1. It Creates A Superiority Complex
I have a few friends that are fans of the show and whenever asked about their reason for finding Jeremy Kyle watchable, the answer is often the same: it makes people feel better about their own lives. The program openly ridicules people and makes a laughing stock of their problems, whether intentional or not. These are real people with actual problems they want to rectify. Maybe a TV show isn't the best way to go about it, but the allure of the small screen and the chance to meet a national celebrity is nothing to be indiscriminately reviled for. Many of you are probably familiar with the German word "Schadenfreude", which means to derive pleasure from other people's misery. And that's exactly what the Jeremy Kyle Show encourages. Whether his guests are in the wrong or "have it coming" doesn't do justice to the superior feeling people get from seeing them suffer. If entertainment means making yourself feel better by comparing yourself to the miserable lives of strangers on TV, it perhaps suggests there are greater issues at stake and watching other people try to fix their lives is less time spent fixing ones own. There are t-shirts you can buy that spout the slogan "no matter how bad my life gets, I can always be happy knowing that I'm better than the people on the Jeremy Kyle Show." Look on Ebay. It saddens me to see that a nation stands together in unison over how entertained they are by the supposed inferiority of others. This is why the Jeremy Kyle Show needs to disappear. Its exploitative nature lures working class people onto the show, disguising its harmful, voyeuristic format under thinly-veiled allusions of personal remedy and reform. Go Jezza!