They now deal with sensationalized romance and conflict, but reality TV shows were not always so superficial. MTV's "The Real World" — one of the pioneers of the reality genre — faced a truly difficult reality in its third season in 1994, filmed in San Fransisco.
That year, the show gave a wide audience the opportunity to view the life of a cast member who was facing AIDS. A few months after the show finished taping, that man, Pedro Zamora, succumbed to the illness.
Zamora's legacy continues however, through two of his cast mates turned AIDS educators and activists — Judd Winick and his wife Pam Ling.
On March 2, Winick will visit the University as part of the Class of 2004 lecture series, which is open to the public.
Winick will discuss AIDS and HIV and read excerpts from his book "Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss and What I Learned."
Winick's work as an AIDS educator began just after the show finished taping. At first, Winick filled in at lectures that Zamora was too ill to attend.
He described that period, in which he was educating people about AIDS while watching his friend struggle before his eyes, as a "very weird time."
"[After] living with one of the best educators in the country for six months," Winick became confident about speaking publicly, he said.
About a year after Zamora's death, Winick stopped touring because it became unbearable, he said.
"Lecturing and living through the experience of living with him and losing him was too much," he said.
The Long Island native then went back to his other passion, cartooning — which he had aspired to do since he was growing up. But the cartooning seemed "thin" compared to his experiences with Zamora, he said.
In 1999, he brought his two interests together, writing and illustrating "Pedro and Me."
"It was odd for the two things to come together," he said. But he said it helped him find his "voice as a storyteller."
Winick said he hopes the illustrated interpretation of his story will attract people to the book so that a wider audience may be educated.
More important to reaching that audience, however, may be the closeness of Winick's age to that of his audience, said James Trussell GS '75, acting dean of the Wilson School and a leading scholar in contraception issues.
"Peers are terrific educators precisely because they can communicate in a language that can be heard and understood," he said in an e-mail.
Winick said his goals are to keep Zamora's spirit alive through repeating his stories.
Winick said he plans to develop a curriculum that incorporates the book and AIDS education for schools around the country.Winick credited much of his success in spreading Zamora's story to the power of television.
Millions of people learned what it was like to live with HIV and AIDS by watching Zamora, he said.
Zamora wanted to be on the show to educate the nation and to eliminate the perception that, "when you have AIDS, you are dying," Winick said.
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