It started years ago with "The Real World," where racial tension seemed to be a prerequisite for casting. And in the past year we saw "Survivor" attempt to divide its teams according to race and Ice Cube attempt to have black and white families swap identities in "Black. White." There is the unnerving minstrel quality to "Flavor of Love," and we even see mixed race couples on "Wife Swap." In many ways it's the "unscripted" nature of a lot of reality TV and its casting of real diverse Americans from different socioeconomic backgrounds that gives us a sharper sense of race in America than scripted dramas with multicultural ensembles. I also happened to catch a pretty shocking discussion of interracial couples on The Tyra Banks show awhile back, which is very popular with teens.
But there's no need to limit this theory to reality TV. Teens learn from TV, period. That includes everything from old Westerns to "modern" mini-series such as Into the West.
3 comments:
Writerfella here --
The question becomes, does anyone ACTUALLY BELIEVE that 'race' in America either had gone away or at least was at a low ebb BEFORE there was 'reality TV'? And does any such person ACTUALLY BELIEVE that programs erroneously yclept 'reality TV' are unscripted, unfiltered, or unrehearsed? Herd them over to writerfella's Swampland Bonds & Deeds soonest! So-called 'reality TV' happens to be the most exactingly written, most carefully filtered and restricted, and even is shot, re-shot, or re-staged using doubles. There even are union scale charts and contract codicils for 'reality series writing' in the industry-wide Minimum Basic Agreement union rules at the Writers Guild of America, west No such series gets writerfella's TV time because it's all about as real as that hoary TV stand-by, WCW Wrestling...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Writerfella here --
POSTSCRIPTUM -- Ulp, almost forgot! And nearly every 'reality TV' series participant becomes qualified to join the Screen Actors Guild, a goodly number of whom actually have!!!
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Writerfella here --
POSTSCRIPTUM 2 -- And it should not be forgotten that the sheer plethora of so-called 'reality series' on commercial television is happening for the two reasons there is commercial television: 1, it's damnably popular; and, 2, it's damnably cheap to shoot! Somehow, that makes writerfella so happy that his favorite TV series is BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
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