A Sucker Speaks Up

I was recently inspired by Reality TV. Wait, there's more: once, in college, I was moved to write a manifesto (which then spurred a bit of a campus mini-movement) after attending a U2 concert. In other words, I’m a sap. Or worse, I suppose: a sucker.

I’ve looked for ways to explain away this sucker tendency. As a writer of stories myself, have I mastered the ability to suspend disbelief? Am I a character-driven sympathizer who over-identifies with compelling personalities? Am I just gullible?

The answer, before you write me off, is an unequivocal No. I’m a genuine, smirking member of the Snark Generation. A TV-referencing, McSweeney’s reading, eye-rolling Gawker commenter. What’s more, I’ve spent the past decade working behind the magic curtain in the marketing and advertising industry. I understand the tricks. I know how to walk the line between false advertising and “enhancing the positive.” I’m a champion parser.

So, how to reconcile the two? What am I doing crying at movies? Why do I own multiple Bright Eyes records? How is it possible that I get goose bumps during the Star Spangled Banner at Yankee Stadium? And isn’t “inspired by Reality TV” an oxymoron?

Let’s start with the last question. The show was Oprah’s Big Give. Oprah’s Big Give is a thinly veiled, shameless advertisement for, well, as many items as they can cram into 40 minutes: Oprah, first and foremost, Ford, to a slightly lesser extent, followed by each of the donated items, services and celebrities who show up to help out. It features “TVLand” contrivances and counterproductive elements like an incongruous, competitive atmosphere. It’s focused on short-term, bombastic displays of charity, rather than on long term solutions. The recipients come secondary – tertiary, even – to the contestants and to Oprah herself.

But at the end of the day, what’s done is done. There are no actors on the show and unless someone is taking everything back once the cameras stop rolling, these are real life-changing events for real Americans with real needs. In one of the lamer bits of a recent episode, the most self-aggrandizing contestant (Rachael) shows up, hurriedly pays a woman’s delinquent heating bill and forwards her two more months. The segment was not well-produced. The narrative thread was missing, the timing was all wrong. It was incongruous for a million reasons. Practically before the woman can wipe the confusion off her face, the team is back in their customized Big Give Ford SUV and zooming toward commercial break. It’s hard not to shake your head, roll your eyes, blog snarkily.

But even as the cameras are on to the next story of contestant in-fighting and incidental charity, the fact is, a poor woman’s life has just changed. And regardless of what ABC or Ford or Oprah’s handlers – or even Oprah herself – intend to get out of the program, there is one person who just got something immeasurable.

There are a million ways to criticize the program. You can call it rigged, contrived, self-aggrandizing, two-faced – maybe even downright hypocritical. But no one can deny the simple fact that the show makes good things happen to deserving people. And if that needs to be packaged within a derivative game-show atmosphere, so be it.

What's so wrong with a television show that sells ads, fulfills the needs of an episodic prime-time format, appeals to some base instincts in order to get ratings, and is making real, tangible changes in American communities in the meantime? Everybody gets what they want, and the greater good is served, ever-so-slightly. In other arenas, this kind of arbitration is the height of success. The kind of win-win-win that makes legends, sells autobiographies and, well... gets ratings. In those arenas, to support such an effort is not gullibility, but insider savvy.

So call me a sucker, if you must. But I know of a woman in Georgia who will agree that to do so is to miss the point entirely.