Reality TV

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Reality television is the most harmful genre in the history of moving pictures. Its dishonesty is masked by the greater lie that it shows reality. This lie derives from less manipulative precursors going back to The Candid Microphone (1947–1950), a prank radio show.

Patrick Radden Keefe’s “How Mark Burnett Resurrected Donald Trump as an Icon of American Success” (New Yorker, 2019-01-07) is a fine essay on the subject. It follows the genre from its inception in Sweden, where state television aired the fascistic Expedition: Robinson (1997) after the first person “voted off the island” committed suicide in an unintentional tribute to Lord of the Flies (1954). Deliberate cruelty played a larger part in Japan in 1998, as documented in The Contestant (2023). In Keefe’s reporting, Mark Burnett brought the concept of Expedition Robinson to the US and then remade it for the “urban jungle” in The Apprentice (2004), a show that transformed the public image of its host, which would lead to his election.