I must admit, I have an ever-growing obsession for the Jeremy Kyle Show. Is it his baby? Has she cheated on him? I am, like many others, fascinated by the vicious cycle of the same old stories just with different dysfunctional people. I guess I am an escapist in a way, I like to watch people in a dilemma so that I think to myself: "Heck! It could be worse!"
It's not just me, I can assure you of that. The whole of the UK is fixating themselves on the lives of others. Like peeping toms, only instead of a window they have a television screen. If you went up to a stranger and asked: "Do you know about the Jeremy Kyle Show?" The most likely answer would be "yes". So what is it about UK and US confrontational chat shows that have dominated our day time TV?
Is it a case of we're not allowed to make bears dance anymore, so have we turned to humans instead? They ring the show to 'talk it out', though I think most of them prefer to enter the stage 'effing-and-blinding', and after having been provoked so much on stage to the point where they feel the need to storm off, they are sent backstage to sort things out with the 'after care team.' Have you listened to the many one-liners that spiel out of Kyle's mouth? The same observations where one person hasn't "put something on the end of it", or maybe they should just "shut up, it's called the Jeremy Kyle show."
I guess the US is to blame, possibly. Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake (and many others who I can't think of right now) have stuck us at the top of a slippery slope when we haven't even learnt how to ski yet. So what comes next when we crash at the bottom? Do we just stick people on a stage and laugh at them for a whole thirty minutes? Stick them in the spotlight and just boo and hiss at them because the DNA test proved that yes, they were the selfish person who didn't "put something on the end of it" and as a result conceived a child who is "stuck in the middle of all this mess." After all, "it's all about the children." It's not enough that Jeremy has told them how useless they are, we must get our say. We have to stand up in that audience and shout what we think, how else will that camera turn on us? Provoke them even more so they do or say something horrific, then we can hate them even more for it.
So here we are, and shall remain for as long as I can see. Sitting in front of our screens, gasping at the fact that so-and-so has cheated on such-and-such. We shall crack our whips as the ringmasters of social dysfunction and collapse, until there is no more fresh skin in society to break.