Some of my most developed ideas and questions and descriptions have come to me while I was in the bathroom. This is no exception. I was staring into space, my mind running through endless loops of contingency for situations the brightest minds in history have all assured us will never happen, when I started to imagine the American popular psyche itself as of right this second. Please allow me the time to tell you something you've heard a thousand times before. Show you something you've seen evidence of in a thousand different episodes of a hundred different shows on TLC, The History Channel, Bravo, et al: America is reaching the end of its patience with its own projected image. If TV, more to the point "reality" TV, is supposed to be a kind of cultural prism, what would the original beam of light running through it look like? What's behind the infighting and child worship and bottomless pit of train wreck voyeurism? Who the hell is watching this stuff?
If I could distill or personify an entire cultural landscape, I would imagine it to look like the average "American" family, if an average still exists. Overweight-yet-still-malnourished red staters with three tow-headed kids, the lot of them not much for reading. A family that, while taking their annual portrait at Walmart, taking pains to keep every hair in place and every smile genuine and toothy and not the least bit awkward, will very slowly begin to realize the camera isn't a still camera, but a video camera. The overly-complimentary photographer in the navy blue polo doesn't work for Walmart.
He's a cameraman for a new reality TV show based on the popular People of Walmart site, being paid to impersonate an employee and keep them there and coax them to just keep smiling and hold still for one second longer because this looks really great, everybody. So they oblige. Seconds seem like hours. The family remains stock still, all the while preening with its collective best face, but now wondering when the hell he's gonna press the damn button already. Weeks pass. The mood changes, as does the image, ever so slightly decaying into confusion. This is where the episode gets interesting.
Still holding. Beads of sweat start forming. Still not getting it. Smiles begin to curl. Fangs appear.
"Sorry guys, just one more quick secoond. You're doing great."
So yeah. That's the collective popular psyche right this second: A family taking pictures at Walmart that's been preening for too long and is about to get sick of the whole thing.
Of course all this is predicated on the idea that reality TV is made up of real people, basically like you and me, and not paid actors. This is almost never the case. These victims of a heinous prank had no intention of becoming famous; no intention of being the butt of a nationally televised joke. At the expense of their collective dignity, this makes for much more compelling television and may be the next step forward in reality TV: Remove the victims' awareness and see what happens. All debts to Candid Camera aside, that may be the only way to revive a stale premise before finally killing it. What good is calling it "real" if it's soft-scripted and everyone is aware of the cameras? That's not reality TV. That's TV. Remember, COPS was a long time ago.
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