Talk shows aren’t just harmless entertainment that discusses social issues. Choices made during production and by the host can harm guests appearing on the show, especially regarding the humiliation techniques used.
In the world of educational research on culture, media and entertainment, the study of talk shows, based totally on semiology (the study of signs and their meanings), journalism and language studies, occupies a relatively modest place.
In such contexts, this genre of media appears harmless since it mainly uses discursive strategies akin to interviews or debates to tell or entertain the general public while exploiting topics of public interest.
However, they’re placed under the microscope of the sensible approach to communication that I take advantage of in my life my research on popular culture, talk shows are emerging in a more menacing light. The genre stands out, particularly ethically, for the humiliating and coercive measures that hosts use on their guests to extract unexpected or compromising revelations, all in anticipation of a rise in popularity.
Flexible morals and inflated egos
From this angle, the talk show becomes a machine for crushing human dignity, consciously utilized by producers with flexible morals and hosts with inflated egos for entertainment, narcissistic or capitalist purposes.
The intention of the article is to attract attention to the damaging nature of humiliation as a deliberate act of power carried out on defenseless or vulnerable people within the presence of the audience, microphones and cameras.
The consequences of such degrading methods of humiliation might be devastating for victims: psychological suffering, lack of self-confidence, a sense of exclusion, a desire to vanish or take revenge. However, the tv industry continues to make use of humiliation in so-called types of entertainment on an enormous variety of talk shows, including among the hottest shows of the last decade, whether in Canada, France, England or the United States.
Of the striking multitude of television humiliation cases available in this text, the next three are exemplary for the time-tested nature of the offensive strategies employed by particularly skillful and experienced hosts (or former hosts).
Arbitrary dismissal: That’s all we have time for
In the UK, as in another countries, dismissal without good and sufficient reason is: violation of employment standards.
Dismissing or just ridiculing an worker due to his appearance, irritating character or foreign accent is then not only an indication of shameful contempt, but additionally illegal. And yet that is what it looks like is occurring to many individuals within the UKincluding participants Graham Norton’s show who naively agree to take a seat within the so-called Scary red chair.
In a recurring segment of a show called That’s all we have time for“ordinary people” – that’s, those that haven’t yet reached the brink of talent or fame deemed vital for admission to the chosen club of entertainment stars – are offered the prospect to realize access to that club just by entertaining the jury with a comic story. The whole situation, presided over by Norton, seems like a parody of a trial – that’s, one that may be widely publicized, swift and fundamentally rigged.
In the primary and half of the clip above, a young man from New Zealand is ridiculed and singled out by Norton and his audience just because of his accent. Even if an individual’s accent shouldn’t be itself a a characteristic protected by lawdiscrimination based on this aspect of identity is clearly unfair, unfair and contemptuous.
From an ethical viewpoint, Norton’s red chair is a weapon of shame used to humiliate individuals who dream of shining in front of tens of millions of viewers. Instead, “all they have time for” is rejection on national television.
Mental spanking: Get a job!
As “one of the most well-known and trusted mental health professionals in the world” and “host of the most popular daytime television program from 2002 to 2023 in the US” Dr. Phil McGraw was no less harmful to some guests than the host in the instance above.
According to Timothy C. Thomason McGraw, yes Wild psychotherapy. Indeed, he now not has a license, he has no respect for secrecy, he tells hard truths without sparing the purchasers’ egos, he is commonly impatient with anxious guests, and his style is rough and tyrannical, but… he entertains the crowds.
In the video above, McGraw delivers what could possibly be called a psychological slap to King Keith, a young man who clearly needs a “reality check.” Even though a chat show is not appropriate for such a conversation, McGraw humiliates the poor boy anyway:
Let’s stop this without delay. This is complete nonsense… Take this note… Since that is my agenda and also you haven’t got yours yet, we will follow my plan and discuss what I need to discuss… You aren’t being dragged… Get a job!
Beat!
Compulsion to obey: Yes! You will!
(Flickr/@ronpaulrevolt2008), (Flickr/Eva Rinaldi), CC BY-SA
Part of the interview between Taylor Swift and Ellen DeGeneres caused public outrage hand in hand with accusations of harassment equated with host and producer DeGeneres in 2020. The techniques utilized in the interview are not any different from those Stanley Milgram’s discoveries about following unreasonable orders from an authority when that authority is perceived as legitimate.
From her metaphorical perspective as a bunch and producer at the peak of her profession, DeGeneres here demands that Taylor Swift, who in 2013 was still quite young (24) and inexperienced, perform a seemingly innocuous motion (shaking the bell), but one which can nonetheless have harmful and irreversible consequences for her private life and profession, including: revealing the identity of a 3rd party, revealing her amorous and sexual behavior in broad daylight, and desecrating her own sanctuary of artistic inspiration in public view.
Taylor: Oh my God! I do not know if I’ll do it… Ellen: Yes, you’ll! Taylor: It’s the one thing I even have! It’s just like the only shred of dignity I even have… People go around guessing and all I even have is that this one card…
The smartest thing DeGeneres did on this scene was imagine and arrange a double bind for the singer, making her “damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t.”
Humiliation: “the new poison of our society”?
In on a regular basis life, humiliation shouldn’t be a spectacle or a type of entertainment. It is a deliberate abuse of power by an aggressor whose primary lever of power is the complicity of others.
For with a purpose to be humiliated, the victim must not only be humiliated in words or deeds, but must even be seen and appear as such within the eyes of others. In such a cooperation between the executioner and the anonymous crowd of witnesses, those that do nothing but watch nevertheless accomplish something: their presence shouldn’t be only a vital condition for committing the crime of humiliation, but can be a guarantee of impunity.
Combining the talent of presenters, the greed of producers, the efficiency of television technology and the passive infatuation of an armchair audience that may see the whole lot without being seen, the talk show is a contemporary instrument pairs of perfection a psychological crime of humiliation, a strong machine crushing human dignity.
