How The Bachelor Illuminates the Falsehoods In Our Lives

by Emily Joy Allison 

I get a lot of scornful, “I can’t believe YOU watch THE BACHELOR” sort of comments from my friends when they find out about my obsession. Granted, if you know me even a little, it’s a bit surprising. On the surface, someone like me (feminist, relatively moral human being, incurable monogamist) watching a show like The Bachelor requires a level of cognitive dissonance few are capable of. But I promise it all makes sense if you dig a little deeper.

What appeals to me about The Bachelor franchise isn’t the drama, the hot men, the international travel, or the suspense of the rose ceremonies. It’s the completely accidental, unintentional running commentary the show provides on human nature in general, and specifically human relationships.

Hear me out.

We laugh at the people competing for love every Monday night at 8/7c because we intuitively recognize the motions they are going through as false. We see that, by and large, the emotions these men and women purport to be feeling are fabricated products of a completely unnatural situation involving isolation, groupthink, and lots of alcohol. “Nobody could fall in love in eight weeks while dating twenty-four other people!” we scoff. When the last rose is handed out, we see the dejection on the face of the unlucky bachelorette that didn’t get chosen; we wonder how she didn’t see it coming; we know Hunky McHotpants only let her go because she wasn’t as pretty as the other girls and that’s really all he cares about anyway. If we have even a vestige of a conscience, we feel a pang of empathy as we watch the jilted almost-lover riding away in a black limo, crying and talking about how stupid she feels for thinking this time things would be different.

But here’s the thing: each of us has been in the metaphorical black limo. We have all, at one time or another, felt stupid for thinking, this time, it would be different. We have all imagined ourselves in love with someone we didn’t really know, we have all let special circumstances and free booze replace hard work and critical thinking. There is a very thin line that separates each of us from the contestants on The Bachelor, and that line is social shame. Most of us wouldn’t be caught dead baring our souls on national television like that, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t thought those Exact. Same. Things.

Which leads to the question of whether or not those things, those feelings, are fake—as we assume them to be when we see them on television—or whether they’re integral parts of the human experience. Anyone can tell you that much of The Bachelor franchise is heavily manipulated, if not outright scripted. Read interviews with past contestants and they will tell you that the producers will purposely set up situations to cause drama and ask extremely pointed questions just to get the “money quotes” they need to make the series as successful as it is. It is both a science and an art. But it’s not all fake, as the (albeit few) very real and lasting marriages that have resulted from the show will testify. Sometimes it’s real, and sometimes it works.

Which could just as well be said about our relationships in real life.

Sometimes it’s real. And sometimes it works.

I wonder if some part of the scorn and derision people express towards The Bachelor comes from the fact that The Bachelor is, unintentionally but effectively, a mirror of human nature. It shows us what we are really like at our rawest, our most shameless. It shows us just how far we will go to find love (and just how far we will go to get laid).

And that is, well, kind of gross. It’s uncomfortable to see ourselves and our pain in the face of a drunk, white girl in a limousine with mascara smeared all over her cheeks, whose name is probably “Britney S.” and has an occupation like “dog lover” or “free spirit.” We’re more sophisticated than that, aren’t we?

Deep down, we know we aren’t. So it is easier not to look at it. It is easier to watch Breaking Bad and Orange is the New Black and Game of Thrones, more serious, sophisticated shows, and pretend that those somehow say more about human nature than a series as shallow and frivolous as The Bachelor.

In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis writes of his deceased wife:

“Reality, looked at steadily, is unbearable. And how or why did such a reality blossom (or fester) here and there into the terrible phenomenon called consciousness? Why did it produce things like us who can see it and, seeing it, recoil in loathing? Who (stranger still) want to see it and take pains to find it out, even when no need compels them and even though the sight of it makes an incurable ulcer in their hearts? People like H. herself, who would have truth at any price.”

Perhaps that also applies to reality television. 

Emily Joy Allison is a poet and provider of fine burritos in Nashville, Tennessee. Her first album is called Dichotomized and can be found on her website emilyjoypoetry.com. You can follow her on Twitter @softlysoaring. 

