Stranger than life? Reality TV as a mirror of morals

“High things should contain and low, although in a different state” (c) Plato

Tell me, would you be very interested to watch a show, where do you do knitting for hours ? Norwegians are interested in: more than 1.2 million descendants of formidable Vikings watched the sweater stitching for more than 12 hours, supporting their champions and giving them recommendations in an online chat. All this - just to beat the Australian knitting record. Did not work . But in general, something like this from the super-successful kingdom was to be expected.

There are more grotesque programs of this genre. For example, Ready4Marriage : Zambian show, where teams consisting of future couples compete in cleaning toilets, ironing clothes and wiping floors - all for a $ 9,000 subsidy (large, by local standards, money + winners will receive full payment for the wedding) for newlyweds. "Well, what - the future wife should be able to clean up the house" - say the creators of the transfer. Impressions of the reviewers are mixed, but the audience likes it and they ask to continue. The third season turned out to be especially popular, where they were preparing for the marriage ... uh, the former "priestesses of love . " By the way, quite a good idea to help rehabilitate dysfunctional citizens.



In Pakistan, in the religious TV quiz “Aman Ramadan”, the winners receive motorcycles, kitchen utensils, furniture and ... children: not so long ago, one unsuspecting married couple that won the competition was presented with a baby . The child was found by volunteers of a local NGO dealing with abandoned children. And, characteristically, the new parents were satisfied and the child is now growing up in a family.
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Following the precepts of Hirst, the creators of TV shows do not forget about the basic instinct. In the British Sex Box program, in full accordance with the name, people have sex in an isolated cell, then to go out and discuss what happened with the presenter and the audience. All this has a high meaning - the show is part of Channel 4’s campaign to discredit pornography: i.e. as if people are told “the truth about real sex”. At the other end of the British Empire, things are going well on this front too: in the Australian reality show with the “talking” name Virgins Wanted, the main participants were engaged ... well, I will say frankly - selling the rights of the first night with you. The government threatened the transmission creator with accusations of organizing sex traffic, and the participant from Brazil won, receiving almost $ 780 thousand (from a 53-year-old Japanese businessman). But do not worry - in her words there was nothing . Then she announced the beginning of a new auction.

But not all the bawdy jokes joke, reality shows can perform useful functions. If you remember, in the 1970s Cambodia suffered from the actions of the Khmer Rouge regime - 2 million people were killed, many people disappeared and many families were destroyed. In the program “This is not a dream,” the presenter and the audience are engaged in the reunification of families with missing relatives, and it turns out that this is very good for them. Since the start of the transfer, more than a thousand families have filed applications and so far not everyone has been able to help, but considering what traces Pol Pot left behind in the life of the country, the transfer is more than relevant.

All these TV shows are very different. Funny and sad, religious and obscene, but one thing unites them all - these are different interesting forms of interaction with the audience. People successfully engage in dialogue, simultaneously solving some social problems: former prostitutes get a chance to start a new life in a country with a disappointingly low level of GDP per capita, teenagers from developed countries become much smarter and more cautious in matters of intimate life, orphans find loving parents, families reunited after many years of separation, and the Norwegians ... well, the Norwegians prove that I, maybe, was wrong about the negative impact of the reality show on people. In general, I am glad that today the viewer still sets the agenda on TV to a much greater extent than it did in the 1990s.