Planet of the Reality Being

“In Atlanta, money and class do give you power,” –Kim Zolciak, The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Turn on your television and pick a channel, any channel, any show. It’s your choice. The end result is going to be the same because whether it’s something you like or something that you don’t necessarily favor, one thing is for sure, you will have an opinion on said show (even if the opinion is no opinion at all). “…It’s a lucky chance that nature has put at our disposal an animal on whom we can study our own bodies. Man serves us in many other fields or research, as you’ll come to realize…At this very moment we are undertaking an extremely important series of experiments.” Zira, Planet of the Apes. Now, pick a book, any book. It’s your choice. But the end result will not be the same because unless it’s a book that you either are compelled to read or are forced to read, you will not have an opinion on that said book.

Why? Simple answer, you can put down a book, but you can’t turn off the television. Why not? Another Simple answer, we’ve allowed television and all its technological counterparts to become intertwined with our daily lives. By this I mean that instead of turning to literature for the knowledge needed to become the people we seek to become, we turn to our televisions to tell us what is on our minds and to our cell phones to tell us the date and time and to our IPods to keep us engaged in our personal bubbles filled with tweets (Twitter) and text messaging. And by the comment made that we cannot turn the televisions off, well simple enough, our favorite programming can now be found on our IPods or laptops. Simply put, the information that we highly seek that we don’t need is at our fingertips. And the literature needed for our very survival is pushed to the side of our lives and instead of becoming a strong population of well educated individualized beings, we’re becoming a population of people dependant on material things to get us through our own every day. And ultimately everything learned in books like Fahrenheit 451, George Orwell’s 1984, and Planet of the Apes, are no longer just stories read for fun, they become reality, and soon enough we’ve become entrapped in our own planet of “reality beings.”

Every morning when I wake up, the first thing I do is reach for my cell phone (that of course is still charging) and check to see the time. There used to be a time when there would be clocks hanging on walls, but in today’s world the twenty-first century person (also known as a “reality being”) is more personalized. Instead of having the clocks on the walls or even the watch on the wrists (do they even make wrist watches anymore?), the time is found on your cell phone, along with your music, your daily dose of entertainment gossip, even the source to our daily communication can be found on your cell phone, basically a world of nonsense is at our fingertips. Literally! And where did this twenty-first century revolution arise from. Pick a channel, any channel, the answer is just a reality show away. Reality TV is the craze that gained notoriety with such shows as Survivor and Big Brother, shows that emphasized the competition for the love of money and revolutionized itself into such shows as I Love Money and Megan Wants a Millionaire. All these shows emphasizing the want of money and the willingness to do whatever it takes to get said amount of money to have a piece of the good life, (even if it means being cooped up in a house with a dozen other strangers or rolling around in mud like a pig or exploiting your own body for the highest bidder (usually the one with the bigger bank account) to win). This good life revolutionized again in the fantastical shows such as The Real Housewives series, this series of shows that follow the lives of five wealthy women in their everyday lives. This series now shows us what to do with the money once you’ve attained it through whatever means you got it from.

Now suddenly our minds become entranced in their real “real” lives and we’ve become addicted. Addicted to their lives? We could care less. No, what we’ve become addicted to is exactly what reality TV strives for us to get highly addicted to. The outlandish behavior that keeps us coming back for more, the premise that we find utterly groundbreaking (a reality spin on the Desperate Housewives?), and finally at the heart of every reality show...money! And the two most important questions, how much and what can I buy with that amount? And this all gives birth to our own dependency. Because what we fail to see every time we turn on our favorite “reality” program, is the marketing behind the show. Some networks will hide this fact with their necessary commercials, but other networks will advertise their objective of advertising to the viewers, right onto their own shows. These, creating a population of consumers, who turn away from the challenge of a novel and will instead indulge themselves in a shiny new tech-toy they feel they need. As stated by Chris Hedges, author of Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, found in the article America’s Identity Crisis in an Age of Consumerism and Spectacle, “We have traded the printed word for the gleaming image. Public rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a ten-year-old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level.” His commentary on a world gone astray really does hit home to all of us who take time out of our day to turn on shows such as The Real Housewives of Atlanta. A show that really has no point other than having women flaunt their wealth even in a time of recession, this became evident outrage on the pages of the New York Times when an article was released entitled, Wealth (and Dior) on Their Minds, highlighting the new stereotype created by those women from the South. “The goal here, as in all the “Housewives” shows, isn’t getting your children into Harvard, but having the ability to keep shopping at Dior and Vuitton without the downer parameters of a budget.” The main point of this article is that now consumerism in reality television has become colored blind. If a wealthy Caucasian from Orange County can marry rich and drive an eighty-thousand dollar car, then why can’t a wealthy woman from Atlanta, Georgia do the same? After all, they both didn’t spend their own money. Now of course, the viewer isn’t going to want to go spend thousands of dollars on luxuries they can’t seriously afford, but, the viewer will let down the walls he or she has built up during this recession time and will spend hundreds of dollars on high-tech-toys they can somewhat afford.