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Reading Exile (Or, The Surprising Truth of Alaskan Women Looking for Love)

by Charity Erickson 

The Palestinian post-colonial critic Edward Said speaks of alienation and exile in his photo essay “States,” a genre-mixing piece that communicates the plight of Palestinians in Israel through investigative journalism, personal narrative, photography and lyrical prose. It tells the story of a people who inhabit a land that is-and-is-not their own, a people who find themselves without a homeland, without an anchor for their identity.

During a brief foray into graduate school, I taught this essay in a first-year reading and writing course. It was intended to serve as an example of how to use evidence; my students were supposed to create their own photo essays exploring the concept of exile, mimicking the way that Said “reads” meaning into the photographs he uses.

It was, on the main, a failure of an assignment. As with most first year writing papers, I got a lot of summary, a lot of filler-fonts, and what made this assignment worse was that they thought I wouldn’t notice when they filled up half-pages with grainy pictures of their hunting dogs and favorite vacation spots. For all but a couple of thoughtful freshmen, exploring “exile” meant talking about a place they missed.

An infrequent class attendee’s hastily pasted images evidenced that morning’s hangover. Another student’s gruesome photos of violence in the Balkans combined with overly confident (yet inscrutable) prose told me that he was recycling something he wrote for AP English and he thought he should be exempted from my class (his eye-rolling habit contributed to that reading).

Many of my students’ photographs presented vivid portraits of exile, but their writing revealed that they were unable to connect the pictures to the concept in a fully formed way.  They knew the feeling; they knew that these images spoke to it; but they couldn’t bridge the gap in words.  As I moved through their photographs, my voyeuristic eye could see what they could not. A picture of a high school football team communicated one student’s mourning for the status and power he enjoyed in his small town, now lost at the big state school where he was too small to play. A photospread of gorgeous models, giving voice to a young woman’s fashion exile in the Midwest, spoke of the jealous wasting disorder that was sucking this woman out of her very self.

Sometimes we are bad at reading our own pictures. These students were communicating alienation, mourning for lost identity, for having to pretend so as to belong; they were exploring different elements of the “exile” concept, but they didn’t realize it; they couldn’t express it in words.

I was reminded of this when I saw the first episode of a very silly reality show on TLC called “Alaskan Women Looking For Love.” The show is based on a ridiculous pretense: a group of women from a fishing village in Alaska go on a trip to Miami for a few weeks, hoping to find committed boyfriends. The thing that fascinated me about the show was that amidst its highly structured plot points, the unscripted interactions between the women and their family members were somehow quite intimate and real.

I was especially taken with the storyline of Jenny, a former youth minister whose recent divorce from her pastor husband has made her a pariah in the (I can only assume) fundamentalist Evangelical community from which she drew her identity. She grew up believing “worldly” exploits like drinking would condemn a person straight to hell. Now that she is out of that rigid religious culture, she doesn’t know what to believe. She spends afternoons at the bar, trying to find a place to be comfortable; yet she looks anything but.

In what could only have been a staged confrontation, Jenny explains to her concerned mother that after being rejected by her faith community, she cannot muster the strength to pull herself out of the low place she is in; she can’t even muster the strength to care, she says, weeping.

I was shocked. I have never seen a moment of emotional honesty like that on a reality TV show. From other preview scenes aired during that first episode, it looks like we will see Jenny go through a trial familiar to many of us: the post-Evangelical meltdown. Oh, how I see myself in her: glancing furtively at the more-accomplished partiers, wondering if you are passing as a fun person; drinking to prove something; confusion and frustration about why you can’t figure out how to be a good bad-person like everyone else.

I don’t expect anything life-changing from this show. It’s frothy fun and the women are damn likeable (though I do hope future episodes cut down on the Miami club-scene “whooo”-ing—good lord, that’s annoying). But for those of us who have experienced the same kind of exile Jenny is going through, there is a little more to the picture, something more to be “read.” There is something true on this reality show, believe it or not. So I’m going to keep watching. 

Charity Erickson and her husband live and work together in the north woods of Minnesota. Check out her blog for more of her writing and follow her on Twitter @CharityJill.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.
 
