Reality Television: Oxymoron by George Will

When television was permeating America, according to George Will in his essay “Reality Television: Oxymoron,” in the United States, some shows were imitations of Fear Factor. The NBC programs attract viewers by offering fee to some simpletons for confronting their fears. In order to targeting watchers, American TV producers, according to Will, use Jackasses to perform some unspeakable nonsense foolishness. Also, the author gave examples of foolishness such as, eating maggots splattered with frog excrements or promising more violent football with cheerleaders’ breasts exposed. Nevertheless, Will marks that NBC used graphic violence and sexual puerilities in their prime time television shows which destroyed some optimistic viewers’ notions of selective program taste. That taste which Will called, celebration of personal “choice” because many adults are decreasingly distinguishable from children nowadays. Moreover, the author of “Reality Television: Oxymoron” determined that Americans need to amuse themselves from every day life and are becoming increasingly desensitized. Entertainment when seeking a mass audience has become coarse by shocking an unshockable society. According to George Will some shows that give pleasure to the spectators cannot be justified because the pleasures are contemptible and coarsen that drive into the culture spiraling downward. Even if the mass audience is looking for justification of watching perversity, television shows and the purveyors who supply the market cannot distinguished from the heroin pushers and moral inferiors, according to Will. Also, in order to satisfy a mass audience, one needs “pro-choice” or Russian roulette with a real bullet as a real chance to see violence if there is a strong spontaneous demand for televised degradation.