Social Reality TV Shows
In our Leaving Cert classes, we have been concentrating on essay writing, the language of argument and signposting after our summer break. Here is Emma’s discussion of Social Reality TV Shows, such as ‘The Jeremy Kyle’
Social Reality Shows: Do we really know Right from Wrong?
“People on social reality TV shows seem to have no sense of right or wrong” Discuss.
By Emma, 5th year.
There are different types of people in this world. This ‘makes the world go round’. Some people know right from wrong, some don’t. Others don’t seem to care if they do right or wrong as long as they themselves benefit from their actions. These are the type of people who end up on social reality shows. People who do not know right from wrong. One of the popular television shows such people are shown on is ‘The Jeremy Kyle Show’. This is a talk show where the guests appear on the show with extremely personal issues. Occasionally guests are asked to take a lie detector test in an attempt to prove their innocence. The issues discussed on the show relate to families, relationships, drugs and alcohol among other issues. Initially, I am going to focus on why people participate in a televised show to understand what type of people go on such shows.
People seem to choose to go on these shows for a variety of reasons. Some people genuinely are desperate to seek the truth and they see the show as their only option, their last resort. Whereas, others do it for personal gain. They may love the attention and the opportunity to go on television may be too great to miss. Whether they are lying or not is irrelevant to these people because they have one thing on their mind and that is them. This type of person shows the unjust nature of the show and the whole concept of social reality programmes. In some incidences, the person telling the lie is the one who brings the people involved onto the show, this makes them look very desperate for attention. Defamation of someone’s character is not a very humane thing to do. These people lose sight of what is truly important like their family and friends because their need to be the centre of attention is so strong. They can be left with nobody supporting them and will end up worse off they ever were before. This is very miserable result and does not follow the flow of regular typical family life in my experience. Family should be at the heart of a person’s life, we have ups and downs but family is always consistent.
Another reason people will go on shows such as these is out of jealousy of family members. A television show is their chance to show the world how rehabilitated their family is. Why is this necessary? These type of people may be jealous of what a friend of family member has and make up a lie to ruin what that person has. Personally, I think this is very immature and selfish of these people because they are ruining lives by making up these lies. For example, in one episode a sister was jealous of her older sister and made up a huge lie about how the older sister’s boyfriend tried to cheat on her with the younger sister. Eventually the younger sister’s lie was discovered but that sister could have ruined more than one relationship with this lie and she didn’t care because she was too jealous of her sister. This fragility of human relationships is known throughout history. Why do certain people decide to air this personal and why do people watch this? Surely, this is like being a fly on the wall of a Counsellor’s office and breaking all the codes of patient confidentiality?
Thus in conclusion, it appears that social reality shows such as the Jeremy Kyle show illustrate guests to show a lack of self-governance. Jealously, spite and selfishness drives one person or often more to appear on a television show, where the audience witnesses a complete breakdown of their relationship. Often, this shows a complete lack of understanding of what common sense is right or wrong in their family units. In my opinion, they seem to question a common sense morality by publicly airing what could be done in the privacy of their own homes or Counsellor’s office.