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A Little Crazy Behind the Eyes: The Bachelor and How to Date 15 Churches at Once

Apparently "Worth the Drive"

by Amanda Taylor

My parents packed up and carried off their three little girls to church every week, every Sunday morning, every Sunday evening, and every Wednesday night for my entire childhood. Thirty-five minutes it took to get to the modest, small brown building on the left-hand side of North Court Street in Circleville, Ohio. Thirty-five minutes to get there, thirty-five minutes to get home, every week through the cornfields and past the paper plant to sit in the pew right behind the 85 year-old woman who’s had When the Roll is Called Up Yonder memorized since 1936.

“A Church Alive is Worth the Drive.”

What is a “church alive?” That phrase has continued to silently whisper in my ear, haunting me since its plastic black letters first appeared on the church sign out front 22 years ago. By many of today’s standards, this church was deadern’ a doornail. Small, both cramped and yet somehow drafty, adverse to change, enthusiastic about routine, skeptical of outside influence, a lover of How Shall the Young Secure Their Hearts.

It is as objectionable to me now as it is entrenched. The comfort, love, and safety I feel in that small Church of Christ setting is something that I am certain will never be replicated, but it is also confining, and limiting, and maddening. So where do I belong? How do I practice this faith in a way that will honor my parents’ commitment, as well as the great blessing and curse of my own?

After swim practice in the fifth grade a friend asked me what religion I was, and when I answered, “Church of Christ,” they told me that wasn’t a thing. Feeling bad for me, they asked if I was, you know, Catholic or something? I pondered, unsettled, and panicked and then asked my dad on the way home from church the next Sunday, Hey Dad? Are we Catholic? Only years later did I realize how incredible my question sounded to him, once it became a running joke through our entire extended family that I might be “the Catholic one,” but that I wasn’t sure.

A little crazy.

Perhaps this confusion about belonging burrowed a little too far into my heart and mind, because now I wonder all over again “what I am.” I must go to church; I have gotten this far.  But the decision of where that will occur is another matter entirely. I find myself, having watched The Bachelor a time or two, seeing parallels between my pursuit for a church community and the latest Bachelor’s quest to date 15 women at one time. Every single option is beautiful, though it carries with it the subtle suspicion of crazy behind the eyes.  

For the record, I don’t think it’s normal to date 15 people at one time. The idea of getting to pick your soul mate while chaotically making out with as many people as you can get away with in the meantime is insanity, which I presume is why it makes for such good television. The human emotion on display is very raw (reference ugly cry here) but it’s expressed in the midst of an entirely orchestrated and fake environment. How do you honor what is real within a production?  

Doesn’t church educate me about what is true and eternal in this human experience through the mechanism of a production? Are churches focused on creating an environment that draws you in and convinces you of their authenticity and relevance, in a great bid for relationship? If The Bachelor is how we are normalizing relationship building in society, is not the church susceptible to similar whimsical and fleeting ideas of commitment? I don’t know how to date 15 churches without inherently judging them all and committing to none, and I’d appreciate being able to blame reality television if at all possible.  

In participating in all these competing religious environments however, I’m struck more by the similarities than the differences. I notice the love and the passion and the cold indifference, coexisting in foldout chairs and velvet-lined pews. I see and experience comfort in the routine, and feel resentment in our complacency. I feel music wash over the body gathered, the rhythm of the words fusing the masses, the repetition calming and steadying, and maybe the drums, either loud and accosting or beating out any worry and tension we’ve brought with us that day.  

The uniting of many for the glory of one is very powerful, and critically important to the practice of faith. We humble ourselves before what is perfect in the hope that we may rest in it, for just a moment, to carry away to the corners of our world whatever remnants are gracious enough to linger.

Person or symbol?

Watching the black smoke turn to white this week, I found myself humbled by the Catholic faith, connected to it. This is the uniting of many, centered, focused on who will lead them in pursuit of the glory and honor of one. This is not political posturing or parochial strategy or a statement to society as much as it is the body of Christ, a church alive.

The press surrounding this important and significant changing of the guard is chilling; it’s analytical and manufactured, yet it reminds me too much of my pursuit of a church community. We have already stripped Pope Francis of his humanity and understand him instead as his geography, his routines, his Jesuit background, and his political implications.  

The Catholic faith quickly becomes a body we review as we would another social psychology case study, peering in upon its internal strife and posturing, labeling so much as scandal and tawdry. We turned church into The Bachelor and asked ourselves if our favorite contestant won. How perilous to think of faith as something that can be contained by policy and bureaucratic refinement or understood by the world’s standards.

