Reality TV Is Decadent and Depraved

Reality TV concerns its viewers with artificial status, confuses celebrity for infamy, and has a tendency toward violence and moral depravity. Welcome to the circus, says Christine Rosen: “Dozens of reality shows are now on the air, and a new one debuts every few months: shows about losing weight, finding love, taking care of passels of children, living life as a little person, renovating houses, and even trading spouses. If a culture gets the celebrities it deserves, what does it say about ours that we are so embedded in the ersatz lives of housewives, wife-swappers, and the prodigiously fertile?”