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Introduction
Reporting from the recent Mip TV trade show in Cannes, Variety quoted the Paris-based Eurodata TV research organization on the “huge impact” that reality programming is having on television schedules around the world, with Survivor and Big Brother among the top ten shows in five out of the 55 countries surveyed last year. (James)
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Programs such as Survivor, Big Brother, Popstars and Temptation Island have arrived at a new formula for television entertainment by looking at the results of an experiment initiated by the production company. Employing the principle of elimination (either by voting or according to the contestants’ performances), these shows have been described by the analysts at Eurodata TV as “psycho-games” or “reality soaps”. (eurodatatv.com 2001)
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In examining some of the reasons for the success of this relatively new genre, I would argue that it heralds a return to one of the earliest paradigms of broadcast television: “liveness”. The promise held out by live television to its audiences was a sense of “immediacy”, “authenticity”, and “truth”. Although the golden age of live television is long past and reality programming (or RTV) is clearly not “live” in any technical sense, it dangles similar bait before its audiences.
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Implicit in the context of live television is a contract between the broadcasters and their audiences to show, as far as it is possible, the “truth” of an event. In this article I will examine what this might mean in terms of reality television, and the ways in which reality soaps seem to be meeting this expectation.
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The question of realism
Reality television began to appear as a distinctive genre in the late eighties, and writers such as Kilborn defined it in terms of lightweight video recording equipment being used to capture events in the lives of individuals or groups, which are then edited and repackaged into a television program “which can be promoted on the strength of its ‘reality’ credentials.” (421)
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The entertainment value is enhanced by use of a presenter, and by ensuring that there is always sufficient Variety in the material itself. In arguing that modern viewers are aware that what is usually seen on television is in every sense a constructed reality, Kilborn sees a key attraction of this new kind of programming coming from its apparent ability to capture “the vibrancy and spontaneity of real-life events.” (423)
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Reality television programming appears to draw on traditions that go back to some of the earliest forms of cinema verite. The question of ‘realism’ has attracted attention from a number of writers, and among them Hassard’s examination of the history of ethnographic documentary seems particularly relevant.
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Tracing the first developments in theory and practice to the Russian film-maker Dziga Vertov, who argued that sets, scripts and actors should be dispensed with in order to present ‘realistic’ images of everyday lives, Hassard notes that this style of film making tries to avoid ‘judgement’ and ‘subjectivity’, with the film-maker’s role limited to revealing ‘reality’. In its purest form there should be no direction, no plot, no questions posed or answered, with the only permissible tools being lightweight cameras & portable sound recorders. “Decisions concerning action should rest with the subject: the film-maker merely decides whether or not to film a particular piece of action.”(44)
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This approach considers the camera operator to be the most important crewmember, with the success of the film resting on his or her ability to keep pace with the action. Long takes are characteristic of the style in order to give the viewer a feeling for the character and atmosphere. When it came to editing, sequences were to be cut close to the way they were actually shot, in order that the process should “ ... as far as possible, be ‘true to life’, rather than footage being manipulated by the editor to create a ‘new’ and essentially ‘different’ reality...” (Hassard 61)
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In this respect, Survivor seems to go out of its way to draw attention to the fact that it is an edited construct by employing the ‘90s cliché of speeded up vision at every possible opportunity. Clouds race across the sky, aerial shots of mazes twist onto the screen with the speed of computer graphics - on no account must the audience experience the slow passage of time characteristic of life in the outback or on a deserted island, for fear that they might become bored and the ratings drop.
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Does this mean that what the audiences are seeing is not ‘true to life’? Certainly it appears that the editors in this new genre of reality soaps highlight certain aspects of people’s behaviour for entertainment value, as part of the process of character construction. A frequent comment from ex-contestants is how “I’m not really like that” because a series of individual incidents have been strung together to exaggerated effect. But in this context a comment from Richard, the “villain” who won Survivor I is illuminating:
Richard said that even though the episodes had been “edited somewhat” to portray her (Jerri) in a bad light, she deserved her reputation. “You do all of those things that you're edited to do,” he said, “and she was evil to people.”(cbsnews.com 2001)
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Live television
When television began, anything seen by the audience was either live or telecined from film. With the introduction of videotape in the seventies the amount of live content declined rapidly, and the current trend amongst television theorists is to reduce its importance. A contrary view is argued by Bourdon, who maintains that the technical possibility of live broadcasting remains important to audiences because:
“From the top, major institutions have all used news, then radio and television liveness, to create a connection between the masses and events …at the base, the need to connect oneself, with others, to the world’s events, is central to the development of the modern nation …” (553)
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Even though live broadcasts are now comparatively rare, television remains deeply influenced by its possibility. This is because “liveness” is not merely a technical phenomenon but also a product of the viewer’s belief.