George Orwell introduces us to those kinds of people, those who do what they are told to do without complaint, who live their lives to please someone who can’t be seen, and ultimately love and hate people they are told to hate with a passion. Do we not see a resemblance here to reality television? Do they not encourage us to go out and spend money we don’t have to keep up with what they say is the latest trends? Even though we don’t have the money to spend, especially in a time of recession? Yes, now people will go (even those with the bad credit), and spend, spend, spend their hard earned (or hard borrowed) money on everything they feel will make them superior to those around who don’t have exactly what they have, because on reality television, more is more. “The more you have, the better you feel,” this being the motto behind reality shows. Unlike the motto behind great literature which is, “the more you learn, the better you feel,” which brings me back to the quick fix I spoke of in another text, the quick fix that is popularized by the media, and warned about in books. In doing this do we not feel subconsciously better for buying because not only have we made ourselves feel better but also because we’ve pleased the advertisement in which we saw what was just purchased advertised in? That feeling better because you have in a sense pleased the advertiser is another trick played on the viewer by the advertiser.

Reality masterminds know that they have to keep people interested in the genre, whether it focuses on a particular show or the whole genre in general, they know that have to keep the strings tightly gripped on the puppet. So, when a reality show loses its grip on the viewers, it’s either fixed or axed. A perfect example of this was the “reality,” phenomena Laguna Beach, a show that in its first two seasons became one of the highest rated shows on cable television, and also became a consumer’s paradise. But after only three seasons was let go from the airwaves. This show became a casualty because simply enough people stopped watching. Bravo probably had the same fear with The Real Housewives of Orange County, a show that has become highly criticized for its fakeness. So, after two successful spin offs, soon came a more realistic addition to the Housewives Series, The Real Housewives of New Jersey. The Real Housewives of New Jersey, which is the fourth installment in the housewives series, takes a more realistic turn in reality genre, only in the sense that the people in this are actually related and actually know each other. As stated in another New York Times article entitled, For Ultrareality, ‘Housewives’ Turns to Jersey Girls, on this new reality craze,

“This may be the most preposterous “Housewives” edition, but it’s also the most believable. The suffocating family ties are an improvement over past incarnations, when producers often threw together women who were not really that close and whose frictions often seemed forced. These women actually do know one another well, talk every day and raise their children together (badly). The camera crew seems to be eavesdropping, rather than masterminding.”

This latest edition brings back the spark to the reality junkie. The spark that seemed to be going away with every new item purchased. It brings back the reality to reality TV. Even though it has a different edge on other programs that just put people together and sees what happens. This show still focuses on the materialism, the over-the-top attitudes, and all the extras that make the viewer feel better about themselves. This, all working to ensure that the viewers don’t leave the trusted relationship between them and their real TV that tells them that they have all the answers and that they are superb human beings. Creating a dependent relationship between the viewer and the technology that promises to keep them always in contact with people that they will never meet and the lives they will never live. Just like a child to its mother.

