Next on Jerry Springer, teenage prostitutes and their pimps! This is a great example of schadenfreude, a malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others.
We need to look no further than daytime television to get our fill of this human characteristic. Of course Jerry, Ricki, and Morton Downey Jr. didn’t invent this form of airing dirty laundry but they have perfected it. And with any luck we can only hope this type of television has seen its last days.
Back in the early days if television this type of programming didn’t belong. No one aired their problems and misfortunes in public. It was considered crude and beneath ones dignity. It still is crude and undignified, but apparently now dignity can be bought and sold for a $600 fee and a free plane ticket.
One of the early examples of schadenfreude on television was a show called “Queen for a day.” Women who were down on their luck got up and told their story of woe (complete with tears) while an applause meter registered the results. The sadder the tale the better chance of winning.
It was the forerunner to reality TV.
Talk shows sprouted up like weeds in the ‘70s when more and more women were homemakers, and daytime TV was limited to soap operas. Phil Donahue was the last and only talk show host to do his job with class and professionalism. Then came Geraldo Rivera (a waste of a great journalist), Morton Downey Jr. (an idiot) and the rest of the sideshow barkers.
Believe it or not I do enjoy some reality TV. I watch COPS if I stumble across it during channel surfing.
I particularly enjoy watching criminals resist arrest, and the hilarity that ensues. I’ll admit watching a criminal get taken down by law enforcement is good fun.
And that is the true reasoning behind schadenfreude. We watch reality TV to see people who are much worse off than us, and we are thankful that we don’t have their problems.
For years television has been scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas for new and innovative shows. And the best we can come up with is re-airing American Gladiators? Maybe the solution is to turn off the TV and read a book or a newspaper.
Schadenfreude is a human trait it will never go away.
Hopefully, the Tyra Banks Show will.
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