Box-Office Gold: Reality TV-ification of our Politics

Michael Hirschorn’s piece in the NYTimes explaining the rise of reality TV and the current state of U.S. politics was hard to read—because it was so spot-on.

Who can argue anymore that performative villainy and the blending of reality and entertainment don’t define our politics? Hirschorn, a television programming veteran, expertly connects the state of modern political culture to the cultural evolution sparked by reality television.

I never watched Survivor and had no idea about Richard Hatch or his victory in the first season of the show. But as Hirschorn retells the story, that was a game-changer (no pun intended). The networks spotted box-office gold in Hatch’s willingness to break the rules of television likability and shock the audience. It also triggered a shift in television away from characters who were loved for their morality to those who were loved—or at least watched—for their bad behavior.

Hirschorn gets to the crux: Reality TV thrives on antiheroes. We can't get enough of schmucky contestants; the more they behave badly, driven by id and impulse, the more we watch.

What happened next shouldn’t surprise you: the emergence of so-called “Reality TV” stars who proved adept at manipulating their images, turning villainy into a career strategy. The studios that produced this schlock went on to pocket fortunes by blurring the lines between fiction and reality, casting people who played up their controversial personalities for fame and notoriety.

Controversy drives attention. Donald Trump figured out a long time ago that controversy drives attention in our attention-driven culture. We’re now hooked on chaos, unpredictability, and the spectacle of reality TV.

Spectacle, unfiltered personalities, and antics that generate headlines, clicks, and social media fights—it’s now all part of the daily news cycle. Along with the accelerating erosion of trust in institutions, we’re hooked on figures like Trump or Elon Musk promoting themselves as outsiders eager to “break the system.”

I’m hardly a latter-day Nostradamus, but it’s impossible to see how any of this will augur well for the future of America. When politics operates like a reality TV show, promoting personalities over policies and spectacle over substance, we’re increasingly prey to cynics ready to shape narratives to their advantage.