Teach the man to fish

When reality TV became the rage, I thought that the final curse had come upon us.

Can’t be bothered to come up with a plot line and pay a competent writer to articulate it? No worries: take a few people depressing in their ordinariness, have them interact while being filmed, and the plot will take care of itself. It seemed to me that reality TV was thought up mainly to allow people – who are generally exhibitionists right at the core – to expose their own weak-mindedness and pettiness to the world, so that other people – who are exactly the same – could have a few laughs and feel better about themselves.

I cannot find any other merit in aesthetic disasters but audience favourites such as Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, Big Brother and Beauty and the Geek. One watches them in a sort of fascinated horror: they’re actually willing to do this? On screen and in front of the whole world? It really gives a whole new meaning to the expression “every dog has his day.”

One should be wary of hasty judgments, though. I was wrong, and I stand chastised. This may be the seamier side of reality TV but that’s what it actually is: just one side. The genre has concurrently been developed to inform society and to reform it. The immediate benefit goes to members of the audience, but the ultimate beneficiary is society as a whole and the structure that governs it.

Into this category fall a host of reality shows that teach you a plethora of things from building your home to redecorating it, from changing the behaviour of problem children to getting them to eat their greens and get exercise, from reinventing your appearance to revitalising or changing your career. For the purposes of this column, let’s bunch such shows together under the heading ‘improving reality TV.’

The producers of these shows have hit upon a winning formula. Studies have shown that people’s levels of confidence and self-esteem are based mainly on comparison: am I as good-looking as him or as accomplished as her? How, in short, do I match up when put against all the other people out there.

In this context, ‘improving reality TV’ works the same way as the ones mentioned earlier, whose main raison d’etre appears to lie in entertainment through voyeurism. Both make audience members feel better about themselves through inspiring thoughts such as, for example, “I wouldn’t react in quite as bitchy as manner as she did”, to “At least my kids aren’t that bad”.

But the latter category – the ‘improving reality TV’ – also fosters a very real and tangible improvement in society. Through shows such as The Hidden Potential and Mad about the House, one gets definite ideas about home improvement. Parenting skills learnt through television shows such as The House of Tiny Tearaways or Supernanny can be put into real use, and competing on Masterchef can settle, once and for all, whether a career change is a wise move.

This may not seem very significant until one considers the implication on areas such as healthcare, the housing industry or law and order. Studies in the UK found that obesity and issues related to it constitute amongst the heaviest burdens on the country’s healthcare system. And obesity is a growing problem across the world in part because of the rampant use of fast and processed foods, in conjunction with a waning interest and expertise in cookery. So teaching people how to eat well and wisely leads to a healthier citizenry which is less likely to eat itself to illness and thereafter hospital.

Similarly, parenting tips gleaned through television reality shows lead not only to peace in the house and less frustrated and therefore more productive parents, they also significantly decrease the chances of today’s problem children turning into tomorrow’s delinquents and criminals.

Such shows are not very expensive to produce, but they do require imagination. Yet surely, redoing a house to allow a wheelchair-ridden occupant unfettered movement is more valuable than advertising the opportunity to marry a millionaire. The former amounts to teaching a man how to fish, rather than merely handing him a herring.

Pakistani channels and television producers are currently facing a crunch due to falling advertising revenues. As a result, large-budget programming with star writers and casts is becoming increasingly difficult. Given this, and the fact that our society could, as a whole, do with some self-improvement tips, ‘improving reality TV’ may be the way forward. Healthy eating has already made it to television and prospered. Let us see similar forays in other directions.

– hmumtaz@dawn.com