One. How is the age of digital images different than the prior age of language?
Whereas words have arbitrary, abstract meaning, images resemble the object they represent so their meaning is not abstract at tall. These images are called icons. We now “read” the world differently. Words require cognitive abilities; icons are more sensuous, a matter of vision, not thinking.
Two. What is the danger from the shift from language to icons?
Icons create knee-jerk reactions, acting without thought.
Icons tap into mythologies that contradict more nuanced, gray realities.
Icons convey propaganda by tapping into unconscious fears and desires.
Icons give us over simplifications of complex situations.
Icons can convey innocence to gloss over something ugly, morally complicated, our outright evil.
Icons can convey evil about something that is more of a tangled mess that defies easy labels like good and evil.
Three. What are “extreme lifestyles” in TV trends?
The formula is simple: Take ordinary people, those the audience can connect with, and place them in an extreme situation like a teacher who becomes a meth maker and dealer in Breaking Bad.
Four. When we analyze television programs, what should be our foremost thought?
The show is designed to make money, that is, good ratings, and connect with as many people as possible. Therefore, the show must reflect a trend of thought and value systems.
The ads are a “complement” to the show and that they are supposed to address the demographic that is deemed to be a viewer of the program.
Francine Prose, Voting Democracy off the Island: Reality TV and the Republican Ethos
One. How is cruelty celebrated in the reality show Average Joe?
In fact, the “average Joe” is a car crash of the unattractive, socially awkward outcast whom is mocked and ridiculed because he represents the ultimate “joke” and humiliation for the female contestants. We are invited to laugh and deride at those who are at the bottom of the Darwinian Reproductive Chain. Why? Because we can. And because we have no scruples about “kicking the guy lying in the gutter.” We are so pathetic that we feel uplifted by indulging in the schadenfreude of the less fortunate. We can infer, then, that reality shows cater to our lowest human denominator. Some would even go so far as to say reality shows, “a dash of brutality, a soupcon of voyeurism,” are a cancer on society.
Two. What mistake did Melana make that got her stuck with a “confederacy of losers”?
She went for “personality” over “surface appearance,” a violation of the Reality TV Code. Now she must pay the price. Personality, character, values, a core of authenticity—all these things are rubbish in the world of the chiseled hunk that represents the aspirations of Reality TV watchers.
Three. What is Francine Prose’s thesis?
That the cesspool of moral bankruptcy embodied by reality TV shows—narcissism, dog-eats-dog competiveness, pathological lying, ruthlessness disguised as “self-reliance,” voyeurism, sadism, immoral individualism, and Darwinian brutality—bear striking similarity to the moral depravity and psychological delusions engendered by the rhetorical excesses of the Republican Party. See paragraph 23.
Prose goes on to say that Republicans in charge of the War Machine who wanted to drum up American support for the invasion of Iraq were enticed by the way the American people could be manipulated by a “false reality” show and wanted to borrow a reality show’s formula to embed reporters in the Middle East where Americans could see the good guys, Us, taking down the bad guys, Them.
We don’t mind that reality shows are scripted, Prose observes, so we surely won’t mind, the War Machine believes, if they script a false pretense for going to war.
Writing Options, Reading the Signs, page 293, Numbers 1 and 3.
One. In an argumentative essay, support, refute, or modify Prose’s proposition that the guiding principles that underlie reality TV are the same that shaped the policies of the George W. Bush administration.
Two. Read or reread the Introduction to this chapter, and write an essay in which you analyze whether the appeal of the episode of Average Joe that Prose describes is based on schadenfreude. Alternately, watch another current RTV program, particularly one that is based on voting contestants out of a competition, and conduct the same sort of analysis.
"A Moral Never-Never Land: Identifying with Tony Soprano" by James Harold (296)
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