A prediction or fiction?

[motocop]

I do think the pollution will get as bad as King wrote about but as far as the violence for viewing, enough people will not want to see that to let it not make the air.

[Mr Nobody]

It's an uncomfortable thought, but tbh I think there could be a time when 'extreme reality' shows do end up like The Running Man - especially in a black and white, with us or against us ideology. Paedophiles, terrorists, notorious murderers...they'd all be likely contestants.
Now, I have the same reaction as many - 'Surely it'd never happen. People wouldn't stand for it' - but already over the last 10 years or so I've been amazed by what large sections of the public will stand for...and what, given the right conditions, they will positively advocate and lap up. On my more or less daily trawl through the news (you never know when you might come across something worth reading, like a recent interview with Joe Hill), looking at some of the readers' comments can be a bit of a scary prospect - and that's on a broadsheet, so God only knows what the 'red top' comments sections are like.

[Pucker]

There are already programs which encourage people to debase themselves in front of an audience for money and our entertainment, as there are police procedural programs -- and even one that glorifies bounty hunting. You can watch guys getting shot at (and hit) on Cops . You can watch scapegoating and all manner of Machiavellian shenanigans on shows like Survivor. You can watch idiocy raised to an art form on any number of "reality" programs.I would prefer not to believe that society will degenerate to the point where people are lining up to risk actual life and limb in torture chambers, but The Running Man -- at least in its embryonic stage -- is already here.

[GNTLGNT]

I've said it before, ad nauseum-that we are near the end of civil-ization, and we're about to drive over the cliff with "Reality" TV at the wheel...

[Ranger_Strider]

I doubt that the producers/editors of most reality shows would allow any footage of a person in the throes of some personal upset/heavy emotional experice to hit the editing-room floor. Quite the opposite I should think. I don't regularly tune in to any of that sort of programming because it feels dirty and voureristic to me and not at all pleasurable to witness. I have this little voice in the back of my brain that says none of this is any of my business and it's really best left private to the people involved. So, ultimately, if the Running Man ever becomes real, it will be the people with remotes/channel changers in there hands who are to blame.

[Stillreading]

The majority of us contribute virtually nothing to the betterment of society, instead we are pulled along like kids on a sled by the rare geniuses and leaders amongst us. To endure our inertia we pacify and numb ourselves with myriad forms of entertainment as we attempt to give meaning to the passage of time that is our lives. The difference is that today we have more ways in which to numb and pacify ourselves than ever before -- however, the line that links the Roman Gladiators to our modern day MMA stars remains strong and clear. I don't think we're declining necessarily, I just think we're doing what we've always done, the way we've always done it. In other words we've just painted the same room a different colour and claimed superiority. It's not necessarily wrong or right, either; it's just the way we are. I think the very fact that so many people fight so desperately and tenaciously for so many seemingly trivial things is perhaps because deep down inside -- layers beneath Hollywood, government propaganda, tv marketing, and rampant materialism -- we're actually all terrified that there is no meaning to existence. And I think our fear expresses itself most naturally through hostility and violence -- vicariously or otherwise. The Running Man is a brilliant story for that reason: even Ben, our hero(anti-hero)/protagonist embodies, reveals, and displays the inconsistencies and the malleability of morality. We are helpless against the times and places in which we live, and when it comes down to it, and push comes to shove, when life faces death, we find that we're really more chimpanzee than human.

[Sophiia]

I saw some 1984 in this, did anyone else or am I being silly?

It did seem a bit like that, the oppression etc, I love books like that.

Like the Handmaid's Tale by Atwood.

Anyone?

[Connie Reader]

The first time I saw Fear Factor I got the shivers.
I agree with Stillreading, there are more similarites between US and the Roman Empire than is comfortable, not just in entertainment but in government as well.
I do love me some MMA.

[starbug]

I think it's entirely possible that there would be an audience for a show like the Running Man or the Long Walk. After all, there were peopel who used to go to executions as a form of entertainment (think of the women knitting in front of the guillotine). Shirley Jackosn said that when she wrote The Lottery, she got letters from three kinds of people - those who loved it, those who hated it and those who wanted to know where the lottery was held, so they could go and watch!