In her article, Laurie Ouellette talks about some of the civic responsibilities of reality TV shows and the networks who run them. She says, “Reality TV’s helping interventions disrupt the calculated rationality of today’s enterprise culture, encouraging visceral and affective reactions to poverty not unlike the industrial slum photographs of Jacob Riis or the gas company-funded social problem documentaries of John Grierson.” In this video of a YouTube talk show, The Majority Report with Sam Seder(admittedly, he’s super irritating to watch and listen to–I’m sorry), Seder addresses the promo of a new CBS reality show, The Briefcase, which encourages everything Ouellette mentions.
In this new show, a struggling, middle-class family is given a briefcase full of money, which they can either keep, give some away, or give it all away. If they give any of it away, they’re promised it would go to an equally struggling, or worse off family. After the camera watches them try and make this decision for a while, the family is informed that the other family also received a briefcase and is trying to make the same decision they are.
This show is all about watching people’s emotions. Unfortunately, it also brings out a lot of bad qualities in people, specifically voices of prejudice when they find out who the other, potentially worse-off family is. Seder addresses this on his talk show and how, while on the surface, being a show about altruism by giving these families money and highlighting good natures, how gruesome it is to pit these already struggling families against each other for entertainment.
The show was received with widely negative responses, and was cancelled after its first season.