“Guiltiest guilty pleasure.  Reality T.V.”

So began last night’s episode of ABC’s “20/20” called “Reality Rules.”  Anchor Deborah Roberts continued by claiming “America’s appetite for reality TV is extreme.  In 1998 there were zero hours of reality tv in primetime on broadcast networks.  In 2011, there will be as many as 15 hours per week.  Meanwhile, reality has dominated the cable channels for nearly a decade.”

The second segment of “Reality Rules” focused on Bravo’s hit reality show The Real Housewives of New Jersey.  They showed a scene from this season’s premiere episode.  Melisa and Joe, a couple on the show, had their baby christened.  A brawl between Joe and his brother in law, who also happens to be named Joe, broke out at the after party.

“This is one of the hottest reality shows around and it’s changing the television landscape,” Roberts claimed.

Andy Cohen, the executive producer of the Real Housewives series, started out skeptical about the authenticity of the show.  But in filming the series, he found that when he “scratch[ed] below the surface, [these women] were somehow really human.”

And that anthropological statement is where I want to begin this examination of the reality show that is “changing the television landscape.”

Real Housewives New Jersey is full of drama and violence and it’s tempting for us to avoid discussing reality television.  We could easily view it as the lowest form of pop-culture. But maybe Cohen has a point.  As much as we may criticize reality television for being fake and constructed, there is something very real about it.  It is the reality behind these shows that make many of us uncomfortable with them; that, indeed, make us scapegoat them.  We want to believe that we are nothing like those fake and excessively dramatic people.  But maybe we are more like the stars of reality television than we want to admit. For example, I fear that 85% of family reunions fall into the same cycles of family drama.  Please, no cameras at my house during Thanksgiving.  Okay?  Thanks.

Instead of scapegoating these shows, maybe we could view them as a study in mimetic anthropology.  For example, the main stars of Real Housewives of New Jersey are Teresa Giudice and her husband Joe Giudice.  Teresa’s brother Joe Gorga and his wife Melissa Gorga are also stars in the show.  What makes the show so compelling is the mimetic rivalry between the couples. 

What is a mimetic rivalry?  When we are in a mimetic rivalry with someone, we want what our rival has.  Our rival is also our model for success.  Here’s a great example from the gossip magazine In Touch. (Have I hit a new low by quoting In Touch?”  Okay, let’s not scapegoat gossip magazines!)  The article “Fame Destroyed My Family" (June 6, 2011) starts, “There was a time when Teresa Giudice found strength in the love of her family – and knew that no matter what life handed her, she could count on their unwavering support.  But that was before Teresa became a star on The Real Housewives of New Jersey – and achieved the type of fame that her younger brother, Joe Gorga, and his wife, Melissa, desperately wanted for themselves.”

That’s the formula for mimetic rivalry.  We desperately want what our rival, who is also our model, has.  Joe and Melissa Gorga desperately want fame, not because they are necessarily bad and greedy people, but because their sister and brother-in-law has it.

When we are in a mimetic rivalry, we want what our rival has, but we also want to become our rival.  In other words, we want to possess the essence of our rival.  Joe Giudice points this out in the article.  The article claims that “Melissa and Joe Gorga love the cameras and wanted a taste of the spotlight badly.”  The next sentence quotes Joe Giudice as saying, “They want to be me and they obviously want to be Teresa …  Go find your own life!”  The drama continues in the same paragraph.  (Oh boy.)  Melissa “claims on her blog that Teresa tried to keep them off the show so that she could be the more successful sibling – which Teresa and Joe Giudice deny.”

So much drama.  But I do think there is an anthropological truth here.  In rivalry, we always want what the other has, and we always think that we deserve what the other has more than the other deserves it.  We blame and demonize our rival, while at the same time think we are the innocent one, the good one.  But the truth is, when it comes to rivalries, no one is innocent. 

So, we’re left asking, “What’s the way out of a mimetic rivalry?”

For the Giudices and for the Gorgas, the only way out of a mimetic rivalry is to let go of the shared desire. If they really want reconciliation, the Giudices and Gorgas need to release their shared desire for fame.  In order to do that, they need to find a new model that will lead them away from rivalry and toward compassion.  That’s a difficult and painful spiritual transformation, but that's the transformation they need. 

And, in a world that breeds rivalry, that's the transformation we all need – unless you happen to live in a monastary . . . a desert monastary.