Following the suicide of 63-year-old Stephen Dymond, a week after appearing on The Jeremy Kyle Show, reality TV has come under attack. ITV has been condemned, The Jeremy Kyle Show has been cancelled and the digital, culture, media and sports committee has launched an investigation into production companies’ duty of care to participants on their shows.
Yet popular culture has always thrived on the exposure of troubled and vulnerable individuals. Back in 1835, the so-called “Greatest Showman” PT Barnum found fame by displaying an elderly and paralysed slave named Joice Heth. She was probably suffering from dementia. She was billed as the “161-year-old nurse of George Washington” and lugged across the US as punters poked and prodded her ailing body, which Barnum exhibited in taverns and pleasure gardens. He once claimed to have starved her and forcibly removed her teeth to make her appear more credible. When she died, aged about 80, her body was publicly dissected in front of a paying crowd, and Barnum was on his way to stardom.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2I7PiDA
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