Getting paid for reality

This NYT article in the paper yesterday got me thinking again about the ethics of reality shows, and how much we are encouraging the abuse and degradation of human beings by watching them.

Image: My daughter's current fave reality show.

The article was mainly about competition shows-- the kind where contestants are eliminated week by week. Survivor was the first of this kind, but there are dozens now, something to suit everyone's interests. There's one about losing weight, there's one about dancing, and there's even one about losing weight while dancing.

The point of the article is that contestants in these shows are pushed to physical and mental limits in order to improve the watchability of the shows-- everyone loves suffering, especially if it's real-- and yet very, very few of the "stars" of these lucrative shows, the contestants, make any money off of them while they're in them.

I was all ready to whip off a post about how reality performers should be unionized when I decided to take a step back and ask an expert about the situation.

My daughter loves competition shows. She's currently wild about Designstar, which has just started its new season, but she goes crazy for American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, Project Runway, America's Next Top Model, and The Fashion Show. As a tween she cycled between the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, but nowadays, in her early teenage herodom, she wants to study human social behavior, especially at its extremes.

I watch most of these shows with her, and we comment on what's going on. I figured she had a healthy understanding of the complicity we have with the producers when we feast on contestants' suffering.

But when I asked her if she thought it was unfair that competition show contestants are not paid, her response was, "Life isn't fair. That's what you told me, isn't it?"

Touché. A palpable hit.

Daughter's bedrock contention was that no one was forcing these people to be in reality shows. She said over and over that they must know what they're getting into when they sign up for them.

Besides, she continued, by going on television, the contestants were getting exposure and showcasing their talents for making money in other venues.

And "If they were paid," she argued, "they wouldn't try as hard to win the competition."

Folks, this gal is a vegetarian with a soft spot for dogs, cats, and pigs. But that soft spot doesn't extend to people, I guess. She is my own Artemis, protector of the wild and slayer of the unworthy.

Worse, I really had no counterargument to offer. As long as people keep signing up to do reality shows for the sole privilege of being humiliated on national television, there's nothing any of us can do. As daughter pointed out, "It's not going to change anything if I stop watching those shows. They're still going to put them on."

I have to give kudos to my girl for her principled stance on meat-eating, and for her iron-clad arguments about reality shows. Maybe she's got her compassion right where it needs to be. Why care about reality show contestants when they're the ones who signed up for their own execution?

Well. At least on Designstar, there's some humanity. This week, when one of the contestants was unable to finish her project and quietly took some time in the ladies' room to lose it (the cameras didn't go in there with her, but microphones did), a couple of the others helped her to make her space look a little more decent. And guess what? Someone else got axed that week.

That's entertainment.