Finally, to end the mirroring of George Orwell’s 1984, do reality shows not encourage us to hate people that we do not even really know or will ever know? Simple Answer to this question, yes! Every day it seems as if some new controversy is sparked up by reality TV. Take The Real Housewives of Atlanta for example, a show about five over-the-top wealthy women living in Atlanta, Georgia. These women sparked controversy not too long ago when they premiered their second season on the Bravo cable network. The controversy here was of the African American race and its new portrayal of shallowness. Brining us back to the article found in The New York Times on the Atlanta Housewives, that highlights the “tight, binary visions,” given to the African American race by these women, who in the article are referred to as “power shoppers” who don’t necessary revolve their lives around serious issues such as getting their children into college, but instead are more concerned with being able to get them into college (with their money) and shopping till they drop. As stated in this article, “There is no point in marrying a cardiologist (or becoming one) when you can hook up with a professional athlete or a vaguely defined entrepreneur who can provide you with a house that has its own beauty salon and the opportunity to hire an estate manager.” This being the underlined message in all The Housewives series’ that you don’t need to worry about life as long as you marry wealthy and stay wealthy. This message, expressed not in favor of the African American person (especially, the African American woman) obviously does not sit well with people, certainly not with the writer behind this article. In this article we see the power reality television is beginning to have on our society as a whole. For the Atlanta Housewives to now become representatives for an entire race, shows just how far reality has really gone and how close to the edge we are to having our society overrun by nothingness because we are now allowing reality television to speak for our interpretations. Just like with the New Jersey Housewives, I mean yes, they do have a certain realistic charm to them. But the show was still meant to entertain not inform (it is not a book after all). Going back to that article of the New Jersey Housewives that highlighted the differences between this show and all its other counterparts still focuses on the similarities of the shows irritabilities. Take Teresa Giuduce, the most superficial one out of all the housewives, whose most famous quote could be heard on the very first episode of the series, which comments on the economy, “I hear the economy’s crashing…So that’s why I pay cash.” Quotes like these are exactly designed to irritate the viewer who worries about how to pay for their next bill. But in quotes like these we see the contradiction in our own annoyances, “The economic slump is rarely if ever mentioned on “Real Housewives.” Partly, that’s because it’s a buzzkill for viewers hooked on the free-floating vulgarity.” But, I must also note that if it is not mentioned on the show, we wonder why, and automatically we begin to feel hatred towards the fictional people that stare back at us on the television. Because we care about them, no, not at all, it’s because we want to be them, simple as that, and reality masterminds feed on this, and they feed on us, stealing our minds away from individualism because they know that the people that have their lives together and do not have dependency on the material or their version of reality cannot be tamed and then the hierarchy will happen.

Well, George Orwell may have introduced us to a world of people without identity. But it is Ray Bradbury who shows us the slow deterioration of a society as a whole and puts it all into perspective for us. In Fahrenheit 451, the books are the enemies and the “family” is the essential key to life in a sense. Here we see what has happened to literature or better yet what the people have allowed to happen to books. Instead of reading (because the books are outlawed) people turn to their telescreens and revolve around them. Just like we revolve around our technology, you could take the entire novel of Fahrenheit as a warning of a future to come or of a future that has already arrived. Like stated earlier, we buy things we see advertised, whether in a commercial or on the actual product reality has served up for us that day. We go out and comply with the peer pressure of our own consumerism and to top it off, we make sure we buy the latest gadgets to simply be able to keep up with the latest episodes of a reality show we used to just watch at home. Now without noticing, our dependency on material things has begun, because reality TV doesn’t just stop at product placement, it makes sure that it is everywhere you want to be. Just in case that pesky book should pass you by, reality television can swat it away like a pesky fly, because at the moral of anything that has to do with reality is you.

This all brings us to the “reality beings,” that new crop of people that think they know it all. Those new crops of people that believe that they have used books for all their going to get out of them and now must find a new pleasure, a new challenge, but not too challenging, since we must remember that we are of a society of quick fixes. So, just like in Fahrenheit, and the telescreen inviting their viewers into the telescreen family; so does reality TV, inviting their viewers into their family. Because after all reality television is the more honest look into the culture around, unlike actual scripted shows that have a purpose in showing you what they show you for the hour or half hour they are on. Reality offers you the opportunity to have your fifteen minutes in the spotlight because after all,
“Reality shows are more honest, but they also breed a kind of country dysmorphic disorder: half the nation is blond, beautiful and driving sports cars through Beverly Hills, while the other half is blond, sleazily oversexed and prone to hair-pulling and name-calling.”

