Among many worried culture-watchers of late, it has become fashionable to denounce the hit television series "Survivor" as a form of contemporary gladiatorial bloodsport. "Survivor" is usually taken as the hallmark of the "reality TV" genre, which allows its audience to observe groups of people being forced to live under some difficult circumstance. In "Survivor," the difficult circumstance is that a group of people, ostensibly shipwrecked on a deserted South Pacific island, must kick one another off the show through a series of votes. The last one left on TV gets a million dollars, and on "Survivor," this consideration leads to the formation of secret coalitions, broken friendships, and of course the early elimination of the weak. The result, many commentators complain, is to transmogrify dishonesty into prudence, and greed into pragmatism. When the show's most accomplished Machiavellian ended up taking home the grand prize, the value-system proper to "Survivor" became devastatingly clear. Uniquely suited to publicize the depressing truth that malevolence often pays and pays well, "reality TV" would appear to hearken a new and powerful validation of mass cynicism.
     But if we are really in the mood to decry the most brutal potentials of "reality TV," we should turn instead to what is far and away the most vicious exemplum of the genre appearing on television today: PBS's wildly successful "The Antiques Roadshow," where serious humiliation is artfully disguised as educational television. The original version of the Roadshow has aired on the BBC for almost three decades, but its upstart American cousin knows better than it how to hook viewers. Hence the sense of tense anticipation permeating the Roadshow of PBS, where members of the public expose their belongings--often cherished family heirlooms--to devastatingly frank retail appraisal. Here are Anne and Jim from Topeka, and here is an ornate lamp for which they have plunked down a small fortune--will their children inherit a genuine Tiffany, or are Anne and Jim now the proud owners of a gauche, embarrassing piece of kitsch? Here is Tanya: she hails from Stockbridge, and now presents to our televisual gaze her great-grandfather's gold watch, which her mother once believed could fund either a modest secondary education or an SUV--was mother badly mistaken?
     The viewer of the Roadshow learns quickly how to spot the rubes, how to recognize those types the producers typically single out for public ridicule. If the owner of the glass vase claims to have any expertise whatsoever, we can be sure that the piece is a fake. If the painting is signed legibly, it was signed by a forger. There are, one must admit, more happy versions of such formulae: if the object was found in an attic, or if it was purchased at a tag sale for next to nothing, or if it is now proffered by someone who claims to know nothing of the thing in question except that they love it with the purely idiotic glee of a child, the object in question will almost certainly be appraised at over $10,000. But we should not be distracted by those who win big, for they are included strictly as cover for those who lose, those who have paid big money for the worthless and damaged, those whose high-falutin' pretensions need to be brought down a notch. All of this, the appraisers assure us, is presented as a sort of public service, so that we the viewing audience will know what to avoid as we amass our own rarified collections, but all parties concerned--viewer, owner, appraiser--know that the real purpose of humiliation, as Sade knew well, is humiliation itself.
     Humiliation is the gold standard of the Roadshow, which is why appraisers are always sure to inform us what a given thing "would have been worth" had the hapless owners not stored it where it is too moist, too dry, or just too idiotic for words. If only you had not refinished this Philadelphia highboy, one expert informs a gentleman from Honolulu, it would have been worth over $200,000. As it stands, the piece is worth perhaps a dinner for two at the Olive Garden. Thanks for bringing it in, however. With a stiff upper lip and some muttered remark, half stoicism and half apology ("Well, OK then; at least now I know..."), he wanders from the set, from our sight, from our disgust; it is here that we see the best example of so-called "living antiquity," here that we recognize this desecrator of furniture for the banished Oedipus he has now become.
     Not that we should pity the contestants too much. The Roadshow's atmosphere is essentially mercenary, since most of these presenters have made the trip in order to cut past soft familial sentiment in order to reach the hard bottom line. And so at its most effective, the program's final accomplishment puts the lie to the lip-service we often pay to the notion of "pricelessness," and to do so by prompting ordinary people toward the confession that yes, they would indeed like to know what mother's hope chest would fetch today at the right auction. All appraisers on the Roadshow make certain to ask the owners if they would like to know--if they choose to acknowledge--the dollar-value of their possessions, but none of these owners ever decline the offer. When they discover the sad truth, they lose more than money. Gone is the fantasy, often nurtured through generations, that one's family holds a precious secret in a bottom dresser drawer; gone too is the sacred pact, that fragile idea linking every individual to his or her ancestors, according to which love of family has nothing to do with money. By comparison, "Survivor" makes good, wholesome, family TV.

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