The Western tradition of art ‘has always equated knowledge with representations which are judged according to their adequacy as reflections of external reality’ (Evans and Hall, 1999:12). However, works of art, photographs and modern media representations are essentially constructions through which ideologies are transmitted.
Reality TV Essay Introduction
Each historical age produces its own form of realism, its own
‘regime of truth.’ These forms of representing social reality change
through time (Dovey, 2004:232). The media landscape has changed
dramatically during the past decade. Out of the new broadcasting
environment arose a new form of factual entertainment, generally
referred to as reality TV. The growth of reality TV has brought
to surface the age-old concern about realism and truthfulness. The
defining feature of the mediated culture in which we now live is the
intermingling of traditional codes of documentary realism with genres
based on celebrity and artifice (Lewis, 2004: 288). These days the
codes of reality and construction are more blurred than ever as factual
television practices have more or less abandoned empirical observation
in favour of the observation of simulated situations created for the
consumption of television audiences. Audiences keep watching because
‘reality TV promises a window to the soul.’ (Patkin, 2003:13). Reality
TV programmes claim to represent real life through the unscripted
actions of real people. Critics claim that realism in reality TV is
nothing but a construction. This essay examines the debates surrounding
the question: How ‘real’ is reality TV? This is done through the
examination of the most popular reality TV format in the UK, Big
Brother. Described as a ‘gamedoc’, Big Brother first appeared on
British television in the summer of 2000. The contestants are monitored
24 hours a day, seven days a week while they live together in a house
isolated from the outside world. Since the first show, Big Brother has
been screened every summer, its contestants have turned into minor
celebrities and commentators have subjected the show to continuous
public controversy due to the fact that it is seen to encourage
paranoia and conflict through continuous surveillance.
The Big Brother Panopticon
The panopticon refers to a spatially organised technology in which
power is exerted through the capacity to survey. The idea of the
panopticon was first created by Bentham and developed further by
Foucault (1999) who was interested in tracing the conditions of
emergence of the visual as the ground of knowledge. As Evans and Hall
(1999:15) describe it, Foucault wanted to uncover how the visual could
be construed as an object of power/knowledge. The panopticon is a
prison consisting of an annular building at the periphery and a central
tower pierced with wide windows. The prison inmates are constantly
visible from the central tower but can never know whether they are
under surveillance at any particular moment. The panopticon induces ‘in
the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures
the automatic functioning of power’ (Foucault, 1999:65). Like the
inmates in the panopticon, Big Brother contestants are constantly
visible. Moreover, Big Brother contestants are also aware of being
watched and cannot escape the all-seeing eye of the cameras. The
panopticon produces homogenous effects of power where inmates learn to
discipline themselves for the surveying gaze. The permanent visibility
in the Big Brother house has a similar effect on the contestants. The
knowledge of the gaze influences the behaviour in the house. Housemates
learn to perform for the cameras and through that performance the
housemates exercise power upon themselves. As the contestants cannot
know whether anyone is watching at any given moment, the performance is
constant. The broadcasting of the show creates a false sense of
intimacy by turning public and private inside out, strengthening the
illusion that the audiences can read the nuances of every performance
with the result of judging which contestants are being ‘real’ (Patkin,
2003:13). The interplay between surveillance and performance forms the
central pleasure of reality TV programmes. At the same time, it renders
the claims of broadcasting real life meaningless. The precise
construction of real life becomes a source of gratification as viewers
survey and criticise the performances of the housemates. Reality shows
therefore prove their unreal nature through the effects of constant
surveillance on the participants’ behaviour.
