Why I Hate Supernanny

Last night, the reality TV show Supernanny came on and I begged, whined, and complained until Suzanne agreed to turn it off and watch a movie instead. She called me a “big baby” which I am but, in this case at least, I am also right. I have good reasons for disliking the show.

First of all, I want to point out something positive. I like the host, Jo Frost. She seems reasonable and intelligent and, what’s more, it’s really nice to see a chubby person on TV besides Jim Belushi. She looks like a real person and that’s a nice change. (Where Extreme Makeover Home Edition finds its designer/construction women who all look like Miss January is a mystery to me.) Host aside, the show itself is the problem.

There are two things I really dislike: #1. It’s completely exploitive and makes entertainment out of real people’s real pain. You can say the show is all about helping the family and happy endings but, if that’s the case, why are all the advertisements for it focused on children hitting/kicking/scratching/biting their parents and/or siblings? Why the lurid emphasis on small, obviously hurting kids doing things outrageous things? Why is a parent crying always the seeming money shot? The show makes a carnival sideshow out of families that need help, not publicity. Sure, Jo may teach them techniques that enable them to manage their families in a more healthy way (which is good) but the show also makes them into a spectacle for friends, neighbors, and classmates to feast on. If a kid is struggling in school because of his emotionally absent father, is being on television going to help or exacerbate that situation in the long run? The dad may become more involved but he’ll do it just in time to comfort his son who is being mocked at school for crying on national television because his dad doesn’t love him enough. Supernanny turns the viewer into a major league voyeur and a minor league sadist. We want to see these people hurt but only if everything comes out okay in the end. Speaking of which . . .

#2. The happy endings are manufactured, manipulated, and misleading. After spending three quarters of the show zooming in on the problems the family faces, the last five or seen minutes of the show are dedicated to blissful, golden images of familial togetherness and cooperation. The numbingly formulaic structure of the show suggests that overcoming dysfunction is merely a naughty-rug and job-list away. It’s television so of course everything is truncated and edited for time but still, it basically says that lifelong problems and miles-deep divisions can all be healed within a couple of days. I think this is an unfair and wildly unrealistic message to put across in a culture that is increasingly fraught with problems. People struggling with difficult children or problematic family relationships don’t need to hear that everything is easily solved. They don’t need to be fed the line of an easy fix. People who expect things to just magically resolve are going to end up disappointed.

This idea, of course, is the age-old criticism of television: that it presents a world in which even the most difficult of domestic problems is solved in under an hour. Sitcoms and dramas are one thing – we know they are fake. But so-called “reality” programming is a lot more insidious. It’s built on the idea that what we are seeing is actually happening. In its way, it’s a lot more persuasive and, therefore, troubling than regular programming.

So there you go. I think Supernanny, for all its good intentions, is bad for the families that participate and bad for the viewers who watch. I’d much rather watch a fictional show about almost anything than a “reality” show that showcases dysfunction.

Next week, if you’re lucky, I’ll write my long-planned but never-written post entitled, “Why October Road is a sign of the Apocalypse. “