Death and Reality TV

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Every Wednesday, YA Highway asks their readership a simple question to answer on your blog. Once you answer, you your link in the comments for other readers to hop on board. This is Road Trip Wednesday.


Today's Question: How would you impress (or not impress) the Hunger Games judges?

Confession: I haven't read The Hunger Games.

This being said, I do know something about killing people off on reality TV. No, really.

Image courtesy of Pyritz Design.
Back when I thought I had a passion for working in theatre*, I worked on a show called REAL DEAD. It was a premiere by a guy named Marty Barrett. The premise was simple: a group of strangers live in a house - very similar to The Real World or Big Brother. The twist was while these people thought they would just be living life like all reality TV stars, they would actually get offed one by one until Mary was the only person left.

The fictional TV audience loved the show and the producers clamored for a second season where they'd follow Mary around until she died. (The play really focused on the inaugural season but had a flash forward beginning.)

So in the first season, which the play was actually about, we learned about the characters and their quirks. In true reality TV fashion, they acted out, hooked up, add-general-reality-TV-cliche-here - the works. Then they had to start killing each other off for survival.

So death and reality TV have been hand in hand for a while starting with Battle Royale** in 1999. This keeps coming up in some form because from a psychological perspective, it's interesting to see what a person's breaking point is. If you and your friend were trapped in a room for a month and the only way out was to kill the other, what would you be a matyr and let your friend live? Interesting question, isn't it?

Of course, leave it to the French to take the dead and reality TV connection to the limit. Reading this article in The Washington Post wants me to polish off my 11th grade French and watch the documentary.

Why do you think there's a connection between reality TV and death? Comment below. And if you've read The Hunger Games trilogy and want to see how other would impress the judges, head over to YA Highway.



*Circa 2001 - 2004ish. Turns out I was just waiting for Hubby.
** For more information about Battle Royale, you can wiki or you can go to Erinn's blog.
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Last.fm hit of the day: A Grave Upon Mankind by Cultus Sanguine