Authenticity and performance
Real life has always fascinated television audiences and programme
producers have always attempted to exploit the audiences’ fascination
with the real. As early as in the nineteenth century, the
industrialisation that accompanied the development of an increasingly
independent market economy has contributed to a waning sense of reality
– one that resonates with sociologist Anthony Giddens’ description of
the disembedding effects of modernity. Giddens (quoted in Andrejevic,
2004:143) wrote: ‘for the educated bourgeoisie […] reality itself began
to seem problematic, something sought rather than lived. A dread of
unreality, a yearning to experience intense real life […] helped to
generate a longing for bodily vigour, emotional intensity, and a
revitalised sense of selfhood.’ Roth (2003:34-35) suggests that reality
is a social construct. If reality is socially constructed, the
identification and explication of the predominant means used by
contemporary society to introduce and maintain dominant ideology is
necessary to achieve a greater understanding of our world. One of the
means in which we achieve this understanding is by watching television
(Roth, 2003:35). However, television in general has often been
associated with fantasy and fictional representations, a kind of
escapism from the hardships of real life. The paradox therefore is that
‘television, as a fictional, contrived world, cannot, by its very
nature, be real’ (Chvasta and Fassett, 2003:217).
Big Brother is a product of the growing need for reality in the age of
the postmodern. As Baudrillard (McGuigan, 1992: 215) described it,
representation is now hyperreal. Simulations and images have become
indistinguishable from the social being to the extent that divisions
between the real and the hyperreal are blurred. The simulated
existence of the digital era has led to a rise in the search for
intense experience as opposed to the homogenisation of mass
consumption. Ryan (2006) claims that ‘by placing human subjects under
the never-ending surveillance of cameras, and by labelling the
resulting spectacle reality, [reality TV shows] seem to have been
conceived for the specific purpose for implementing Foucault’s dystopic
vision of a panoptic society, and Baudrillard’s doctrine of the
hyperreality of the image in contemporary culture.’
In her research into reality TV audiences, Hill (2005) has identified
performance as the most powerful framing device for judging reality
TV’s claims to the real. The legacy of the documentary is still
persistent in television viewers’ minds. The documentary claimed to
offer ‘a window on the world’ through representing objectively real
events as they naturally occurred. Dovey (2004:239) doesn’t believe in
the authenticity of Big Brother: ‘the whole event is staged within a
space characterised by mimicry in which participants are called upon to
play a part in an imaginative construct, here the houseguests are
playing a version of themselves which engages audiences in endless
speculation around whether or not this performance of self is a true,
authentic self or calculated performance.’ Clark (quoted in Kilborn
2004:54) on the other hand, believes that Big Brother represents
reality: ‘Big Brother, with its laboratory layout, is just documentary
making by another route. The audience tuned in to see a type of reality
– real human beings behaving in unusual circumstances.’ The ultimate
message of reality programmes is that the participants are ‘plain
folks’; people just like you and me (Patkin, 2003:23). Big Brother
claims to represent reality but there is little evidence of this claim
in the programme itself. Housemates talk to the cameras like they were
real people, speculate about the outside world and how they are
perceived by the media and the public, and above all they play a game,
devise strategies and game plans and attempt to outdo each other in
their race for the cash prize. However, as Couldry (2004:63) points
out, ‘however ambiguous the claims of Big Brother to represent reality,
without some such claim its status as a show that makes celebrities out
of real, ordinary people, collapses.’ In fact, viewers are attracted to
reality TV precisely because it features real people. Hill (2005:58)
notes that ‘viewers are also distrustful of the authenticity of reality
TV because real people’s stories are represented in an entertaining
manner.’
More than any other reality TV programme Big Brother encourages
housemates to act up for the cameras. The most ‘real’ or the most
‘likeable character’ will win the game. The fact that Big Brother
borrows the narrative techniques of fictional genres makes the
interplay between performance and authenticity ambiguous. Viewers are
aware of the constructed nature of the programme and understand the
show in terms of the tensions between performed selves and real selves.
Audiences enjoy looking for moments when performance breaks down and
the real personality of the housemate emerges. When participants forget
the cameras, something real and authentic can be displayed. The
producers of the show cannot predict how their human subjects will
behave in every situation. For example, the 5th series of Big Brother
descended into chaos as the housemates broke into a fight where some
contestants threatened to kill each other. The housemates pushed each
other around, threw things, and broke plates and furniture. The
producers cannot foresee all future developments – therefore openness
is a defining characteristic of Big Brother. This openness also leaves
space for moments of truth, when the housemates drop the act. Claims to
authenticity and the real are immediately undermined by the ability of
the contestants to put on an act for the cameras. On the other hand,
however, reality TV does feature real people with the potential to be
real. Reality TV is not real life; it is a constructed performance of
the real.
