"Reality" in Teen Mom Summary

Teen Mom is a show that follows four mothers that had their child at an early age and their families. The focus of the show is on the parents and their hardships. Not only are the hardships time, money, and education based, but they also took a mental toll on the girls as well. This is what I will be focusing on. How the show depicts the girls' psychological struggles in dealing with moving from adolescence to a place of great responsibility in a matter of nine months. The show starts with 16 and pregnant and then chronicles all the way through the early years of child raising and is still on going. The four different stories include jailing, adoption, death of the father and other events that occur through the time with a child. Strengths included in this show are showing an accurate depiction of what some of the difficulties of being a teen mom might be, and showing a wide array of scenarios the parents chose or were thrust into. One of the main weaknesses of the show is that it shows only through the parents perspective so those around them such as friends and parents don't seem as much of an impact as would be in most cases in actuality. Overall the show does however depict a pretty real "reality" that the teens are living in and also shows many psychological hardships. This is one of the stronger "reality" shows on tv and is a semi real one in contrary to the many scripted, fake, or over produced reality shows on air. However since we have no basis of knowing the participant of reality shows true reality it seems more as though they are being depicted by grand puppet masters casting shadows of what we see as reality. This comparison can parallel Plato's story The Cave. We are like those chained to the cave floor. A blank mind content to sit on the cave floor, or couch, and stare at the images being depicted to us, shadows to the cave or television to us. This comparison sheds light to what we see and think we see when watching reality television. While it may appear to the common watching teen mom, myself included, that this is a much more normalized version of reality, we truely do not know and therefore are no better than the prisoners to the cave staring at a wall. Once they get this view of how reality is or should be implanted in our minds, there is a Freudian twist to the seemingly innocent business of warping minds through mindless entertainment. Freud would say they are then able to subconsciously advertise to the audience using products that this new image of reality has projected and makes those living with this new view of reality think they might need a product.