The Death of Reality Television. Please?

Oh, a girl can dream, can’t she?

If by some generous definition reality TV had any grace to fall from, 2009 seems the year it crashed (megahit upliftersThe Biggest Loser and American Idol exempted, here and throughout). Observe the desperate state dinner-infiltration of the Real Housewives of DC-bound Salahis; the child-pimping and reality-series-courting of Octomom and the Balloon Boy family; the incomparably dark tale of Ryan Jenkins, the rumored victor of two VH1 reality shows, Megan Wants a Millionaire and I Love Money, who killed himself after being charged in the brutal murder and mutilation of his new wife, who, in a twist too extreme for even the most cynical satire of our culture’s degradations of the body, was identified by the serial number on her breast implants.

This is the first year I can remember hearing the term “aspiring reality-TV stars.” Shudder.

Well, what do we expect? Reality TV features bad choices and personality disorders and irresponsible behavior, kneejerk reactions and regrettable outbursts, susceptibility to nervous breakdowns and filterless narcissism, because that is, and always has been, the stuff of great storytelling. But showcasing instability seems to be encouraging it, no? Inviting it out to play?

At the risk of waxing nostalgic about something that verges on cultural bankruptcy, I really do think there was a crisp, magical quality to the first generation of reality television: the first seasons of The Real World** felt alive with a kind of authenticity that had drained right out of so much scripted TV, especially the constipated living room sets of sitcoms, with their predictable one-two jokes and sappy “good talk” denouements.

The original cast members of The Real World seemed to be stopping at the show on the way up to somewhere better; they were interesting and had talents and sometimes bad skin, and sometimes they made noble choices and sometimes dumb ones, but they weren’t moral examples or joke-butt props, they were just living their lives, figuring shit out.

But that was then, and this is SEASON TWENTY-THREE of The Real World, which last I checked has become a show about hard bodies, hot tubs, and bar crawls.

Somewhere along the way the content of reality television ripped free of its reality-moorings to skate through the air overhead, becoming a very distracting silver balloon with no live boy inside. Whatever authenticity it once aimed to capture has been swapped out for something just as self-conscious as scripted TV. It reminds me of that passage in Infinite Jest, where David Foster Wallace imagines the rise and fall of the videophone: early adopters find themselves suddenly revealed as both physically unprepared for public interaction and underattentive in conversation, and moreover shocked to find “you were actually commanding not one bit more attention than you were paying”; and users are so distressed by the bloated, moist appearance of their faces onscreen that they begin to wear high tech masks simulating their best angles, which they eventually replace with static photographs of more beautiful lookalikes…and eventually people are nostalgic for “good old Bell-era blind aural-only telephoning.”

Same thing with reality TV, sort of. Reality TV’s efforts at increasing intimacy and relatability have pushed them away. The point is, I guess, that authenticity is one of those elusive qualities–if you try to capture it, it’s gone. You lose it by pursuing it. Not unrelated to ye olde Observer Effect.

That inauthenticity skews especially sad, I think, on dating shows. Sad: I remember watching an episode of The Bachelor in which The Bachelor and one of his intensely eager honeys (which, sidenote, I will never get over the weird polyamory thing happening on these shows) recline on a blanket spread out in the middle of a football field. The honey looks at The Bachelor as if she smells something wonderful and says, “This is the most romantic night of my life.” “Yeah,” he replies dully, “it’s totally awesome.” And then he closes his mouth over her whole lower face.

Sadder: my friend called me one night a couple of years ago, shaken, after watching the finale of the second season of Rock of Love, in which Bret Michaels is gloriously rescued from hair metal obscurity, draped in a beautiful flaxen wig, and fought over viciously by tired-looking women in spandex. My friend was shaken when, during the final dinner before the final elimination, in an apparent bid for the win, one of these ladies in spandex leans over to Michaels and says, in a fragile, slightly uncertain tone, “I’m not wearing any underwear.” And when Michaels asks for proof, she–with seeming reluctance!–parts her legs.

Rock of love? Rock of lust? Rock of other?

The last straw: Okay, confession time, I watched almost an entire episode of VH1’s For the Love of Ray J, during a particularly epic stint on the elliptical machine at the gym. Have you seen that show? It’s just The Bachelor, but for a moderately successful R+B singer, and the women courting him use a lot of, er, persuasive techniques with their bodies. It’s currently in its second season, which means the first girl who did something for the love of Ray J (we’re missing a verb, VH1!) is history. Anyway during the elimination ceremony of the episode I watched Ray J looked deeply into the eyeshadow fans of a very beautiful girl with glitter on her cleavage and said, “I need to know. Are you really here for the love of Ray J?”

I was like, Stop. Ray J, what exactly do you mean by that? What is loving of Ray J? Does loving of Ray J mean he’s loving back? And what’s the point of loving of Ray J if you, Ray J, are probably coming back for a third season, maybe even in the love-challenged ambience of a Love of Ray J Bus?

Or maybe I’ve missed the point of your question. Maybe you just mean, “Do you know what show you’re on, dear?”

But let’s look at a really salient part of your question, Ray J. Why are these people here? We all know one reason they aren’t:

(courtesy of FourFour)

Yikes, I heard you the first seventy billion times. OK, so what, pray tell, are you here for? My wished-for demise of reality television requires both a drop in demand (which ratings are bearing out, yay) and a drop in aspiring reality-TV star supply.

So let’s try to figure out why you’re here. Just for the win? Victory alone? And maybe free wine? Maybe to harness celebrity that strangely resembles obscurity? To find the illusory fast track to the career you’d probably do better in if you weren’t saddled with the stigma of being the one who had a meltdown when he wasn’t permitted his cheese of choice on his sandwich?

Are you here to receive a giant cardboard check from a host who seems to be imperceptibly mocking you? To receive an approving, steamy squint from Tyra Banks? To become afraid to Google your own name, lest you move the rock covering the anonymous internet legions dissecting you, the legions who, in all probability, hunger for your ruin?

Are you here to nearly drown in a manmade lake, tangled in a deflating inner tube? To sleep in a bunkbed in a tacky mansion? To see a has-been famous person naked, even if you have to be sort of pushy about it? To be naked yourself, perhaps eventually featured in some tasteful nudes in a magazine? To flex your abs on the cover of People? To lose yourself in a tender kiss from a strong-jawed man with questionable appeal, who has just offered you one of a dozen identical long-stemmed roses that seem to imply you and all these ladies in sequined evening gowns lined up behind you like billiard balls are basically identical too, even though this strong-jawed man has told you, earnestly, in a carriage ride with just you and one of the other girls–a girl who is also not here to make friends–so just you, and the other girl, and the strong-jawed man, and also a boom mike operator and the show’s director and a handful of camera guys eating sprinkle donuts while they watch you fall in love, that there is “something special about you”?

Wait. Is that it? You’re here to know you’re special? OK, you are. Now for your own sake, stay away from the light, Carol Ann.

OK. Good talk, aspiring reality-TV stars.

** People who might call Survivor reality TV’s proverbial Garden of Eden get no real argument from me. I missed the original Survivor hysteria, and have not once caught a full episode, so I can’t really tango in those waters, to coin a phrase.