Reality TV as a construction
Reality TV can be seen as construction, a simulation of real life. The
participants are carefully selected; the world of the show constructed,
the production environment made as risk-free as possible and the
footage is selectively edited into short daily episodes. Despite all
claims of Big Brother to represent reality, the daily show on Channel 4
is constructed of edited footage of the previous days’ events. This
edited footage is represented through narrative conventions familiar
from other genres. Despite the reality promise, reality shows deliver a
carefully crafted menu of tightly planned activities. ‘Just as
technical reproduction removes the context from a work of art so too
can mediated relationships strip the context from a life’ (Benjamin
quoted in Patkin, 2003:19). Reality TV shows simulate the conditions
of everyday life in a laboratory designed to entertain rather than
enlighten the audiences. They construct artificial identities for the
participants through selective editing and deception. The reality of
reality television is therefore highly scripted and carefully edited
(Patkin, 2003:20). The major complaint of evicted housemates is that
they have not been portrayed fairly. The producers of the show select
the most entertaining, the most revealing moments with the purpose of
creating pseudo-heroes, the celebrities of the moment. This selection
process starts with the casting of the participants. The casting
process helps to maintain the illusion of play as well as to make the
show as entertaining as possible (Patkin, 2003:14). The editorial
function provides audiences with personality types that they can
identify with. It is clear that the Big Brother contestants do not
always get to represent themselves.
Conclusion
Reality TV is like a panopticon, marking the height of permanent
visibility through surveillance. The disciplinary powers of observation
encourage viewers to classify and compare individuals through their
performance of the real. Television representations consist of fantasy
and fictional narratives. Reality TV representations claim to represent
real life and real people. There is an inherent contradiction between
the role of television as representing something fictional and the
documentary tradition on which reality TV shows are supposedly based.
Can we trust what we see on Big Brother? ‘The appeal of reality TV lies
in an attempt to reclaim what seems to be lost after digitisation, to
connect with other subjects across time and space’ (Biressi and Nunn,
2004:32). The claim that reality TV cannot possibly capture reality
because participants are selected by the producers, because they are
aware of the presence of the cameras or because the whole situation is
artificial, misses one important point. Human reality is more complex
than the essentialist view that we can only be ourselves behind closed
doors, in the safe haven of our homes and families. This assumption is
based on the claim that everybody constructs a social face, a façade
that they present to other people. As Ryan (2006) puts it, ‘the false,
controlled self of public life is opposed to the true, impulsive self
of privacy,’ which reality TV shows can only hope to capture in the
brief glimpses when the participants forget the presence of the
cameras. Reality TV is then not representing real life, rather, it is
real in the sense that it features real people whose real personalities
can be scrutinised, analysed and dissected by the audiences. The fact
that people perform for the cameras makes the process of viewing
pleasurable – the audiences become involved in a guessing game
consisting of the search for the person behind the performance.
Moreover, one could argue that television audiences do not necessarily
care how real a reality TV programme is. They already know that the
events they witness become a resource that is carefully fashioned by
programme makers into a saleable commodity (Kilborn, 2003:59). In fact,
one of the major pleasures of a programme like Big Brother is the
knowledge that it is indeed a construction of reality. Big Brother is
not real and it does not represent normality since people are not under
surveillance 24 hours a day. The constructed world of reality TV
reveals how people act in a strange situation. As a result, the
housemates become representations of modern individuals living in a
society where difference, self-expression, individuality and image are
central to the way in which people make meaning. Instead of the search
for the reality in reality TV, would it not be more important to assess
reality TV’s emphasis on personal relationships and the representations
of identity, sexuality, gender and race found in these programmes?
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