By Emily-Rose Maher
Buffalo, NY – For those of us who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, there was something unique about the way we saw ourselves, something that separated us from our parents. In the days when the Internet was just a twinkle in Al Gore's eye, network television was already picking up on a generation of people who wanted to be seen not just by their grandparents on holidays and friends on rainy afternoons, but by everyone, everywhere, and instantly. And our ability to do so was only just beginning, a germinating seed in our psyches that would shoot forth into the likes of YouTube, MySpace, and reality TV.
"America's Funniest Home Videos" is a television program that has brought a smile to my typically cynical face for as long as I can remember. The show first debuted in 1989, and it was the vehicle by which we were first able to experience American life through the eyes of real people and not a Hollywood lens. A haphazard collection of funny-looking babies, exercising dogs, teenagers bouncing off trampolines, and old men dancing at weddings assembled before us, transforming the concept of "10 minutes of fame" before our very eyes. "America," that upbeat voice told us, "this is you." And we believed those words wholeheartedly.
What we have now is a barrage of tweens lip-synching to their favorite pop stars' songs in their bedrooms and amateur skateboarders showing off their most extreme moves in backyard half-pipes all constantly streaming over the Internet. On television, we are introduced each night to a new set of average Americans who have presumably given up everything in their lives for a shot to show the nation their talents, lose some weight, or find love. Whether this kind of entertainment is in fact a demonstration of actual "reality" at all is certainly up for debate. But nonetheless the ratings for these bizarre programs continue to soar, and the question on every one's lips is: Where do we go from here?
It seems that the day of the sitcom has long since past. While television dramas continue to draw fans, countless numbers of comedies debut and bust within weeks every season, barely seeing the light of primetime. Have we become so infatuated with the hilarity of unscripted, unadulterated, unprocessed real life that we can no longer giggle at the contrived dialogue of hopelessly wholesome shows like "The Brady Bunch" or "Full House"? The most feared answer is that we have become so engrossed in ourselves that we will never again be interested in anything that doesn't represent what we believe to be "real life." And even more feared than that is the notion that "real life" will start to reflect the larger-than-life, oftentimes far-fetched version of the real thing we see on television. We can't know just yet how all of this will affect the next generation. For many kids, reality television has taken over important roles once held by parents, teachers, and coaches. What will happen when they become adults and have to learn the hard way that the world can oftentimes look nothing like what they've been seeing on television all their lives? For children who learned about love from a show like ABC's "The Bachelor," the real landscape of relationships may be quite a surprise. And it can be argued that the problems faced by MTV's "The Real World" stars will pale in comparison to what new roommates really have to go through. Will they become overwhelmed and disenchanted? Or will they take to the complexity of everyday life like a powerfully allied school of fish to water, having already been exposed to things they would run into down the road?
It feels oftentimes like the world of "me" we have created for ourselves is spinning out of control. But we cannot put a halt to a child's desire to become something today any more than our parents could twenty years ago. Today teens aren't writing about their struggles in diaries that are gingerly stashed under mattress pads, hidden away from nosey siblings. They're expressing themselves in the most public of ways in blogs, on MySpace Web sites, and through video diaries posted to YouTube. There's something scary about this generation's willingness to share their lives, but there's also something unavoidably beautiful about it. The tentacles of human connection are extending, and the chances of finding some commonality in this world are ever greater with each passing second.
The truth is that people have always wanted to share their lives with others. But for us twenty-somethings, and even more so for those who follow close behind, we're no longer just telling friends what happened. We're showing the world. It's been nearly twenty years since "America's Funniest Home Videos" debuted, and as the reality genre continues to spin its tales, one can hear increasingly the panicky sentiment that this is not a trend. But storytelling is no fad, and expression is no momentary fashion. As long as the drive to tell one's story is an innate characteristic of what it means to be human, and as long as the means of doing so becomes more sophisticated and accessible, we can expect the real world and the entertainment world to become increasingly attached. All the world is a stage, and now any one of us can be a player.
Listener-Commentator Emily-Rose Maher is a recent graduate of St. Bonaventure University.
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