Every now and again my 19-year-old daughter, Emily, and I like to watch a television comedy. Ancient Aliens on the History Channel is one of our favorites.
Oh, perhaps some folks watch the show and wonder whether ancient aliens really did build the pyramids or cause the tides or introduce us all to Twinkies. Every six months or so, Em and I tune in for the giggles. We particularly enjoy hearing a certain Legendary Times publisher Girogio A. Tsoukalos, he of the wild hair and even wilder theories. He’s so popular that his hair has its own Facebook page … with more than 26,500 likes.
A sample quote from Mr. Tsoukalos:
The only way the ancient astronauts theory can be disproven is when the extraterrestrials show up and say, ‘We were never here in the past.’
It’s this sort of logic on which Ancient Aliens is predicated. Last week, Em and I tuned into the show for a bit and heard a science-y guy talk about how alien intelligence might’ve been responsible for every weapon we have or will wield—ever. This particular guy was talking about, I think, how we humans learned how to make steel and said something like: “Did we just gradually learn how to do this process over the span of hundreds of years, or did aliens teach us? Nobody really knows, but …”
The phrase “nobody really knows” has become a running joke now. If I ask Emily who put an empty milk jug back in the fridge, she might say, “Did someone drink all the milk and put the empty gallon back in the refrigerator, or did ancient aliens take the previous gallon and replace it with what we see now? Nobody really knows …”
There is an odd sort of logic behind the whole “nobody knows” phrase. On a certain level, we don’t know, at least firsthand, very much at all. I didn’t see anyone drink the milk. I didn’t hang around the very first steel-smelters to see if they were visited by extraterrestrials. Much of what we “know” is the product of what other people know. We know about the chaos in Egypt not because we’ve been there, but because other people have and tell us about it. We know that fast food is bad for us because, in part, we’ve heard nutritionists and scientists say so.
Much of what we know actually involves a surprisingly complex process of discernment: We take in information and weigh that information to determine its credibility. Is the source reliable? Does the information make sense? Does it jibe with any corollaries that we’ve seen ourselves? Subconsciously, we weigh these and many other factors against one another: How credible the source? How reasonable the explanation? Our lives are like a never-ending trial, in which we must judge the truth or falsehood of a thousand things a day.
So, in the case of the missing milk, I believe it more likely that it was consumed by someone—most likely someone in my own family—than spirited away by aliens. And even if Emily insists that aliens are at fault (and even though I consider Emily to be a generally reliable source of information), I’d require a great deal more evidence from her than had she, say, pointed the finger of blame at her brother.
It strikes me that this is an important process to walk through whenever we’re exposed to “reality television.” It seems, more and more, that television “reality” doesn’t always seem to reflect what you and I would call reality. Take a couple of shows that recently launched new seasons:
Discovery Channel’s Amish Mafia (for which I posted an updated review this week), claims to give viewers a glimpse into a typically secretive community—especially into some self-styled enforcers who try to protect the Amish even as they get into a whole bunch of mischief of their own.
But the show feels about as real as a jackalope. Oh, perhaps some of the characters are or have been (or have at least seen the) Amish. But given that most Amish communities don’t have televisions, it seems unlikely that most would allow exploitative television crews to film them over multiple seasons. Every scene feels staged, every conflict forced. And now with its second-season influx of bizarre, picture-perfect characters (demon-possessed brothers! Dwarven enforcers!) the whole show feels more like Twin Peaks (a scripted show that itself pushed the limits of surreality) than any sort of reality I’m familiar with.
Duck Dynasty is a different animal, but it also engages in its share of unreality. The A&E show centers around the colorful (and heavily bearded) Robertson family, members of which (I’m guessing) play slightly exaggerated caricatures of their real-life selves. The situations seem staged, making the whole thing feel like a wacky sitcom without, maybe, the full script written in advance. And yet, some reality (or what I’d like to hope is reality) shines through: The Robertsons’ love of the outdoors, of God, and of their quirky extended family.
Truthfully, I don’t know how real either show is. I don’t personally know Amish Mafia’s Lebanon Levi or Duck Dynasty’s Willie Robertson. I’m not at the filming. Anyone involved with either show will be coy with how much is real (Amish Mafia only admits to airing “select reenactments”). And sometimes, perhaps it doesn’t matter. Duck Dynasty, real or no, doesn’t seem to be exploiting anyone (except, of course, the ducks).
But sometimes, it does. People who take Ancient Aliens as fact (and there are some who do) have a much different view of the world than I do. People who believe in the Amish Mafia might take their distaste for those hypocritical Mafia members and transpose that on the Amish as a whole. Perhaps it will even give them new reason to doubt or ignore the God that they—and we—worship. And what a shame that would be.
What is real on reality television? As the Ancient Aliens science guy might say, nobody really knows. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t facts from which we can make some good educated deductions.
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