Research Paper on Talk Shows: Exploiting Victims for Entertainment?

Abstract

Talk shows are among the essential programs established by media companies to examine a wide range of social, psychological, and sexual issues. However, talk shows turn these issues into a form of entertainment by going overboard to exploit the victims' situations. Instead of establishing a better understanding of the problems in society, talk shows tend to perpetuate the worst generalizations of the victims, therefore, reducing compassion among audiences for the affected. The entertainment value of talk shows is mainly based on the exploitation of victims to offer fascinating stories thus resulting in good ratings for the talk show from viewership. Also, the other reality of talk shows is that they have replaced serious discussion regarding education, unemployment, injustice and community development, and focused on gender stereotyping as forms of entertainment.

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Keywords: Talk show, psychological, exploit, entertainment, society.

Executive Summary

As we watch, tune in, and are engaged, TV talk shows are revising our social contents, changing our observations, our social connections, and our connections to the ordinary world. Television talk shows offer us a universe of obscured limits. TV talk shows make an imitation network, with no of the social and individual duties that are connected to reality. The first suspicion-that most social pathology is the consequence of a medicinal issue outside the ability to control of the supposed "injured individual"- energizes, at any rate by implication, individuals to make advances on these shows admitting preposterous accounts of against social conduct to a great many outsiders. However, these individuals remain cartoons, culled out of the setting of their real lives, irrelevant aside from their engaging issue. (All things considered, somebody may scrutinize the advantages of freely admitting to individuals who genuinely could not care less about you or cannot offer guidance. The focal contortion that these shows propound is that they offer favorable treatment to visitors and valuable guidance to the crowd. TV talk shows are fields for genuine individuals. Their control by "has," who switch back and forth between deriding, a disparaging skepticism ("I need to be as shrewd as you sometime in the future"- Phil), and a deliberately developed verisimilitude of minding ("Thank you for offering that to us"- Oprah) must have repercussions for the "visitors" after the show is finished. We the survey crowd have engaged ourselves at the catastrophes of genuine lives.

Americas Victims: Do Talk Shows Exploit Society's Victims?

IntroductionUndoubtedly, talk shows have taken control of daytime television in the world of television day in day out. This takeover has resulted in a prolonged public disagreement. Soap operas and game shows have dominated the daytime airwaves in the nineteen-eighties. Talk shows were most prevalent among television viewers during the nineteens period. The trend of these talk shows began with characters such as Sally Jesse Rafael (now called Sally), Geraldo Rivera to mention but a few (Tolson). Today's talk shows use the same subjects and topics used by the original character; mostly, they only change the format and style but everything else is just the same. Today's talk shows concentrate on the welfare of society and the improvement of standards of living. By focusing on the welfare of society, talk shows discuss the issues that victims of society have encountered in an attempt to create awareness (see fig. 1).

Not everyone experiences or witnesses what talk shows are all about, so watching them gives people the picture of what the talk shows talk about making them understand what is happening in day to day activities. Some shows do not educate, but they serve a different purpose too such as the Ricki Lake Show, the Jenny Jones Show. Such shows can be the best for a laugh and other reasons (Tolson). They are not as respectable as the Opera Winfrey Show, or as flagrant as the Jerry Springer show.

According to Peck, the biggest issue most people have with these talk shows is that they exploit the lives of people for the public to see. When switching from one channel to another, you come across topics such as sex, drugs and hate among adults in the news. Talk shows take the most heat is because this is the time of bringing to light these taboo issues. Everyone that listens and sees these talk shows be it child or adult may tend to think it is the usual way of living. Children with proper morals get confused when they turn on the TV and see open talks on immoral topics of discussion such as "Prostitution" and "Pregnant strippers". Just imagine how a twelve-year-old must feel when he watches a talk show about other age mates, but these teens have already had numerous sexual partners who are among the many things their guardians condemn. The talk shows tend to trick public viewers into watching them by not telling them in advance what the shows are about.

How TV Talk Shows Deconstruct Society and Exploit Victims

Society is formed as a result of its own making that is what it will allow and what it will not allow. If community order is not a given, if it is not within the community members, then without a doubt, we are clearly in the act of creating virtual realities, of different functions (Abt 1). Propensities, schedules and establishments are the examples that make the world underestimated. Learning of how to carry on is contained in social contexts that are themselves results of human collaboration and correspondence about the idea of reality taboos. Blame, shame, humiliation are controlling emotions that emerge from talking the unspeakable and from going against the taboos.

