Political Impact Of Reality Television



The political impact of reality television has been huge. Some analysts have seen this as a significant political phenomenon. For example, some totalitarian, dictatorial, and authoritarian countries don’t allow voting at all so voting through the cell phone or television is the first time that many of these people have ever had experience with voting at all. Free and big-scale elections have never taken place in any of these countries, in other words. Furthermore, some reality television shows broach taboos, and they are all realistic so it shows the possibility of these taboos actually existing in society without causing its ruin. For example, Star Academy Arab World shows unmarried male and female contestants living together, and this has caused considerable interest in the Arab world. Some commentators have gone so far as to say that the best hope for democracy in the Middle East could be Arab-produced reality television. In other countries like China, Super Girl attracted so many votes and caused such an interest in democracy that the Chinese government banned the show completely. An Arab version of Big Brother was banned after causing street protests. Some people in foreign countries just can’t handle reality television. The way forward for success in reality television in authoritarian countries is to combine the excitement of reality television with culturally appropriate topics that the whole mass of viewers will not have a public outcry about.



Script dramas just don’t have the excitement of reality television because they rarely tackle culturally relevant topics. Reality television is a force for moving the culture forward politically because it approaches taboos, topics, and issues that are relevant to everyday people in the context of drama where real characters make choices, decisions, and actions that affect others and themselves. Reality television is a way of experiencing, thinking through, and wondering about things that aren’t in your everyday experience but which the culture has a hard time moving past collectively. Reality television is the conduit to move past difficult cultural issues.



Other shows like Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers bring back the allure and interest in working-class heroes that help rich people and upper middle class people see the dangers, trials, and hard work put forth by people in the working class from the comfort of their own television set. This helps cross class boundaries in a society where classes at the top and bottom rarely appreciate each other’s needs. Shows like The Apprentice would work the other way with working class people seeing what it’s like for the ultra rich to get new jobs in a high-powered corporate setting. This creates cultural and class dual appreciation.



The most powerful way that reality television can influence politics, however, is in the tumultuous Middle East where democracy is not allowed to thrive because of political and religious pressure. Shows like Super Star and Star Academy broadcast these shows all across the Middle East from satellites. At a time when issues of freedom of speech, politics, gender, and equal rights is taking the world by storm, especially in light of recent conflicts in the Middle East as a result of invasion, contested elections, and war, reality television proposes to be a fuel for democracy.

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