It’s Friday so I’m getting out my soapbox. You have been warned.
I’m here to lament the continued trend in entertainment to reducing everything to a competition. You might even call it Competition Creep.
I hate competition. I find it stressful. I also realize that some folks enjoy watching it and even thrive on participating. Not me. Give me some fascinating history shows, arts programs, human interest stories and home shows that don’t take themselves too seriously. Throw in some old episodes of “Whose Line?” where the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.
If you are looking for competition, there are plenty of sporting events to follow and game shows, too. Isn’t that enough?
Apparently not.
It seems that almost everything on television these days is framed as a competition. For those of us who remember a life before there was this thing called “Reality TV” the change is noticeable. Perhaps you’d like to see a seasonal show on the making of gingerbread houses. Too bad. You can only find something along the lines of a “Great Gingerbread Showdown” with highly stressed competitors forced to meet unrealistic expectations under difficult conditions with the addition of artificially created drama for added “television interest.”
No thanks.
Competition has wormed its way into cooking shows, home and garden shows, musical entertainment, even shows about crafting!!! It has been used to create competitions around weight loss and courtship, for heaven’s sake. Then there are the sheer endurance competitions which harken back to Depression-era dance marathons.
Some years back there was a very sweet (dare I say, “low key”?) musical show called “Majors and Minors” aimed at teens and pre-teens. It’s the only competition-styled show that has ever gotten it right, in my opinion. It went against the mold of pitting contestants against one another and creating artificial drama. They only made one season. It seems there wasn’t interest from the folks on high in bankrolling that kind of programming.
I have another concern aside from my own natural aversion to competition entertainment. It has infected to play of children - - even very young children. A table full of preschoolers exploring play dough and various related tools used to play “bakery”, make a “meal’, or create “animals” for a zoo. Now very often they will act out reality tv contests. Roles are assigned. Someone must be the judge. Social hierarchies within the classroom are undoubtedly reinforced. There will be tears, or arguments. Some children who would thrive in purely imaginative play will feel uncomfortable or left out.
There are honestly enough natural and developmentally appropriate experiences and challenges for kids that they can enjoy and grow through without subjecting them to the limitations of competition. What’s sad is that, once inundated with the competition mindset in entertainment, they will keep reproducing it in their play. Like the cowbird egg in the nest, it crowds out everything else.
It’s not that competition is inherently wrong or should be eliminated. My point is that it doesn’t need to be in everything. It’s honestly a lazy and cheap framework that seems to stimulate a certain kind of dopamine rush. Once that response is activated and that expectation is created, many people forget that there is anything else.
A world where everything is “contestified” is a smaller and less imaginative world. It is a world where values are skewed and the innate value of each human being is irrelevant. What matters is not who you are or how you can contribute but only “if you can win.” The logical consequence of this mindset is how the media now covers presidential elections.
Think about it.
Years ago there was a push to examine the nature and amount of violence in children’s television. Studies were done. The results were alarming. Many of the shows with more gratuitous violence were changed or went away. Yet there is still enough of that violence out there to influence children’s play. Ask anyone who does playground duty. They’ll have stories for you.
The problem with competition entertainment is that its impact is not as obvious to spot. It’s easy to recognize a cartoon-inspired melee on the playground when children are yelling “I’m Batman!” or the current favorite of the day. It’s harder to see how insidiously competion has turned the imaginative adventure of childhood into a high-stakes game show. Over and over again certain children will thrive while others will languish and that pattern will extend to classroom behavior, social interaction, and will seep, irrevocably, into self concept.
Is “The Great Gingerbread Showdown” worth all that?
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