In the end church is a production of sorts, an orchestration of people, ideas, action, and relationship, to say something to the world and to the individual about the Creator. It is inviting us to see its relevance and look past its flaws and, more than anything, is asking for participation, for faith, to just show up to own version of a modest, small brown building on the left-hand side of North Court Street.

“It is to provide an example that submitting to the practice of worship and the leadership of those in charge is a Christian teaching about humility and submission to God.” My dad said that.

Amanda works in “community development” and no, she doesn’t know what that means either. Forever the critic. And enthusiast. Never one for dichotomies. Follow her on Twitter @tayloram03 if you’re not into receiving tweets.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

Song of the Week: "Give A Little Love" by Noah and the Whale

by Ben Howard

Good weekend everybody! I hope you've all had an awesome week because I know I have. This week we talked about the movie Pitch Perfect, as well as baseball, reality TV, and the documentary Hellbound. Then yesterday I introduced you to our series for next week about American and Christian identity, "Who We Are Instead". I hope you'll check out all the posts from this week.

I'm Too Cool to Like Happy Things by Ben Howard
Life is Like Baseball (and That Sucks) by Mitchell Richards
Making Up Reality by Ian McLoud
A Sermon on Hellbound by Adam Graham
Who We Are Instead: An Introduction by Ben Howard

This song of the week is "Give A Little Love" by Noah and the Whale from their album Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down. I first encountered this song in a montage on the show Cougar Town and it was just so beautiful and powerful that I've listened to it at least once a week for the last year or so. I hope you enjoy!

Peace,
Ben

You can follow Ben on Twitter @BenHoward87 or email him at benjamin.howard87 [at] gmail.com.

Also, you can subscribe to On Pop Theology via RSS feed or email on the top right corner of the main page.

Making Up Reality

by Ian McLoud

Since this blog is where I go to confess things, I must confess that I have an unhealthy addiction to reality TV shows. Only the manly ones of course, like Pawn Stars, Swamp People, Top Chef, Sister Wives, and What Not to Wear. Okay, I’m kidding about What Not to Wear. No seriously, I am. I do watch way too much HGTV though.

           

However, while I like some reality TV shows, I really hate their preview commercials. They are always overly dramatic and way out of context.

If all you watched were commercials for Sister Wives, you’d think that Christine hated everyone when in reality she just doesn’t like Robin. On Top Chef you would think that every single person was going home every week and that the judges hated everyone. Pawn Stars makes you think that every find could be worth a million dollars and HGTV makes you think that every person hates whatever room/house/backyard they’re being shown. If you only saw the previews for Swamp People you would think Troy Landry was an incoherent maniac who shoots alligators. Umm…that last one may be true.

TV producers know that drama sells. They specifically create and edit those commercials to entice viewers to watch. This kind of sensationalized drama makes people want to watch the show, which to be fair, is the only reason the show exists. Even when you know that the 50 cent cracker jack toy someone brought into the pawn shop is really only going to cost 50 cents, if you can catch Rick or the Old Man saying it MIGHT be worth more, that gets viewers. We want to see something spectacular.

I think, and thankfully I believe this trend is changing, for too long this is how Christians have treated Christianity. Have a problem? Become a Christian, we don’t have any. Worried about life? Become a Christian, we don’t have worries. Need a spouse? Become a Christian, everyone here is married! (I may be a bit bitter about that one.)

We try to create these happy, carefree facades to entice people to become Christians (*cough* Joel Osteen *cough, cough*). In reality, Christians have problems and we worry, and we can be single even when we don’t want to be. We’re people.

What sets us apart isn’t that we have all the answers or that we have carefree lives. We do not need to edit our lives like a reality show commercial to entice people. That’s what the hope found in Christ does. We just need to be better about owning our faults and admitting that what gets us through life is the hope we find in Christ. That’s enticing enough.

You can follow Ian on Twitter @KindaScottish.

Also, you can subscribe to On Pop Theology via RSS feed or email on the top right corner of the main page.

I Love Sister Wives

by Ian McLoud

My name is Ian McLoud. I am a 25 year old, single youth and family minister and I love TLC’s Sister Wives.

