The Messaging of Late 2000’s & Early 2010’s Reality TV

Many of you on here are teenagers or in your early to mid-20’s, so you’ve probably seen your fair share of reality television. Millennials essentially created our modern concept of it with the advent of Big Brother, although the idea of capturing reality is a much older concept than that. In the 1970’s, the show Candid Camera gained much popularity for showing staged pranks and interviews with seemingly random people. Something similar came along later with Americas Funniest Home Videos, or AFV for short. Although, I won’t be talking about the dating and comedy reality shows in this post.

So reality TV isn’t new, but what did it mean for our generation?

Recently my dad has been watching Shark Tank reruns on TV. It’s made me think a lot about the reality shows I was exposed to on a regular basis as a kid. When I thought about the popular reality shows I watched, American Pickers, Storage Wars, Pawn Stars, and others came to mind, including those ones about auto-shops and home renovation. They may not be what comes to mind immediately when you think of “reality TV,” but this genre of day-time television is surprisingly still alive and well. Suddenly it seemed kind of obvious that there was a common theme to all of these. 

In their own way, these shows were reinforcing the American Dream and gender roles in a post-9/11 and post-recession landscape. Think about it— American Pickers is about making money from unexpected places, with two very traditionally masculine guys going out haggling and making deals. It isn’t primarily about the antiques, but rather the money to be made as an independent buyer and the thrill of it. Pawn Stars and Storage Wars are in a similar vein. It’s like a treasure hunt for extra cash. They all feature relatable male protagonists with the simple goal of making money off of what was previously considered junk. It’s about the small business and entrepreneurial ideal that most White American men subscribe to.

These were created in a climate where money was becoming increasingly tight for people, which I’m sure we can relate with now, and I would venture to guess that these shows were partially intended to foster hope in their viewers, a “feel good show” if you will. These shows, intentionally or unintentionally, send the message that the government and economic system isn’t flawed, rather, we need to be smarter, more entrepreneurial, and stick to traditional gender and family roles. Even the auto-shop and home renovation shows I mentioned previously will lie about the prices of homes, cars, and construction/detailing projects in order to seem more attainable, making them seem more realistic to the average viewer. Hell, I just realized now, even cooking shows at the time were focused on using less and selective ingredients— creativity under economic stress and limited resources?

Creativity has become an increasingly corporate idea… hasn’t it?

Hope is not the only emotion one can take from these shows, though. They also make a viewer feel bad about themselves, these people who are just like me are able to earn this cash and buy these homes and cars, why can’t I? This once again reinforces the idea that you need to be entrepreneurial— the system is not broken, but you are not working hard enough to play it right. These people on TV could do it, why can’t you? There is not any community focus, no teamwork even. All of the shows boil down to making money. It also fosters individualism and competitiveness, sometimes to an extreme degree like the show Shark Tank.

Shark Tank is a whole different animal and powerhouse of its own compared to the other shows I’ve mentioned, but it still holds true to this same idea. The show revolves around a few multi-millionaires, and I believe a billionaire as well. Historically, they were all White men besides two White women and a Black man. Now it’s usually one White woman and sometimes a temporary investor. People just starting or struggling with a new independent business will go on the show to ask investors for money in exchange for equity in their company. This show is the most preachy out of all of the American Dream-centric reality television shows I can think of. They even directly comment on it at times. It touts its demonstration of how every American can “pull themselves up from their boot straps,” and they make it a point to show mothers and immigrants as business owners. 

The ironic part of this is that it unintentionally reflects the biases and harmful nature that goes along with business culture and wealth distribution at large.

Many of the businesses featured on Shark Tank will still fail shortly after the show aired, even ones that got a deal. The investors make their choices very emotionally and with a dramatic flair, because… reality television, but this reveals their biases. Just like real life, the male investors are much less likely to invest in women-owned businesses, with women only making up 20% or less of their investments on average, as well as making smaller deals with women on average. You can find this data and more on this website: https://thehustle.co/shark-tank-data-analysis-10-seasons/amp/.

So I’ve been thinking about how this could’ve affected myself and my generation. Perhaps it contributed unintentionally to our generation being more critical of the American Dream— by portraying it in such a superficial way on television, maybe we became more disillusioned. Honestly, I don’t really know how many kids really watched those shows. I just watched them because my dad had the TV remote. Which is another thing, these shows are catered to Baby Boomers and perhaps the older Gen X. Older people tend to take television at face value more so than their younger counterparts. They grew up watching TV with only a handful of channels, and the politicization of different news networks and the creation of special-interest channels are still very new in the grand scheme of things. I think because of this, they see more of the supposed reality than we do in a show without realizing it. Shows have historically reflected messaging and values of a society in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, but never were they presented as “reality” as far as I know.

What are your opinions on this? Do you think I’m reading into it too much?

I’m considering writing a study on masculinity and capitalism in reality TV in the future, where hopefully I would’ve done more research rather than just my opinions and observations. Let me know what you think in the comments. Thank you for reading!