Reality Check

So I’ve been rewatching Veep. Many of us are, I think, in honor of recent political occurrences. Admittedly, there are a few similarities to be drawn between Veep and current American politics (which I find hilarious), but one major difference trumps all similarities. American politics carry very real, rarely humorous consequences. Veep is made-up. 

I used to recoil at the phrase, “It’s just a TV show,” because it belittled the medium’s importance in my life. TV shows can be memories, wake-up calls, friends, and teachers. They can help you view and understand the world when you feel lost in it. They can encourage tangible change and cause serious harm. What I need reminding of is that they can also be “just a show.” This applies to all forms of entertainment, of course—movies, music, books, and social media alike. Social media might be the most obvious culprit these days, but TV has always been my chosen vice. For those who tend to get caught up in things (like myself), it is easy to be all-consumed by media and forget where imagination ends and reality begins. 

The real world and the world I see on screen have been precariously indecipherable for as long as I can remember. There was a moment there where I feared (and my mother probably did too) that my preoccupation with fictional life would destroy my enjoyment of real life. Perhaps it briefly did. Now, I am better able to decipher that line, though that doesn’t mean I don’t like crossing over it every once in a while.

For example, at the Democratic National Convention the other week, I got giddy when Kerry Washington and Tony Goldwyn took the stage (I hope you all know what Scandal means to me by now). I loved the jokes about Olivia Pope coming to save the election and America needing a sexy, competent president like Fitzgerald Grant. I also cracked up at the Law & Order-inspired promotional that framed Harris as the prosecutor and Trump as the criminal. To amp up audiences and draw in more supporters, the DNC was purposefully blurring the lines between entertainment and reality. They unabashedly asked the question: What if you were watching this election unfold on your favorite TV show? How would you want the characters to act? And the illusion worked on me. It totally did. 

Then I remembered an Atlantic article I read a few months ago that brought me back to Earth hard and fast. Megan Garber’s “We’ve Lost the Plot” is an examination of what she calls our “metaverse” and how entertainment and reality have become frighteningly synonymous. She argues that major tech corporations, social media, and television are pushing our society towards the dystopian, referencing 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. Everything is recorded and watched. Everyone is subject to exploitation. “‘All the world’s a stage’” was once a metaphor; today, it’s a dull description of life in the metaverse,” she writes. As a TV lover herself, Garber points out the vicious cycle of turning real world events (most often tragedies) into entertainment, humans into characters, and forfeiting integrity for charisma. It muddles our relationships, our perception of self, and our politics, among other things. If our world has become a stage, our value system has shifted towards the performative. How do you act when no one is watching, if someone is always watching? Do we care more about the principles of a politician, or how good their marketing campaign is?

I felt (feel) directly called out. One of my favorite jokes to make is that everything I know about life I’ve learned from television. I think it’s hilarious because it’s largely true. But upon rereading Garber’s article, I feel apprehensive about that truth. Not that Garber is shaming anyone or any particular thing—she isn’t. She is instead highlighting the pattern of events that got us here, to the “metaverse.” The gradual disillusionment with reality. It is evident in our language, she argues: “People who are deluded, we say, have ‘lost the plot’; people who have become pariahs have been ‘canceled.’...These are jokes, of course, but they have an uneasy edge. They suggest a creeping realization that we truly have come to inhabit our entertainment.”

I will be the first to admit that I use such language. My friends and I love to point out moments in our lives we think would be a sitcom bit, or refer to a dramatic event as “the series finale.” When somebody exits our lives, they’ve been “written off.” When someone moves to a new city, they’re getting their “spin-off episode.” These types of comments always bring a smile to my face and I don’t particularly see a problem with them. However, I understand where Garber is coming from. This can be a slippery slope into delusion. Trust me, I do not endorse delusion. “Dwell in this environment long enough, and it becomes difficult to process the facts of the world through anything except entertainment,” Garber writes. “We’ve become so accustomed to its heightened atmosphere that the plain old real version of things starts to seem dull by comparison.”

On that point, I wholeheartedly agree with Garber. Toeing the line between the real world and the screen world is all fun and games until you don’t know what the weather was like today or how to look a real human being in the eye. Entertainment, specifically television, is meant to be a temporary escape, not a permanent reality. As much as I like TV, I think that would be terrifying. The real world is quiet and slow and bright and warm. There are serious stakes and matters to attend to that require quiet, slow thought. 

Kamala Harris is not Olivia Pope of Scandal or Selina Meyer of Veep. No writers room has preordained the results of the upcoming election. The power is in our hands and our actions have consequences.

Megan Garber finishes her article with this sentiment: “Be transported by our entertainment but not bound by it.” Though it has taken me some time, I am now of the same belief. Sometimes the screen world can teach us empathy, language, and critical thought, which are all meant to be utilized in our real world, where we look people in the eye and say “hello” as we walk by. Other times, a TV show really is just a TV show. You turn it off, put your shoes on, and go outside.

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I’m not sure who I’m writing this for because I think to most people this topic is straightforward. It’s never been straightforward to me. So, maybe I’m just writing this for myself and that’s okay. Nonetheless, I urge you to read “We’ve Lost the Plot” by Megan Garber, who is more eloquent than I could ever dream of being.