{"id":3589,"date":"2015-05-21T04:30:58","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T04:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=3589"},"modified":"2015-05-21T04:30:58","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T04:30:58","slug":"the-guilty-pleasure-of-watching-trashy-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-guilty-pleasure-of-watching-trashy-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"The guilty pleasure of watching trashy TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles McCoy<\/a>, SUNY Plattsburgh<\/a><\/em> and Roscoe Scarborough<\/a>, University of Virginia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Many Americans have a conflicted relationship with the media they watch.<\/p>\n

In particular, those who think of themselves as \u201ccultured\u201d tend to have a negative view of certain \u201clow-brow\u201d contemporary television shows. Scripted shows like Two and a Half Men and Reign are described as \u201cbanal<\/a>\u201d and \u201cdumb<\/a>,\u201d while the latest crop of \u201ctrashy<\/a>\u201d reality shows \u2013 The Bachelorette, Keeping Up with the Kardashians \u2013 are to be enjoyed only by \u201chate-watching<\/a>\u201d them.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, these very<\/a> same<\/a> shows<\/a> are watched by millions of people each week.<\/p>\n

The popularity (and profitability) of reality TV has reshaped the landscape of television<\/a>. In fact, many TV producers are purposely making \u201cbad\u201d shows to appeal to a certain type of viewer.<\/p>\n

How can so many people complain so much about these shows \u2013 yet still watch them?<\/p>\n

We sought to understand<\/a> this seeming contradiction by going to the source and talking to self-described viewers of \u201cbad\u201d television.<\/p>\n

Many of the people we interviewed found trashy television too offensive<\/a> to watch, but there were others who kept on consuming, even as they described the shows as \u201cawful,\u201d \u201cterrible,\u201d and \u201cjust downright bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those we talked to were often what society considers to be \u201ccultured\u201d \u2013 upper-class, educated and comfortable talking about art or their favorite novelist. These sophisticated television viewers felt the contradiction of watching trashy television even more acutely than most; they struggled with the idea that, for all their appreciation of \u201cgood\u201d culture, they found themselves repeatedly watching such \u201cbad\u201d TV.<\/p>\n

In order to overcome the contradiction of condemning while also consuming, our interviewees generally resorted to three explanations.<\/p>\n

A guilty pleasure<\/h2>\n

Many cultured viewers actually feel quite badly about watching trashy television, but they can\u2019t seem to stop themselves.<\/p>\n

They feel ashamed, almost unclean, after watching an episode of Reign or The Bachelor, but they can\u2019t help it.<\/p>\n

As one 50-year-old nonprofit manager explained:<\/p>\n

You feel a little dirty in a way\u2026I\u2019m like, \u201cOh my God. Why are you doing this to yourself, and why am I choosing to sit here and watch it when it\u2019s just ridiculous?\u201d I feel terrible about myself. I\u2019m like, \u201cI\u2019ve wasted twenty minutes here, just watching America\u2019s Next Top Model.\u201d And, you know, I resolve never to do it again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But she does watch again, like most other guilty pleasure viewers. And again. And again.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust one more episode,\u201d they say. Or, \u201cIt\u2019s been such a long day and my job is so demanding, it\u2019s okay if I indulge in a little mindless crap at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most claim it is simply out of their control, like being unable to look away from a car crash. One university professor described why he watches Judge Judy like this:<\/p>\n

There is an element there of being freaked out by something, and watching it is almost like watching a car wreck. You know, you are driving along the highway and you see a car smashed up, you slow down; it\u2019s the same kind of thing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ironic consumption<\/h2>\n

Not all feel guilty about watching trashy television \u2013 some revel in it.<\/p>\n

Ironic consumers, or \u201chipster viewers,\u201d think that the shows they watch are really bad, but they still enjoy them: they derive great pleasure from making fun of a terrible show. To them, trashy television is \u2013 as the saying goes \u2013 \u201cso bad it\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n

These viewers tend to watch trashy television from an emotional distance. They don\u2019t really feel connected to the characters or care about their fates. (They are just there for the laughs, after all.)<\/p>\n

Watching with this perspective allows them to feel superior to the show and its conventional viewers. A 28-year-old teacher who enjoys watching Hoarders stated:<\/p>\n

It depicts such a bad scenario, but it\u2019s pleasurable to watch because it makes you feel better about yourself\u2026a person will think, \u201cThank God I\u2019m not like that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a way, by watching trashy TV from a position of superiority, ironic consumers can reaffirm their own self-perception of being cultured.<\/p>\n

A camp sensibility<\/h2>\n

Audiences who view these shows as camp have more complex reasons behind their reasons for watching. Susan Sontag described \u201ccamp sensibility\u201d<\/a> as enjoying a cultural object that is so extravagant and exaggerated that it achieves a certain kind of \u201cfailed seriousness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those with a camp sensibility don\u2019t feel guilty, nor do they revel in the trashiness of bad television. Rather, these connoisseurs of bad culture have a strange kind of admiration \u2013 almost reverence \u2013 for really awful cultural products. As Sontag observed, \u201cCamp is a tender feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

One graduate student compared his enjoyment of 1980s B-movies to honoring an embarrassing cultural moment:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sort of a celebration of our failure. Like, I can\u2019t believe someone spent so much time on this and it\u2019s so bad; maybe that\u2019s it, celebrating our failings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whereas ironic consumers feel apart and above the cultural object, a camp sensibility allows a viewer to identify with the creators of the movie or television show. They admire the vision of the producers and rejoice in its ultimately disastrous outcome.<\/p>\n

Our complicated culture<\/h2>\n

We exist in a complicated cultural environment where we no longer take the products of media at face value. We make aesthetic and moral judgments about TV shows \u2013 \u201cthat was awful,\u201d \u201cthis is trash\u201d \u2013 but we keep on watching. Conflicted, we want to have it both ways; we try to hold on to the idea that we really do have \u201cgood taste,\u201d even as we consume television we judge to be terrible.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, television producers have caught on. Now \u201cbad\u201d shows are expressly produced for connoisseurs of trashy television. Shows like 16 and Pregnant, Jersey Shore, and True Blood can be specifically consumed as a guilty pleasure, ironically or with a camp sensibility.<\/p>\n

All the while we try to remain aesthetically pure. We watch these \u201ctrashy\u201d shows at a distance, in order not to be contaminated by the appearance of bad taste.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Charles McCoy<\/a> is Assistant Professor of Sociology at SUNY Plattsburgh<\/a>.
\nRoscoe Scarborough<\/a> is PhD candidate in Sociology at University of Virginia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>.
\nRead the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles McCoy, SUNY Plattsburgh and Roscoe Scarborough, University of Virginia Many Americans have a conflicted relationship with the media they watch. In particular, those who think of themselves as \u201ccultured\u201d tend to have a negative view of certain \u201clow-brow\u201d contemporary television shows. Scripted shows like Two and a Half Men and Reign are described as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":7054,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[41],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3589"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3590,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3589\/revisions\/3590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}