Question:

What’s to be said of reality shows? Is it licit to watch them? Can we participate in them?

Answer:

Reality shows need no introduction; they are well known. They originated in Europe, were later transplanted to the United States and have already invaded a large part of the world. The rules of the supposed “game” are extremely basic: a group of people locked together for a relatively long time and isolated from the rest of the world, are observed day and night by anyone who wants to spend their time snooping through one of the countless cameras that spy on them. According to relations of sympathy or antipathy, the viewers vote by telephone, gradually eliminating the participants (and letting their money be taken with each call they make). The last one who remains wins a coveted sum of money. In exchange for devoting their time to scrutinizing the life of the group, the people responsible for the program promise to show all the details of their daily life, including passions, intimacies, temptations, etc.

Without going into the question of the great scam that this seems to represent for the public (because they promise to show the spontaneous life of simple characters and in reality — according to those who know the behind-the-scenes of the production — it is a carefully studied script) the question that asks us about the moral aspects of this phenomenon (therefore it is worth the same if it is a reality or a fiction).

I hasten to respond by saying that, in my opinion, we must make serious moral and psychological challenges to the so-called ‘reality shows’.

1. One further step in degradation…

We have come to this point because of the need to invent new ‘excitements’. These shows are, in essence, the replacement of the teletheater or soap-opera, which have already lost their capacity to attract the public’s attention.

This is a law well known to the sellers of pornography and is called the ‘law of novelty’. It can be expressed by saying: ‘to impress sensorially and psychically, one must vary and renew’. Applied to the field of lust, human psychology knows that, due to its repetitive nature, pornography has the great disadvantage of becoming dull, falling and becoming ‘bland’, in the sense of losing its capacity to excite. The eminent psychiatrist G. Zuanazzi pointed out: ‘we are in a vicious circle: stimulus and immunization; new stimulus, greater immunization and more subtle search for emotions. It is a game of  bric-à-brac , in which sexual disaster and human unhappiness are at stake’. Therefore, the producer of pornography is forced to constantly seek new forms of sexuality, still unexploited. This law therefore leads to exploring new fields of degeneration: from heterosexuality, we will have to move on to the field of homosexuality, from here to pedophilia, from there to sadism, and so on.

Without going to such extremes, the sellers of television dramas apply the same law to the field of feelings and passions. That is why they have had to gradually move from making the maid fall in love with the rich boy to adultery, from here to love triangles, from these to the melodrama of incest or sacrilege (at one time it was fashionable to put a priest or a nun in some gruesome sentimental tragedy) and from here to homosexuality… but even so they have not been able to satisfy the thirst for novelty that awakens in those who begin to go down the slope of morbidity. And since fiction has ceased to excite, now they are tested with naked ‘reality’ shows (or the appearance of reality, as is this case).

2. Voyeurism and exhibitionism

From a psychological and moral point of view, what deformation of the human personality are we dealing with? Basically, it manifests itself as a form (attenuated or incipient) of voyeurism and exhibitionism. I do not mean to say that it is actually the pathological disturbances designated by these terms (voyeurism is a perversion by which one seeks excitement by contemplating the intimate parts of the human body; exhibitionism, on the other hand, consists of the impulse to show the genital organs). Nevertheless, without reaching these paraphilias, this type of phenomenon puts us on the same line. In fact, the success of this type of ‘show’ is based on the convergence of two morally deformed tendencies of the human being: on the one hand, the ambition to be looked at, and, on the other, the desire to pry into other people’s lives.

1. The taste for ‘being looked at’, for publicly displaying one’s private life, is a moral degeneration (and could end in a psychological perversion). It is opposed to modesty, which is an integral part of temperance and has the function of preserving the privacy of the person. Modesty “designates the refusal to show what should remain veiled”, says the Catechism. It orders looks and gestures in conformity with the dignity of persons and with the relationship that exists between them; it protects the mystery of persons and their love; it invites patience and moderation in the loving relationship. Modesty is modesty. “It maintains silence or reserve where the risk of unhealthy curiosity is guessed; it becomes discretion”. The Catechism also says: “There is a modesty of feelings as well as a modesty of the body. This modesty rejects, for example, the exhibitionism of the human body characteristic of certain advertising or the incitement of some media to make public every intimate confidence. Modesty inspires a way of life that allows us to resist the demands of fashion and the pressure of dominant ideologies”. It would be wrong to restrict this to the field of chastity and purity. In reality, the entire intimacy of the person, of marriage and of the family is protected by the beneficial shadow of modesty.

