Talk Shows

If social order is not a given, if it is not encoded in our DNA, then to some extremity we are always in the process of producing virtual strongities, some more(prenominal) than functional than others. Habits, routines, and institutions are the patterns that create the world taken for granted. Knowledge of how to extradite is contained in ethnical scripts that are themselves products of human interaction and communication virtually the nature of reality. Shame, guilt, embarrassment are controlling feelings that arise from speaking the execrable and from violating cultural taboos. purchase order is a result of its boundaries,of what it will and wont allow. As we watch, listen, and are entertained, TV talk faces are rewriting our cultural scripts, altering our perceptions, our social relationships, and our relationships to the natural world. TV talk shows offer us a world of blurred boundaries. Cultural distinctions between public and private, conceivable and incredible wi tnesses, truth and falseness, good and evil, sickness and irresponsibility, normal and abnormal, therapy and exploitation, intimate and stranger, fragmentation and community are manipulated and erased for our distraction and entertainment.A community in real time and place exhibits longevity, an interdependence based on common interests, day-by-day concerns, mutual obligations, norms, kinship, friendship, loyalty, and local knowledge, and real physical structures, not just dual-lane information. If your neighbors house is on fire, you are motivated to back up confide it out, or at least interested in having it put out, because you care approximately your neighbor and the fire is a threat to your get house. Television talk shows create an ersatz community, without some(prenominal) of the social and ad hominem responsibilities that are attached to real life. Therapy as entertainment is the appeal of these shows.The alleged(prenominal) hosts rely on the cynical use of the thera peutic model for mental sound bites. The need to educate and inform the earreach is the voiced precept for getting the so-called guests to give ever more titillating expand of their misdeeds, or of the misdeeds done to them by family or friends ( practically not on the show). The profound assumption that close social pathology is the result of a medical problem beyond the control of the so-called victim encour long times, at least indirectly, battalion to sum up on to these shows confessing outrageous stories of anti-social behavior to millions of strangers.Rather than being mortified, ashamed, or nerve-racking to hide their stigma, guests willingly and eagerly discuss their child molesting, inner quirks, and criminal records in an effort to seek understanding for their particular disease. withal these people remain caricatures, plucked out of the context of their real lives, unsubstantial except for their entertaining problem. (In real life someone might disbelief th e benefits of publicly confessing to people who really dont care about you or dont ingest the expertise to give advice. Exploitation, voyeurism, peeping Toms, disgust shows all come to mind. )The central distortion that these shows propound is that they give reclaimable therapy to guests and useful advice to the audience. And that they are not primarily designed to extract the most riveting and most entertaining emotional displays from participants. This leads to such self-serving and punch-drunk speeches by hosts as I ask this question not to value in your business but to educate parents in our audience (Oprah, trying to get graphic details from a female guest who claims to have been sodomized by her father) and Do I understand, Lisa, that intercourse began with your dad at age 12, and oral sex between 5 and 12?Do I understand that you were beaten before and after the sexual encounters? (Phil, reading from prompt notes, to a crying teenager). The audience at various points in the moment has a chance to get on television too. Their questions are often rude by conventional standards and reinforce the hosts requests for more potentially entertaining details. Their advice ranges from merely simplistic, under the circumstances, to misleading and erroneous.For example, in a recent Sally Jessy Raphael Show entitled When Your Best Friend Is quiescence With Your Father, the daughters on stage were advised to just love them both and involve the situation. The most problematic part of this is the generally nonjudgmental tenor of the dialogue. Societys conventions are flouted with impunity, and the hidden message is that the way to get on television is to be as outrageous and antisocial as possible. The 20 million pedestal viewers have no direct contact, physically, with the social situation in the studio.Home viewers can be comprehend to people recounting concentration camp horrors while popping a frozen dinner into the microwave. The ordinary, everyday worl d of the home audience is make bizarre by the contrasting tales of horror and woe they are whole half listening to. The viewer has two basic options He or she can, like the hero of Nathanael Wests tragic Miss Lonelyhearts, go crazy listening to these stories of hideous pain and pathology. Or he or she must become inured, apathetic, or amused, or, to use the darkly delicious German word schadenfreude, he or she may get a plentiful sense of glee at anothers misfortunes.People come into view, talk, cry, disappear, and in between we watch the commercials for consumer products that promise to improve our lives. Edward Albees Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? revolves around the seemingly out-of-place confessions by a husband and wife of their most private life together to two guests in their home who are virtual strangers. Traditional expectations of polite formalities and barriers are eternally br distributivelyed within the action of the play. The husband, at one point says, Aww, that was nice, I appreciate weve been having a, a real good evening, all things considered.Weve sat around, and got to know each other, and had fun and games.. . Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , however disconcerting to the audience, is just a play with actors. Television talk shows are arenas for real people. Their manipulation by hosts, who alternate between mocking, a patronizing cynicism (I want to be as smart as you someday Phil), and a carefully constructed verisimilitude of care (Thank you for sharing that with us Oprah) must have repercussions for the guests after the show is over.These people may really be seeking help or understanding. Appropriate reactions seem virtually impossible under the circumstances. We the viewing audience have entertained ourselves at the disasters of real lives. This is one of the more unashamed aspects of the talk show spectacle. As passive witnesses, we consume others misfortunes without feeling any responsibility to do anything to intervene.