Fox Turning Economic Reality Into ‘Reality’
Gentlemen... start your backstabbing. (Image via Flickr)
Our world is rife with bad economic news right now. The media is filled with stories of how the pressure of coping with a recession and financial crisis is straining marriages, testing business alliances, and making some of our longest-held beliefs about fairness, loyalty and equity in the workplace seem like quaint relics of a past that maybe never was.
What’s the best way to deal with it? If you’re the Fox network, you turn it into a game show:
An upcoming series titled, Someone’s Gotta Go, lets employees of a small business decide which one of their colleagues will be laid off. (via Fox to make reality TV show out of company layoffs – USATODAY.com).
What better way to appeal to the better nature of humans in a time of crisis than to pit them against each other for our amusement? I half expect to see Rupert Murdoch tossing loaves of bread to the crowd, too…
Anyone want to predict when the reality show train, having squandered the last of our good will while simultaneously siphoning off the last drops of crass at the bottom of the cultural cess pool, finally grinds to a halt?
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To quote one of my all time favorite New Yorker Cartoons: How about NEVER? Is NEVER good for you?
I’m afraid, Matthew, there is no end to tasteless reality show ideas. Besides, the UK hasn’t stopped coming up with ideas for American TV producers to rip off! ~ DD
Please forgive the hubris, by I commented on this yesterday on my own blog. For brevity, I’ve condensed it a bit:
It had to happen, I guess. As predicted some years ago in Stephen King’s now prescient novella “The Running Man,” there would come a time when society’s tastes would revert to a tradition as ancient as human civilization itself – the need for blood. Be it watching a public hanging in the nineteenth century, or rounding up the family for a picnic alongside the daily guillotine show in revolutionary France, the public’s willingness to court death as a form of entertainment has never really waned.
The twentieth century seemed to change that for a while. With death and destruction through two world wars, numerous genocides, and more than a few worldwide epidemics, the need to witness violence as a form of entertainment waned considerably. The most violent event about was probably American football, until recently when the ultimate fighting leagues gained popularity.
Still, be it football or ultimate fighting, the contestants were not fighting for their lives, and nor were they poor saps stuck in a terrible spot. The wanted to be where they were, and were trained fully for their tasks. In other words, they were professionals, so whatever misfortune came their way came as much through their own doing as through the hand of capricious fate.
But things have changed, it seems. No longer content to see willing parties engage in potentially tragic events, the public wants unwilling participants hit head on by life changing tragedy.
I guess Fox has gauged this need amongst its audience, and now we get to watch as ordinary folk are fired from their jobs, and cast out into the world, all hopes, dreams, and plans shattered.
Will they be following this up with a Death Row comedy hour?
Dang. Sorry. I double posted. Is there any way to delete, and/or edit comments? I think that would be a useful feature.
James,
Thanks for the thoughts… I wonder if this new Fox entry shows a different kind of bloodlust, though — or, rather, a further refining of the bloodlust most reality shows already display. Rather than watch our countrymen literally rip each other to shreds, we now get to see them treat each other poorly, emotionally wound each other and otherwise do unto them as we hope no one would do unto us.
How else to explain this Fox show, the women of “The Bachelor” or any of VH-1’s “dating” shows — it’s all about watching people behave and treat each other in ways we tell ourselves we’d never act in our own life. It’s emotional bloodlust, with a touch of snobbery thrown in, too.
First small business to feature: American Idol. Make Simon, Randee, Paula and New Girl argue about which of them should be let go. Then I would watch.
Isn’t reality TV supposed to be a mindless escape from it all? Why would I want to see layoffs on TV when I can just read about it in any newspaper…before they’re all gone.