How Jerry Springer taught us to love watching people at their worst

Contrary to what our teachers and parents may have told us in the ’90s, Jerry Springer did not ruin TV. He wasn’t one of the Apocalypse’s Four Horsemen, and he didn’t usher in the downfall of society as we knew it. Instead, in the wake of his death this week, we can admit that Jerry Springer was the future: a magnet for controversy and a cultural lightning rod, and, perhaps most accurately, the godfather of reality television as we now know it.

At the height of his talk show, Springer’s name was synonymous with trash TV. And to the objective viewer, this description might make sense. Episodes such as “You Slept With My Stripper Sister!” and “I Married a Horse,” pandered to audiences eager to slow down and stare at cultural car crashes.

Fights often broke out between guests, audience members and, occasionally, both, and the judge-and-jury dynamic between viewers and show participants gifted anyone watching with a power with which they could decide whether somebody deserved approval or condemnation. “Springer” capitalized on our insatiable need to weigh in on other people’s business while simultaneously providing a platform for anyone hungry for their 15 minutes. Anyone who engaged with “The Jerry Springer Show” was arguably complicit: everybody involved simply performed the roles they thought they deserved.

Which might sound like it’s giving “Springer” more credit than is earned, but from 1991 to 2018, his series laid the foundation for the way we watch television now. It’s easy to forget (between spoofing himself in “Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me” and the way persons of authority tended to dismiss the show entirely) that among episodes like “Pornographic Clowns,” the host wasn’t entirely entrenched in content fit for grocery store tabloids. As the son of Jewish-German refugees who escaped the Nazis, his show was also used as a vessel for racial discourse (of the most heightened magnitude), in which he confronted an antisemitic priest (1995) and saw his TV audience descend on a pack of KKK members. It wasn’t “Oprah” or “Donahue,” but it was still something. And most importantly, it got everybody talking.

Whether this is a good thing or not depends on the subject. For every real conversation about racism, incidences of transphobia, homophobia, fatphobia and sexism (to name a few) thrived on “The Jerry Springer Show.” Guests may have been happy to put themselves in the hot seat, but those who strayed from accepted social norms drew the ire from audiences happy to judge anything they didn’t identify with. At times, this was understandable, but it was also conflicting: Springer himself obviously welcomed the outrageousness of his guests and the response from those watching, yet by offering a platform to parties willing to hurt other people in the name of attention cultivated a climate in which that was not just acceptable, but encouraged. Sound familiar?

Outside the spectrum of television, Springer’s courtship with controversy has influenced the current approach to culture and politics. Social media – especially Twitter – has promoted us from our passive roles to key players, giving audiences not only the chance to respond through judgment or approval, but to mount our own stages and to share our own stories. What we’ve deemed to be the modern culture wars are simply glorified episodes of “Springer”: public opinions are met with fury (or overwhelming approval) from a particular base, and the cycle begins again.

But like “The Jerry Springer Show” itself, this formulaic approach to big conversations tends to be overshadowed by mess. In the same way Springer instigated discussion about important social issues only to have them largely overshadowed by his legacy of sensational, tabloid-centric show titles, reactionary responses on social media (and our tendency to react to those) eclipse matters of life and death. What somebody tweets can certainly carry weight, but by focusing on the microcosm of one person’s public display, we’re distracted from the systemic circumstances feeding it. We read the episode title and react instead of looking into where it came from.

The same can be said for the way we consume television. While franchises like “Housewives” or series like “Vanderpump Rules” or “Love Island” offer a different structure than a traditional talk show, they still provide a gateway for our voyeuristic values. As a culture, we crave drama and we tend to prefer that it isn’t our own. We lose ourselves in the messiness of strangers’ relationships and the willingness of cast members (or guests) to display their worst, most egregious selves so we can play up our own morality. Ironically, it’s an escape from our real lives in which we’re continually plagued with the type of drama we can’t control. Like “Springer,” we can dip into a reality in which the stakes are far lower: we have nothing to do with what we’re watching, but our heightened emotions are given an outlet. We can slow down and watch before speeding back into our regular lives.

Of course, where reality TV now is a polished, highly edited counterpart to the trenches of talk show television, “Springer” dared America to lift the curtain to reveal what human beings can be capable of — and it was usually bleak. Sensationalism for the sake of sensationalism created a reactive, chaotic environment in which the threat of violence or outbursts could arise at any minute. The bleakness was less the subject matter, and more the possibility of what it could be met with: would somebody’s relationship be responded to with violence? Or would an ethos built on negating human rights be met with cheers?

Yet over 30 years since the premiere of “Springer,” producers have learned to parlay grim reality into shiny, polished packages, transforming bad behaviour into watchable season arcs and cast member catchphrases.

There will never be another show like “The Jerry Springer Show,” and that’s probably a good thing. But it isn’t fair to condemn or belittle Springer’s contributions to pop culture or culture entirely since few of us are immune to television shows about “normal” people doing things we would not. One person’s trash TV is another’s appointment viewing. And credit must be paid: “The Jerry Springer Show” cultivated a climate in which we not only welcomed strangers into our homes, but involved ourselves in their chaos. We may hate those strangers and never want to see them again, but Jerry Springer’s legacy has ensured that there will always be more to take their place.

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