Summary of Reality in America

Reality in America, written by Lee Siegel, tells how reality television creates a publicly accepted idea of what reality is. This idea has blown up in the past few years.Reality television did not just happen overnight, it has a history. One of the main reality television shows, Survivor, was taken from the Europeans. Many of our other reality shows came over from Holland and Germany. If you think back at O.J. Simpson, Americans all over the world watched as if it were a television drama. This was just one of the events that set the mood for the "trend". We ran with the idea in the past few years, with shows like The Bachelor, American Idol, and The Real World.

The idea is reality television brings an unedited show that captures someone’s real personality and traits. Siegel does not feel this way. He does not think that is what is shown at all. It doesn’t show the uncut version; it is edited to where the person may be taken out of context and shown completely different. The catch is that we don’t want the uncut version. We want something that is negative. As Siegel states in his essay, we don't want “anything that is not physically perfect, not carefully presented, not stylistically flawless, not shiningly successful- anything that is not packaged in the form of an ideal.” (171) One quality that is gratified is defeat. We want the person to fail, be embarrassed, and have none their emotions be reciprocated.

Bibliography

Atwan, Robert . Convergences. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.

"The Bachelor Paris." ABC. ABC. 06 Feb. 2006 <http://abc.go.com/primetime/bachelor/>.

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