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By Root 1105 0

at Iowa City, writes that reality shows like Big Brother and Survivor glamorize the intrusiveness of the surveillance state, presenting it as “one of the hip attributes of the contemporary world,” “an entrée into the world of wealth and celebrity,” and even a moral good. In his book Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched, he quotes veterans of The Real World, Road Rules, and Temptation Island who speak about their on-air personal growth and the therapeutic value of being constantly watched. As Josh on Big Brother explains, “Everyone should have an audience.” Big Brother, in which ten cohabiting strangers willingly submit to round-the-clock video monitoring, is a celebration of the surveillance state. More than twice as many young people apply to MTV’s Real World show than to Harvard, for a chance to live under constant surveillance. But the use of hidden cameras—part of professional wrestling’s attraction as well as a staple on reality television—reinforces celebrity culture’s frightening assumption that it is normal, indeed enviable, to be constantly watched. For corporations and a government that seeks to make surveillance routine, whether to study our buying habits or read our e-mails or make sure we do not organize social protest, these shows normalize what was once considered a flagrant violation of our Constitutional right to privacy.16

There is a rapacious appetite for new, “real-life” drama and a desperate thirst for validation by the celebrity culture. This yearning to be anointed worthy of celebrity was captured in Dave Eggers’s book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. He writes a satirical transcript of an interview/audition tape he purportedly made for The Real World.

Eggers eagerly discloses to the interviewer the most sensational episodes of his life, including his daily habit of masturbating in the shower. His parents both died of cancer thirty-two days apart, leaving him at twenty-two to raise his eight-year-old brother Toph. Mr. T from the A-Team moved into the town he grew up in. His childhood friend’s father doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire. He drew a picture of his mother on her deathbed. His father was a devious alcoholic who drank vodka out of tall soda glasses.

Eggers muses on the hunger for celebrity:

Because, see, I think what my town, and your show, reflect so wonderfully is that the main by-product of the comfort and prosperity that I’m describing is a sort of pure, insinuating solipsism . . . we’ve grown up thinking of ourselves in relation to the political-media-entertainment ephemera, in our safe and comfortable homes, given the time to think about how we would fit into this or that band or TV show or movie, and how we would look doing it. These are people for whom the idea of anonymity is existentially irrational, indefensible.17

“Why do you want to be on The Real World?” asks the interviewer. “Because I want everyone to witness my youth,” answers Eggers:

I just mean, that it’s in bloom. That’s what you’re all about, right? The showing of raw fruit, correct? Whether that’s in videos or on Spring Break, whatever, the amplifying of youth, the editing and volume magnifying what it means to be right there, at the point when all is allowed and your body wants everything for it, is hungry and taut, churning, an energy vortex, sucking all toward it.18

Okay, you want to hear a sad story? Last night I was home, listening to an album. A favorite song came on, and I was singing aloud . . . and as I was singing and doing the slo-mo hands-in-hair maneuver, I messed up the words to the song I was singing, and though it was two fifty-one in the morning, I became quickly, deeply embarrassed about my singing gaffe, convinced that there was a very good chance that someone could see me—through the window, across the dark, across the street. I was sure, saw vividly that someone—or more likely a someone and his friends—over there was having a hearty laugh at my expense.19

At the end of the interview, Eggers says to the interviewer, “Reward me for my suffering,”