reality lifestyle
TRANSCRIPT
Realityand
Lifestyle TV
Initial Questions Does being surveilled bother you?
Do you even notice?
Has being surveilled become something we take for granted?
Who’s watching you (us)? Why?
What does this have to do with reality television?
MTV’s The Real World
Premiered in 1992
Influenced by An American Family
Group of young strangers
Living in a house for months
Different location every season
NYC, LA, San Francisco, London, Miami, Boston, Seattle, Hawaii, New Orleans, NYC (again), Chicago, Las Vegas, Paris, San Diego, Philadelphia, Austin, Key West, Denver, Sydney, Hollywood, Brooklyn, Cancun, D.C., etc.
The Apprentice
Big Brother
Britain’s Got Talent
Coach Trip
Come Dine with Me
Ex on the Beach
Geordie Shore
I’m a Celebrity… Get me Out of Here!
Made in Chelsea
The Magaluf Weekender
The Only Way is Essex
What is Reality TV? Today, reality TV encompasses a variety of specialized
formats or subgenres, including most prominently the gamedoc (Survivor, Big Brother, Fear Factor), the dating program (Joe Millionaire, Mrs. Personality, Blind Date), the makeover/lifestyle program (What Not to Wear, A Wedding Story, Extreme Makeover), and the docusoap (The Real World, High School Reunion, Sorority Life). Other examples include the talent contest (American Idol), popular court programs (Judge Judy, Court TV), reality sitcoms (The Osbournes, My Life as a Sitcom), and celebrity variations have tapped into many of the conventions for presenting “ordinary” people on television (Celebrity Boxing). (Murray, Ouellete, 2008: 3-4)
Candid Camera began in America in 1949 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOSF38CEQ3Q
Also continued in the 1990s docusoaps: Airport, The Cruise, Hotel, Holiday Reps, Driving School, etc
Birth of Big Brother …
First broadcast in 1999 in the Netherlands…
Started in the summer of 2000 in the UK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0G6OX6din0
5.8 million viewers on average at peak in season 3
Followed by Pop Idol
Let’s look at… Reality TV
Surveillance Performance Disciplining society Class
Lifestyle TV From citizen to consumer The TV experts
More Questions What is “real” about reality TV?
Isn’t there a paradox in being “sold” a version of our reality?
Gender and class politics in reality shows – how does the “reality” format change what is acceptable in terms of representation?
What “realities” are reified?
Surveillance Intensified interest in our image
Big Brother…CCTV…
The legitimisation of CCTV/surveillance
Crimewatch … TV as a surveyor not for the public good, for the public’s own good
Gok Wan as women’s (gay) best friend
“Reality TV is not the end of civilization as we know it: it is civilization as we know it. It is popular culture as its most popular, soap opera come to life”. (Greer, 2001)
Critical positions Contemporary popular media are the product of a market-led
political economy and therefore culturally suspect. (The Trash TV position)
Contemporary factual television has strengthened the mission of public service by fostering interactive participation in social space, releasing everyday voices into the public sphere and challenging established paternalisms. (Reality TV as empowerment)
Reality TV is the ultimate example of the simulacrum in which the insistence upon realism is in direct proportion to the disappearance and irrelevance of any referential value. (Reality TV as nightmare).
From Freakshow: First Person Media and Factual Television by Jon Dovey (2000: 83)
Performance “Getting real – attaining authenticity – means being seen.
The corollary to this formulation is, of course, the guiding premise of the “reality-based” television format: we are told that what we are being provided access to reality through surveillance, and are thereby invited to adopt the position of the “pure gaze”. The audience response to reality shows including Survivor, Big Brother, and The Real World suggests that fans of the genre are drawn by the fact that the emotions of the cast members are real – that, for example, when a cast member is crying, he or she is not an actor playing someone who’s crying but is really upset”. (Andrejevic, 2004: 189)
Disciplining society
Can be seen as part of Foucault’s (1979) ‘Disciplinary Society’
He used the ‘panopticon’ prison as a metaphor
“Experts” (i.e., doctors etc.) judging us… telling us what is “normal”
Television as Panopticon
The panopticon is a prison that places a guard tower at the centre and positions prisoners in a circle around it
‘To induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that ensures the automatic functioning of power…’ (Foucault, 1979: 201)
Class Family reality shows…
Wife Swap (2003-2009), Honey We’re Killing the Kids (2007), Holiday Showdown (2003-2009), Supernanny (2004-2012)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg7lpp_Mk4A
Shots of the outside of the home… to position them/expose them/shame
Ideals of how families should perform …. Middle class?
Final Questions What do reality TV shows have in common?
Do they have narratives?
The Only Way Is Essex and Made in Chelsea: What does the “semi-reality” or “structured-reality”
allow these shows to do ? Why are they sold as partial reality ? How is national/regional identity implicated and why ?
Lifestyle TV
Lifestyle TV Why lifestyle television
From citizens to consumers
What is Lifestyle TV? Home DIY
Gardening
Property
Cooking
Fashion
Makeovers…
Why Lifestyle TVReasons for the expansion of lifestyle TV, in terms of social changes: Increase in home ownership Female entry into the work-force The continuing postponement among social classes A, B and C, of the
first child. (7-8) In the context of British television: The arrival of satellite, privileging sport and films and the increase in
multi-set households leading to the diminution in family viewing and the discernible feminization of prime-time terrestrial television
A substantial increase in independent productions appearing on screen following the introduction of the 25 percent rule in 1992. “Many of the lifestyle shows are made by independents, many are fronted by women and many have production teams with quite high proportion of women” (8)
From Brunsdon, C. (2003) ‘Lifestyling Britain: The 8-9 Slot on British Television’ .
From Citizen to Consumer
PSB (BBC) traditionally about ‘education and information’
80s/90s neoliberalism Thatcherism/Blairism
‘Lifestylification’
Lifestyle about improvement through goods
Lifestyle TV … new public service... BBC followed ITV
From skill acquision… “There is a long history of hobby or enthusiast
television programming in Britain: gardening, cooking, and ‘do-it-yourself’ (home improvement), all of which implies a narrative of transformation. However, in the older hobby genre, the narrative of transformation is generally one of skill acquisition.” (Brunsdon, 2003:9-10)
To living your best life Television experts:
Doctors, psychologists, nannies, chefs, fashion experts, etc.
Disciplining us (mostly women) into become citizens/consumers
Judging what’s “normal” in terms of behavior or appearance
Defining boundaries of feminity and class