Last night I watched a couple of new reality shows on the Sci Fi Channel that disturbed me quite a bit. This wasn't the same kind of "disturbed" as when I first saw that the Sci Fi Channel (let's be clear: the SCIENCE FICTON Channel) was going to be showing wrestling on Tuesday nights (this is not to say that some other night would have been better -- it most assuredly would not have). I'll admit, having wrestling on a channel devoted to science fiction/fantasy/horror/and really crappy B movies might be justified by saying, "Well, gee, wrestling IS fiction. If you throw in some fog machines and a few wire-fu bits, it could even be "science" fiction. And it's certainly fantasy of a sort."
Okay, I can't argue with that. I just don't like it. Wrestling belongs on Spike, or possibly Comedy Central.
Meanwhile, what disturbed me about the two shows I watched last night (on DVR -- so don't go complaining about how I couldn't have watched them because they aren't on on the same nights; also, there's no need to bring it to my attention that it's ironic that I DVR'd two shows that I knew I would have moral and ethical problems with -- that, my friends, is already apparent; I live in a land of irony) was how they showed the basest (or debasest) nature of humanity: greed, greed, greed.
"Cha$e" even has a dollar sign right there in the name. Okay, that's alright, lots of "reality" shows (arghh, THERE is a subject I could ramble on about for a while, but not today) have money involved: "Survivor" being the one that comes immediately to mind. Others publicly degrade the participants without even the promise of a bit of cash -- "Big Brother," "Real World," the evening news. But and but and but the premise of "Cha$e" is that the contestants -- "runners" -- must run around a "game board" (in this case, the warehouse district of a waterfront area) while eluding Terminator-like "hunters." The runners must manage to elude the hunters for an hour AND then be the first one out of a gate in order to win a certain amount of cash (which varies in some arcane way. Dunno how -- it required higher math skills to understand and I'm an English major).
Fine, "Cha$e," although not a good show -- luck more than skill is required to "survive" the whole hour; I had no vested interest in the fates of any of the whiny, self-serving "runners"; and I found the hunters, although impressive for their abilities to run in full Men in Black suits and sunglasses, were low-grade American Gladiators -- it at least wasn't as bad as the next one I watched: "Estate of Panic."
Oh, by all that is good and right in the world (puppies, mostly), why does this show exist?
Take some contestants to a house rigged with all sorts of booby traps and difficulties (a room that fills with water and snakes; a room that collapses; a garden rigged with a spider's web of electrical fencing), tell them that there's a lot of money hidden around, and then set them to scrabbling for it, all while half of them are screaming their heads off because there's snakes, or crabs, or spiders, or Paris Hilton (okay, there wasn't any Attack of the Paris, but since we're talking "reality" shows here, I couldn't help mention her).
What results is a spilled stew boiled up from the basest aspects of human nature. For an hour, the contestants scrabble around on their hands and knees, dig through tubs filled with earthworms or other creepy crawlies, swim with snakes, yell at each other, and put themselves in physical and mental danger in order to "win" the money "found" during the course of the evening. In this case, it turned out to be $28,000 and some change.
It sounds like a good deal: one hour; sixty minutes. Follow the rules, gather up the cash, don't get too scared (but get scared enough that the ratings will stay up), and walk away with something in the neighborhood of Joe the Plumber's yearly wage (minus half or so for taxes). Why the heck not?
But what these shows do is reduce us as human beings. We don't get to see the wonder that human beings are capable of; we don't even get to see the prowess we're capable of in something like wrestling (however fake it might be and whatever channel it might be on). No, they show us scrabbling on our hands and knees, breaking apart art and archetecture, sweating as we are chased by well-dressed corporate types, all for a few shreds of cash.
Now, I'm a big fan of cash. I like money. I like to spend it. But I don't think that the goal of human evolution into something prouder and grander than we are is well served as long as we are willing to degrade ourselves for public amusement in shows like "Cha$e" and "Estate of Panic."
So from now on, I'm DVRing "Jeopardy," instead.