Snap back to reality

On the contrary, with the way media consumption has changed, the way people form opinions has too. Sure, it’s designed for easy digestion and edited to extract maximum drama. But underneath all the fluff, it forces viewers to take sides, and people often end up on the side of someone outside their own bubble. Remember the ‘How Can She Slap?’ outtake from Dadagiri: Beat The Bullies, which became an online sensation in 2009? Remember the public chatter over a contestant who was slapped by a woman and slapped her in return? Remember how it shook everyone’s ideas of equality and empowerment? Reality TV did that, not your everyday sociology textbook.

If someone’s poison is The Witcher or whatever Aaron Sorkin has created for TV, that’s great. But sometimes it’s easier to get involved in real people’s drama, romance, break-ups and fights. What else do people discuss around the watercooler (or is it Zoom meetings now?) the next day? Take Lauren and Cameron, contestants who participated in Love Is Blind’s debut season, which was shot in 2019 but aired February 2020. They hadn’t actually seen each other until their engagement, met on the first day of filming and instantly hit it off. Viewers rooted for them all through. They celebrated their third wedding anniversary in November 2021.

We tend to put people on screen on a pedestal – hold them up as an aspiration. Reality TV pulls them down a notch, humanises them. Case in point: The Kardashians. From an early 2010s reality TV show to clothing lines, brand deals and endorsements, modelling careers, make-up lines and much, much more, their documentary-style show has followed them through it all. It’s also given the world an insider’s PoV of how much a celebrity can share and still keep secrets (like the transformation of Caitlyn Jenner).

The inclusivity is not just in terms of the shows themselves, but the people they feature. There are ghost whisperers (Hollywood Medium), fabulous drag queens (RuPaul’s Drag Race), business and entrepreneurship (Shark Tank India), ultra-expensive real-estate (Selling Sunset), dance (Dance India Dance, Jhalak Dikhla Jaa), and weddings that feature every colour of the LGBTQ+ rainbow (The Big Day, Indian Matchmaking). Those who have watched Queer Eye, know exactly how a show can help right the world. Those that have followed India’s Got Talent, l know how contestants from any background have a shot at fame.

You know what to expect with any edition of MasterChef. You shout at the TV when you know the answer to a KBC question. You go on a cleaning spree after Marie Kondo makes it look so easy. And most of all, you support people like MC Stan, who follow their dreams, because it makes you believe that you can do it, too.