CLCWeb Volume 7 Issue 2 (June 2005) Article 5
Joanne Morreale,
"Reality TV, Faking It, and the Transformation of Personal Identity"
· “personal identity through performance”
· “the contents and performance of the show intensify the link between consumer culture”
· “the fabrication of identity by teaching that fulfillment comes from becoming, rather than having, a commodity shape our identities”
· “viewers see less than an hour's worth of footage. The highly contrived result is filtered, packaged and marketed as "reality."”
“the blurring of boundaries between real life and entertainment”
· “criticism of reality television viewers as passive voyeurs, however, we find more insightful perspective on the phenomenon in Boorstin’s (1961) conclusion that life has become stagecraft—a blending of reality and mass mediated experience that evokes life as a movie in which people play themselves (Gabler 1998).”
· “Depicts common people engaging in and common tasks, giving viewers the chance to compare and contrast their own lives with those of the show’s “protagonist.”
· “Grayson and Shulman’s perspective sharply contrasts postmodern views of hyper reality in which simulation is substituted for genuine experience, and perhaps even preferred (Baudrillard 1983).”
"To put it simply, we are social animals, to borrow the title of David Brooks’s 2011 book. And as long as we are still fascinated by other humans and there is a profit to be made, programmes like Made in Chelsea will exist, and people will watch them."
http://thebeaveronline.co.uk/2012/03/11/dramality-is-more-boring-than-reality/
"There are so many reality TV shows in the States and if you're going to avoid them, then you might as well avoid television,"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/jun/01/reality-tv-only-way-essex
Message from Girlguiding UK :
· ‘Towie generation’ is exposed to such a narrow field of women in the public eye that they are harming their futures.”
· It believes shows such as Geordie Shore and Skins are creating a ‘role model deficit’.
· 11 to 21-year-old females think there aren’t enough female role models.
· Girlguiding UK said the lives of celebrities are ‘hugely influential’ on girls’ behaviour and that, for some, programmes such as Geordie Shore and The Only Way Is Essex are ‘a blueprint of how their lives should look’.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15652404
“the award had been introduced to reflect "how television production and viewing is changing".”
“Reality and constructed factual programming has… been hugely influential”
Americans spend 1/3 of their free time watching television and of that 67% are reality shows
It costs $7 dollars to produce a 10-day reality show
Reality TV episodes have increased to 57% of all television shows that can be found on your screens
“is this strange blend of fact and drama the future of entertainment TV?”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/jun/01/reality-tv-only-way-essex
“why is a huge audience buying into something so obviously artificial?”
“The Only Way is Essex was not the first structured reality show to hit British screens but it's certainly had the biggest impact – it has attracted a peak audience of 1.5 million.”
"There are so many reality TV shows in the States and if you're going to avoid them, then you might as well avoid television” – Little
"alienation effect". (Brecht described this as "stripping an event of its self-evident, familiar, obvious quality and creating a sense of astonishment and curiosity about [it]".)
