Reality TV started to take off in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and it seems that for the last ten years or so one of its major subgenres has been something that might be termed “trainwreck reality”. In these shows, the producers follow a fixed set of people, either individually or as a group, who are chosen specifically for their negative qualities. The attraction to the viewers is presumably the schadenfreude and feeling of superiority that comes with seeing these people behaving badly, most commonly by repeatedly humiliating or embarrassing themselves and others.
I don’t watch a lot of TV so the only examples that come to mind are the following:
[ul][li]Jersey Shore (2009) is an American series about a group of young party-goers, various of whom are narcissistic, aggressive, irresponsible, promiscuous, or just downright stupid.[/li][li]The German Traumfrau gesucht (2012) assembles a group of downright unlikable men (lazy, unkempt slobs, or prissy, insufferable know-it-alls) who are acutely unaware of their repulsiveness, and then sends them abroad to Eastern European matchmaking services where we get to watch them get rejected by woman after horrified woman.[/li][/ul]
I’m wondering, what’s the origin of this subgenre, and what are the very earliest examples? If I had to guess, I’d say that these shows owe a lot to the long-running documentary series COPS, which debuted in 1989. But I wouldn’t count COPS as a bona fide example of the subgenre, since it doesn’t follow the same group of criminals (or even the same cops) from episode to episode. There’s probably also some influence from “embarrassment” mockumentaries like The Office, which premiered in 2001, but again, I wouldn’t count The Office as part of the genre because it is scripted and uses professional actors.
Even when the participants weren’t deliberately chosen because they were trainwrecks, the shows often end up that way. It’s sometimes considered that the first American reality show (if one doesn’t include shows with short unscripted prank scenes where the participants didn’t know they were being filmed and some shows where celebrities did things like hunting and fishing knowing that they were being filmed) was An American Family in 1973, which was shown on PBS. The wife demanded a separation on screen. The son came out as gay. It wasn’t intended to be like that. They were an upper-middle-class family who the people in charge of the show thought were happy:
Your choice for the origin of the genre, or for the earliest example of it? I haven’t heard/seen the show, but from what I glean from the Wikipedia article, the format is quite different from what I described in my OP. In particular, it’s a game show rather than a straight-up documentary, and it seems that the contestants are not followed for the entire length of the series (or even individual seasons) but rather have an episode-to-episode turnaround.
An American Family, mentioned by Wendell Wagner, better fits the long-running documentary format, though as he mentioned, the fact that it turned out to be a trainwreck was entirely accidental.
My first thought was of the MTV show The Real World which started out (ca. 1992) more or less thoughtful but then started to degenerate into “young people in a house fighting and making out”. (At least that was my impression of it; I haven’t watched it much.)
Agreed, Real World, and to a lesser extent Road Rules was the first show I thought of. The people were specifically cast for their conflicting/big personalities and the show was edited to make it look like they hated each other a whole lot more than they did. Many of those people have done interviews and many of them have stated that I/he/she wasn’t the asshole they were made out to be, but when the editors have 50,000 hours of footage and the only have to hand 11 hours to the network, they have more than enough material to tell the story however they want while casting any one of them as the ‘bad guy’.
This is Your Life, the radio program starting in 1948, probably hit the trainwreck category from time to time, with programs introducing the Hiroshima bombing survivors to the crew of the Enola Gay and reuniting Holocaust survivors to family members they had no idea had also survived (it’s great to reunite them - but to do it on air as a surprise is not cool). This Is Your Life - Wikipedia and 428: Oh You Shouldn't Have - This American Life provide details.
The first thing I thought of was The Osbournes (2002). That show was actually pretty funny. I forgot about The Real World, but then it wasn’t a show that I watched much.
I think that fits into the category, but not intentionally a train wreck. Queen for a Day is also like that, they may have been trying to make the audience feel better in comparison to the tragedies faced by some poor woman, but I don’t think they were really looking for the train wreck aspect. An American Family also didn’t intend to feature a train wreck but it might have been the inspiration for the future shows which intended just that. If not for the unintended train wrecks on the show it would have gained no significant notice.
I remember watching that show at the time, and they did a special where they showed bits of the audition interviews of the cast members. One of the guys said in his interview “sometimes if I find something that bugs somebody I just keep doing it to see what happens” and my friend commented ‘and that’s when they decided to cast him’. I don’t remember the show being especially thoughtful even at the start, they were pretty obviously gearing up for conflict. Maybe they weren’t shooting for as much conflict as they got in the second season where they had to boot David from the show for forcibly stripping a housemate, but they certainly wanted drama like in the third season where Puck got booted for being incredibly annoying.
Come to Vienna and watch Nachtschiene, which some TV station runs late at night instead of the infomercials that plague other channels. The show is produced by mounting a camera to the front of the local streetcars and just streaming what happens. As far as I know they’ve never shown any accidents. It’s just hour after hour of the streetcar trundling along its tracks and stopping to pick up and let off passengers.
COPS debuted in 1989 and fits your definition of “The attraction to the viewers is presumably the schadenfreude and feeling of superiority that comes with seeing these people behaving badly, most commonly by repeatedly humiliating or embarrassing themselves and others.”