In the process of watching, listening, and getting entertained, the TV talk shows are rewriting our culture, changing our perceptions, our community relationships, and our relationships to the real natural world. TV talk shows offer us a universe of obscured limits. Cultural differences between private and public, good and bad, reliable and reliable witnesses, truthfulness and falseness, responsibility and irresponsibility, normal and abnormal, therapy and exploitation, familiar and stranger, society and fragmentation are controlled and erased for our intrusion and entertainment (Abt 2).

A community progressively and spot shows life span, a reliance dependent on underlying interests, every day concerns, collective commitments, standards, family relationship, kinship, devotion, and neighborhood learning, genuine physical structures, not merely shared information.. When your house is on fire, the neighbor is inspired to aid you in putting it out because both of you care about each other and the fire is a threat to both houses. These TV talk shows build an inferior community, lacking the communal and distinctive responsibilities that are connected to real life (Abt 3).

Therapy as excitement and entertainment is the intrigue of these shows. The supposed hosts depend on the critical utilization of the remedial model for mental sound nibbles. The obligation to instruct and illuminate the audience is the voiced method of reasoning for getting the purported visitors to give always titillating subtleties of their offences, or the wrongdoings done to them by family or companions.

The fundamental presumption that most social pathology is the consequence of a restorative issue outside the ability to control of the supposed "injured individual"-supports, in any event in a roundabout way, individuals to make advances on these shows admitting preposterous accounts of hostile to social conduct in no small number of outsiders (Abt 3). As opposed to being embarrassed, or attempting to conceal their shame, "visitors" readily and anxiously talk about their child molesting sexual idiosyncrasies, and criminal records with an end goal to look for understanding for their specific illness. However, these individuals remain exaggerations, culled out of the setting of their real lives, insignificant except for their entertaining problem. In real life, somebody may scrutinize the advantages of openly admitting to individuals who genuinely could not care less about you or cannot offer guidance.

The focal bending that these shows propound is that they offer favorable treatment to visitors and valuable guidance to the audience. What's more, that they are not principally intended to extract the most arresting and most engaging passionate showcases from members. This prompts such self-serving and senseless addresses by hosts.

The audience at different focuses in the hour gets an opportunity to jump on TV as well. Their inquiries are frequently inconsiderate by ordinary benchmarks and fortify the host's solicitations for all the more conceivably entertaining details. Their recommendation ranges from only oversimplified, in light of the current situation, to misdirecting and wrong. For instance, in an ongoing Sally Jessy Raphael Show entitled "When Your Best Friend Is Sleeping with Your Father, "the little girls in front of an audience were encouraged to cherish them both and acknowledge the circumstance only? (Abt 4).

The riskiest piece of this is the most part nonjudgmental tenor of the discourse. Society's shows are ridiculed without any potential repercussions, and the shrouded message is that the best approach to jump on TV is to be as silly and withdrawn as possible. All home watchers have no immediate contact, physically, with the social circumstance in the studio. Home viewers can be tuning in to individuals relating death camp revulsions while popping a cold supper into the microwave. The collective, regular universe of the home audience is made strange by the differentiating stories of awfulness and hardship they are just half tuning in to (Nelson).

Family Traumatized By Murder and Then by Talk ShowThis story of an American lady, whose mother was murdered by their father who conspired with a woman he had earlier had an affair with, illustrates an excellent example of victim exploitation by talk shows. This 1991 occurrence traumatized the lady since any form of loss can be distressing (Bradford). As usual, any brutal murder case can bring about a magnified grieving process, which is often cut short and complicated by the investigation activities that follow. Based on a 2011 report, it was revealed that 80% of families hit with murder incidences are later reported to suffer from trauma-related symptoms (Bradford). The aftermath of murder bears several challenges, including repeated subjection to processes of re-trauma.

The drama surrounding murder cases can be complicated, and therefore talk shows tend to chip in to offer exciting content to their viewers. The audiences for such shows forget the reality of the impacts accompanying the murder bereaved families; ranging from grief to trauma, which is never projected on the screens. In most cases, if the media experience is not managed, the original trauma might strike back. News is an essential aspect of TV viewership, mainly when the media handles stories for public interest. However, there arises apparent discrepancy when the story becomes for public interest and when it is of interest to the public- the latter is devastating.

Most families go wrong the moment they seek help from media, mainly when it seems to be...