This appalling show is just the latest escalation in the entertainment industry's attempts to keep you from living a meaningful life of your own. It all probably started with those terrible Fox "reality" shows like "When Animals Attack" and "When Teenagers Go Postal."
This is all just an extension of what Roman satirist Juvenal meant when he said "the people long eagerly for two things: bread and circuses." Sounds like popcorn and movies. People are distracted so they don't know what's really wrong in society. As long as people are content, all they want is entertainment. And watching the suffering of other people sure is entertaining, isn't it?
In the free market economy we have here in America there are a multitude of industries that survive by making people dependent on them and their products. By far the most menacing is the entertainment industry.
By claiming to portray "real life" like in this show, it implies two things: 1)you have to watch TV to see real life, and 2) we (the industry)know what real life is better than you do...so trust us and keep watching! And be sure to purchase the products advertised on this show! (Especially those violent video games and movies we market to your kids, because kids are sooooo vulnerable to advertising). The last thing the industry wants is for people to find other things to do, like reading a book or improving their education.
I remember after the "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire" debacle that Fox announced it would no longer do shows like that due to the negative press. Then "Survivor" came along. Now Fox has announced that because of Survivor's success the rules have changed, and they have to put on crap like "Temptation Island" to compete.
What bothers me is that 18 million people watched the first episode. That's about 1 in 15 people at your office who were probably standing around the water cooler the next day talking about the show. Everything in the entertainment industry is about one-upmanship. I heard "Friends" was going to introduce a lesbian love interest for one of the characters just to lure viewers back to that show!
As much as I hate to say it, this show is just the tip of a gigantic iceberg. Unfortunately there are enough shallow, stupid people in this country to make sure these kind of shows succeed. Sooner or later we are going to get things that are raunchier than this. Some day the networks will want to drop all the restrictions against language and nudity, because they can only go so far with the current format. After all, they can't do a show called "Who Wants to Get Raped Anally for $2 Million"...can they?
