"DRAMA?! Where's It At?: Quick Glance At Drama In The Media"

     Late last night, I was up job searching and I decided to check out some television. Now, usually, if the television is on (which is rare), it's for Netflix, Real World, Martin, documentaries from the history channel, sports, or 90's cartoons...but I tune into LMN and Lifetime sometimes. I found "Celebrity Wife Swap". Sometimes interesting, sometimes not x_x. On last night's episode, Lisa Leslie and Julie Brown were switching homes for a week. You know how this goes, right? They take two wives from two mildly to extremely different environments and lifestyles and place them into each other's homes for a week. After the week is up, the wives (and their partners) meet up to "discuss" the observations, experiences, and likes and dislikes of the other family's routine. Ever wonder why they don't swap husbands on the show?  I even checked Google to see if there was an episode that had switched husbands, but when I typed "husband swap" in the search engine, one of the results I viewed was an actual wife swapping business where wives swap husbands for sexual pleasures. Definitely not was I was looking for...(moment of awkward silence).

     Okay, anyway, I continued watching the episode, and as the end of it approached, the mini preview before the commercials as to what was happening next flashed across the screen. Alongside the dramatic music and the flick of both families sitting across from each other at the table, the preview showed a Lisa Leslie's slightly and seemingly stern facial expression towards her husband, and Julie Brown making a statement about wearing heels in order to get Leslie's husband's attention. "OHHHHH!! No she didn't!!!" "Why was Lisa looking like that?!" "Drama! Drama! Drama!" I mean, those are just a couple of examples of how I'm certain some people felt. After the commercials, I watched the rest of the episode, and that "drama" showed in the preview of what was coming next, was not what actually occurred. Yes, Leslie had a certain facial expression at one point (after finding out her husband lost his tennis match because she doesn't like losing lol), and Brown made a statement about wearing her heels (because she felt it was the best way to get Leslie's husband's attention because of his height), but, the clips shown in the preview, were edited to display the presence of drama. To keep the viewer interested. Drama. Something that keeps some people alive, right?!

     We gladly embrace the ability the media grants us to study, evaluate, and respond to someone else's drama while temporarily escaping our own lives. Some of us await gossip and even start it to create drama...in real life (i.e. Facebook and Twitter he say/she say, attempted defamation of someone else's character, keyboard warriors, dramatic confrontation, etc). To live and thrive off of it. So what better way to help the drama fiends survive than to offer shows like reality shows (with limited scripting) with real life, actual individuals sharing their drama with the world?! Sure, mystery, battle, love stories, and crime stories ignite a flame for more, but it's drama. No matter how big of the drama or small. Perhaps, drama can have different categories, but... it's still drama. Reality shows and tv drama...YES!! So many to choose from. Enough shows to make a status on Facebook about. Enough shows granting us the ability to make a call to a friend to discuss what just happened, or to chat about over lunch! It may be a guilty pleasure of all of ours. My drama is "Real World: Free Agents". I'm not a "Real Housewives of (insert location here)", "Love and Hip Hop", "Scandal", "All My Children" or "The Bachelor" type of individual for reasons that I should save for another blog, but the drama in my show is there, too. I don't search for it though. I'm more interested in how a group of people manage to live together and face each other in challenges while fighting for money (and pride), but the drama makes its way in.

     What we seldom think about, though, is how some of us allow ourselves to get sucked into the drama from the media. How we feed into their edited previews and clips and shows and allow it to consume our minds. How the media only offers certain information when covering things that have made the news, and how negative or devastating news is displayed more than positive news. Did you even notice how drama is used to lure some of us in? Have we asked ourselves "Why do I like watching women argue and talk about one another behind their backs?", "Why is being someone's mistress so enticing?", or "Why am I watching people fight?" Is it because it just happens? Is it because it's life? Is it an outlet for some people that sleep with drama? Is it consoling because it shows that all humans have issues? Is it just a simple guilty pleasure? Is it something we cannot avoid? Is it even a big deal? Really...Why do you watch?

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B. Elae
5/24/2014
12:10 p.m.