Reality TVA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZW‘symbolic deaths’ of contestants serve as ques-
tionable therapy for the watchers (or voyeurs?):
we return to ‘our lives feeling somehow better’
knowing that we ‘are “survivors” of our own real-
ity show called Life’.
On the other hand, in a London Evening Stan-
dard online article (3 July 2009), Brian Sewell
argues that Reality TV ‘is the modern equivalent
of Aesop’s Fables ... in drawing morals from such
programmes they are every bit as instructive
as examples of how we should behave in what
is left of our still fundamentally Judo-Christian
society’. We obtain glimpses of ‘society as it now
really is’.
When we turn to actual research evidence
rather than cursory impression, as exemplifi ed
by broadcaster John Humphrey’s view expressed
at the Edinburgh Festival that Reality TV is
‘mind numbing, witless vulgarity’, we encounter
a diff erent picture. Annette Hill, author of Real-
ity TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Televi-
sion (Routledge, 2005), countered Humphrey’s
opinion in a New Humanist article, ‘Witless
vulgarity’ (November/December 2004). Hill’s
research indicated that audiences for Reality TV
were often proactively questioning. Th ey ‘gossip,
speculate and judge how far people can portray
themselves and stay true to themselves in the
spectacle/performance environment’.
Hill states that viewers are well aware ‘of how
far the reality shows are planned and directed.
And if they are aware of the constructed nature of
these formats, they are also aware of the staging
of reality in other types of factual programmes,
such as documentary, or even news. In other
words, these audiences are truly media literate’.
She argues that ‘if the debunkers of reality TV
actually listened to the people who watch such
programmes they’d realise that rather than “mind
numbing, witless vulgarity”, Big Brother, I’m a
Celebrity ... and even Too Posh to Wash can actu-
ally foster a new kind of intellectual engagement’.
The treatment of women in Reality TV
programmes is a keen focus of attention for
analysts. In ‘Outwit, outlast, out-fl irt? Th e women
of Reality TV’ published in Featuring Females:
Feminist Analyses of Media (American Psycho-
logical Association, 2005), edited by Ellen Cole
and Jessica Henderson Daniel, Laura S. Brown
writes, ‘Reality shows do a remarkable job of
refl ecting the social construction of gender within
dominant culture. In that regard, no matter how
contrived the story lines, the stereotypes of
women on reality shows appear highly consistent
with those seen in other aspects of popular
media. Th ese images arise from the decision ofmentary’; a prime example being, in the UK,
Channel 4’s Big Brother, versions of which have
been produced in many other countries world-
wide. While participants in Reality TV are real
people (rather than actors), and while the story
of their interactions is unscripted and not known
in advance, such programmes are essentially
contrivances of reality – highly mediated by the
TV production team, and highly manipulated
from start to fi nish.
The participants are painstakingly vetted
prior to selection. Once chosen, although they
are ‘real’ people, they are placed into a situation
that requires performance. Th ey become actors
in front of cameras and millions of viewers,
knowing full well that the performance of the
realities of self-presentation will be judged by a
‘participatory’ audience.
Such programmes as Big Brother, the BBC’s
Castaway or ITV’s Popstars have been described
as docu-soaps with gameshow appeal, and they
chiefly target younger-generation audiences.
Their popularity, the unscripted sensation-
seeking of many participants, and the encour-
agement of such sensationalism on the part of
the popular press, have provoked criticism and a
degree of righteous indignation, in part because
they take up so much TV time.
Generally, Reality TV shows such as American
Idol, Th e X Factor, SurvivorWife Swap , and Hell’s
Kitchen are cheap to produce (the participants
queue in thousands to take part, for the lure of
fame and fortune). Th ey are about success and
failure; success for a few and failure, and very
often audience derision, for the many.
Reality TV is a classic bad eff ects/good eff ects
scenario, giving rise to questions such as what
exactly is meant by ‘success’; and for those who
achieve it, what is the long-term future for what
have been called ‘nonebrities’ or ‘Z-list celebri-
ties’? Critics argue that the price of failure is both
damaging to the participant and brings out the
worst in audences. Media analyst Tom Alder-
man has written that ‘there is a subset of Reality
TV that can only be described as Shame TV
becauses it uses humiliation as its core appeal’.
In a blog posted to SF Gate website of the San
Francisco Chronicle (31 January 2011) entitled
‘Reality TV is NOT Reality’, psychiatrist Jim
Taylor, focusing on US Reality TV, argues that
‘Reality TV has become the public executions of
our times. We sit on the edge of our seats waiting
eagerly for the guillotine to fall, yet don’t want
the end to come too quickly. We want to savour
the lingering death of humiliation and rejection’.
It would seem, according to Dr Taylor, that the