Reality bites

According to TIME television blogger, James Poniewozik, the WGA strike may come to an end very soon. This will hopefully mean higher wages and more royalties for television writers who have been receiving the brunt end of the stick ever since Jack Bauer first charged his way onto DVD.

More importantly, I am hoping that a strike resolution will also bring an end to the conspiracy that is reality television.

It’s scripted, people. Deal with it.

Any professional deserves to receive credit for his or her work. Television writers are justified in demanding recognition for deciding what Lauren and Heidi will say on the Hills each week.

On second thought, if I was writing some of those lines, I don’t think I’d want people to know about it.

In all seriousness, though, I think it’s interesting that we live in a society that is so tweaked and so stylized, yet a fear of admitting that things are not as natural as they seem permeates our culture.

Think about it. We wear coloured contact lenses and eat genetically modified foods and get our daily news fix from heavily edited footage narrated by an airbrushed news anchor.  A lot of work goes into packaging and presentation these days.

Someone has to be first to stand up and admit there’s a puppet pulling the strings.

It’s time to give credit where credit is due.