How reality TV leaves reality behind

Karl Marx's best one-liner -- and he had a few -- was to observe that all world-historic characters appear twice -- first as tragedy and then as farce. Today we would say -- first as tragedy and then as reality TV.

They may not all have been world historical figures, but reality TV has crafted a sub-genre out of recycling the assorted and sometimes sordid affairs of characters like Tonya Harding, Monica Lewinsky and Joey Buttafuoco, using their name recognition and the perennial appeal of the "whatever-happened-to" format to draw viewers.

The logic was pure tabloid capitalism: Game, regardless of its source, is a commodity that can be traded in for cash.

Reality TV became the great currency exchange for all kinds of notoriety and renown, offering payouts to everyone from aging rock stars and fading icons to former child stars and one-hit wonders.

Despite the frequent descriptions of reality TV as a "democratic" genre and comparisons of the vote totals for "American Idol" to those of presidential elections, politicians have been largely absent from the reality TV mix, perhaps in deference to some imagined lined between celebrity and politics.

The line started to blur in the United Kingdom, when, after the runaway success of "Big Brother," the Conservative Party named an executive in the show's production company to its Commission for Democracy, and the Hansard Society, a nonpartisan group that promotes parliamentary democracy, released a report comparing the "Big Brother" house to the House of Commons.

One of its conclusions was that the public might be able to relate better to politicians if they became more like reality TV stars, providing unscripted, candid access to the political process at work.

The report may have been ahead of its time. Now, in the Twitter era, it has come into its own.

Politicians are forsaking the finely spun prose of the press release for the hip, techno-argot of Twitter, complete with text-message abbreviations and emoticons.

The migration of politics to reality TV isn't far behind, thanks to the pioneering efforts of indicted former U.S. Rep. Tom (The Hammer) DeLay, who has been promoting his turn on "Dancing with the Stars" with commercials of him smashing a disco ball with -- what else? -- a shiny metal hammer.

The voiceover, in the urgent gravel-bass tones of a movie trailer, turns DeLay's political antics and scandals into more grist for the ratings mill. It is a strange moment for anyone who followed DeLay's self-righteous political crusades during his heyday -- his battles for the impeachment of Bill Clinton and against environmental regulation and the teaching of evolution, followed by his eventual downfall amid allegations of corruption.

It was as if all these political events amounted, in the end, to the creation of a character with resale value for reality TV. The effect might almost be described as a form of distancing -- as if the troubling reality fades into a nostalgia-laundered back story for reality TV.

This has been, all along, the logic of reality TV's rehabilitation of faded celebrities -- that they were once well known is more important than why they were well known. Maybe we disliked or disdained or ignored them at the height of their fame -- but their return brings a glow of recognition and perhaps a tinge of nostalgia for a bygone era.

We might describe this as the Holden Caulfield effect -- we start to miss all of the characters from the past, even the ones we thought we couldn't stand, even Maurice the pimp.

This is a strange and disturbing thing to do to politics -- to launder it through the lens of celebrity to produce a kind of content-neutral exchange value. DeLay's antics -- as troubling as they might have been -- come to count as tokens of fame, interchangeable with other reasons for celebrity: an appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated, a hit song, a pro wrestling career.

We might call this the de-realization effect of reality TV -- the ability to turn political and social trauma into entertainment programming. Just think of Rodney King's return to the small screen -- his migration from the evening news to "Celebrity Rehab." The history of police abuse and violent racial division has faded into the background of his struggle with alcohol abuse. And when Dr. Drew appears shocked, shocked to learn of the racial epithets used by the police, he's not leading us back into a troubled social history, but expressing concern for his patient's trauma.

Is there a feeling of relief in the diminution of the real? A promise that in the end what was once so traumatic, divisive and even violent can be reabsorbed into a shared entertainment spectacle?

We can start to imagine the de-realization of the present through the lens of its future reality TV incarnation -- the trauma of the Iraq war transposed into a celebrity boxing match between, say, Cindy Sheehan and Lynddie England. Tragedy returned to us in the shiny farce of reality TV.

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Mark Andrejevic teaches media studies at the University of Iowa. He is the author of "Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched."