This is, incidentally, one of the problems with the tendency to personify everything. Specifically, the fact of the matter is that once a thing is personified, it remains personified. Which means it can give you guilt about paying attention to James Joyce and not to it.
But I digress. To return back to the track of my thoughts, blocked as it may be by trees of digression upon the rails...Secret Millionaire is a show that is, in theory, a really cool concept; they take a millionaire and make he or she live in a slum and volunteer in various nonprofit organizations for a week. At the end of the week, they come clean to the organizations in a "reveal" scene, then donate a truly ridiculous amount of money to them.
Pretty cool, right? I'm assuming the idea came about from that story that hit the news a few Christmases ago revealing the identity of a Kansas City "Secret Santa" who, over the course of 26 years, gave away 1.3 million dollars in hundred-dollar bills...anonymously. He only revealed himself in the hopes of inspiring others to follow in his footsteps. Shortly after doing so, he died at the age of 58.
Random acts of kindness have since been growing in popularity, so it was really only a matter of time before a reality TV show was dedicated to the concept.
So here's my problem with reality television, why I never ever watch it. You can't trust it. It's the issue that always arises wherever there's audience-awareness. The presence of known observation automatically changes the behavior being observed. In other words, when the millionaire starts crying about her childhood on national television, one can't help but wonder why. Is she doing it to generate audience sympathy? To prove that just because she's rich doesn't mean she's happy? She knows the camera is there. She knows it's a moment worthy of filming. She knows that if she isn't interesting enough, the show won't air. That has to have an effect on her actions.
Don't get me wrong, it's a nice thing that the show is trying to do. Giving away a million dollars to various deserving charitable organizations is a great thing, and if flogging millionaire ego is a way to get them to do it, then so be it. But does it have to be a circus? Does there have to be fifteen minutes in which the millionaire pretends to discover, all on their own, a charitable organization that, as luck would have it, exists in the Very Same Slum They Happen To Be Living In? It's kind of obvious that the show researchers found it and pointed them at it, so why the charades? Do we really need twenty minutes of the millionaires sobbing or making happy-faces at the camera to indicate just how huge their Huge Gigantic Emotional Epiphanies That Will Totally Change Their Millionaire Lives Forever is?
Do I even care about their epiphanies? No, not particularly. Because they're millionaires. They can afford to have epiphanies all the time. They don't need to be on television to do it. They could have gone and done the donation thing without having a show dedicated to their generosity, even! They could have done the right thing without getting any credit whatsoever, just for the sake of doing it.
What a concept.
My opinion is softened somewhat by the reveal itself, because even if the millionaire tears are fake, the reactions of the people receiving the money are anything but. "Do you know how many people we can help with this?" a woman in charge of a soup kitchen asks, her face hidden from the camera, her voice choked with tears. "Do you KNOW?!" She can hardly talk, she looks like she might have a heart attack right there and then, and it's real, it's genuine.
The problem is that I've seen this scene before....the network has been showing it every commercial break.Come see, the network trumpets, come see the soup-kitchen lady cry! Check it out, it's like she means it! I've actually lost track of the amount of times they've made me WATCH the soup-kitchen lady cry. (Enough times that this time around, when the hug comes around, I notice the millionaire benefactress ensuring that her face isn't obscured.)
I suppose I can't blame the networks for being excited, though.
It's not often you get reality on reality television.
Don't get me wrong, it's a nice thing that the show is trying to do. Giving away a million dollars to various deserving charitable organizations is a great thing, and if flogging millionaire ego is a way to get them to do it, then so be it. But does it have to be a circus? Does there have to be fifteen minutes in which the millionaire pretends to discover, all on their own, a charitable organization that, as luck would have it, exists in the Very Same Slum They Happen To Be Living In? It's kind of obvious that the show researchers found it and pointed them at it, so why the charades? Do we really need twenty minutes of the millionaires sobbing or making happy-faces at the camera to indicate just how huge their Huge Gigantic Emotional Epiphanies That Will Totally Change Their Millionaire Lives Forever is?
Do I even care about their epiphanies? No, not particularly. Because they're millionaires. They can afford to have epiphanies all the time. They don't need to be on television to do it. They could have gone and done the donation thing without having a show dedicated to their generosity, even! They could have done the right thing without getting any credit whatsoever, just for the sake of doing it.
What a concept.
My opinion is softened somewhat by the reveal itself, because even if the millionaire tears are fake, the reactions of the people receiving the money are anything but. "Do you know how many people we can help with this?" a woman in charge of a soup kitchen asks, her face hidden from the camera, her voice choked with tears. "Do you KNOW?!" She can hardly talk, she looks like she might have a heart attack right there and then, and it's real, it's genuine.
The problem is that I've seen this scene before....the network has been showing it every commercial break.Come see, the network trumpets, come see the soup-kitchen lady cry! Check it out, it's like she means it! I've actually lost track of the amount of times they've made me WATCH the soup-kitchen lady cry. (Enough times that this time around, when the hug comes around, I notice the millionaire benefactress ensuring that her face isn't obscured.)
I suppose I can't blame the networks for being excited, though.
It's not often you get reality on reality television.
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