Reality TV Takes on Its First Death
Print
Email
Reality television has exploded these last two decades since a group of strangers moved in together in New York to launch MTV's "The Real World." And we've seen it all--the cameras have followed the lives of truckers, wealthy, spoiled young adults in Laguna Beach, Calif., fierce competitions in exotic locales, high seas hijinks in the name of whales...
We've seen it all. Well, almost.
Tonight's episode of Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch will share with its viewers the death of Captain Phil Harris. It is the first "reality tv" death caught on camera, and according to Salon.com, it has been handled with "intelligence and taste."
"But catastrophe and suffering are innately cinematic. Even a sensitive documentarian might look at the "Deadliest Catch" camera crew's post-stroke footage and think, "This is a motherlode," then set about repackaging pain as entertainment. The task was daunting: In a genre that has captured endless humiliation, violence and other human suffering, here was reality TV's first death," writes Salon's Matt Zoller Seitz.