ANETTE HILL: Reality Tv: Audiences and popular factual television 2005
“Popular series… in the UK have attracted up to and over 50% of the market share” pg 2
“One of the reasons the reality genre has been so powerful in the television market is that it appeals to younger adults in particular” pg 5
“Reality programming provides a cheap alternative to drama” pg 6
Reality TV cost as little as £114,000 per hour / Hour long drama £875,000
“Economically attractive to local stations and networks”
“reality programming is so popular it has changed the economics of the television industry”
“The popularity of reality tv has led to a dangerous blurring of boundries between fact and fiction… as a result reality TV has had a negative effect on modern society” – Nick Clarke pg 7
“In essence, this may aswell be network crack: reality TV is fast, cheap and totally addictive… the shows are weapons of mass desctruction… causing us to be dumber, fatter and more disengaged from ourselves and society” - A critic pg 7
“Docu-soaps became the ‘motor of peaktime’ during the mid to late 1990’s” pg 27
“It’s the technique of a soap opera brought into documentaries” – Biddiscomb 1998 pg 27
“The rise of reality tv came at a time when networks were looking for a quick fix solution to economic problems within the cultural industries” pg 39
“these hybrid formats focus on telling stories about real people and real events in an entertaining style” pg 39
“reality programming is an extraordinary success story, an example of televisions ability to cannibalise itself in order to survive in a commercially uncertain media environment”
“reality programmes are part of the landscape of the evening schedule, bridging the divide between traditional factual television and traditional fictional television” pg 51
“many popular factual formats also contain other storytelling techniques, such as strong characterisation, and/or serial narratives in order to attract repeat viewers” pg 52
“At the heart if the debate about the reality of reality TV is a paradox the more entertaining a factual programme is, the less real it appears to viewers” pg 57
“the ‘Criteria of truthfulness’” – Ellis 2002 “Is associated with their belief that the more people act up in front of cameras, the less real a programme appears to be” pg 62
“audiences may be uncomfortable watching ordinary people on television because the participants in the show have been ‘coerced into making a fool of themselves, and their presence or image on screen has been manipulated by technicians, producers and bullying presenters” pg 70
“another topic is that of ‘Voyeur Vision’. Voyeurism, or peeping Tom syndrome, links with the other two topics of harm and ‘dumbing down’ as voyeurism implies watching reality Tv is a form of socially deviant behaviour”. Pg 84
“The stigmatisation of reality TV as trash TV in the popular press impacts on viewers, who attempt to manage the impressions of other people…” pg 86
“If reality TV is mindless entertainment … and its role the dumbing down of television.” Pg 86
“One of the pleasures offered by the new reality formats is the knowledge that what is being offered for consumption in manifestly “staged reality”” – Kilborn 2003 pg 175
“The more people perform in front of camera, the less ‘real’ the programme is” pg 176
“We live in a presentational culture in which appearance is reality” – Roger Silverstone 1999 pg 176
“The success of the performance, in everyday life as on the bounded space of stage and screen, depends on the judgements and acceptance of an audience” Silverstone 1999 pg 176
“Viewers may, at one level, treat the unfolding drama as having a degree of credibility… at another level, however, they are sufficiently media literate as to be aware that everything played out before them has been contrived to meet their perceived entertainment needs” - Kilborn 2003 pg 176
“Reality can be staged, but the staging has to be clearly marked by programme makers for audiences” pg 177
Bernadette Casey, Neil Casey, Ben Calvert, Liam French and Justin Lewis: Television Studies: The Key Concepts 2002
“Reality television is generally thought to have emerged in the late 1980’s in America and very quickly established itself within mainstream popular programming by the mid 1990’s” pg 196
“intimate revelations of the first person accounts are the driving force behind the narrative structure of these programmes” pg 196
“reality TV is the perfect form for the times in which we live, in that it provides a cultural space where contemporary anxieties are played out within a dramatic structure and in an entertaining format.” – Dovey 2000 pg 197
People have criticised “television producers for pandering to the lowest common denominator in parading the less pleasant side of contemporary life as voyeuristic spectacle” pg 197
JONATHAN BIGNELL: An Inroduction to Television Studies, 3rd Edition 2013
“reality TV loses the authenticity… and develops instead towards spectacle and performance” pg 137
Should TOWIE be described as a “documentary or drama” pg 138
“Producers who work on the programme have the task of looking for dramatic storylines that will anchor the everyday interactions between the participants” pg 138
“What is at stake… in TOWIE in the context if reality TV’s interest in character, is emotional realism. Rather than documenting and observing, or investigating people in sociological or political terms the series focusses on expression of emotion” pg 138
“Performances in scenes that have been planned by professional storyline producers are very likely to include moments of inauthenticity from at least some of the characters.” Pg 139
“the question of authenticity was intended to be part of the pleasure for viewers in the series” – Tony Wood (creative director of Lime Pictures) pg 139
“by mixing the ingredients from drama and documentary genres, recent factual television formats have found a prominent place in the television schedule” pg 139
