Reality Check: The Redeeming Social Value of Keeping up with the Kardashians and the Real Danger of the Real Housewives

I don’t always watch reality shows, but when I do, I watch the Kardashians and the Real Housewives (and occasionally Breaking Amish, and Sister Wives, and Little People Big World, and The Little Couple, and Celebrity Rehab, and Gypsy Sisters . . .) In reality, it’s not as bad as it sounds.  My husband would not let it get as bad as it sounds.

We all know the arguments against reality shows.

They glorify excess and consuming.  Their message is that stuff is good and that we need more stuff and that it will make us happy.

But I wonder how many people see past this.  More than their critics think, I believe.

Frankly, I like to see Kardashian excess because it is so excessive that I’m grateful my own simple life.  After hearing about their bikini and eyebrow and who knows what else waxes, I realize the truth that it is a gift to be simple.  (And, I have to admit, I feel smug that I can live without stuff.  Well, without as much stuff.) 

And besides being about stuff the show is about looking for love and having various degrees of luck finding it.  (Mostly not much.)  So far, there have been two divorces, a separation and several breakups.  Does it occur to the audience that things, and even financial stability, don’t guarantee a good relationship?  I think it has.

You can also see this on the Real Housewives shows.  During the first season, Theresa talked about taking her daughters shopping at least once a week.  And they always seem to be buying new houses or gutting and redecorating the old ones.  But the Housewives shows deal with relationships, too.  And that it the real danger. 

The really toxic thing about the Housewives shows is not that relationships (like the friendship of Jill and Bethany) fail, but that they fail after all kinds of efforts to repair them.  People keep talking about each other and to (or at) each other, but nothing is ever resolved.  Efforts to mend fences only make the situation worse.

The message I got from the Real Housewives is “There ain’t no use in talking if there ain’t nobody listening.  And nobody is.”  So you flip tables over and tweet nasty messages.  Watch the Housewives long enough and you can become a hater and grudge holder.  Ever the optimist, I keep waiting for epiphanies and grand makeup scenes.  But they never seem to come.

Supposedly, though, after a relationship fails you can buy more stuff.  I don’t know if the Housewives see that this doesn’t help, but I have faith that the audience does.

So maybe those of us who have been guiltily watching the reality shows can come out of the closet and explain to our critics that they must look at the subtext.  (You do know I meant this in a snarky, anti-academic, anti-English major way, don’t you?)