Is Reality TV the End of Civilization?

June 14, 2001 -- In the quest for ratings, how far will game show contestants, and the major U.S. TV networks, go?

This week, NBC introduced Fear Factor, a show whose premiere had contestants in a pit while 400 live rats were poured on them, dragged down a muddy street behind two horses, and stepping over a wet car suspended high above a watery canyon.

Critics immediately took the show to task. "Fear Factor made me physically ill," wrote Washington Post critic Tom Shales. "It's hard to think of anything as irresponsible and reckless as the rat pit on Fear Factor."

The show is the latest, and perhaps most extreme, U.S. TV network show placing "real people" — that is, non-actors — in stressful, perilous, intrusive and potentially embarrassing situations.

The shows have come a long way since the 1950s, when reality TV meant contestants competing to go on a blind date with a model (accompanied by the host of the TV show and the winner's mother).

In 2001, reality TV is Fox's Temptation Island, where otherwise monogamous couples are tempted to stray.

It's CBS' Big Brother, in which strangers live in a house equipped with scores of cameras monitoring their every move.

It's ABC's The Mole, in which people are assigned tasks to earn cash and must find the traitor among them.

And it's CBS' Survivor, with the challenge and pressure of, for example, either downing a mouthful of chewy larvae or forgoing a potential $1 million grand prize.

Lamenting a Decline in Quality

Reality TV is popular: Some 11 million people tuned in to Fear Factor, making it the highest rated show of its time slot.

But critics say that's no excuse. Fear Factor is a "show that practically begs critics to condemn it for all kinds of cultural ills," wrote Mathew Gilbert of the Boston Globe.

It's "demeaning toward human beings," wrote Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel critic Tom Jicha.

Shales wrote that the trend is motivated by a desperation among the networks to meet the devolving tastes of viewers:

"The sound you hear in the distance is not rats nibbling ears. It's the sound of networks flailing. Their desperation increases as competition from cable grows and the old formulas and formats seem less and less attractive to American viewers."

The consequences, Shales wrote, are the declining quality of television and a certain shamelessness among the networks and the participants. "[I]s it any longer possible to embarrass NBC — or any of the other broadcast networks for that matter? They may have passed the point of embarrassability."

The End of Civilization?

Writer Kurt Vonnegut, speaking on ABCNEWS' Nightline Wednesday, said he thought the creators of reality TV were "scumbags," but he dismissed the notion that the shows could harm our civilization.

"Well, what makes you or anybody else think we have a civilization?" the author of Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions asked Nightline host Ted Koppel. "My Lord, to act as though we have this precious thing which could be damaged? What can happen to it that hasn't already happened to it?"

Also on Nightline Wednesday night, TV talk-show pioneer Dick Cavett said people are drawn to "the cheap curiosity factory."

Cavett, who is currently appearing in Broadway's Rocky Horror Show — in which a lingerie-clad transvestite alien seduces both members of a lost heterosexual couple — pointed out that people used to attend lynchings almost as a form of entertainment.

"I'm just afraid they're going to get even more horrible things, and maybe we end up having to see Gilligan's Island again," he said.

New York Times critic Caryn James called Fear Factor "a terrible show," but said it wasn't the end of civilization.

"I think the culture has changed and we live in a culture where the camera determines so much of reality," she said.

Just a Passing Fad?

Others, too, argue the shows don't herald the decline of American culture and society.

"I think people are fascinated with reality TV shows because it gives them something to compare their lives to, you know: 'Oh, I'm better than that person. I'm smarter than that person. I never would have done that,'" says Dan Minihan, a filmmaker who wrote and directed Series Seven, depicting a reality show in which the contestants must kill each other or be killed.

"It's also a safe place to kind of act out your aggressions," he says. "You pick the person you dislike the most. You wait for them to get voted off the island, booted out of the house or humiliated in some way. And you know it's kind of good, you know, good mean-spirited fun."

The Foreign Connection

Overseas, reality TV is often an even bigger staple, such as the Peruvian TV show I'll Do Anything for Money, on which impoverished Peruvians ate maggots for $20.

The Japanese have been absorbed in reality-based TV for more than a decade. Consider these two concepts: A man is locked in a house for a year and has to perform stunts for food. Or, baseball fans are locked away for a season and punished when their teams lose by having the electricity cut.

And they seem to have long-abandoned concerns that these shows herald a social crisis. Tetsuo Jimbo, a freelance TV journalist and the head of Japan Video News, says people want to see others suffering.

"The suffering element is very important to understand why these shows became very popular in the last 10 years in Japan," he says.

Japanese concerns about reality shows have largely subsided over the years, he says. "I think it's mainly because the Japanese public has pretty much acquired the attitude that those shows are just a sheer form of entertainment, nothing more."

Minihan thinks the phenomenon in America will eventually play itself out. "I think it'll kind of go full circle. In a way, maybe people will get bored with reality or realize what they're seeing is not real, and we'll go back to traditional old sitcoms and TV shows."

ABCNEWS' John Donvan and Peter Demchuk contributed to this report.