Recently, I developed a strange form of insomnia. I began waking up in the middle of the night, plagued by repetitive, obsessive thoughts, unable to return to sleep, unable to stop thinking. The only thing that seemed to stop me from thinking and eventually lull me back to sleep was to turn on the television.
At one in the morning, my favorite telenovela is repeated with fewer commercial interruptions. I watched the Magic Bullet commercial dubbed in Spanish several times. I developed a fondness for the commercials for Time-Life CD anthologies, in particular Soul Hits of the 70s. But my programs of choice, the ones that could stop obsessive thoughts in their tracks, were more often than not what a friend of mine calls “trainwreck television,” what I call repulsion television.
At one in the morning, my favorite telenovela is repeated with fewer commercial interruptions. I watched the Magic Bullet commercial dubbed in Spanish several times. I developed a fondness for the commercials for Time-Life CD anthologies, in particular Soul Hits of the 70s. But my programs of choice, the ones that could stop obsessive thoughts in their tracks, were more often than not what a friend of mine calls “trainwreck television,” what I call repulsion television.
As the number of television networks grows, the audience has splintered, and those networks have to fight to keep sufficient numbers of people watching. And one way to lure people in is by going for the gross out.
The king of all repulsion television, among so many worthy candidates, has to be A&E's Hoarders (or TLC's Hoarding: Buried Alive, which premiered later in March 2010), which chronicles the stories of people on the verge of a personal crisis as a result of their compulsive hoarding. Some people have always been hoarders and have just gotten worse over time, like the man who shows his apartment to his girlfriend for the first time, and she is horrified. She tells him she can't continue their relationship if he continues hoarding, but he can't or won't stop.
The king of all repulsion television, among so many worthy candidates, has to be A&E's Hoarders (or TLC's Hoarding: Buried Alive, which premiered later in March 2010), which chronicles the stories of people on the verge of a personal crisis as a result of their compulsive hoarding. Some people have always been hoarders and have just gotten worse over time, like the man who shows his apartment to his girlfriend for the first time, and she is horrified. She tells him she can't continue their relationship if he continues hoarding, but he can't or won't stop.
Other people become hoarders as the result of some personal tragedy. One woman loses her husband just as he was about to retire from the police force. Not only can she not throw away anything acquired during the time he was alive, she also begins to purchase items representing plans that she and her husband made for his retirement.
Although Hoarders and Hoarding are two separate shows, I tend to think of them as one show, given their similarity, and even though TLC easily edges out A&E for the honor of the Home of Trainwreck Television. It’s my particular favorite because it satisfies the “need” for repulsion, but not in any empty way; each show features an intervention and a makeover, an extreme Extreme Home Makeover, which gives the show a genuine narrative arc, as opposed to, "Yeah...she popped out another kid."
And Hoarders/Hoarding is genuinely heartbreaking. Given the visual nature of the disease, it is particularly suited to television. My skin literally crawls when I see the homes of the hoarders.
TLC's Toddlers & Tiaras invites, even demands an intervention. It's a look into baby beauty pageants. The level of manipulation by the mothers in order to get their little girls to participate in the pageants is astonishing, and if the girls don't want to participate, the mothers can be outright cruel. One little girl comes to her mother and says she doesn't want to be in the pageant and her mother literally pushes her away, saying, "Get away from me."
For all the money, which many of them do not even have, that the mothers spend on their daughters' appearances for the pageants, and time spent on primping, the mothers themselves on the whole do not take very good care of themselves, presentation-wise. One can't help but think, let your daughter be a kid, and spend some of that time and money on yourself to take care of yourself better.
The Millionaire Matchmaker (on the Bravo network) takes shows like The Bachelor and adds a twist of Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous and a heaping helping of revulsion. The matchmaker, Patti Stangis, is loud and vulgar in demeanor and appearance (excessive collagen implants in those lips) and appears to hate all of her clients - with good reason! So many of these wealthy men have no manners whatsoever and they treat their dates with no respect. The women just throw themselves at these boors, ignoring the men's callous remarks, no doubt thinking only of their money. The only real spark of romance I saw on the show was between two men Ms. Stangis fixed up. The only genuinely attractive, well-groomed men I'd seen on the show, they had champagne and strawberries on the beach and kissed. Sweet.
1000 Ways to Die features simulation segments (which I love) of shocking demises, like getting hit by a meteor, or sucked into a jet engine, or even weirder, hooking up a cow heart to a car battery to make it pulsate and then fucking the cow heart - oops, electrocuted! See ya.
Anyway, I finally figured out that my insomnia was actually being encouraged by the repulsion shows, that on some level I wanted to wake up and watch them, so I canceled that part of my cable package, and now I sleep great.
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