Review of Jonah Goldberg's Article, "Reality Television Debases Society", with Focus on The Effects of Reality Shows in The Community

In his article, “Reality Television Debases Society”, Jonah Goldberg argues that reality television negatively impacts viewers, in areas ranging from values to wisdom. He believes reality television contributes, at least partly, to the degradation of American culture and society, claiming, “Reality-show culture has thrived in [a] moral vacuum, accelerating the decay and helping to create a society in which celebrity is the new nobility.” Goldberg employs the social theories of Arnold Toynbee and Charles Murray to explain the negative outcomes of reality television upending the social ladder by homogenizing the rich and poor. He also offers economic reasoning as to why the wealthy can afford to behave poorly, though the middle and lower classes cannot. Indeed, the immoral actions of celebrities, the unspoken upper crust in America, spill over onto lower rungs of the social ladder; this ripple effect causes a near-total abandonment of necessary virtues, not to mention intelligence. I agree with Jonah Goldberg’s argument in, “Reality Television Debases Society” that reality shows corrupt America because they exhibit unacceptable behavior, which average people—who go to great lengths to emulate an elite—will only repeat, and because they provide people false expectations for real life scenarios by glamorizing otherwise shameful behavior.

Reality shows hurt society by implicitly urging the middle and lower classes to resort to egregious behavior because it assimilates them to celebrities, modern America’s elite. In the 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted experiments featuring an actor posing as a volunteer “student” in the experiment and a real volunteer “teacher” instructed to deliver increasing voltages of electric shock to the student every time he answered a question incorrectly. Milgram told the students to answer nearly every question wrong for the experiment’s sake. Of course, the students never received a shock in the experiment; they only pretended to. Nonetheless, sixty percent of teachers—all of whom thought the students actually received the shocks—delivered the maximum shock to the students, even after hearing the students’ pained requests to stop the shocks. Just as the teachers obeyed Milgram, the social authority in the experiment, average Americans “obey” the rules suggested by the elite’s actions; given reality television stars behave poorly, average Americans follow suit as they imitate the actions of a group of people with the wealth and status they long to have. In so doing, these Americans lose their morals and other positive attributes. Hence, reality television negatively affects society because it encourages everyday Americans to emulate celebrities’ poor behaviors.

Moreover, unacceptable behaviors now find approval in reality television, which mean they will gain acceptance from television viewers, too. Often, reality TV stars are compelled to exaggerate or unnecessarily dramatize their lives in order to appeal to the public. Yet, because viewers are under the impression that “reality” implies unscripted and genuine scenarios, they fail to recognize this, thinking instead that extreme behaviors are acceptable. Viewers also tend to forget that reality TV stars’ outlandish behaviors are only acceptable for purposes of entertainment; society accepts their actions because of their high social status. But for the average viewer leading a normal life, these behaviors are not permissible. In this way, people are misled into falsely believing that actions that are deemed appropriate for reality TV stars are also appropriate for everyday people.

Ultimately, reality television does have harmful effects on society. It glamorizes reprehensible actions and, because viewers emulate this modern “elite”, society subsequently adopts these poor behaviors. These are the claims at the heart of Jonah Goldberg’s article, “Reality Television Debases Society”, in which the author argues that such shows undermine the significance of morality and prudence and thus “debase” society.