Editor's note: The following writing reflects the personal views of author Bjorn Runa.
Although it is often said that what keeps reality TV shows alive and so entertaining is the fulfillment of viewers' voyeuristic desires, in fact the real fuel that keeps them going, in most cases, is the irritation they cause in the audience. A kind of rage farming that predates the digital world and smartphones. But, like politics, reality TV has an expiration date. After a while, the fights within the house begin to repeat themselves and the "unfiltered" reality that the program claims to offer suddenly turns into a format. Consequently, as the audience tires of the annual repetitions, the producers seem to have chosen this time to do what Albanian public life has always done best: move the drama elsewhere.
And so, the drama flowed outside the walls of the 24-hour monitored house, towards the panel of opinionators, that strange gray area on our televisions, where everyone speaks with authority, but where in the end no one is held accountable for what they say. It is precisely into this space that Monika Kryemadhi has entered this time, presented to us not with all her political past, but through the neutralizing language of television, as a commentator, analyst, opinion writer... In short, a quirky television character .
But the problem is that the past is too stubborn to be forced to disappear so easily. Kryemadhi did not enter the well-lit studio of BBVIP alone. On the contrary, she arrived there followed by years of public memory, investigations, security measures, and, inevitably, by the figure of her ex-husband Ilir Meta – at once former president, former prime minister, former speaker of parliament, former MP – and someone who, for the vast majority of his career (regardless of the positions held), has served as nothing more than a living metaphor for transactional politics in Albania, and who has now been in detention for over a year.
Now, we are all aware that reality shows thrive on the suspension of morality. In other words, viewers are indirectly asked to lower their ethical shields in order to understand the game, and as we sit in front of the screen, we are willing to accept even behaviors that would seem intolerable to us in everyday life – humiliation, manipulation, exhibitionism – because all of these are presented to us as part of the “game” and the “experiment.” However, what we seem to be seeing this year at BBVIP Albania is something else entirely, as what we are being asked to do is to stop considering corruption as something urgent. Under the spotlight of the show, it (corruption) becomes irrelevant, causing political responsibility and accountability to give way to television time and personalities, which we must now also see as entertainment. Thus, the former video of the tour of the house with nine bathrooms for nine cats, from excess, turns into a video audition... Proof of eccentricity, virality and the fact that spectacle can digest everything, transforming inequality into entertainment. After what we saw on Saturday and what we will see on Saturdays in a row, the question that many will ask themselves will no longer be "how is it possible that these things happen", nor how can someone have a toilet for each pet when most people cannot even have a home of their own... No! From now on, we should be amazed by the fact of "how entertaining" these people and their eccentricity are.
What is perhaps even more frightening is that, to clean up an image, no complicated rehabilitation process was needed, much less a public apology. What we saw on Saturday was enough… A dry cleaning, without the need for soap and water. No attempt at a redeeming narrative arc, no attempt at defense. The system works much more efficiently: by relegating controversial figures to the universe of trivial television debates, 'reality TV' performs a civic function. It teaches us to consume power as content, useless and forgettable the moment another scandal arises, and to accept that the public sphere can be dissolved in the world of entertainment to death , without any difficulty. In these circumstances, corruption no longer needs to be criticized or defended, as it slowly transforms into a boring consumer good on equally boring Saturday evenings.
