Shocking it might be, yet still part of an old pattern. The US Department of Homeland Security is floating the idea of using a reality television program to select immigrants vying for US citizenship. Whether this involves gladiatorial combat or inane pillow battles remains to be seen, though it is bound to involve airhead celebrity hosts and a set of fabricated challenges. What matters is the premise: the reduction of a government agency’s functions to a debauched spectacle of deceit, desperation and televisual pornography. Much, in some ways, like the Trump administration itself.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, television producer Rob Worsoff, the man behind the Duck Dynasty reality show, comes clean in his monstrous intentions behind this proposed series he hopes to call The American: he has been pursuing this seedy project since the days of the Obama administration, hoping for some amoral stakeholder to bite. Worsoff, in true fashion, denies that such a project is intended as malicious (“this isn’t the ‘The Hunger Games’ for immigrants”), let alone denigrating the dignity of human worth. In the grand idea of full bloom, optimistic America, it is intended as hopeful, but most of all, competitive. Forget equal protection and a fair evaluation of merits; here is a chance for Social Darwinism to excel.
Worsoff insists he is free of political ideology. “As an immigrant myself, I am merely trying to make a show that celebrates the immigration process, celebrate what it means to be American and have a national conversation about what it means to be American, through the eyes of people who want it most”. He proposes to do this by, for instance, sending immigrants to San Francisco where they find themselves in a mine to retrieve gold. Another would see the contestants journey to Detroit, where they will be placed on an auto assembly to reassemble a Model-T Ford chassis.
The winners would end up on the Capitol steps, presumably to receive their citizenship in some staged ceremony for television. The losing contestants would go home with such generous prizes as a Starbucks gift card or airline points.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin has apparently spoken to Worsoff on this steaming drivel, with the producer describing the response as “positive”. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, it is said, has not officially “‘backed’ or even reviewed the pitch of any scripted or reality show. The Department of Homeland Security receives hundreds of television show pitches a year.” The mind can only dissipate in despair at such an observation, unsurprising in a land where the television, or televisual platforms, remain brain numbing instructors.
That the DHS is considering this is unremarkable. The department has already participated in television projects and networks, To Catch a Smuggler being a case in point. Noem has also made much of the camera when it comes to dealing with immigrants. An ad campaign costing US$200 million promises to feature her admonishing illegal immigrants to return to their countries. No doubt the hairdressing and makeup department will be busy when tarting her up for the noble task.
Broadcasters in a number of countries have also found the unsuspecting migrant or foreign guest captured by television irresistible viewing. It’s not just good, couch potato fun, but also a chance to fan prejudice and feed sketchy stereotypes. The reality TV show Border Security, which first aired on Australia’s free-to-air Channel 7 in 2004, proved to be a pioneering model in this regard. Not only did it provide a chance to mock the eating habits of new arrivals as food stuffs were confiscated by customs officers with names like “Barbs”, the program could also impute an intention to attack the Australian agricultural sector with introduced pests and diseases. These depictions went hand in hand with the demonising strategy of the Australian government towards unwanted asylum seekers and refugees (“Stop the Boats!” was the cry), characterised by lengthy spells of detention in an offshore tropical gulag.
The plight of the vulnerable immigrant has also become a matter of pantomime substitution, an idea supposedly educative in function. Why not act out the entire migrant experience with reality television individuals with particularly xenophobic views?
In February, this is exactly what took place in a reality television show vulgarly titled Go Back to Where You Come From aired on the UK’s Channel 4, running four episodes where selected, largely anti-immigration participants, according to Channel 4, “experience some of the most perilous parts of the refugee journeys”. It comes as little surprise that the series is modelled on an Australian precursor made in the early 2010s.
Even pro-immigrant groups were reduced to a state of admiring stupor, with the Refugee Council, a British charity, praising the worth of such shows to “have huge potential to highlight the stories behind the headlines”. Gareth Benest, advocacy director at the International Broadcasting Trust charity, also thought it instructive that the participants “face the reality of irregular migration and to challenge their preconceptions.”
French politician Xavier Bertrand failed to identify similar points, calling the program “nauseating”. In his attack on the experiment, he saw the deaths across the English Channel as “a humanitarian tragedy, not the subject of a game”. But a game it has become, at least when placed before the camera.