Parallel Television Universe

Part of the appeal of watching television is that you get to watch other people make embarrassingly funny mistakes, while forgetting about your own. Viewers love to watch middle-class men make idiots out of themselves while their intelligent and forgiving wives chastise them. However, I do believe there is a parallel between this and reality television. 

Take the Real World for example. The contestants are put on television to drink too much, get into fights, and sleep around. The guys get reprimanded for flirting with too many girls and the girls get into drama over cheating on their boyfriends. Their behavior is mockable because no one does that in real life. Similarly, middle class men are portrayed as buffoons. Homer Simpson is always at the bar. Hank Hill has been quoted as saying  "What the hell kind of country is this if I can only hate a man if he's white?" which exemplifies institutionalized racism and unintelligence. These kinds of men are laughed at just as reality television stars are. In both cases, the demographics of middle-class men and twenty-something men and women are grossly misrepresented. Rather than portraying middle class men as hard workers and passionate family men, they are drunk and unintelligent. Rather than portraying young men and women as being interested in school over alcohol, they're represented as promiscuous and drunks. This perpetuates a cycle of misrepresentative stereotypes.