Christensen: Documenting our vices

My name is Caitlyn — that’s spelled C-A-I-T-L-Y-N. I’m 20 years old, and from a town… My name is Caitlyn — that’s spelled C-A-I-T-L-Y-N. I’m 20 years old, and from a town called Leesburg, Va. My life is perfect except for one thing: I’m addicted to TV documentaries.

If you’ve ever watched A&E’s show “Intervention,” you’ll get what I’m alluding to in my opening up there. But my problem doesn’t stop with watching people confront their alcoholism and methamphetamine addictions. Nay, nay. Recently, in self-imposed confinement from the snow, I expanded my repertoire to include “Hoarders” and the National Geographic prison documentary “Lockdown.” If it’s dirty, if it’s gritty, if it presents an alternate, extreme version of my reality, I’ll watch it.

Ordinarily, I’m not a big fan of the tube. I don’t have the attention span to tune into a show on a weekly basis, and I don’t have any patience for so-called “reality TV” that is obviously manipulated for shock value. Rather than the “Oh, it’s 8 p.m. on a Wednesday — time to put on NBC” mentality behind other serials, which you have to watch in a certain order, the documentaries can be watched in haphazardly, any time I’m craving a roller coaster of emotions. A hoarder who compulsively stores rotten food? I’ll skip to season two for that! A meth head who thinks she’s Jesus’ sister? Hello, “Intervention” season two, episode 18.

After my documentary binge, even when I wasn’t watching the shows, I was probably talking about them. I got to thinking about the appeal of reality TV: Rather than actually going to prison or drinking a gallon of vodka every day, do I want to experience it vicariously on screen?

In “Going Bowling,” a 2000 episode of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Harvard professor Robert Putnam explained the effect of TV on human connection in American society, saying, “The more entertainment television you watch, the less critically engaged you are. People watch ‘Friends’ rather than having friends.”

I don’t think my attraction to TV documentaries about addiction and crime is as simple as saying “I watch alcoholics rather than being an alcoholic myself,” or anything like that. Just like any other show, the documentaries have familiar patterns that I enjoy falling into. On “Intervention,” for instance, the plot is pretty much the same every episode — probably as redundant as an episode of “Full House.” The addicts are introduced; the camera follows them around as they get their fix; there’s a back story that clues us in to their childhoods and makes us feel as though we know them intimately. Then there is the intervention, and even that is sometimes highly redundant; one of the interventionists uses the exact same line with every confrontation. The addict usually takes treatment and the camera follows him into the rehabilitation center with the same song in the background every time. In the final moments there is a minor epilogue, either detailing the addict’s successes or failures.

There’s also the Schadenfreude effect, whereby people supposedly take pleasure in someone else’s suffering. Undeniably, human distress is the main character in every episode of “Lockdown,” “Intervention” and “Hoarders.” Fortunately, as a woman, I might be exempt from coming across as a sadist. According to a report in The New York Times, empathy circuits light up in women when we observe bad things happening to good people and bad things happening to bad people. Maybe I’m just covering my tracks here — I mean, if I cared that much I would probably turn off the show, right?

Empathetic or not, I think the main appeal of the documentaries is the pleasure derived, not just from suffering, but from learning about the “lowest rungs” of society — and the way operations proceed in different social settings. I’m fascinated with “Lockdown” not only for the characters, but also because some part of me is really interested in a prison’s social order. I’ll never need to carve a shank out of a toothbrush, but I know how to. My interest in “Intervention” and “Hoarders” is harder to put my finger on; maybe it does come down to Schadenfreude after all. What I do know is, when I log into my Netflix account, what I see will offer me some element of escapism — even if that involves escaping into a darker place.

Write Caitlyn at cac141@pitt.edu.