Why do we watch reality TV?
A Summer House post-mortem
Reality television has come a long way since I first tuned into reruns of MTV’s The Real World. Back then, daytime soap operas still had high budgets, and primetime soaps ruled the airwaves. Now, they’ve been replaced by reality television dramas — television just as addictive as Marlena Evans being possessed by the devil on Days of Our Lives — but much cheaper to make. When soap operas practically vanished from the airwaves, Bravo became the new home for fans of high drama, camp, and, of course, sleaze.
Renowned soap fan and cultural critic Camille Paglia wrote about her love of Bravo and The Real Housewives in 2014: “The Real Housewives franchise isn’t entertainment to me—it’s a lifestyle. I watch virtually nothing else on TV now, except for occasional documentaries and Turner Classic Movies. I can see the same Real Housewives episode multiple times with equal enjoyment. I love the frank display of emotion, the intricate interrelationships, and the sharp-elbows jockeying for power and visibility. Not since the radical gay German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder revived and recast Douglas Sirk’s ‘women’s pictures’ during the 1970s has a single individual so boldly rescued a waning genre and given it such splendid new life.
To compare reality television to Sirk might seem like an exaggeration, but it’s not. What are storylines like faking cancer, FBI arrests, and affairs besides high melodrama? Soaps were once lauded as “sex and suffering in the afternoon” by TIME magazine in 1976. Is that not what we watch Bravo for? Sure, the wish-fulfillment aspect is part of it; soap operas also gave us a peek into glamorous lives that weren’t our own. But increasingly, Bravo fans have demanded a frictionless viewing experience that is devoid of drama. In the wake of the Summer House scandal, I’ve seen a myriad of suggestions for a show where Ciara Miller and other Black women merely hang out and live fabulous, drama-free lives. Baby, that’s called Instagram stories.