This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1456549
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1456549
Gong.
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Instead, guests involved in relationship betrayals or with simmering resentments would confront one another
…and seeing as though the guests were largely poor and unattractive, it was trash Tv. Unlike modern prime time reality fare, in which the people yelling at one another are rich and have beautifully (re)constructed faces.
I thought Maury was more entertaining. “That’s not my baby!” says the man who looks exactly like the baby, who despite all protestations looks pretty nervous about those DNA results.
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The Jerry Springer show was very entertaining. I used to wait for the guest at the third chair to arrive with as much anticipation as waiting for my lottery number to be called. As a host, he had a good sense of humor and was quite likable.
The show taught me that the world is very diverse and that we are all navigating our journeys in our own ways making different choices and taking different action. It is not be viewed or looked down upon with a Dr. Phil or The Five or a puritanical church lady mindset. Jerry Springer was mostly not staged to the same extent as WWE or golf.
There are many kinds of messengers and prophets we can all learn from.
Can only say I have no time in my life for Springer, Judge Judy, Bachelor or any of this crap that is scripted.
We, my wife and I, live our lives not through some asshole TV show.
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In its own way, Jerry Springer and his show contributed to the coarsening of our society. Was it entertaining? Well, it depends on the definition of entertaining. It is probably entertaining in the same way drivers in their vehicles slow down or stop to view other vehicular accidents, up to and including the injury and/or death of those involved.
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But did it “coarsen” society? Sure it made things more blatant, but human society is a tawdry affair by nature. It’s something that’s been with us from the beginning. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are chock full of bawdy jokes and the Romantic poets filled their poetry with sly sexual innuendo. It’s something that’s always been there and if it’s old enough, it’s graduated to being called “high art” (not that I imagine The Jerry Springer Show will ever be so inducted).
I’ve never been interested in Jerry Springer’s (or “Reality” TV’s) version of entertainment, but it seems like their primary sin is chipping the enamel off the carefully cultivated image of “polite” society and exposing a more honest view. There are various jokes/snubs of “Southern hospitality,” playing off people who are thoroughly polite to each other’s faces, but the moment someone leaves the room, they viciously insult them behind their backs. It feels like people are uncomfortable with Springer because he wasn’t keeping it quiet. He was taking what was always there and putting it front and center.
I don’t have the answers, but is society better off if we keep a polite face in public, but then bad-mouth people behind their backs? Is it “coarser” if we do it all in public, if it was always there anyway? I think what it really should show is that we prefer to live a lie and pretend society is a politer, kinder place than it is. If we want that polite society to be real, it seems like we need to acknowledge where we really are currently and work from that place, rather than to act like we are genteel, considerate people already and Springer and his crowd are aberrations.
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You’ve used too many words trying to dissect a piece of shit TV show that unfortunately lasted 27 years, and we’re all worse off for it. Yes, it coarsened society to answer your rhetorical question.
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I think that I can claim some – admittedly small but nevertheless direct – credit for the Jerry Springer Show’s focus.
You see, I was one of the first people to buy the “Too Hot for TV” VHS tape when it came on the market, and one afternoon, I received a phone call from the Jerry Springer Show. This made me nervous – did they want me for a guest? oh, no… – but it was only a market research call, and the staffer on the other end wanted to know what prompted me to buy the videotape. What did I like to watch?
My reply was immediate: “I like to watch the white trash beatin’ on each other.”
Shortly thereafter, the frequency and intensity of fisticuffs on the Jerry Springer Show skyrocketed. It appears that they took my advice.
I read a few of the Springer obits, and in every one there was at least one quotation of him giving some sanctimonious retrospective justification for the show, as if he had been performing social work. I would have had at least minimal respect for him if he’d admitted it was pure exploitation and he did it for the money.
Also noteworthy is that Springer postured as some sort of progressive liberal. Exploitation is what conservatives do, just as stinking is characteristic of skunks. De mortuis nil nisi bonum to the contrary, Springer was a worthless lout who left the country a little more sullied, a little more moronic, and certainly more willing to see politics and civic engagement as an extension of trash TV.
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Poor Jerry, he seemed to be implying, he couldn’t help it if his audience wanted to beat up on each other in front of a camera. The best he could do was a mic drop.
Yes, Jerry Springer, the downwardly mobile families on “Married….With Children” and “Roseann,” Andrew Dice Clay and Howard Stern, the lowbrow guidos, real “housewives” and Kardashian spawn living large on reality TV…