Joe Millionaire, The Bachelor & The Office

This article first appeared in The Age on February 22, 2003

Hey, I've got a great idea for a reality television show. Let's contrast the lives of millions of people who have been living under sanctions which limits their access to basic medical care and food, endure regular bombings raids, and live under the pall of an insane dictator with the life of one American Cowboy President who, despite the lessons of the whole of the 20th century, and perhaps the whole of history, wants to start a war. This guy has POWER. He's the man; he's the guy, oh yeah.

We can cut between the group shots of dying children, and shots of this one guy, pumping the pulpit, talking about God's creations. Because that's the twist, the insane dictator, and the Cowboy President are both fundamentalists!!!!! You think they are different, but then you find out they are both the same: blinded by religion and power mad. We could throw in some tank-driving, gun-toting soldiers; often poor, insane with boredom, and pumped full of vaccinations, which led to thousands being ill in the last war the USA fought.

Not funny? Too much reality? Okay, let's switch to Joe Millionaire (Thursdays, Channel 7, 8.30pm) and the second series of The Bachelor, which started last Tuesday (Channel 9, 7.30pm). The Reality Television column is a column I have put off writing for some months. I didn't want to be the umpteenth person to write: these shows aren't reality, and they're crap. So, I sat down and watched them and this is my analysis: they aren't reality, and they're crap. Oh yes, and they are really, really, really sexist.

In The Bachelor, 25 women vie for the attention of a water-skiing mid-western, piano playing, restaurateur, academic, multilingual, CEO who flies planes. I haven't heard of any one laying claim to such a diverse range of talents since Helen Demidenko/Darville. The women he has to choose from are executives, beauty queens, cheerleaders, flight attendants, primary school teachers and, one tells us, a virgin. To me, and I suspect Aaron, they are a blur of bosoms and hair. When they have to impress him at the meet and greet cocktail party the mass flirting frenzy that ensues reminds me of that one night a year the Great Barrier Reef is awash with ejaculating coral.

Joe Millionaire is the more tolerable of the two shows because the talent, Evan, is more self-deprecating and struggles with the fact he's a liar up front. The women are more ordinary and forthright - one of them observing, quite accurately, that 'only the obnoxious will survive.' Of course the controversy on this show is the fact that Evan says he has inherited 50 Million dollars when he's really a badly paid construction worker. (Recent press suggest he's not that either. Who knows and who cares. ) Evan has flown 20 women to a French chalet and gives the ones he wants to know better a pearl necklace (the obscene double entendre is the shows, not mine).

What The Office (ABC, Tuesdays, 10pm) knows and Reality Television doesn't is that to make something appear to be real you need to use intelligent scripting and performances. In the same way comics can only perform a song badly after they have learnt to sing it in tune, recreating real life is not about putting a camera in a room and watching people try and make themselves famous. The only reality in that is that large numbers of people will do anything for their 15 minutes of fame.

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