I have sinned

I have confession to make. I have a dark, dirty secret that I tell no one in my private life. This habit is so heinous and so disturbing that I have become disgusted with myself for propagating a social plague, I have become overwhelmed with guilt due to my support of the writer’s union (tentative deal, yay!), and most importantly it has caused me to doubt my taste in popular culture.

I watch American Gladiators.

At 7PM on Mondays, I have finally came back from campus and have finished all my errands. So I relax in front of my television. And there on NBC (the media company that brought Battlestar Galactica, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Medium, 30 Rock, Conan O’Brian, and the first four seasons of Friends into my life) I find people volunteering to be publicly beaten unconscious.

I typically am appalled at “reality” programming, especially since the studio decided to not pay their writers for one of the main mediums (and soon to be the medium) of distributing their product. I don’t idolize American Idol. MTV makes me want to vomit. And Bruno vs. Mary Anne: Dance War sounds like a horseman of the apocalypse. But broadcasted violence is compelling television to me, for some reason. For example:

In the first challenge, contestants sprint through a narrow pathway while four bodybuilders repeatedly punch them in the face. After this the contestants endure many other challenges, such as the pyramid. In the pyramid, the contestants try to climb a forty-foot pyramid made of exercise mats as fast as possible. This in itself wouldn’t be entertaining. But when you factor in the Gladiators throwing the contestants down forty feet, having the contestants recover and climb the pyramid for the second time only to have the Gladiators throw them down again and again; it becomes interesting.

Why do the contestants push themselves farther and farther into the Gladiators’ fists? So that they may have a head start against the other contestant in the eliminator. In the eliminator, the contestants climb a ten foot wall, swim under several concussing bars of face-scaring OPEN FLAMES, climb a thirty foot wall, disorient themselves by rolling down a human-sized sewing spool, exhaust every muscle in their arms by propelling themselves with bicycle pedals, climb the forty foot pyramid again, zip line into the ground next to the finishing point, and then WHEN NO MUSCLE SYSTEM IN THEIR BODY WILL FUCKING WORK FOR A MONTH they have to climb an elevated treadmill that is going the wrong way.

I admit the main draw for me is the violence. But the show is much more than that. Half of the contestants say that their motivation for going on to international television (consequently everyone they will ever meet will remember them as the guy who was thrown into a wall thirty times) is to make money for their family. The go on this show for their kids and for their moms. I love that they don’t consider engaging in a career path that would earn them more money than an exploitive television show ever would. Instead, they planned to be pummeled for money.

(Note: the average life-time earnings for those with a High School diploma is $1.2 million, a Bachelor’s Degree gives an average $2.1 million, Master’s typically gives $2.5 million, Doctorate’s give an average of $3.4 million, and Professional Degrees give average life-time earnings of $4.4 million. American Gladiators gives an average of $12,500.)

Beyond the contestants’ desperation and lack of logic, the Gladiators have the queerest stage personas I have seen since I watched professional wrestling (I was 8, don’t judge me). At any point the contestants have no idea whether the gladiators intend to kill them or rape them. I also enjoy the contestants that honestly just had a lot of time on their hands and thought the show would be fun. They smile and remain perky when they win while the other contestants go on and on about how they have failed and now can no longer support their addiction to meth.

…

Inevitably, at the 7:15 commercial break I flip through channels while listening to jazz on my MP3 player to remind myself that I am human. And it is then that I notice that I could have been watching How I Met Your Mother. The guilt sets in and I cry a little as the five witty urbanites chastise me for not watching the opening act of their comic plots. I tell them that I’m sorry, but Allison Hannigan and Neil Patrick Harris won’t listen. So I turn to NBC, watch poor people be beaten, concussed, ridiculed, and dismembered for the joy of the masses. I then repress the memories of HIMYM so that I may function for another week.