A prediction or fiction?

[strange]

Does anyone else think that the road humanity is going down may lead to actual TV shows like the Running Man or extreme game shows and reality tv? It seems as reality tv becomes more popular and more surreal (which begs to question why it's still called reality tv?) but do you think reality tv or tv shows will dissolve into that sort of cruel viewing or am i just being paranoid?

[Bryan James]

Does art imitate life or does life imitate art?

Yes.

[Lencho_of_the_Apes]

Good science fiction should be able to project cultural trends into the future, the same way it does with technological advances. For example, writers in the 30s-40s-50s-60s that thought about overpopulation, or...

An even better example: if you're familiar with the movie "Idiocracy", the basic idea for that was thought of in the 1950's, long before the movie makers started thinking about how dumb the world was getting. ("The Marching Morons", by Fredrik Pohl aand C.M. Kornbluth.)


If you think you see society moving in a direction similar to what you read in The Running Man, that just means that the seeds of something like that were visible to Sai King at the time he wrote the book.


We all float down here.

[marew1]

I hope it never comes to that. We need good, entertaining, programs.

[bryras]

I can actually see cruel programming happening. I bet the some pretty crazy ideas have actually been pitched already. I have trouble with a lot of the reality shows now so if they get much worse I guess I can always turn the TV off and read more!

[wally wonder]

what i liked about the running man is that ben is accused of having ideas inconsistent with the racial act of 2004 or some darn thing. what's uncanny about that in the story is that not only is the date about the same time that fashionable ideology came down the pike, but there was another, something about the seattle riots, and darned if something like that didn't happen when the big heads met there to do what big heads do, fock with the little heads.

but i did see something on the tellie not too long ago (within the last six months) channel surfing, bunch of oriental judges--they spoke one of the oriental languages and there was no helpful bouncing ball jumping across a written translation--shine little glow worm, quiver!--and these contestants were lined up across the table from each other and the opposing team member would pull some kind of lever and someone on the other team would/or would not get some kind of wallop in the stomach area. great fun!

i miss the fights in hockey. they don't show them like they used to. guys whacking each other, or trying to, pulling the other guy's jersey up over his head. but there was one player who was seriously injured (that i know about) last season. go wings.

i think president obama should grow a beard. that'd be on my essay.

[brandon]

kinda answers your own question with that last post I think

[ginapenn]

It never fails to amaze me how far ahead of his time Mr. King is. He is definitely a forward thinker.

Listening to WKIT and loving it!

[bryantburnette]

I think the specifics of The Running Man are fictional, and will probably stay that way, but that there is also a lot of fundamental truth to it. There is no doubt in my mind that a large segment of the viewing audience for reality shows -- and I'm thinking here more along the lines of Rock of Love-type shows and their ilk than I am of contest-based shows like survivor or American Idol -- is tuning into these things so that they can feel good about despising people. They are giving themselves permission to feel superior to others.

In a way, that's no different than some of the attitudes Ben Richards encounters in the Running Man, which partially revolves around the idea of the well-to-do watching shows so that they can feel superior to the people who form what they perceive to be the dregs of society.

We're a long way from shows in which people are murdered for sport. However, if the right sociological conditions -- civil war, for example, or continued economic collapse, or environmental catastrophe -- were to arise and nudge us toward the fringes politically speaking...? I have absolutely zero doubt in my mind that our culture could, under circumstances like that, find its way toward something very similar to The Running Man or The Long Walk.

If it ever happens, I hope I'm not around to know about it.

[Roou*]

i agree with the comments
and it's happening now, slowly but there are alot of trashy reality shows...
some people enjoy that realitys so yeah i think this history could be real in some years :P