Where Game Shows Have Gone

The only TV game shows I grew up with were quiz shows. They were based on trivia questions, word puzzles, word clues, making guesses, matching answers. The people who lucked out or knew the answers won the game. It was all in good fun. People were good-natured, funny, and honest. There was no cheating allowed. Players treated their opponents with the utmost respect. The games were simple and straightforward. Prizes were not life-changing, maybe a few thousand dollars, a trip, or a car.

Over some decades, this gradually changed. First some innuendo and lewdness crept in. Now, in the new millennium, we have what are called reality TV game shows such as Survivor. I don't know what is more "real" about them than the games I've just described except the set-ups, the rules, the prizes, and the conduct of the players. Human nature is still the same as ever. People are just as free to be nice or mean, civil or uncivil, decent or indecent, gracious or greedy. And it's looking very bad. The shows have ramped up the stakes and the rules and the drama and the production and the playing time to encourage people to sink to their lowest and do their worst toward their fellow man. Instead of wearing suits and ties the players are wearing their underwear. Instead of being decent and honest, the players are often crude and underhanded.

Fans of these shows like to rationalize them by insisting "it's just a game." So, in games we are allowed to sink to our basest, most selfish, most deceitful, most uncivil, most greedy? Try that with your family at the dining table playing any game and all will end very badly indeed. It is in every kind of human interaction, perhaps especially dramatically in the part of living we call playing games, that we must be on our best behavior: good manners, good sportsmanship, rooting for each other, enjoying the game itself rather than the winning or losing, sharpening our wits, and if we win we have won not by cheating or stepping on others but by doing our best. These values are not a part of some shows today. In fact, they are often seen as weak and a sure way to lose. What some of us are caring about now is winning above all else.

The new game shows, played over weeks and months, actually become these people's real life, rather than what can be defined as any kind of game. These players are not actors. They are real people thinking and choosing, game or no game. And we are treated to seeing that they care more about winning money and fame than about being good or kind or unselfish or honest. These societal developments should make us take a long hard look at ourselves and our world.

Entertaining as these new game shows may be, the reasons they are really awful is that they are played for huge stakes, they take the place of the these people's normal lives and become their new reality, the players become famous stars, they are based on greed and avarice, and the players are encouraged to use any means by which to win. Deep, long-term deception, carried on day after day, is praised as a virtue. What we think of as a game turns into real life, a nightmarish life. I can't even imagine interacting with other people day after day in these selfish, deceptive ways. We seem to have forgotten that games are for fun and should show us at our best, not our worst. It's like we're back in Roman times enjoying watching people hurt each other for entertainment.

I just read The Hunger Games, which, aside from some criticisms I have of the writing, I thought was a great commentary on where our society has taken this perverse form of entertainment. It's the national taste and our new reality.