Feels good to that off my chest. And no, I will not defend my love for such a show. I’m fascinated by Mormons, especially the fundamentalist sects, and that is the only reason I watch. At least that’s what I tell myself. Secretly, I think I just like betting on when and how often Robyn will cry in any given episode.

I was catching up on Season 3 the other day and came across a rare gem, an episode I hadn’t seen before! This week on Sister Wives Kody and his wives are upset over the lack of a good ole “faith and morals” based social outlet. So, they do what any good Mormon polygamist family does and go visit a Presbyterian church.

You read that right. Kody, with his wives in tow, waltzes into a Presbyterian church and begins to ask poor Pastor Ray if his army of children can attend youth group activities because they need a good social outlet. Before Pastor Ray can really say anything wife #3, Christine, pipes up and says she can’t allow this.

I feel I must point out that Pastor Ray, to his credit, was willing to let the Brown Family Brigade join the youth group, but, in some moment of clarity, Christine realizes that they’re good FLDS Mormons and not Presbyterians. This would be wrong. It could lead their children down the wrong path. So they “table the discussion,” as Kody says.

What happens next is an argument between Kody and his wives. Wives 1 and 2, Meri and Janelle, are for the youth group because it’s just social. Wives 3 and 4, Christine and Robyn, are against. Kody, surprising no one, sides with Christine and Robyn.

Even though it was his idea, Kody now sees the error of his ways because this could really lead his children to a different faith. Church is never just a social outlet, no matter what wives 1 and 2 may think. Kody decides this type of thinking is simply wrong and puts his foot down, ending the discussion.

So what does this have to do with us?

Reread that incredibly profound statement that Kody makes about church being more than just a social outlet. Maybe it’s just because I’m a youth minister, but I often get the sense that some only see church as a place to socialize and make friends. I know for some of my students that is definitely the case. That’s probably why Kody’s words that church is more than a social outlet made such an impact.

Church is community. Church is where we come into contact with God by worshiping and fellowshiping with fellow believers. Community does powerful things. Community lets you know you’re safe, you’re not alone and you’re welcome. People worshiping as a community of God is a beautiful thing.

The Browns are right to be afraid that sending their kids to church is dangerous because community, when done right, is life changing. Let’s try and find that kind of community, where God is at the head and the main focus. I promise the social aspect will fall into place.

You can follow Ian on Twitter @KindaScottish.

God Loves Honey Boo Boo Too

by Jonathan Harrison

Yesterday TLC premiered the Great Babylonian Whore of reality television: Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, which in my opinion doesn't deserve italics. Look on ye trailer mortals, and despair:

 

(dear Lord did she say "you better redneckognize"?)

Within the short time of thirty seconds, viewers are subjected to a distilled version of Toddlers and Tiaras, Jackass, The Beverly Hillbillies and Full House. While yours truly has too much self-respect to research the show any further, I'm pretty sure a great number of people will watch the Boo Boos on a weekly basis, and TLC, probably unbeknownst to the Boo Boos, will make a hefty wad of cash off the eccentricities of, let's hope, a lower-income family.

I know what you're thinking. "Jonathan. What has this to do with theology besides it being a disaster of biblical proportions?" Well. I'm not really sure. Shows like HCHBB tend to destroy everyone's faith in humanity, and I can't tell if that's because people can't a believe a family like the Boo Boos exist or that millions of people watch families like the Boo Boos on television and enjoy it.

Personally, I'm more shocked at the latter. Read a book or something people. Stare at the wall. Get a hobby. Volunteer somewhere. Get another degree. I don't know, maybe talk to your freaking grandmother in the nursing home for goodness sakes. That generation defeated Hitler. What have you done lately besides watch the reality show equivalent of the Great London Fire in slow motion? Yea.  That's what I thought.

Wait.  Where was I?

Let me try again. I tend to watch shows like HCHBB and think that Jesus came from Galilee which was more or less thought to be hicks-ville, and Galilee probably had a few families like the Boo Boos.

Of course, I then come to the conclusion that the people of Galilee were probably hard-working people and didn't teach their children to say "A dolla makes me holla" or some other inanity.  The people of Galilee probably had some self-respect, so I'm not even going to try to make that comparison.

