The Culture of Talk Shows Essay -- Talk Shows Television Media Essays

The agriculture of Talk Shows If social order is not a given, if it is not encoded in our DNA, then to some extent we be always in the sportsmanction of producing virtual realities, some more functional than others. Habits, routines, and institutions are the patterns that create the valet taken for granted. Knowledge of how to behave is contained in cultural scripts that are themselves products of military man interaction and communication about the nature of reality. Shame, guilt, embarrassment are supreme feelings that arise from speaking the unspeakable and from violating cultural taboos. Society is a dissolving agent of its boundaries,of what it will and wont allow. As we watch, listen, and are diverted, TV talk testifys are revising our cultural scripts, altering our perceptions, our social relationships, and our relationships to the natural world. TV talk shows cristal us a world of blurred boundaries. Cultural distinctions amid creation a nd private, credible and incredible witnesses, truth and falseness, good and evil, sickness and irresponsibility, normal and abnormal, therapy and exploitation, advert and stranger, fragmentation and community are manipulated and erased for our distraction and entertainment. A community in real time and place exhibits longevity, an interdependence based on public interests, daily concerns, mutual obligations, norms, kinship, friendship, loyalty, and local knowledge, and real physical structures, not scarce shared information. If your neighbors house is on fire, you are motivated to help coif it out, or at least interested in having it put out, because you reverence about your neighbor and the fire is a threat to your own house. television system talk shows create an ersatz community, without any of the social and personal responsibilities that are attached to real life. Therapy as entertainment is the appeal of these shows. The so-called hosts cuss on the c ynical use of the therapeutic model for psychological hefty bites. The need to educate and inform the audience is the voiced rationale for getting the so-called guests to give ever more titillating details of their misdeeds, or of the misdeeds done to them by family or friends (often not on the show). The underlying surmise -- that most social pathology is the result of a medical problem beyond the control of t... ...rs. Traditional expectations of polite formalities and barriers are constantly breached in spite of appearance the action of the play. The husband, at one point says, Aww, that was nice, I think weve been having a, a real good evening, all things considered. Weve sat around, and got to know each other, and had fun and games . . . Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, however disconcerting to the audience, is just a play with actors. goggle box talk shows are arenas for real people. Their manipulation by hosts, who alternate between mocking, a patronizi ng cynicism (I want to be as cleverness as you someday -- Phil), and a carefully constructed verisimilitude of caring (Thank you for sacramental manduction that with us -- Oprah) must have repercussions for the guests after the show is over. These people may really be seeking help or understanding. Appropriate reactions bet virtually impossible under the circumstances. We the viewing audience have entertained ourselves at the disasters of real lives. This is one of the more shameless aspects of the talk show spectacle. As passive witnesses, we consume others misfortunes without feeling any responsibility to do anything to intervene.