So if that’s you, come on down. This last quote taken from an article found also in The New York Times, entitled, The Classless Utopia of Reality TV. This article focuses on the difference between the scripted show and the reality, and how the reality does not focus on class as much scripted shows. Also, it mentions the melting pot of reality that does advertise to everybody, and everybody does respond. This also brings us to the ultimate focus of The Planet of The Apes, and its view on the demise of society. A society that was once a dominant race, turned into nothing but animals. One must ask themselves if we aren’t already seeing this happening today.

Nowadays, we look around for the quick fix and the good life. We associate these together simply because we are lazy. People think that celebrity will bring tons of money and now will do anything for it, except for the obvious of earning it. Instead they go in search of the scandal because, “No matter how tawdry the tale, how ridiculous the costume required, how cheap the stunt, people will do anything now, tell anything, to get on television.” This quote taken form an article found on CBSNews.com entitled, A Reality Check on Reality TV Aspirants, that is a response to the recent scandal surrounding Professional Golfer, Tiger Woods, and the many woman that are trying to capitalize on his celebrity. These women know what they are doing when coming forward with their tales (whether true or not) of the golfer. They are looking for any sort of television deal or sponsor because as stated in this article, “…getting on television has become the dominant force in American life.”

What people are forgetting and what I believe was the main point trying to be made in Planet of the Apes and Fahrenheit 451, was the ultimate price people pay for their fifteen minutes of ignorance. People don’t understand what to do when they finally get what they ultimately want. Whether if it is to be up on the latest high-priced luxuries, or being the center of the wrong attention. People fail to realize the debt that accrue if you fail to pay the credit card bills on time or the price of the dignity you pay when you sell yourself on television. The article that brings this paper full circle is the article that is simply entitled, Jade Goody, British Reality Television Star, Dies at 27, this article focuses on the life and career of Jade Goody, a woman who rose to fame on the British version of the hit reality show Big Brother. She was a women who came from nothing as a youth, and was determined to stay on top of her fame, which she managed to do until she lost her fight against cervical cancer. In her final months, after accepting her ultimate fate, she earned $1million by selling the media rights of her wedding and was determined to die in front of the media, the same media that in a sense saw her true birth. She was quoted as saying, “I’ve lived my whole adult life talking about my life,” she told an interviewer from her hospital bed. “I’ve lived in front of the cameras. And maybe I’ll die in front of them.”

This last quote sums up the tragedy behind the new 21st century kind of person. This person has put down literature at a moment when we need it the most, in a day and age when prosperity is limitless. He or she has decided for some reason to remain lazy and go in search of the quick fix and has created their own dependency on the high-tech gadgets that promise their own fifteen minutes even if they don’t get it in front on the cameras, they will get it in their own bubble filled with text messages and tweets.

Going back to the article on the Chris Hedge book, we have become, “a country that places prosperity above principle, celebrity above substance, spectacle above nuance and introspection.” We have put the books down and let our minds turn into mush. We have allowed our lives to be controlled by things and people we cannot see. The ones overlooking to make sure we are following the new laws of the land are the IPods, cell phones, and televisions. They make sure what we are listening to, they make sure we know where we are so we feel safe, and they make sure to tell us what we are thinking. So we don’t get away and begin to read novels like George Orwell’s 1984, Fahrenheit 451, or The Planet of the Apes. Because the reality masterminds aren’t fools. They know they need the “reality beings” much more than we need them.

So they keep us preoccupied with reality trash, they keep our minds going with unnecessary opinions on unnecessary people. They keep books away by telling us that we are superior to the images we see, they make us think we have all the answers to life already through unnecessary opinion. In short, reality TV and all its counterparts is dominating our lives, simply because it offers comfort that we feel we need in tough times. Some people call TV, comfort. We MUST ask the question, how comfortable is too comfortable?

THE REAL HOUSEWIVES THEMES