Reality Television's Influence On Culture

There is no male role model to show a son how to treat a woman or be a father. There is no male role model to show a daughter how she should be treated by a man. Because of the abscense, the children are left to learn by trial and error.

Becker’s article focuses on the damaging practices and behaviors women can learn by watching reality television. Becker points out that the reality program, Are You Hot?, a show entirely focused on a female competitor’s appearance being evaluated by a panel of judges, is one such program that can lead to female viewers developing body image issues. This is said as competitors are frequently unhappy with the way they look, and they can resort to unhealthy eating habits. Throughout the article, the author effectively criticizes the show and highlights the negative side of reality television. Although the author states that parents should advise their daughters to avoid watching the show and similar programs, she fails to make note of the enlightening effects reality shows have on eating disorder research. Researchers now know that young women can adapt certain behaviors into their lifestyles by merely viewing certain media, not only by being around their peers and families. Therefore, this source accurately shows how watching reality

In the book, The Rise of Enlightened Sexism by Susan Douglas, gives insight and knowledge that digs deep into pop culture explaining how the media portrays the appearances of women that are in powerful positions in our culture. The appetencies tent undermines the actual progress of women. Douglas is interested in what these pop culture ideals shows about our culture. The way we react to women in our culture with powerful influence. What do these shows do to the female imagine in our culture? Why as a culture do we still glorify these kinds of shows?

Misrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States represent an ongoing issue which broadens everyday as individuals are exposed to distorted information of these minorities in the media. Despite the issue being well known, regulations and even movements have proven unsuccessful in eradicating xenophobia, stereotypes, discrimination, and bigotry from society. Travis L. Dixon and Daniel Linz in the article, “Television News, Prejudicial Pretrial Publicity, and the Depiction of Race,” state how media portrays People of Color (Black and Latinos) as “dangerous criminals and Black defendants are often associated with drugs and violent crimes” (117). These misleading portrayals of people of color in television often create stigmas

In Abernethy’s “Male Bashing on TV”, the way that the author revealed the trend of males depicted as bumbling, lazy, and incompetent on commercials and modern TV shows irritated me

In this article written by Steven Johnson, he looks into the development of television over the last couple of years. He states that most of the TV shows that society sees as bad TV are actually healthy for us to watch.

Neal Gabler defines entertainment in his book Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality as a damaging power which is able to “ruin” society (Gabler, 1998). However, according to Longman Dictionary, entertainment refers to “things such as films, television, performances etc that are intended to amuse or interest people”; to be more objective, it “entails communication via external stimuli, which reaches a generally passive audience and gives some portion of that audience pleasure” (Bates & Ferri, 2010). The contradiction of these definitions shows that entertainment makes both negative and positive influences on society, so it is not entertainment itself, but the way how it is used by human beings has the capacity to “ruin” or improve

Without a doubt, reality TV is degrading and exploiting ethnic cultures, and minorities, most commonly African American men & woman. In the article Cline states that’s, in today’s reality TV “you have the aforementioned Evil Black woman with an attitude, or sometimes Black Man with an attitude”. This allows an increase in racial stereotypes against African American men and woman, for example MSNBC also states that reality TV thrives on and also relies on the growing stereotypes of these groups of people, which ethically, should not be acceptable. Whether viewers know or not that this is happening, reality television is making it culturally acceptable for viewers to create biased perception of black men and woman because that’s how their being

Jennifer L. Pozner paints a tale in “The Unreal World” of network executives that profit at the physical and emotional expense of reality TV stars, all for the sake of ratings. Through inaccurate representation of women using the pursuit of perfection along with the objectification of women makes reality TV a poisonous industry. She doesn’t just make these claims, but she also backs it up through her intricate use of multiple techniques and ethos in the Unreal World. The appeal I found to be most prevalent when analyzing “The Unreal World” has to be the emotional appeal. Pozner uses this article as an outlet to display to the world her deep dislike for reality TV and all it stands for. She goes to great lengths through her article to establish

Reality TV has proven to be popular and influential amongst the populations of several nations but the reasoning behind it has yet to be concurred by sociologists. By utilizing symbolic interactionist perspective, functional analysis and conflict theory individuals can create reasoning behind why reality TV receives such positive response despite the deplorable deeds being presented.

Reality TV brings out the worst in people. The first reality series ever, The Real World, even includes the lines “...people stop being polite, and start getting real” in its opening title sequence. Producers edit and manipulate people’s actions to create drama and paint their casts in their worst light. A great number of reality shows “represent” certain demographics, such as young Italian-Americans on Jersey Shore or white, affluent teenagers on Laguna Beach. According to Media Ethics Magazine, one crucial component producers should uphold in reality television ethics is that the stars “be treated in a fair and responsible manner” (Crew). However, a show’s poor representation of an individual representing a demographic, even if it is acceptable

Imagine the ability to escape from all the gender roles we are absolutely drenched with from the second we arrive here. Imagine a world where your child isn’t always second guessing themselves and who they want to be. Imagine what it would be like if instead of questioning “why?” someone does something, we encourage them to always show their individuality and express themselves freely and openly. We want to believe we are capable of doing all these things, although, what people don’t realize is that they are limiting and taking away children 's capabilities from the second they enter the world. Generalizations of people are detrimental, not just because they have bias, but because every person is an individual, and we are all unique. The goal

Shows like “Keeping Up with the Kardashians , and Love and Hip-Hop” are a bad influence on our kids and young adults in today’s society.It shows a bad role model and a bad mentor.” Reality Tv is a big, diverse medium of course: some of its raunchy,some of it ugly,some obnoxius…”states James Poniewozik, author of “ Why Reality Tv is the New family Tv”.

Black and white are just 2 different colors. The media sometimes portrays them in different ways. In the court case Plessy v. Ferguson the court ruling was :separate but equal.” And in the court case Brown v. Board of education said that “separate but equal” was unfair and unconstitutional. In the events of integration in the south’s school, such as Central high-the press(media) illuminated and some situations, but also failed to give full picture or an accurate picture of the event.

In just 100 years we have successfully and amazingly come so far with technology. Television, an American household staple, wasn 't prevalent in the US until the 1940 's but fast forward to the 1970 's and television was easily and indisputably the medium for information and entertainment. During this time, the US owned approximately 90 million of the 250 million television sets produced in the entire world. And like with most cultures and societies, we became progressive in regards to what types and genres of television shows we watch. Not too long, Americans first discovered and became infatuated with the idea of Reality Based Television.