Rationale

Though a seemingly recent phenomenon, reality television has existed for decades. In 1948, Allen Funt’s “Candid Camera”, arguably the first reality show, became immensely popular for its depiction of ordinary people placed in unusual, often prankish, situations. Over the next several decades, reality-based shows continued to occasionally surface, with varying degrees of success. Of these, most notable was the 1973 PBS series “An American Family”. A documentary about a family undergoing a divorce, its 12 parts drew 10 million viewers--a significant number at the time.

Still, these efforts were few and far between, partly due to technological limitations. It wasn’t until the late 1980’s that reality television truly attained a foothold, enabled by the advent of computer-based non-linear editing systems. While film had been easy to edit, it was too expensive to regularly shoot extensive hours of footage with. Now, producers possessed the ability to quickly condense hours of video footage into a usable, bullet-point version of events. This facilitated development of serialized “reality” television, which had the side benefit of being far cheaper to produce due to the lack of scripts and actors. Christopher J. Wright, discussing //Survivor//, mentions that “each 44-minute episode is culled from as much as 72 hours of footage from multiple cameras. Burnett and his team can make anyone look bad and they can make anyone look good” (2006, p. 172).



Popular culture is a manifestation of zeitgeist, reflecting the values and attitudes prevalent in society. During the latter part of the 20th century, society was undergoing a significant cultural shift. The proliferation of the Internet empowered us to find more, experience more, and learn more about any subject that caught our fancy--including other people. As new devices and technologies became integral parts of our everyday lives, humanity fell in love not only with its ability to share information, but with its ability to access it on demand. While Web 2.0 facilitated both connectivity and interaction, the result was that these occurred at a distance, from the far side of a screen. Users were simultaneously invisible and visible, afflicted with a need not only to consume information, but to manufacture an “always on” public persona for others, whether Facebook profile or forum avatar.

The correlation to the life of a celebrity can easily be drawn. Reality television’s rise in popularity reflects not only this hunger to connect and identify with strangers, but also the obfuscation of the boundary between private and public. As Feitveit writes, “reality TV comes with a unique promise of contact with reality, but at the same time it promises a secure distance” (2002, p. 130). A recent article published in the //Journal of Experimental Social Psychology// tests the “Social Surrogacy Hypothesis”, which suggests that people seek out parasocial relationships--via television--when real interactions are unavailable. (Derrick, et al., 2009) Just as a friendship evolves through spending time together, parasocial relationships evolve through our involvement with these surrogates’ personal lives, idiosyncrasies, and experiences. (Butler and Pickett, 2009) The “unstaged” nature of reality shows creates an illusion of intimacy with strangers. Audiences are often aware that the shows are carefully constructed and edited to maximize emotional impact and foster a personal investment in the people shown.

>> …as viewers, we know that reality TV is, in fact, a sham. Through a combination of casting decisions, generic conventions, celebrity aspirations, etc., the participants of these shows are, in effect, not acting ‘authentically,’ but are rather ‘playing roles.’ Nevertheless, we enjoy watching them as if we think of them as ‘real people’. (Friedlander, 2007, p. 10)

Reality shows, therefore, are the triumph of the manufactured image: the articulation of our desire to relate to fabricated identities and carefully edited personas. They are the blank screen upon which we can project our own need to belong--and to transform our own identities as necessary. Each reality television subgenre draws this out differently. Through documentary shows, audiences live vicariously, experiencing life as a bounty hunter, or a frontiersman, or a survivalist. Makeover shows reflect the anxieties of our time; in a society where youth culture dominates the media, social deviance is shown “in the form of poor selection of apparel, neglect of bodies or the natural process of ageing,” these shows portray change as salvation and compliance as a heroic narrative. (Ibrahim, p. 51) Talent and competition shows revel in personal investment in the journey from amateur to professional, from non-celebrity to star, with web 2.0 technology compelling audiences to help determine a program’s outcome--and thus a person’s future.

VH1 executive vice president Michael Hirschorn wrote that the plots and subject matter seen on reality television are more authentic and more engaging than scripted television, which "remains dominated by variants on the police procedural... in which a stock group of characters (ethnically, sexually, and generationally diverse) grapples with endless versions of the same dilemma.” Reality television, he argues, takes “the best elements of scripted TV and documentaries while eschewing the problems of each”, benefitting from the story structure and pacing but leaving behind the canned plots and characters. It’s "the liveliest genre on the set right now. It has engaged hot-button cultural issues—class, sex, race—that respectable television... rarely touches." (2007)

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a time capsule as "a container used to store for posterity a selection of objects thought to be representative of life at a particular time." They should provide a glimpse inside the culture of a particular generation: how they lived and what they dreamed of, the details that color in the broad outlines painted by history books. Reality television blurs authenticity and invention, public and private, voyeurism and transgression. It is a symptom of our times--and according to some outspoken critics, perhaps a larger disease. Nonetheless, its impact on popular culture of the 1990’s and 2000’s is undeniable, alluding not only to who we are, but who we want to be.



Because of this, it’s important to preserve samples of reality television, and to illuminate the path it blazed across all levels of society. Just as multiple shows empower the audience to dictate specific results, web 2.0 enabled shows to build upon their viewers. Fans weren’t just able to create stars, but to interact with them and like-minded viewers. Meanwhile, shows turned each viewer into a potential promoter and disseminator. This recursion and interrelatedness typifies the web 2.0 era. Whether through proxy or at the proverbial water cooler--where coworkers discuss the plight of contestants as if they’re dear, close friends--reality television has facilitated a sense of community that our disconnected society often seems to lack. However, rich or poor, young or old, perhaps reality television’s greatest achievement is offering “spaces for ordinary people to explore celebrity status and to be transformed by their journeys.” (Ibrahim, p. 54) During a time when class and political lines seem to be drawn thicker than ever, this message of change and hope shines brightly, an illusion that we’re all too willing to believe. It is up to future generations to discover what we actually became.

Resources:

Butler, Fionnuala and Cynthia Pickett. “Imaginary Friends.” //Scientific American//, July 28, 2009. Accessed from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=imaginary-friends on March 24, 2011. Derrick, Jaye L., Shira Gabriel, and Kurt Hugenberg. “Social surrogacy: How favored television programs provide the experience of belonging.” //Journal of Experimental Social Psychology// 45, no. 2 (2009): 352-62. Fetveit, Arlid. “Reality TV in the Digital Era: A Paradox in Visual Culture?.” In //Reality Squared: Televisual Discourse on the Real//. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Friedlander, Jennifer. “No Business Like Schmo Business: Reality TV and Fetishistic Inversion.” //International Journal of Zizek Studies// 1, no. 3 (2007), accessed from http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/view/60, March 24, 2011. Hirschorn, Michael. "The Case for Reality TV." //The Atlantic Monthly// 299, no. 4 (May 2007): 138-40. Ibrahim, Yasmin. “Transformation as Narrative and Process: Locating Myth and Mimesis in Reality TV”, //Nebula// 4, no. 4 (December 2007): 41-58. Wright, Christopher J. “Welcome to the Jungle of the Real: Simulation, Commoditization, and Survivor”. //The Journal of American Culture// 29, no. 2 (June 2006): 170-82.