The "Real" Housewives

Bravo has a lot of reality TV these days.  They have a whole string of shows that are variations on a theme, the Real Housewives series.  I know you've probably seen the commercials if you're here in the States.  They go to Orange County, New York, and Atlanta and follow a group of ultra-rich women around as they basically ham it up and fight with one another.  What the hell kind of entertainment is this? 

Granted, okay, I've never seen more than about five minutes of any of these, and that was only because I was in the kitchen or the middle of something I couldn't turn loose of to get to the remote after a show I do watch ended.  What little of them I have seen has consisted of catfights, romantic melodrama, excessive spending, and dubious parenting.  Again, I ask, why is this entertainment?

It pains me to watch someone wreck their lives or the lives of others when its fictional.  How much worse is it when it's real?  These shows have been on for several years now, so we've been privy to all sorts of moments and momentous decisions that probably are absolutely none of our business at all.  Why?

To me, these shows are a part of a larger trend in culture to make the private public.  I don't believe that every single thing in a person's life is the public property of the whole world.  There seems to be a growing Brave New World mentality that "everybody belongs to everyone else."  I don't care for that very much.  Maybe it's because I've read that book so often and I know how it turns out.  Maybe it's because I am, at heart, such an intensely private person myself. 

"But you write a blog," you say.  "You're putting your life out there for others to view."  Yeah.  You're right.  I do.  And some of the stuff I share here is very personal indeed.  However, that being said, I do not have a camera following me around every day (at least not with my knowledge...otherwise, greetings Big Brother, and that's the end of my dystopian novel allusions, I swear....) watching me fall on my face and screw up for the amusement of the whole world.  What you see here is what I want you to see.  Think of me as a magician on the stage, the juggling fool and not the trainwreck on the news.  To me there is a difference.

Maybe that's the way the Housewives think of their shows, too.  Maybe once those cameras stop rolling, they take off their cat claws, put away their damp hankies, kick off their heels, and just are.  Maybe, after all of it, there is not much reality to it at all. I guess I'll never know.  I wish we could find a way to be more fascinated by things other than the spectacle presented.