I am not a fan of long-running television shows alleging to be 'reality' and unscripted that exploit families and especially children. I have watched episodes or parts of episodes of so many of these shows and am increasingly disgusted by the premise itself. My children liked to watch "John and Kate Plus 8" years ago and so I would watch with them, but it made me nervous and edgy over time. One parent was laissez faire and the other was overwrought and controlling - it would appear from what we saw. I saw partial episodes of Honey Boo Boo, many episodes of "Little People, Big World", and like everyone else, I cannot avoid seeing parts of "Keeping up with the Kardashians". And, because one of my daughter's was fascinated with the Duggars, I have also suffered through episodes of that show. These shows dismay me. They make me wonder about why people even have children if they are just going to exploit them.
I am not here to criticize the individuals who will engage in reality TV programs or to take issue with their lifestyles, etc. But, it's one thing to dip in and take a look at a family, do a one time documentary the way news magazines sometimes do, and maybe come back in a year or two and check in, versus the 24/7 pandering to cameras and creation of fictional life scenarios that takes place with these long running shows. What we see is not the lives these families really have - but the lives they are able to create for the cameras. We see them move into biggere houses or expand the ones they have. We see them get special new vehicles to transport their large broods. They go on trips with VIP status. Had the cameras never come, the sponsors not ponied up funds - the pictures would be so different.
I guess I am dismayed with the status of our empathy, intelligence and how we collectively value human dignity. Long before I was born an entire world was appalled at the way the Dionne quintuplets were literally put on display for others to gawk at, and psychologists, social workers and mental health professionals all issued an outcry from which it appeared we learned a great lesson. Those five little girls were the first surviving set of quintuplets. Their parents were of limited means. There was a fascination factor - and it was exploited. I've read some books about the Dionnes and their lives were not happy ones. They never really recovered from how they were treated, gawked at, speculated about. It was unnatural to live within some sort of an exhibit, like zoo animals. Over the years other quints were born. They were featured in magazine stories. Their tired parents were given free diapers or formula by companies eager to associate themselves with rare wonders like significant multiple birth families. But we didn't put them in a hermetically sealed glass house for us to all view.
The reality is, under the best of circumstances, it is stressful to raise that many children at one time. It strains marriages. Some parents of multiples haven't just ended their marriages, but sadly, their own lives. Perhaps there is a false perception that with additional wealth and significant attention, people feel special and less stressed, and that is why in our attention starved and self-absorbed society single women will go through the process of bearing as many children as they possibly can at once, and more and more couples risk significant multiple births and all of the health and psychological risks that come with them - just for the chance to perhaps be on TV like the Gosselins. And we all know how well that ended for John and Kate. And it will be decades before we know how it really ended for all of those children.
It's no different when your family is an 'oddity' for other reasons - like where you were born and how minimal your education was - or that you just keep popping out children one after the other. Speaking as someone who grew up in a large family, privacy is a premium - quiet time to think and reflect and form your own worldview is scarce. And there is always so much work to be done, so many chores. Children born into families with one or two children often rely on their parents to do the cooking, cleaning, etc. But, when you are born into a large family you learn to fold laundry early, to cook, to rake leaves and scrub floors. Why - because the sheer volume of your family makes all of those chores multiply. I can't imagine a child or adolescent or even an attention starved teenager (maybe them least of all) WANTING to add the constant glare of TV cameras and crews and journalists and photographers to an already hectic daily regimen. And, I can't imagine what it would be like to be home-schooled and kept away from other children and social stimuli AND have that added burden of Dionne-esque display. Everything is staged. Everything is scrutinized, and your place and your identity and your ability to figure out what the world is all about and how you factor into it is exponentially hampered. You have to be what you appear to be, what they want you to appear to be. Your worldview is narrowed and when you look out it is as if you were peering through the wrong end of a door's peephole - able to only see the exaggerated size of the eye looking back at you.
Why are we doing this? Why are we watching this, as one after another family crumbles before our eyes? I clicked on to a Kardashian's episode one night for less than four minutes, and during that time was assaulted by a conversation in a kitchen while presumably a small child or two was in the house - between two unmarried partners about the man's insistence on anal intercourse. These are scripted, fake programs and everyone has the opportunity to edit away - the wealthier, savvier families able to exert the most control over what vision of them we get projected at us. And yet conversations like those are what they WANT us to know about them?
I suppose those are the two extremes. The ones who want to appear beautiful, desired by all and completely oversexed with no real work lives or responsibilities who make themselves wealthier still by using their talentless notoriety to create a 'brand' they can sell elsewhere to make even more money for doing nothing - and the ones who wish to project their simple lives as idyllic and ordained despite the reality that without all of the income from exploiting themselves there would be nothing simple or idyllic about them at all. Can't we just turn those folks off? Why could we see, albeit too late for those five little girls to lead normal childhoods, how wrong and exploitive it was to put the Dionne's on display - and we refuse to recognize it with all of these other families? It's not just unnatural, it is unhealthy to spend so much time preening for a camera and creating one false perception of what your life is after another, day after day, year after year.
I admit to a guilty pleasure in watching "House Hunters" and shows about home improvement even though I know they too are staged - because I get to see a lot of neat houses and neat renovations, and it's different houses and people all the time. I get no pleasure, guilty or otherwise, out of watching people put themselves on constant display. I'm interested in interviews. I'm interested in the human side of other's experiences. I am open to learning more about other points of view, other family configurations, other lifestyles. But, I don't want my intelligence insulted by having the puppet masters show me the same shadows on the cave wall day after day to make things look happy or pretty or glamorous when in fact what is going on outside the cave that is our carefully edited and scripted viewing space is just some one dimensional lifeless puppets dancing before a fire when their strings are pulled.
Can't we just stop watching this stuff and make it go away?
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