so...people say it's decadent, but how do you define decadence?

I just came away from watching the Flavor Flav show with my girlfriend and some friends. I couldn't stand to watch it, but I'm not sure why, and I came on here to ramble, and also to see if anyone has thoughts on just how some reality TV shows can affect your mind, and why they are so often considered decadent by the very same people who can't turn away from the screen when reality TV is on.

One thought I have had, which I think ties in with Northrop Frye, has to do with the notion that throughout roughly the last 2500 years of western literary history, and it makes some sweeping generalizations, so I'm not sure if this idea holds water, but it echoes in my head sometimes. Apparently some people write that since classical times, or at least since the renaissance, you can notice a more or less steady progression in the subject matter of literary works and entertainment - plays in ancient Greece often dealt with the nobility or with deities, and you can also see this trend in the early medieval period with things like Beowulf, where the literary work deals with the struggles of characters who are generally in some way above the reader, then fast forward to the renaissance and you see Shakespeare and his contemporaries writing plays that deal with issues of the nobility, but also include commoners, wenches, etc. People
were expected to look up to the noble characters, even though they were flawed, but they were also expected to laugh at cockney-speaking commoners. Fast forward again to the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries, where you see realism starting to come in, with Ibsen, Shaw, and finally Arthur Miller who put a cap on the idea of thetragedy of the common man - when we see Willy Loman, we see ourselves in him, he's on our level with no buffer of "oh, he's a deity, i can't actually have that type of problem." The boundaries between real life and theatre had begun to blur, and you could even see this in the styles of theatrical venues that were being built. The standard proscenium arch (picture frame style used in high school auditoriums) pitted the actors clearly on one side of a line, and spectators on another side. Through the 20th century it became more common for these boundaries to blur, as you see in the addition of seating on three or four sides, etc.

Then comes things like The Sopranos. We identify with Tony because he is a lot like us, but we feel better watching it because we know (or think) that even though we have inward struggles, we are above mobsters in everyday real life.

I'm not saying I subscribe to this theory 100%. In fact, I think it has gaps that you could drive a truck through. But maybe it holds water in ways that I don't understand - I'm curious what people think.

Now if this theory holds water, how does reality TV fit into it? I haven't seen too many reality shows, but on the ones that I have seen, the people who always get the most attention are the least likable ones there. They almost always get re-hired, or in some cases they get their own show altogether (I Love New York.) Are we, as Americans, feeling so futile about our own possibilities to get something better out of life that we have become desperate for something to look down on, and use the immature people on reality shows to give ourselves a boost? If so, is this necessarily a bad thing?

I think a big question is, what comes next? A reality show about the Iraq War? A day in the life of a meth peddler? Often, people watch these shows and are entertained by cruelty, but the cruelty is often very petty, along the lines of catty middle school students and people who never grew up, blah blah blah. But I am really wondering how far it will go. If catty social immaturity sells, does that mean that there will be a reality show one day about cruel things that have more serious consequences? I'm trying to look at it as an anthropologist would, and not jump to too many conclusions, and I'm wondering what thoughts people have on this trend.

Any input is welcome.