Speaking of reality shows, an article already cited says: “the researcher and doctor in psychology, Roberto Follari, comments that this is explained by the feeling of ‘the pleasure of watching and being watched’, even if only for a short while. ‘It is not only related to the possibility of winning a prize but also to the glory of being watched for ten minutes, even if it is not’ (…) The researcher described the profile in which, in general, most of the participants fit. ‘They are anonymous beings, in some cases frustrated or from the popular classes, or without other possibilities of standing out than that of baring their real or fictitious passions on television’. If they lie or tell the truth? ‘That does not matter, the important thing is that people recognize them on the street and feel that they can share the glory of the great stars’, he added. On the other hand, for the sociologist Graciela Cousinet, baring passions on TV responds to the start of a process of ‘commodification’ of social relations. That is, ‘more and more relationships of this type are bought and sold. Now it turns out that going to the bathroom sells and attracts attention’.

2. This is combined with the (no less perverted) tendency to pry into other people’s lives, that is, voyeurism (exacerbated curiosity about sexual matters and the intimacy of others). Until recently, this type of pervert seemed to be characterized as the individual who looked through binoculars or a telescope at the private life of the woman next door. Today, we have the ‘reality show’, and instead of binoculars, there is a television channel that performs the same function. The important thing is that we realize that it is the same thing. For this psychological and moral corruption to be verified, it does not matter whether the person being observed agrees or not. Some people must believe that their attitude is not immoral because the people being snooped on offer themselves voluntarily. This is false! The essence of this behavior is the morbid pleasure that the snoopy experiences in looking through the keyhole (even if it is a virtual keyhole, like the one provided by the television camera). When a neurosis ‘fixes’ this tendency (created by this type of programs) we can face a real case of voyeurism.

It is interesting (and tragic) the moral turn that our society is taking in this regard. Until recently, being labelled as voyeurs, busybodies, curious, gossipers, ferrets, etc., was an insult, a very low identification (in several costumbrist novels, characters with these characteristics are described, always being abhorrent to the reader). Now this same vice goes unnoticed, and the intimacies, passions, vices, etc., of the group of people who offer their privacy on television, are the daily gossip and talk in offices, schools, shops, on the bus or in taxis. Could it be an effect of globalization? Could it be that instead of a ‘global village’ we are building a tenement without borders?

3. The society we are building

Recently, in a popular Italian magazine, a young woman defended the Italian version of one of these ‘reality shows’; someone had dared to criticize it by saying that this program ‘changed the way people think’; she maintained that it did not. Despite her good intentions, the few lines of her defense were a demonstration of how right the criticism was: their ways of thinking were shaped by this program.

These programs, whether their followers accept them or not, produce very serious consequences for society. ‘Neither extremely critical nor defenders of the phenomenon, the sociologists and psychologists consulted assure that these programs are not harmless for the viewer’.

The ideas and attitudes that are revealed in these shows are of an immoral nature. Let us not speak here of the disordered passions that are shown or promised to be shown, at least in some versions of these shows (fights, jealousy, obscenities, sex, shamelessness, idleness, etc.). This goes without saying. Nonetheless, the very mechanics of the phenomenon contain an immorality: in effect, it is a game, but what is at stake? The prize is money and fame; by contrast, the punishment is the return to anonymity. Those who reward and punish are (at least so they are led to believe) the viewers who vote for who to keep and who to throw out. The mechanism of the game therefore consists of cunning to undermine the other participants (otherwise, how could one win?), but showing a positive face, ‘good vibes’, team spirit, that is, the sympathy necessary to win over the voting public. However, in this small society of competitors, ‘no one helps anyone else, no matter how much they pretend otherwise’. In essence, this is the realm of hypocrisy, which disguises ‘rivalry’ as camaraderie. This is why in some countries, such as France and Greece, certain sectors of society have reacted strongly against these television shows. The Greek daily Kathimerini has accused one of these reality shows of ‘bringing out the most repugnant characteristics of human nature’.

