The Remedy

I have a confession to make. The Ox is slowly devolving into one of those people you read about in the news: a bona fide reality-show watcher. Once proud of the fact that he "only watches The Amazing Race", I've startlingly realised that reality shows (especially good ones) have as much if not more drawing power than a similar episode of Las Muchas Crappas, or any other Uruguay/Paraguay/Argentinian soap our local stations tend to dish out after three in the afternoon.

Case in point: having mistakenly assumed that American Idol would be on last night, I was suddenly greeted by an unfamiliar little programme called The Family on 8tv (which is quite good, IMHO). A reality series with yet another twist in which this time the contestants are all members of the same family, and all of them are after the million dollar reward. Now the show isn't revolutionary in any respect, and the production values can be somewhat iffy as well. However, I now understand the terrible attraction shows like this have on the human psyche. The dynamics of a family undergoing a slow but steady breakdown all the while showing the most horrible greedy behaviour draws us in somewhat: we become some sort of an invisible jury, passing judgements and comments while at the same time breathing huge sighs of relief that it's not us under the limelight. I've been a student of human nature long enough to know that at least for some of us, we like to labour under the impression that we're not as bad as that. On the other hand, we know of course that we only see what the producers want us to see, but we play along because it's always good to find something wrong with someone else. We feel safe. Might it be partly correct to say that in a way contestants in reality shows become our sacrificial scapegoats, per se?

Earlier tonight I finally sat down and watched Akademi Fantasia for the first time ever. I'm thankful now I didn't join the craze. Sitting through those two hours made me think about the gladitorial battles in old Rome: how the lives of the fighters would be decided by the mob. In a crazy way I think that was why the show worked so well in Malaysia. The SMS voters became our mob. In short we had the power to decide the fate of several hopefuls and damn ain't that intoxicating. I know this is old laundry, but the impression I got was this wasn't really about talent. It was instead about who could move the crowd enough to vote for them so they'd last another week. And all the yowling at the end didn't help either. As Daisy wonderfully opines, we need a little more professionalism in our industry.

But then again, I'm little more than a semi-disgruntled viewer. I understand completely that to many people, AF was a wonderful piece of programming. Until I am swayed that way however, I'll stick with Simon, Randy, The Amazing Race and yeah, maybe even the Family.