How Real are Reality TV Shows?

Reality TV shows have become hugely popular in the past couple of years. Theres a reality TV show for almost anything you could ever imagine: becoming a top model, surviving an island, finding a spouse, building a house, pulling pranks on people and a billion other situations. Its as if television is becoming life itself.

Are reality TV shows an accurate portrayal of real life? Its hard to imagine how it could not be. Its not like you can make up footage of real people doing and saying real things. These are real life situations that are happening in front of our eyes.

At the same time, the situations depicted in reality TV shows arent always so realistic. When in real life will girls live together and compete against each other to be the next Tyra Banks? When will people ever be forced to survive through a grueling, artificially constructed environment? Building a house is pretty realistic but you dont always have TV stations funding your project and following you around with cameras. Pranks are doable too but would just anyone be able to track down these celebrities and embarrass them on national television?

As for the footage, its true that it cant be fabricated, but it can be scripted or be edited to make it seem like things happened in a different order or at a different pace than they really did. When someone says something off-hand, it can be edited to seem like they directed it at somebody or participated in a conversation. And overall, what we see is restricted to what reality TV shows decide to show us. We dont know whats going on off-camera, so what we see is what we get and we base our conclusions off of it. The public will make extreme judgments of contestants based on what they see of thema contestant becomes a jerk because a statement he made, but you cant judge someone based on just one action. Of course, if a contestant is truly a jerk, it will probably show through but reality TV shows can exaggerate these traits and make contestants seem one-dimensional.

Regardless, the public will probably continue to take reality TV shows at face value. Reality TV shows will remain popular and theyll continue to function as a guilty pleasure that ironically allows us to escape from the real world for a bit, the way that regular TV programs do.