Society absorbs these attitudes and these mechanisms like a sponge. One demonstration of this is the manipulation that the producers of these programs exert not only on the participants but also on the audience: the judgments that people make about each of the participants are controlled by the producers. ‘In the summaries that are broadcast during the week, the sequence of images is arbitrary and constitutes an essential tool to manipulate public opinion. The editing – the families have said it until they are tired – ‘you show the worst of my son, I called the production to report it, they told me they were going to review the tapes, but nothing happened, in this country it is always the same – establishes a trend, it twists the public’s thinking, it molds their humor. In the same way, value judgments are manipulated, since the relationships of sympathy and antipathy (which are sentimental and easily manipulated) with respect to each character give rise to value judgments about their behavior: we tend to ‘justify’ the actions of those we love and ‘condemn’ the behavior of those we hate.

That is why it is not entirely accurate (although to a certain extent) what is often said: that these shows are a reflection of our contemporary society. The opposite is true, namely: that, through the power of the media (which are ‘opinion makers’, as they are sometimes called) television programs shape society, that is, they get the audience to end up talking, thinking and acting as the characters they watch act, talk and think. Many, watching these programs, may wonder in amazement: ‘Is that really how we are?’ And in order not to miss the train of society (supreme shame!) they will also get on the last carriage of a ghost train.

In any case, it can be said that these ‘reality shows’ reflect society in a ‘futurist’ key. That is, as a reflection of the society to which our ill-considered globalization is rapidly tending. Victor Hugo Ghitta makes a couple of very interesting observations in a newspaper article, evoking George Orwell’s novel ‘1984’, which is a metaphor for the oppression exercised by power in totalitarian regimes, which can be summarized in a kind of new commandment: ‘you shall not escape’. He also recalls the book ‘Discipline and Punish’, by Michel Foucault, written in the 1970s: ‘In this work Foucault examines contemporary imprisonment systems, the way in which they denigrate the human condition and establish a hierarchical surveillance to develop what he calls ‘social orthopedics’. In this volume, Foucault incorporates a term that will endure over time: “panopticism”. In a nutshell, the panopticon is an observation tower from which the authorities can monitor the movements of prisoners. The idea of ​​the panopticon, as Foucault notes, arose during the outbreak of an epidemic in the 17th century: citizens are isolated in their homes, they do not maintain contact with their neighbors; in other words, the authorities control their relationships. A curious fact is that at the beginning of that decade, a group of intellectuals that Foucault is part of published a pamphlet entitled ‘Intolerables’. It says: ‘The following are intolerable: the courts, hospitals, mental asylums, schools, military service, the press, television, the State’. Are reality shows not a new form of intolerant totalitarianism (cybernetic totalitarianism)? Are they not (unwillingly, of course) predisposing the mentality of modern man to allow his life to be manipulated by a new ‘panoptic’ society? Let us leave these questions to sociologists and futurologists.

* * *

All in all, to synthesize the moral judgement that reality shows deserve: they are an insult (and a very serious one) to the dignity of the human person; an insult that is committed by the producers, the participants and the spectators alike. Just as not only the prostitute who trades her body is guilty of sin, but also the society of scroungers and lechers who push her to earn a living in this way (without demand there is no supply), in the same way those who profit by selling their privacy or baring their passions in public, as well as those who expose them and those who watch them, are guilty of the degradation of the human being. If the Roman plebs, degraded and corrupted, had not been hungry for bread and circuses, the tyrants of the Empire would not have thought of shedding so much blood in their amphitheaters. Who were the wild beasts: the animals or the spectators? Has the Empire ended, or have we perpetuated the worst that it left us as a legacy?

Fr. Miguel A. Fuentes, IVE

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