The technology exists, but does that warrant me revealing the intimacies of my life, under the guise of artistic license? I first asked myself that question in the mid-90s, when webcams and Web sites like JenniCam brought homemade porn and voyeuristic scenes from strangers’ boudoirs into my living room. Next came reality television, which I discovered while an expat overseas. Watching Survivor, the freshman in a long line of should-be dropouts, we sat transfixed, mentally bridging our Asian existence to our former Western lives, while watching Americans navigate a barren island in the South Pacific. Survivor took the political term alliance and morphed its meaning into a method for making new friends. The show taught the world that if you were awarded a picnic lunch, you might be able to transform yourself from a malnourished nobody into a potential star catching a first break.
But who would have thought that filming people’s daily lives—or whatever they might do if given the opportunity to have their lives filmed—would take off as it has? I sure didn’t. But the joke’s on me, because just when I think our culture’s churn-out mentality has fossilized, another oversexed, over-emotionalized reality show is introduced during the commercial break.
Shows like quarterlife (which started out as a pilot for television, was canned, became a do-it-yourself production, offered free viewing of its series on the Internet, and found its audience) are now hits. In this particular instance, you can guess what happened next. NBC watched the online action and courted the series back to mainstream television, a strategic move by both its creators and the studio. Marketing and production costs remained the responsibility of the creators, so there was no financial risk to the studio (this is the same type of agreement that invaded the book publishing industry years ago, and put the independent film industry on the map).
I watched a couple of episodes of quarterlife online. Starring real people, this show is about life, love, art, and blogging uploaded to a Web site about life, love, and the potential non-art of blogging. In the opening scene of the most recent episode, a character (person) named Debra may or may not have attempted to take her own life. In an effort to deal, her friends turn their backs on one another, cover their faces with their hands to show their concern, and jack their bodies around to overact their anguish. Andy, a hipster with the expected Elvis Costello frames, turns to Lisa, a flippant blonde who seems to know it all already and says, “If she doesn’t die, you wanna go out?” Her response, “Sure, it can’t be any worse than this date, right?” Has suicide also become formulaic?
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