Reality TV in 1983
People who know me well, know that I don’t watch a whole lot of TV as a rule. I don’t really have anything against TV per se. I just don’t find a whole lot that engages me enough to invest a whole lot of time in front of the tube. I heard that tonight ABC is airing a reunion special of That’s Incredible!. When I was a kid, in the early 1980’s, I never missed an episode of that show. Luckily, ABC is the one station I get with my set-top antenna (I’ll get around to ordering cable… eventually), so I’m watching the show as I type this.
The reunion special isn’t particularly well-done. It’s rather smarmy and corny, sort of like the original show. So far all they’ve done is show some clips from the old shows, and made some cute, pun-laden remarks about them. Oddly enough, they even have basically the same hair styles as they did during their salad days between 1980 and 1984. For those of you who missed the show, the premise is simple. The show consisted of vignettes featuring people doing incredible and incredibly odd things. An average show might feature a yoga master with his feet behind his ears, a 2-year-old who can read, a man catching a bullet between his teeth, and a record-breaking domino fall. Basically, it was all the best that humankind had to offer in one hour, one night a week.
Why isn’t there as much of this kind of thing on TV anymore? Why don’t these things show up on the front page of the newspaper? I think it would be great if we concentrated more on celebrating our greatest accomplishments rather than the uglier sides of human interaction. Humankind is capable of beautiful and amazing things. I know. I saw it on TV when I was a child. What are children seeing on TV tonight?
They say that art imitates life. I can’t help but wonder what life would be like if only it were the other way around.
Bye for now.
May 22nd, 2002 at 7:11 am
They do have “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not”. Not the one with Jack Palance from our childhood. The one with Someone Dean Allen or something like that (Superman from TV’s “Lois and Clark”).
Other than that I can’t think of anything else. Maybe RealTV but basically all they show are people getting seriously hurt, then seriously hurt in slow motion, and then sped up, then slowed down etc.
I guess human achievements don’t get the rating that human depravity do