As I think I’ve mentioned before I like television. I have never known a world without television. My dad went out and bought a TV (one of the great, big boxes with a little, tiny round screen) just a few weeks before I was born. We watched everything and I remember it all: the Friday night fights, Captain Video, I Married Joan, huge numbers of variety shows (I loved Jimmy Durante and, on Your Show of Shows Imogene Coca), The Ed Sullivan Show, great drama anthologies like Playhouse 90, You Are There, Omnibus, and on and on. I still watch television.
I have never been able to get into reality programs. What a misnomer! Decades ago I had seen clips from various Japanese game shows that seemed to have the purpose of embarrassing the contestants. Not like Beat the Clock or The Gong Show did. Really embarrassing them. Provoking outbursts. Reality shows look like the direct lineal descendants of those programs.
I’ve tried, occasionally. I’d seen Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour (I didn’t much care for it) so American Idol doesn’t do much for me. I tried watching The Bacherlorette with my niece, Claire, when she was living with us last summer. Fifteen minutes was about all I could take. I left her to watch it by herself. My later reaction to her was that it was like professional wrestling except with walks on the beach at sunset instead of throwing chairs at each other.
One of the things I’ve noticed is that many of the “reality” shows follow the format of Stalag 17. Constrained environment. Artificial rules. Guards. Heroes. Villains. The guy you love to hate. Traitors. I’d rather watch Stalag 17.
I’m not claiming the high ground on this. I see it more as a character flaw in myself. I’m out of the mainstream on this (as in so many things). Since they’re relatively cheap, profitable, and quick to produce I expect we’ll have reality shows around for a long time to come. I can always watch reruns of NCIS.
I watch Ice Road Truckers on Netflix. But it’s possible a whole series of it would get boring (Netflix just gives you a taste)
I’ve watched a couple of reality cooking shows. I was on book tour in the UK when the BBC was running something called the Great British Bake-off. By Hollywood standards it was awful — slow, dull, with participants who had not been professionally “cast.” I liked it.
The Americanized versions like Master Chef are so formulaic, so loaded with long pauses inserted in dialog to serve as edit points, so clearly about casting rather than ability, so reliant on musical stings and computer graphics, and as a result so boring.
Both scripted shows and reality live in a world of formula. But skillful writers can make formula fresh. The producers who run reality shows don’t have that kind of detailed control so all the wires show. It ends up being embarrassing to watch.
Some of the most successful popular writers of the 20th century were formula writers: Frederick Schiller Faust (Max Brand) and Edgar Rice Burroughs leap to mind. Of course, the syndicates all operated on a formula.
I am embarrassed to say I’ve never read a Stephen King novel (I’ve read some of his short stories). Is he a formula writer? I suspect so.
“Reality” TV is just a more scripted version of the freaks in a circus tour. Now where’s that bearded lady…..
Stephen King is an amazingly accomplished writer. He’s generally known for his horror, but he’s quite versatile and has serious writing chops — his book on writing is also great. He’s also one of the hardest-working writers out there and has a deep knowledge of popular culture.
And he has very, very good taste in books having once written, “I’ve been corresponding with your “Michael Grant†about his Gone books. More important, I’ve been reading the Gone books–the first and Hunger, the follow-up. These are exciting, high-tension stories told in a driving, torrential narrative that never lets up. There are monsters, there are kids with mad-crazy super powers, there’s the mystery of where all the adults went. Most of all, there are children I can believe in and root for. This is great fiction. If you want to quote any or all of that, be my guest. I love these books.”
Yeah, that was his best writing.
“I’ve tried, occasionally. I’d seen Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour (I didn’t much care for it) ”
You must have missed the one when Lenny Bruce was 0n doing Barry Fitzgerald (just after he got out of the Navy, I think) as a rabbi with a yiddish-irish accent. Really.
Oh, and I wouldn’t call King a formula writer.
On the basis of the non-horror short stories of his that I’ve read I’d agree that King is a fine writer. His language is not to my taste but it is authentic.
My favorite horror writer remains William Hope Hodgson who died in the waning days of World War I. As I’ve said, I’m hopelessly out of step.