I also see examples of shows such as HCHBB and wonder how much of a transformation Jesus or God would make in these people lives, but then I realize that the Boos Boos probably have a better church attendance track record than yours truly, and this realization makes me slowly raise my hand to the bartender at the end of a bar who, while drying a Collins glass with a pristine white rag, acknowledges my summons and gives me the slightest of nods.

He knows me. I'm a regular here. A regular at this bar built on the despair caused by reality shows, humanity, and the existence of The Learning Channel, which, ironically, has become a channel hell-bent on the dumbing-down of America.

I stare at the mirror behind the bar. I've gotten older. I've gained weight. I did not think I would ever be this way. I did not think it would ever happen to me. Floyd, that's his name, asks if I need a cab. I make no noise. Outside it is raining.

Jonathan Harrison just started a kickstarter college fund for Honey because she's probably going to need an education worse than any of us.  He writes over at driedhumor.wordpress.com occasionally.  He also writes a blog on Library Marketing but is not going to post the link because he knows none of you want to read that. 

Why I Love Happily Ever After and Why I Need Something Else

by Ben Howard

Recently, as both a massive surprise to myself and with great loss of personal dignity, I developed a love of the TV show The Bachelorette. Granted, I only watched two episodes, but those two episodes, like crack, were more than enough to guarantee addiction.

In my defense, a significant amount of my enjoyment is ironic. I mean what other show can support so many cliche story lines that it spawns both a drinking game and a fantasy league. At the same time, I actually felt a little emotional when quasi-Mormon Jeff With One F proposed to Emily the Blonde. Against my own expectations I had actually invested emotionally in their relationship. I like them. I hope they end up living happily ever after.

It's easy to mock a show like the Bachelor or the Bachelorette. It's easy to point out the insanity of trying to find your “soul mate” on a nationally televised game show. It's easy to be cynical, but I'm not convinced that the cynicism is warranted. At least not all of it.

At its core, the show provides a proxy for both our deepest desire and our deepest fear. We want to be loved, but we're afraid that we'll end up alone. It's the same core that spurs the success of paint-by-numbers romantic comedies. We want to hear the story again because we want the story to be real. We want the story to part of us. A show like this serves a purpose.

I've always been a hopeless romantic. I love the Bachelorette for the same reason that I love When Harry Met Sally or Definitely, Maybe. They're aspirational how-to guides about finding profound happiness. They're fairy tales.

We need fairy tales. We need escape and we need dreams. Sometimes they even come true.

But we need other stories too or else we run the risk of fairy tales dominating our reality to the extent that we think of them as the rule and not the exception. We need stories that tell us that happily ever after is just the beginning. We need stories that show us that being single isn't synonymous with failure. We need stories that remind us that we don't have to be rich or successful to be valuable.

Churches need to learn how to tell these stories. Please note that I did not say anecdotes or illustrations. These are not points we need to prop up, but stories we need to embody. In order to lead healthy, fulfilling lives we need big, beautiful dreams, but we also need a deeply realized and beautiful reality.

I try my best to be honest here. I've told some of my friends that writing this blog is my form of therapy and this post is no less than that. I love the fairytale, but my pursuit of that fairytale has often left me feeling bitter and lonely.

There are two possible reasons for this. First, to quote from the movie High Fidelity, “Only people of a certain disposition are frightened of being alone for the rest of their lives at the age of 26.” I am certainly of that disposition.

Secondly, and I think more profoundly, I have no idea what it looks like to be healthy, happy and single. It's not a story I'm familiar with, yet when I look at the Bible or Christian history it's quite apparent that this is a perfectly viable option.

I don't have a pithy point to wrap all this up. I love the stories we tell ourselves in popular culture, it's why I like writing about it, but at the same time I think we've gone too far. We know how to chase the dream, but it's become increasingly harder to live the reality. Here's to figuring it out.

Peace,

Ben

You can follow me on Twitter @BenHoward87 or leave a comment if you'd like to contact me.

What Happens When You Go to Eleven

by Josh Kiel

In my life there have occasionally been Sunday nights where, after a few beers, I turn on the television for some cheap, in the intellectually qualitative sense of the word, entertainment. Every so often I am treated to the MSNBC/Dateline series To Catch a Predator. Such was the case this past Sunday. For those of you who may not know this program, it is presented as an "investigation" exposing men who via the internet attempt to arrange sexual liaisons with underage persons. The host of the show then confronts the men when they show up at a house for that purpose.

