Making A Case Against Supporting School Levies

Love it or hate it, reality television is part of our culture. It has been a slow train coming, and the station from which it departed can be debated. You may remember shows like Survivor, but the origins go back further. Some contend that televised news probably holds the distinction of being first. Regardless of your age, you probably can associate the words “Oh, the humanity” and the Hindenburg burning, or Cronkite’s emotional reporting of the Kennedy assassination, replete with the black and white images, and the feelings they evoke.

Ted Turner probably recognized the value in that brand of reality when he launched CNN. All News, All the Time is about as relevant as Tastes Great, Less Filling. Both are equally hard to prove.

It wasn’t until the last decade that reality TV became the primary goal of programming, and for good reason. Reality television is cheap! The “Must See TV” sitcoms of the 1990s crumbled beneath the weight of their own success. The casts of Seinfeld or Friends easily commanded several million dollars per episode. Add that to the cost writers, sound stages, wardrobe, post production et al; suddenly giving a guy a million bucks to rough it on an exotic island seems an absolute bargain.

When George and Jerry were pitching their “sitcom” idea to the phony executives at NBC they were actually writing their own obituary. Too bad they could not recognize how prophetic the words “It’s a show about nothing!” were at the time.

In the 1990s I had a few friends that wanted a career in entertainment production. It was equally amusing and dismaying to watch the process of brainstorming ideas. Everyone needed something, a hook, to get them in the door. It was like listening to someone trying to explain to you their “system” at winning the lotto or beating the casino at roulette. Seemingly oblivious to such nuance as odds or the caprice of chance, they forged ahead with nothing more than an idea and hope. They knew someone won Powerball and someone once pitched the The Amazing Race.

Somebody had to win.

It is nearly impossible not to get sucked into their world. It was far more fascinating to be a part of than my mundane aerospace engineering job in Los Angeles. Sure, these people could barely make the rent but who wants to talk about red-lining some engineering prints or calculating a tolerance stack?

In their world, the golden ticket into the chocolate factory was scoring a meeting, usually with someone screening for someone else, who may or may not be in a position to green light a project. There are as many layers of flunkies between you and a decision maker as there are rings on a redwood. But, at least with a meeting, you had a chance. The line to the bank teller just incrementally moved you one step closer.

It was 1996 and they were talking, and getting meetings to pitch: raunchy animated sitcoms; mockumentaries; following people on their mundane jobs; and literally walking in someone else’s shoes.

I even had the bright idea of dedicating a whole network to car chases, live via satellite uplink; inspired by living in L.A.

It wasn’t that my friends were especially clever, since all of their ideas eventually made it onto TV in some fashion since then. It just wasn’t them who got the credit. It probably meant that everyone trying to make it in television at that time had the exact same banal ideas. The shear volume of wannabes suggests that it was a numbers game and my acquaintances did not have the matching numbers on their ticket, or most likely, the skills to pitch their ideas effectively.

Why bother with acting; or aspiring to direct? Reality television made everyone arriving in Hollywood want to be a producer.

Now that we have over a decade of reality shows we have seemed to lose our self consciousness. And, if we have lost our self consciousness then can any of these shows still stake a claim in reality? We know the cameras are rolling, even if they are hidden.

That brings me to the whole point of writing about this phenomenon. It is a clip from what is effectively a reality network (my idea, I swear).

TruTV broadcasts a show called Principal’s Office. It is a “day in the life” formatted show where an endless parade of kids take a seat in the principal’s office at a high school somewhere in these United States. Topics cover dress code violations, PDA, truancy, and any other assorted teenage nonsense. It is part Welcome Back Kotter, part Father Knows Best, and part COPS.

Witness the nurturing, and exasperation, of the staff. Empathize with the awkwardness of being a teen. Gasp at these kids nowadays. Or, just sit passively because nothing else is on or you cannot be bothered to change the channel.

The problem is that it hardly seems spontaneous, and it certainly isn’t in this clip. In fact, the reason this clip is so interesting is because everyone knows they are on camera.

Suddenly, reality has become like the live local news story where the goofy kid just has to jump up behind the reporter to get on TV. No respect for the gravity of the situation. And, in this case, no respect for the genre.

But, at the same time, it is an act of genius. You will get the sense that the Vern Fonk looking school administrative lackey knows the cameras are rolling. He wants you to think he has the situation under control. That he is compassionate and respected. However, the two students know otherwise. When you are seventeen, you have a pretty good idea of who is a douche. They also know that they are walking into a scripted event, so why not do a little script rewrite?

As the clip ends, I get the feeling that Logan and Brandon know that they are just biding their time until graduation, where they will move onto better things in spite of their high school experience, not because of it. They toyed with Mr. Blue Tie like a cat toys with the mouse. Just who was leading who?

Those who can, do, Brandon and Logan. And they just did what the principal could not. They made the segment entertaining.

Perhaps the school district was so desperate for those TV dollars that they agreed to film their schools’ staff looking like idiots for the money. If that is the case then I will be voting no in the future. How can I pass up an opportunity for our schools to hit prime time?