But it's not exactly true. Yes, reality shows often show the lyingest, lustiest lows of human behavior, and we've come to automatically assume that they're amoral at best, soul-corroding at worst. (That's pretty much why we watch them.) What reality-TV critics and fans alike fail to see, however, is that the shows are really constructed as tiny morality plays: At the center of each show's premise is a simple, Goofus-and-Gallant lesson about how to live with other people.
This probably seems odd to say about shows that make stars of fat naked guys with Napoleon complexes. But there's always been a symbiotic relationship between sleaze and sermonizing. Tent-show preachers are at their most compelling when they get going about FOR-ni-KAY-shun. Dostoevsky, a writer with an intense moral vision, was an inveterate gambler and wrote about prostitutes and murderers; Hieronymus Bosch conveyed an impassioned vision of heaven and hell in "Garden of Earthly Delights" — but it contains some of the most indelible orgy scenes in art history. Between the two of them, they could have made one hell of a reality series.
We're not saying that students will someday study Mark Burnett in graduate literature seminars, or that Mark Walberg thought he was doing the Lord's work on "Temptation Island." But the same principle applies: Scratch beneath the seaminess and you find some of the most conventionally moral programming on television, highly symbolic, old-fashioned primers on cohabitating, cooperating, even playing fair. Go ahead and watch for the bikinis and backstabbing. The fact is, everything you need to know about life, you can learn from reality.
Community
Can the very rules of a game make it immoral? Susan Sarandon
thinks so. The statement-minded actress condescended to
guest-star on NBC's "Friends" because, she said, its rival "Survivor" is
a game that "[rewards] behavior that shouldn't be rewarded."
Unlike the more wholesome chess (which rewards sacrificing the
weak to protect the important) or Monopoly (which rewards price
gouging)? Hard fought as it is — as in pretty much any game, there's
only one winner — "Survivor" is also based on social precepts most
people try to teach their toddlers. Play well with others: "Survivor"
is not kind to loners, like this season's Kel and Debb. Share your
goodies: When Colby brought back chunks of an endangered coral
reef for his tribe mates after winning a day trip, the calculated
baksheesh bolstered his position. Don't be bossy: Jerri's pushiness
ultimately led to her tribal alliance's surprise turn against her.
Indeed, despite the conventional line that the game is all about
treachery, the alliances on both seasons of the show have more
often than not held together — so much so that the producers have
had to edit creatively to create suspense. If the players won't play
tricks, the camera has to.
Communication
We all laughed last year when NBC signed "Chains of Love" — in
which a "picker," male or female, is chained to four "dates" over
four days — and called it a "relationship show." (NBC later took the
high road and aired the XFL instead.) Turns out the description
was accurate. The surprising thing about "Chains" (UPN, Tuesdays,
8 p.m. E.T.) is not the PG-rated sex play (the chainees wear chaste
bathing suits even in a hot tub) but the discovery that even
reality-TV exhibitionists have thoroughly internalized the chatty
psychobabble of relationship gurus. In the debut, picker Andy
spends less time trying to score than prattling about his dates'
"honesty," "self-esteem" and "defensiveness." If you were
expecting chained heat, you will discover something more like "Big
Brother" (whose makers coproduce Chains), which promised
scandal but delivered group therapy.
Fidelity
Fox's "Temptation Island" — in which four unmarried couples tried to
resist a bevy of hot singles — was, in most people's opinion, the show
most likely to induce God to consume Earth with tongues of flame.
Unless, for the most part, those people were under 35. The
audience that made "Island" a hit grew up in an era of 50 percent divorce
rates; for them, it offered more than campy, sexy entertainment.
It was also a wholehearted, even corny, testament to making
imperfect relationships work, despite slights, misunderstandings
and the occasional striptease with a stranger. It couldn't have had
heavier-handed cues if it were produced by Pat Robertson: when a
"date" veered close to real cheating (which never went anywhere),
we heard tense music straight out of a soap opera; and up swelled
the sappy synths when couples decided to stay together, as it
turned out each one did.
Discipline
It may be odd to look for moral uplift in "Boot Camp" (Fox,
Wednesdays, 9 p.m. E.T.), a military-training "Survivor" look-alike
that prompted a lawsuit from CBS (since swiping hit concepts is
unheard-of in the TV business). But while it is derivative and
goofy — the screaming "drill instructors" put the "camp" in "Boot
Camp" — it also shows a kind of olive-drab heart. Its major
structural difference from "Survivor" is the most telling: the
"recruits" conduct grueling reward challenges, not in teams, but as
one unit. It's the most literal example of a widespread reality-show
theme: that ordinary folk (including a professional balloon
sculptor), working together and given motivation, can gut it out
mentally and physically — that your real opponent is yourself.
Fairness
Reality-show hosts are half devil, half angel, tempter and
comforter. (Think Jeff Probst offering starving Survivors extra
vittles in exchange for their tent.) Not so Anne Robinson of "The
Weakest Link" (NBC, Mondays, 8 p.m. E.T.), a British import game
show with a "Survivor" twist: players vote each other off. The dour,
sarcastic host dismisses losers with a curt "You are the weakest
link. Good-bye." (Thanks to NBC's weeks-long ad blitz, it may be
the first TV catchphrase Americans have got sick of before its show
even aired). But there's an integrity to her evil-Regis act. She
mercilessly skewers the weak, but her tongue-lashings — "Slow
coaches and ditherers have no place on the team!" — are an implicit
reproach to players who would vote their strongest rivals off (the
last one standing wins the whole pot). To Robinson, this kind of
strategist is a "coward." As a quiz show, "Link" is quotidian. But if it
does click with Yanks, we have a guess why: In an era of economic
contraction, it is a parable on how to equitably fire people. Don't
base it on personal factors. Measure performance objectively. And
what is Robinson but the game-show equivalent of the joyless
mouthpieces employers have to do their hatcheting for them? You
might not want Robinson to pink-slip you. But at least you would
know the next guy will get it just as bad. Nothing personal at all.
Good-bye.