http://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/mm/subscribers/downloads/archive_mm/mmagpast/mm22_reality.html
Reality television appears to have taken over our TV schedules. From the monstrous behemoth that is Big Brother the genre spawned many hybrids and sub-genres. Faced with a serious documentary on BBC4 or Wife Swap on Channel 4, most of the nation seems to choose the ‘reality’ option. Indeed, Endemol, the Dutch company behind Big Brother, is announcing record profits and moving into ever more controversial programming. In its provocative, consciousness-raising hoax The Big Donor Show 2007, Lisa, the 37-year-old victim of a brain tumour, asked the audience to help her decide which of the three contestants with degenerative kidney conditions deserved to get her healthy kidneys.
Reality TV’s future
The allegory of Plato’s cave offers an interesting comment on reality television programming, particularly with the notion of celebrity, our obsession with confession and voyeurism, and the desire to get past the ‘puppet handlers’ and the fire to the rarefied celebrity lifestyle. The chained audience theory might be limited by the active social engagement that audiences bring to this viewing experience, as reality programmes clearly seem to serve a social function.
The future of reality TV in the UK seems assured, as new series are continually commissioned. However, in Italy, for example, the state broadcaster has stopped their broadcast; La Repubblica, the national newspaper has labelled reality television ‘a dinosaur’. La Repubblica points to poor ratings in recent series of the country’s two most popular reality TV shows, Grande Fratello (Big Brother) on Mediaset and L’Isola dei Famosi (Celebrity Island) on Rai. Grande Fratello is said to have lost a million viewers last year. The audience may yet decide...press your red buttons now!
The audience
The success of reality TV is partly due to the increasingly voyeuristic nature of the society in which we live, and in part due to the obsession with celebrity and everyone wanting to be one. I would also argue that we are living in a much more ‘open society’; not open in terms of freedoms (in fact we have less freedoms), but open in terms of the ‘nothing is sacred’ philosophy. Tabloids and gossip magazines give graphic details and photographs of anyone and everyone. There is very little we don’t know about Victoria and David Beckham, Sven Gorran Eriksson’s love life, Jordan and Peter Andre’s relationship, Elaine Lordan and Jesse Wallace’s pregnancies, Jodie Marsh’s wardrobe and sex life, and Charlotte Church’s clubbing antics. Magazines like Heat,Closer, OK!, Hello and so on have huge circulation figures and even bigger readerships; a trip to the newsagents sees a new gossip magazine on the shelves weekly.
Some theoretical perspectives
Can we apply any theoretical perspectives to the reality TV phenomenon? Firstly, given that this would be relevant to the ‘Audience’ section of Med4, Uses and Gratifications theory could certainly be applied. All four categories of Uses and Gratifications research: (Diversion, Personal Relationships, Personal Identity, Surveillance), can be applied to reality TV.
• There is no doubt that we use reality TV as a form of escapism, it certainly helps you forget about the stresses of the day when you can see people having a much worse day than you have had.
• Reality TV performs the function of companionship through identification with television characters, and there is no doubt that there is sociability
• In discussion: everyone was talking about BB5. In terms of personal identity, comparisons are a relatively natural thing to make: we either take the stance that we are better than the participants, or we want to be them.
• And finally, it is a source of information about the world, not just from a psychological perspective, but also from finding out about a particular way of life – for example, Airport, Property Ladder etc.
• There is no doubt that we use reality TV as a form of escapism, it certainly helps you forget about the stresses of the day when you can see people having a much worse day than you have had.
• Reality TV performs the function of companionship through identification with television characters, and there is no doubt that there is sociability
• In discussion: everyone was talking about BB5. In terms of personal identity, comparisons are a relatively natural thing to make: we either take the stance that we are better than the participants, or we want to be them.
• And finally, it is a source of information about the world, not just from a psychological perspective, but also from finding out about a particular way of life – for example, Airport, Property Ladder etc.
Reality and post-modernism
I would argue that you could apply a postmodern theoretical perspective to the reality TV phenomenon. To quote Baudrillard:
Art today has totally penetrated reality.
If we substitute the term popular culture for art this makes more sense. He meant that the border between popular culture and reality has vanished as both have collapsed into the universal simulacrum. There are four stages to this:
• It is the reflection of a basic reality.
• It masks and perverts a basic reality.
• It marks the absence of a basic reality.
• It bears no relation to any reality whatever – it is its own pure simulacrum in which the distinctions between ‘real life’ and its media representations have become blurred.
• It masks and perverts a basic reality.
• It marks the absence of a basic reality.
• It bears no relation to any reality whatever – it is its own pure simulacrum in which the distinctions between ‘real life’ and its media representations have become blurred.
Reality becomes redundant and we have a hyper-reality, in which images breed with each other without reference to reality or meaning. Though a little abstract, it is possible to apply this to reality TV in the sense that we watch the shows because we believe we are watching real people; which in fact in a postmodern sense is nonsense. They are not real anymore; they are not even in a real situation anymore. In real terms, once you see the mediation process involved, you are aware that it is not a real situation. As soon as Jason came out of the Big Brother house he was interviewed by Closer magazine, in which he argued that we were not seeing the real Jason in the house, but an edited and manipulated version. So, was anyone real in the house?
Reality and hegemony
And, finally, I would argue that the most easily applicable theory is from a Marxist perspective: it is the concept of hegemony. The whole notion of hegemony is that we are ruled by ideas: if we believe that the world is actually a reasonable place to live, and a good education and a good job will provide everything we could ever need, then the system remains intact. As mentioned earlier, the notion of hard work has been replaced by something much more instant – being a contestant on reality TV show. In Marxist terms this could be perceived of as a masterstroke on the part of the ruling class: they don’t even have to convince the masses to work hard anymore, just convince a whole generation of young people that the key to fame and fortune is to appear as a contestant on a reality TV show. It is even more of an incentive than the Football Pools or the National Lottery. What more could we ask for? Reality TV seems to have it all.
The hegemonic view
Theories of hegemony are based around the idea that dominant classes persuade subordinate or lower ones to accept and adopt their values. In programmes like Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor, a panel of so-called experts decide who has talent and who has not. These judges decide who will be plucked from their drab life (the drabber and harder the better), to enter over the threshold into celebrity. In case you hadn’t noticed, the ‘winners’ fade quickly into obscurity and do not get a fabulous life. The winner of The X Factor in 2004, Steve Brookstein, is not an international music artist and you probably barely remember him: he was reduced to working the ‘P&O’ Portsmouth to Bilbao ferry in June 2007 as a cabaret act, together with fellow reality television ‘celebrities’ as Chico Slimani and Journey South.
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