In one corner are hip academics, already scribbling scholarly essays proclaiming brilliance the way Camille Paglia did about Madonna in the '80s. "Dramalities," they say, are satiating people's needs for sanitized gossip, Peeping Tomism, and the pathetic desire to feel superior. The programs' unrehearsed moments are like visual jazz, appealing to the near-universal desire to be on TV in a country where there is no greater achievement. ...
In the opposite corner are those who decry the phenomenon as the fulfillment of Edward R. Murrow's dark prophecy: "This instrument [television] can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box."
Michelle Conlin, "America's Reality-TV Addiction," Business Week Online, January 30, 2003
Matthew Gilbert, "We like to watch," The Boston Globe, May 28, 2000
For word hounds, dramality is just the latest in a long line of words and phrases that have vied for the standard descriptor of shows such as Survivor, The Bachelor, and Joe Millionaire. Some other contenders that have come and gone are reality drama, unscripted nonfiction drama, nonscripted programming, alternative TV, and peeping Tom TV. (I like crack TV, used in the example citation.) Fittingly, dramality was coined by the guy who started it all (at least in the U.S.): Mark Burnett, creator of Survivor.
weapon of mass distraction