The core of the show is the logical progression of a genre which it doesn't aspire to be: trashy reality television. My more cynical imagination of the show's origins involve an MSNBC producer flipping through his television channels one night and coming across Punk'd whereupon, in the spirit of Nigel Tufnel, he began wondering if that type of show can, "go to eleven."

There has been a progression in television from Candid Camera to Punk'd to To Catch a Predator which reflects on our definition of entertainment. The simple pranks of old that were so in vogue in the era of laugh tracks seem dull and boring to the generation that grew up with Worlds Wildest Police Chases and When Animals Attack. Without some level of shock value we the viewers raised on COPS and Fear Factor easily become bored and seek our thrills elsewhere. The fact is that in making these shows the producers fulfill our desires, but only momentarily until, like a drug, we want something stronger, something more real.

In that spirit we turn to programs like To Catch a Predator to seek out entertainment which has both shock value and lasting real life consequences. In reality, the collateral damage of the network's quest for ratings by providing the shock value we seek is that we witness the actual destruction of people's actual lives.

These are the stakes that the show's subjects face when they walk into the house. The typical episode includes some of the saddest displays of self-justification and illogical explanations that you may ever see. Once they encounter the show's host their awareness of their own guilt often becomes transparently obvious as they try to make a defense or reasoning for their presence.

Recently I watched an episode with some of my friends during which point one of them wondered, "Why don't they just shut up and get a lawyer?" If the men being confronted on the show had an informed advocate available during these encounters I doubt the show would ever have done so well.

The show's host in these interactions is given all of the materials to prepare for the encounter and has planned out the most condemning parts of the online conversations to confront the subject with upon their arrival. In essence the host is transformed into a quasi-omniscient accuser and serves as the embodiment of public opinion; a judge standing before them and damning them for their depravity.

In the face of this the subject will try to defend themselves in a manner that painfully demonstrates that they are completely incapable of doing so. Their chain of excuses and pathetic explanations ends with them being informed that their encounter is intended for display on national television, their shame for all the world to see. This isn't the end of their ordeal though because once they leave the house they are arrested, occasionally tasered, and interrogated by the police.

I find it easy to sit on the couch and watch all of this unfold with a detached feeling of superiority. At times I find myself conflicted about why we find this show entertaining. There haven't been any new "investigations" made by MSNBC in this series since 2007, but it is still a go to filler for the network when they need something to fill a time slot.

I've asked a few people I know why they believe the show is entertaining and the typical answer I get is that they're seeing justice done. This always strikes me as odd because there is the distinct possibility that if not for the show being produced some of the criminals featured may never have done anything criminally wrong in the first place. Stated another way, this may be a skewed reality according to the laws of supply and demand.

The show suggests that every one of the men would have ended up having sex with a child if they weren't actually talking to decoys. The hopeful idealist in me would think that the quantity of pre-teens spending time in internet chat rooms looking for sex does not meet the apparent abundance provided by the shows decoys. This would lead to a scenario where men exist who would want to have sex with children who simply haven't because of a lack of supply of willing victims; sad and pathetic yes, criminal no. To insert another obligatory pop culture reference, are these people being treated like the criminals in Minority Report, punished because of something they haven't done, but are expected to do?  Is that justice?

Being honest with myself and casting my concern for social airs of decency aside, the part of the show that I find appealing is the Schadenfreude involved. Maybe it's just my German heritage, but there is something entertaining about seeing these people try to defend themselves and failing completely. I realize that I'm not alone on that. If Schadenfreude wasn't entertaining then American Idol wouldn't have survived past the first few episodes. Who would want to listen to a bunch of terrible singers for an hour if we weren't rewarded with their utter decimation and humiliation delivered in a smarmy British accent.

I am of the opinion that reality television is one of the worst aspects of society today (Hello Teen Mom!). I view many of these shows as the modern incarnation of the Roman gladiatorial games. We're too refined to actually watch people die (maybe), but we will sit down and watch their hopes and egos destroyed for some mindless entertainment. Ruining peoples lives just seems to be the next level up from that.  I'm just hoping 2017 comes and goes without The Running Man becoming a television sensation.  (Google it kids, it's like The Hunger Games, but with Arnold Schwarzenegger).