Canadian Politics Today

Still, though... there are frames of reality: unreal, fantasy, surreal, hyper-real etc.

There is a thing I heard on Sunday Edition where some academic said that when they blended fake wrestling with real stories of the people (eg. their backstories, divorces, substance abuse or whatever) then they created a new hybrid reality and that is what President 45 carves out as his sphere of existence.

Many of the so-called "reality shows" are anything but.  Once like The Amazing Race and Survivor are of course just elaborate game shows. But shows like Duck Dynasty or the various Real Housewives shows or 24 Kids And Counting or Moonshiners or **** like that are just a bunch of scripted shenanigans, falsely portraying themselves as being real life.


Westeros as depicted in Game of Thrones is a fictional setting vaguely inspired by medieval Europe but also inspired by medieval European myth.  Madison Avenue of 1960 as depicted in Mad Men is a fictional setting inspired by a recent time and place,  and whatever mythological touches may be present in the series are far less obvious than those in Game of Thrones.  Gotham City as depicted in Batman comics and movies is a fictional setting inspired by the darker, grimier side of New York City.  Metropolis, as depicted in Superman comics and movies is also inspired by New York City, but takes its cue from the brighter, shinier aspects of New York City as opposed to Gotham's inspiration in the darker aspects of the place.  New York City as depicted in Spiderman comics and movies is no more real than Gotham City or Metropolis.

Locals like Westeros, Gotham, Metropolis, and even the New York City of comics have an honesty to them, as there is no question about the "reality" of what is being portrayed.  The line blurs a little when something like Mad Men or The Wolf of Wall Street appears, because even though these are inspired by real times and places, they aren't real. The same could be said of any movie or TV show set in the present day, when you come down to it.  One could look at an episode of some police procedural or spy drama and say "hey, this is a real setting", but it certainly isn't.  But most audiences at least understand that despite the pretense of being in a modern day setting, this isn't "real".

But when it comes to these "reality shows", the line isn't just blurred, it's completely erased.



Trivia corner:  "Gotham" as a nickname for New York City originated in 1807, in Washington Irving's satirical periodical "Salmagundi", where Irving lampooned New York City culture and politics using the fictional Gotham, named after Gotham, Nottinghamshire, England, a locality notorious for the alleged stupidity of its residents.

 -k