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Friday, July 11, 2008

Why do Christians suck at reality TV?


After last nights Last Comic Standing,
I was wondering why Christians also seem to be the first to be booted off of Reality TV shows.

A few years ago Survivor had a Charlotte Christian radio host on, who made it only to the third/forth episode. And last night "God's Pottery" was the first comic eliminated from LCS. Not to mention that guy from the Real World with the Cowboy hat.

And I too would have voted them off, if I were stranded on a "deserted" island, I am not sure I could withstand being with an over the top Christian. And while I found God's Pottery set was decent- the "I love Jesus refrain" seemed to fall into an altar-call response to help them feel justified about their ministry.

Obviously, these shows are looking for over the top personalities that will play into an audiences' preconceived notion of how annoying a Christian radio host and "Christian folk comedic duo" would be.

At the same time the manipulative game-show quality of reality TV probably makes succeeding at the game near impossible. And the idea most of these Christian actors probably have is that Reality TV would be a good "witnessing tool"--until the edit room reworks the tape to show them as mindless boobs.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

You thought that God's Pottery was serious? I viewed them as a total tongue-in-cheek act. Generally really funny, but it did get old.

wes said...

Check out their websites:

http://godspottery.blogspot.com/

http://www.godspottery.com

I viewed them as standard YL/PFR programmatic staff group that somehow made it on to NBC.

Unknown said...

Here's something interesting - Back in '01, when reality TV was just beginning (Survivor was on season 2-3?), One of our pastors at Bel Air, Jim Lee, got to be on a show called "Manhunt" - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299349/ - I won't blow the ending, in case you could somehow find it, but he went all the way through to the end and played like a champ. He was honest but not obnoxious and while the editing process gave a certain perspective to things, he didn't provide additional fodder, which he said was one of his objectives.

In general - Christians on TV (especially reality), are way too naive and don't understand they have to be both innocent as doves, AND shrewd as snakes!

Unknown said...

... he's now the Director of Spiritual Life at Oaks Christian (http://www.oakschristian.org/directory/profile.aspx?LinkID=9757&pageaction=VPSFaculty) - where Joe Montana & Wayne Gretzky's sons play QB. Hard to believe it only opened 8 years ago.

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