Friday, March 9, 2012
Why we tend to Love Guilty Pleasure TV
Why we tend to Love Guilty Pleasure TV
We all have our very little guilty pleasures. Secret things we tend to love that we do not prefer to admit. Expensive chocolates, the occasional cigarette, that matinee showing of The Vow. we all know we tend to should not, however we tend to simply can not help ourselves.
When it involves the tiny screen, guilty pleasure TV has practically become its own genre in recent years. And rather than hiding it, we've embraced our love for ridiculous reality shows and soapy dramas. we do not need to hide our secret affection for the Kardashians or The Bachelor or Revenge as a result of everybody else loves them too. Here's why we tend to love guilty pleasure TV and why it's most likely time to prevent feeling thus darned guilty concerning it.
1. It makes us feel higher concerning our own lives
[Picture] Guilty pleasure TV shows have the facility to place things into perspective. you'll be stuck during a dead finish job and a not-so-storybook romance, but hey, a minimum of you are not an adolescent Mom. And thus what if you haven't done the dishes in 3 days otherwise you totally forgot to pay the gas bill otherwise you mom will not stop attempting to introduce you to her accountant's son? Things may continuously be worse — you'll be a Lifetime movie character. the good factor concerning guilty pleasure TV is that it's the facility to create our crappy lives look downright awesome. as a result of your screwy relationships and emotional drama pale as compared to a woman who is kinda-sorta-definitely realizing that she's married to the city rapist (as Tiffani Amber Thiessen did within the Lifetime movie, The Stranger Beside Me).
2. generally TV is thus unhealthy it's...AWESOME
everybody is aware of concerning the great to unhealthy scale. however solely true lovers of guilty pleasure TV understand the unhealthy to awesome scale, whereby one thing is thus unbelievably, ridiculously, insanely terrible that it somehow becomes awesome. Take The Bachelor. Most folks rationally perceive that you simply cannot fall in love with a person that you simply have solely been on four dates with and who is simultaneously dating ten different girls. And we can, objectively, tell that half the Bachelorettes are simply yearning for their quarter-hour of fame whereas the opposite 0.5 are emotionally unstable human disasters. however that does not stop us from digging into the guilty pleasure sundae — complete with a generous serving to of NUTS — that's The Bachelor. The ABC dating show is absurdly god-awful, and that is specifically why it is the best reasonably guilty pleasure TV.
3. we tend to like watching pretty folks do pretty things
[Picture] it is a basic truth of human nature that we tend to like watching pretty folks do pretty things. the traditional Greeks carved statues of toned beauties lounging in numerous states of undress and Shakespeare wrote plays concerning young love and Monet painted girls with parasols standing against azure skies. TV shows like Gossip woman and therefore the Vampire Diaries serve an equivalent purpose in today's trendy world. most are lovely, wealthy, well-coiffed, and, a lot of typically than not, half-undressed. These shows are the last word wish-fulfillment fantasies, and there is nothing wrong with that. there is most likely even one thing healthy concerning living out your fantasies via the tiny screen rather than running around city asking each hot guy to bite you. We're simply saying.
4. The automotive crash impact of unhealthy TV
Have you ever ever watched a automotive crash in slow motion? you cannot look away. Go realize one on YouTube and see for yourself. We'll wait. Some guilty pleasure TV shows are are basically half-hour versions of slow motion automotive wrecks, and a bit like the important factor, we won't take our eyes off the screen. simply when it appears like Jersey Shore cannot get a lot of drunk and disorderly than it already is — BAM! — JWoww is punching matters within the face. And simply after you assume Toddlers and Tiaras cannot presumably plumb the depths of age-inappropriateness to any extent further than it already has — WHAMMO! — there is a four-year-old dressed up as a prostitute. it is so jaw-droppingly absurd that you simply can not help however tune in week when week (after week when week).
5. The predictability makes us feel safe
Last fall, HBO's Homeland gave audiences one in all the tensest, most nail-biting finales of the previous few years. it had been sophisticated, morally ambiguous, and totally riveting. it had been conjointly helllllla stressful and it most likely aged us a solid few months. Nuanced dramas concerning troublesome problems are nice, however generally when an extended day at work we tend to simply need to show our brains off. that is where the predictability of guilty pleasure TV shows comes in handy. The folks on Hoarders will continuously be counted on to hoard disgusting things like food wrappers, used diapers, and dead cats (all true stories). and you may never catch the Kardashian women talking concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the dysfunction of our political system. No, it's all shoes, hair, money, and non-stop narcissism. we tend to am fond of it as a result of we all know what to expect and therefore the unwavering consistency makes us feel safe during a world which will be unpredictable, confusing, and sometimes tragic. and perhaps that is the guiltiest pleasure of all of them...