I recently learned a new term. Trash TV. Don’t know what trash TV is? Welcome to the club. I’d never even heard the term until a few days ago I ran across it while I was doing some internet research on an entirely unrelated subject. If you do know what it is, and you’re a fan, you might want to stop reading at this point because you’re not going to like what follows.
I had to look up the definition of trash TV because, honestly, the term just wasn’t intuitively obvious to me, but when I did look it up it was immediately apparent. The most common definition is “a genre of television talk show with little or no educational content and a focus on controversy and confrontation”. This, I realized, is that subset of reality TV that deals in the embarrassing, seamy side of life. I’d, of course, heard of such shows, but I’m not a fan of any reality TV show, so all I have in the way of direct knowledge is what I’ve read in the occasional news article, and that was usually when one of the confrontations went awry and generated what passes for real news.
After getting the definition, my OCD side kicked in. I had to know more about this genre. What I found out stunned me even more. Even though this type of show is what is commonly known as ‘low brow’ entertainment, millions of otherwise sophisticated and well-educated people watch these shows regularly. The trash TV personalities are often among the best known and highest paid in the industry.
The strangest thing is that many regular viewers of such ‘trash’ (this is their word) feel guilty for doing so, but come back week after week to see another episode. They admit that the shows are mindless, ridiculous, and often offensive, and that they sometimes feel ashamed, even unclean after watching, yet, they are glued to their sets when the ‘trash’ airs again, like a drug addict who feels guilty about the abuse of chemical substances but is unable to resist. There are others who watch these shows because they are bad. They get pleasure from making fun of shows they watch from an emotional, unconnected distance. They are left feeling good about themselves because they’re not as bad as the people they’re watching.
If you’re confused at this point, it’s understandable. None of this sounds logical. But I’ve learned over the years that people in general are anything but logical. We vote for a terrible candidate because we don’t like the hairstyle or TV appearance of another. We slow down to gawk when we see traffic accidents, despite the fact that this causes traffic jams and can also cause other accidents. We eat things that we know harm us and we watch television that we admit is ‘terrible junk.’
Trash TV is sometimes called ‘stupid TV for stupid people.’ I wouldn’t go that far. I think trash TV is like the tabloid papers sold at the supermarket checkout counter that have lead stories about alien abductions and Big Foot sightings. In many ways we’ve not advanced all that far intellectually from our ancient ancestors who gazed at the stars and imagined that they were signs of the gods, or who believe that walking under a ladder is bad luck—actually, if a bucket of paint on that ladder topples and spills on you, that is bad luck, so there’s probably some logic to that one.
Anyway, for those of you who are fans of the genre who’ve stuck with me this far, continue to enjoy it. For those who, like me, have given up on broadcast TV except for the occasional scientific or historical documentary, have a nice day and the next time you’re driving and you see flashing lights signaling an accident, move over to the farthest lane, drive slow and don’t try to see if there are any bodies on the pavement. – NWI
