“Fucking cunt! Beaner whore!” These were just a few of the names hurled at my coworker Dahlia when she encountered a former reality show contestant at the elite gym at which I used to work. This man was on American Idol several years ago as well as So You Think You Can Dance. If you couldn’t tell, he was the quintessential “reality show monster” — loud, flamboyant, crass, and abrasive; a completely untalented megalomaniac. Yet, he was the ratings booster, the buzz-maker, and the tune-in hiker. He was paid to act like that, right? Dahlia discovered, however, that the loudmouthed, offensive, hyperbolic ‘ sassy gay stereotype’ was no act.

This man, like so many figures in the current American zeitgeist, blurred the line between authenticity and manufactured experiences. His outrageous on-air hi-jinks were not derived from some dadaist genius or Kaufmanian sensibility, and in person they are definitely not spurred from creativity. He is addicted to attention. He is a destructive person enabled by a culture of commodification that says, if you can make money off something, why stop? It is an American tradition to take an oddity and exploit it for entertainment (i.e. profit), desensitising us to its special-ness in the process. The result is a higher threshold for impression…or bullshit.

That night at the gym the pop culture one-hit-wonder proceeded to berate Dahlia in full view of everyone around them, as if he were doing a performance piece. At the top of his lungs he accused her of homophobia (she’s lesbian),swore at her in English and Spanish (which she understands; she’s a Latinx woman), all while walking, in full street clothes, on the treadmill closest to the front desk so every incoming member would be forced to see the drama. There are no guards at these gyms, so security could not remove him. Dahlia just had to keep doing her job while a pathetic man tried to tear her down.

Oh, and he brought his mother along, who he forced to just sit and wait for him. As if in a daze, she said nothing. I wonder if she was actually his mother. She wasn’t the only silent one, though. Not a single member intervened to defend Dahlia that day. Not one person considered helping someone that helps them every day.

All they did was stand and watch.

…he brought his mother to the gym, who he forced to just sit and wait for him. She said nothing. I wonder if she was actually his mother.

Producers of reality shows bank on ‘reality stars’ to carry a season, and the way they become “stars” is via the outrageous. Shows like Cops, The Jerry Springer Show, and The Real World redefined the carnvialesque. Real life was deemed boring, but “Real” life is the televised circus America loves to hate, or simply loves. Shows are reliant on extremity because of this. The stranger the person, the more screen time they shall receive. The subjects know this too and so a vicious cycle occurs where terrible behaviour is rewarded with more focus that requires worse behaviour to sustain its narrative. There has to be a narrative in the end, right? Real life, without prescribed characters, plot, or ad breaks is far too mundane.

Like P.T. Barnum, reality show producers see profitable spectacle in eccentricity and fringe. While some of them may consider themselves documentarians, documentary cinema is inspired by human interest, not cynicism, and rarely is it a cash-grab endeavour. More importantly though, reality show producers too often fail to realise that the same circus acts that they throw out in the public eye like fishing bait for commercial sponsorship often transcend the off-kilter “reality” that is deliberately manufactured in development offices and editing rooms. Their onscreen personae are really them, even if they’re hidden under layers of socially programmed normalcy. It is the light of a camera that peels away that yolk.

Real life was deemed boring, but “Real” life is the 24 hour circus America loves to hate, or simply loves.

Reality television show-runners craft great illusions from society’s grand delusion. While I concede that the achievements of reality television challenges are enriching and encouraging in some cases, the grand delusion is that while achievements are attainable because of the recipients familiarity, bad behaviour is restricted to “TV villains.”

Herein lies the dangerous, pornographic fantasy of reality television: cruelty, anger, rudeness, bigotry, ignorance, stupidity, ineptness, and utter failure only happens to other people. “I’m not as bad as the Dance Moms,” says the helicopter mom suffocating her child’s independence. “That dude’s being such a creepy jerk,” says the chauvinistic guy hate-watching The Bachelorette before going to “da club” to do the same.

People on reality shows are the ultimate “other people.” It’s like rubbernecking while not wearing a seat belt. Misfortune only befalls or is caused by characters on shows that look and sound just like us. But they are us, we just refuse to believe it. Reality television succeeds because our most carnal, selfish, impulsive versions of ourselves are given a space to roam free, played out by avatars on a screen. The truth is though, we all have the agency and potential to do good and bad, we just prefer to do nothing but be entertained. The only people left doing anything then, are those on the extremes, ready to cash in.

Reality show subjects — be they contestants or “characters” — may be performing for the camera, but they are not performers. Reality shows are not imaginative enough nor budgeted well enough to have trained, professional actors. They simply draw from real human’s cognitive wells…and then exploit them until they’re dried up, useless, before moving on to the next one. The public does not consider this, when the smell of easy fame wafts over. It’s the same reason so many people try to become famous on social media and YouTube — we want our faults to be redeemed. The only way this happens is through fame.

And so, with a false sense of control and schadenfreude, the bizarre becomes normalised. We become blind to danger. Abusive, socially inept people become characters, or at least potential ones, and they are worshipped through love or hate. Media is so deeply embedded into American life and fame and celebrity have become an economy and culture all their own. When everyone looks at reality TV and thinks, “that could be me,” the qualities of the carnivalesque are welcomed and accepted. This is how we ended up with Donald Trump as President — millions of Americans saw in him a validation of their despicable behaviour in an election that was covered by media like one big reality show event.

Where does this come from though? Why do we tolerate this kind of behaviour, both in terms of allowing exploitative entertainment to persist as well as suspending our disgust until the next episode? I claim we don’t allow it…not consciously at least.

In Part II we explore the corporate mechanics that make reality television so prevalent in American culture. It will be released soon.