her about the fact that she is a terrible person and an
even more horrifying mother. She is unfit to even have kids…but what does this
really accomplish? I mean she already is getting a one-year term in jail. Why
would she want to humiliate herself even more? The answer is self-exploitation.
I believe that when people reach a certain low
in their life, they lose all rationality and cling onto any opportunity
given to them. The number is online, the call is free, and you get 50 bucks,
why not?
I would be willing to bet that 99%
of the people that are allowed on talk shows are one or more of the following:
poor, have unpaid bills, have no insurance, have lots of kids, have been
divorced numerous times, or are desperate for a partner. The list could go on
but I believe that I have the percentage already covered. The dissidents of
society appear on these shows. I am totally with Ehrenreich when she says that
she would like to see a show about CEOs who take from their company while their
employees are kicked to the streets. Those people that find themselves on the
streets have already had their turn on talk shows; it’s the CEOs’ turn now. If
the people that are now on the streets have entered talk shows, they have at least
attempted to make their grievance known, at least in their eyes. Though the general upper-class-viewer-base
couldn’t care less, maybe the ex-employed have a point to prove. They are
devoid of everything that they have always known. I believe that they should just dust themselves off and find another job, but I guess they don’t have a show
about that yet…
This response is very informal; I digress.
ReplyDeleteIt appears as if this particular piece of writing is a personal response to "In Defense of Talk Shows". So I'll respond similarly. While I believe that people who appear on talk shows aren't exactly the top 1% of the country, I don't think that everyone on Jerry Springer are "poor, have unpaid bills, have no insurance, have lots of kids, have been divorced numerous times, or are desperate for a partner". You said that the numbers are obvious, that they shouldn't even be mentioned. A simple Google search couldn't pull out a statistic like that. Maybe it isn't that simple. While I don't have a particularly good opinion of talk shows either, it doesn't seem right to slap a 99% sticker to the number of people with low-income jobs that join talk shows.
Although it seems like it's definitely time for a Montel Williams show featuring corrupt CEOs and top embezzlers of the year, I don't think we're ready for that yet. It just feels like people would be more interested in "Sixteen and Pregnant" than "CEO siphons money from company budget". Entertainment is based on people who have more problems than we do, which makes their lives and story interesting. I know I wouldn't want to watch shows that deal with "rich people problems". Morality issues are interesting as well, which also adds to the appeal of talk shows (the ones you condemn). People don't want to watch how a small child leads an elderly lady across the street. They want to watch simple moral plays in action, good vs. evil situations, or something that will shock them. That can't be helped. However, despite this obvious exploitation of the less fortunate, talk shows or some other forms will always be popular because people will always want to distance themselves from those who are worse off than them because that's interesting to them. Oh well.
Now, I’m not an expert, but it appears to me that talk shows don’t seem to be your favorite thing. I’m completely ok with that. I commend it, actually. I see what you mean when you said talk shows just make our lives more problematic. You’d think that by notifying a lot of people about a problem that is common among the lower class, it would help the lower class. But in reality, you can find times when the general public will act like they’re fired up about stopping a social issue and then do very little about it. The Stop Kony campaign is a prime example. It seems kind of cruel for me to say that, but it’s true so that makes it better. Especially on Twitter, all of America went through a week of inspiration to stop this man named Kony whose evil deeds were unveiled to the world by a 30 minute long video that went viral several months ago. Everyone was talking about how they wanted to donate money to the cause, and the cool thing to support the hash tags meant to make his malfeasances famous which were #StopKony and #Kony2012. Suddenly, almost as rapidly as the movement arose, it faded away as its 15 minutes of fame expired. That is the exact same thing that has happened and will continue to happen with talk shows. An insignificant quantity of people will get excited about helping out the issue unveiled on a talk show, and then they’ll do nothing about it because they didn’t really mean it when they said they would help. Drawing awareness for issues present in society oftentimes does nothing to help resolve the issue.
ReplyDeleteI think you placed a bit of a stereotype on the talk show guests, but it is a fairly accurate one. Those are the exact kinds of people that appear on talk shows, and for whatever reason the viewers love to see them. I also agree that it would be fantastic to have the public know how CEO’s exploit their employees and treat them unfairly, but the same issue arises. Would the public actually do anything about it? Or would it just be another #StopKony?