Department of New Lows: Reality TV Goes Slumming

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Two new British reality shows transform the lived experience of poverty into a spectacle we can all enjoy in prime time:

On ITV’s “Fortune: Million Pound Giveaway,” needy—and sometimes not-so-needy—supplicants have 60 seconds to persuade a panel of five wealthy panelists to give them money. The other show, “The Secret Millionaire” … features self-made millionaires who go undercover and spend 10 days in a poor neighborhood looking for people who could use their charity.  At the end of the show, the millionaire reveals him- or herself and writes checks to the winners.*

Neither of these shows would, I believe, require much adjustment for American television audiences already fed on a steady diet of loutishness and self-abasement.  An American version of “The Secret Millionaire” would be especially appealing to some, leaving unchallenged the larger forces that drive people into poverty, and celebrating the playful beneficence of the more fortunate among us.

So grab a bowl of popcorn.  There are valuable lessons for the whole family in the humiliation of the poor.

_____

*“Philanthropy TV” by Robert Frank in the April 13, 2007, issue of the Wall Street Journal Online.

Comments

[Bruce Trachtenberg]

Same amount of humbleness, humility and charity as the guy who stands up in church or temple to announce "I give one million dollars anonymously."

[Albert Ruesga]

I think it's in Matthew's gospel: Don't let the right donor-advised fund know what the left private foundation is doing.

There's something disturbing about this kind of charitable spectacle, about the idea that one can address the issue of persistent poverty by tossing a few large appliances off the back of a truck, for example. Perhaps ultimately it's better to be charitable the way Oprah is than the way most people aren't.

[Dr. Trotsky]

It might be that these spectacles have very little to do with charity and giving, social consciousness, or anything in that line. Sound like formulaic diagrams of alleged classist wish fulfillment, like most television (should note that I haven't seen these specimens - going on what they sound like - remember The Millionaire? Queen for a Day?)

Placebos with a dash of opium.

Maybe this is why some choose to toss appliances off the back of a truck:

When I like an object, I always give it to someone. It isn't generosity--it's only because I want others to be enslaved by objects, not me.
--Jean Paul Sartre

[Robert]

The one moment I remembered in this show is Duncan Bannatyne on Dragons Den. Two people were pitching for money for a music festival and were well experienced in the student market. They had already run their festival last year and on close questioning it transpired that their festival and most others are run on the basis of free labour. People are officially volunteers and receive a ticket for the festival. Duncan voiced his concerns about this way of doing things and pointed out that there is a minimum wage. I was impressed.
Reality TV