Blog 6(Opinion piece)

 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/25/opinion/the-golden-bachelor-aging.html


In a world full of war, crime and corruption it is sometimes a bit refreshing to read an opinion piece about a non life threatening topic. I was very impressed at how much real world relevance was tied into this piece given it was written about a tabloid style reality tv show. When you paint a world full of idealism and unrealistic beauty standards, you have to deal with the repercussions that can have, often we think of this as an issue for younger groups of people, but the golden bachelor is a sign that is all changing. The writer of the piece even says this show is a perfect metaphor for the “Americas denial of aging and death”. There are certain realities that exist when you grow older, including many challenges you need to face both mentally and physically. If the golden bachelor wished to accurately portray a show full of baby boomers, for the sake of accuracy it would make sense to include both the positives and negatives associated with that age group. The contestants are all incredibly perky all the time they are on camera, if you’ve spent time around older generations of people, you know aging comes with ups and downs and it is not possible to always be “on” or in a mood to interact. The idea of expanding reality shows to a wider age range to include older generations of people seems like a good idea and a step toward inclusion, until you remember how little reality such shows actually include. If you are someone watching this so you can relate to the show more, but you have the deficiencies that actually plague real life senior citizens, you will most likely be forced to feel unfairly insecure or feel as if they are abnormal. According to Michelle, the people who will likely be most enthused about this show would be middle age or younger individuals hoping that this is the future they’re preparing for, rather than one filled with the sad realities of aging. The elder populations of people who like the show do not enjoy it because they think it is realistic and depicts the truth of aging, they enjoy the fantasy of presents, likely wishing they were feeling younger, not leaving content with how they really feel. Michelle points out one of the main hurdles preventing truly authentic reality tv could be the bases of people who consume the medium, people often watch tv to escape from their realities, not to be reminded of them. It would be interesting to see if a show based in reality and related to aging would get any views at all, show runners obviously have very little faith in this on certain entertainment based platforms. It will be interesting to see if this show continues for the long haul, or receives any new criticism or praise for its inclusion of much older participants than the average reality tv show. It will also be very interesting to see the continuing age demographics of the people who watch and if older people are turned off by the lack of reality or enticed by the fantasy. 

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