The Jerry Springer Show is arguably one of the most favorable television programs in the United States of America. The serial television program runs family and interpersonal relationship feuds. The complainant contacts the television show host, Jerry Springer, who then arranges to get both the defendant and the plaintiff to the live audience show. The two parties proceed to table their dispute and each of them gives his or her side of the story. The scenes in most cases get as murky as the two engaging in physical fights that would consequently continue with neither the host nor the live audience moving to intervene upon. At the end of both the hot verbal exchanges and to some time the physical duels, the host eventually reaches a neutral ground and in most cases the two conflicting parties would always reconcile and forge their way forward.
This is a weekly television program that runs non factious stories, this is a fact that give s a very direct relation between the issues raised in the show to the events taking place in the society on the day to day basis. Among the major themes that the television show addresses in most of its episodes include conflict, family conflict and the general conflicts that exist among members of the public. The show exposes the level of moral decay that the American society has witnessed within this century. Last week’s episode, run a conflict between a lady and her boyfriend. The lady had accused her boyfriend of cheating on her, when the host followed the story; it became eminent that the boyfriend was in deed cheating on his girlfriend. This is a normal occurrence as most men in the society today cheat on their spouses, what was however unlikely, was the fact that the man was cheating on his girlfriend with yet another man.
Homosexual relationships in as much as several pressure groups would like to make the rest of the world believe that they are fair and human in nature, the core fact that is no doubt very truthful is the that no man or woman is born a homosexual (Herrenkohl, R.C. 2005: 67). Homosexuality is not a physical attribution but a state of the mind, at on time in the course of an individual’s life, things fail to work as they ought to and these people end up appreciating members of their sexes as sexual partners. In most cases most of homosexuals are people who were mostly sexually molested in their childhood and this restructured their lives as they began living lives in fear. All these surmount to the open fact that the society’s morality is decayed beyond repair.
The television show however, appreciates the power of reconciliation or separation and the availability of life beyond the conflicts. Most of the people who seek Jerry Springer’s intervention in their personal problems are individuals who are dejected and feel betrayed with life, those who they had trusted upon turned against them and betrayed the trust they had for them. They thus live hopeless lives, Jerry Springer on the other hand moves in between the two and reconciles the two conflicting parties and give the individuals to make up their decisions on how to continue relating. Some of these people reconcile and end up reliving their lives with the people who had cheated on them as they too promise to change, however others opt for separation and the host, the live audience and the home audience all over the world appreciates these decisions.
The shows run short episodes, ten to fifteen minutes, within which there are run several commercials. Most of the commercials in the Jerry Springer show are those of guidance and counseling service providers. This imply that those who enjoy and follow the show are people who in one way or the other are in situation closely similar to that the characters in the show are going though. These feuds and conflicts exist in families world over and the only readily available help would be the services rendered by the several family psychotherapists.
What does the show really say?
The characters who come in diverse dresses and make ups, the accepted use of physical confrontation to settle the feuds and the use of extremely vulgar language, the Jerry Springer show gives exactly what the society is. The conflicts that are mediated upon from an episode to another are as unique as each family can ever be. Jerry does not corroborate the contents he airs in his shows but they are aired live as they transpire in the studio. The underlying message that each episode presents is therefore that which is witnessed in the society on daily basis. The major appeal that the show uses to have its audience glued to their seats is the reality it reflects from the society, people would always like to watch from the television programs the issues that they are familiar to, the family conflict such as extramarital affairs, drugs use among other are things that people come across on their daily endeavors and the resemblance that they portray form the catch for the huge viewership that the show receives world wide (Herrenkohl, R.C. 2005: 88).
Work cited
Herrenkohl, R.C. “The definition of child maltreatment: from case study to construct”. Child
abuse and neglect. Oxford: OUP. 2005. Electronic.