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Bourdon suggests the following typology for degrees of “liveness” in television sequences:
* Fully live - major media events, which break into the normal run of programming; other examples are news shows or channels such as CNN where the viewer “knows” the broadcast to be happening “now”.
* Continuity - has the appearance of being live but may not be - sporting matches, game shows, Variety programs; the viewer cannot really tell from cues within the program if the show is coming to them live or off tape. In some circumstances viewers may even seek to enhance their viewing experience by preserving the “liveness” (for example, by avoiding news bulletins on radio about a sporting event which they intend viewing as a delayed telecast).
* Edited - non-fictional television such as news stories within the evening bulletin, or documentaries; these may use a presenter on location to indicate ‘presentness’ but the viewer almost certainly does not believe them to be live.
* Fiction - programs that have been recorded live before an audience such as sitcoms, followed by most forms of fiction such as series or soap operas, which in today’s television are no longer produced live. Films have minimal ‘liveness’.
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In this typology, reality soap programs would appear to fall somewhere between edited and fiction. The possibility of live broadcasts barely exists in most of these shows because the participants tend to spend a great deal of their time waiting around for something exciting to happen. In order to make this interesting for a television audience the editors must take on a role similar to that played by the writers of a fictional series. They construct a narrative from the raw material that both compresses time and highlights the inter-relationships between members of the “cast”. The application of new editing technologies to this process should not go without comment. The sheer volume of material generated by these shows could not be cut (and presumably re-cut in the light of later events) without the speed and flexibility offered by non-linear computer based editing systems, which became a common feature of the television industry only in the mid to late nineties.
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Nevertheless, I would argue that the game show element injects the same kind of uncertainty (“anything might happen”), which is peculiar to live television. The audience is aware that non-actors have been placed in situations that are un-scripted, where the outcomes have not been pre-determined by the producers. This element of uncertainty provides a sensation of “immediacy” by allowing audiences to have the expectation that “anything might happen” - still the most marked characteristic of live television.
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In some shows there is even an element of danger, and contestants place themselves in hazardous situations. As with many sporting events, the possibility of injury may be part of the thrill for the audience. In Survivor II viewers witnessed Michael Skupin being evacuated by helicopter after being badly burnt, and the effect that this had upon the other contestants. The presence of crocodiles on the same location with the contestants was clearly established by the cameras, and even highlighted in attendant publicity. In the same interview the host, Jeff Probst, also played up the possibility of injury in the next series:
“I think there is a chance that somebody could die or be seriously hurt. Nobody wants it to happen, but you can’t go and fence off people from the outside world in a program like this …you can take precautions, but you can’t take the risk out of it.”(Newton 35)
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On this reading, it seems likely that audiences are consuming reality soaps as ephemerally as a sporting telecast or game show - and after the outcome is known, there is no further interest in the show. Where reality soaps do differ from a game show or sporting event, however, is in the amount of viewer identification with the contestants.
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In Ang’s study of the highly popular television drama Dallas, she used data from a viewer survey to discern an attribution of realism as a key principle of the popular aesthetic. She discussed both ‘empirical realism’ (likeness of setting, social action, themes) and ‘classical realism’ (continuity editing, classic montage etc) before dismissing them as inadequate explanations. Ang concluded that an ‘emotional realism’ which links the actions of the characters with the viewer’s own experiences as being the most likely, “...produced by the construction of a psychological reality ... an ‘inner realism’ ... combined with an ‘external unrealism’.” (47)
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Thus despite the external unrealism of shows such as Survivor and Big Brother, which are every bit as fantastic as the Ewing family’s circumstances, it seems likely that the viewers are responding to what is ‘real’ in the situation - the contestants themselves. The “casting” process seems to be exhaustive, and designed to throw up before the viewers a cross-section of society where nearly every demographic can find someone with whom to identify. Over the course of a series, television audiences come to know the contestants as individuals, as characters. The emotions and inter-relationships between them as they make friends and enemies are a primary focus of reality soaps, with the underlying story arc provided by the need for them to compete/co-operate with each other in order to win.
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In Survivor, contestants are encouraged to soliloquise in a manner reminiscent of the role played by Ian Richardson in the BBC drama House of Cards. This can give rise to some fascinating discontinuities between each contestant’s view of the action, as in episode 9 of Survivor II when Jerri and Colby spent a day on the Barrier reef:
“I couldn't have come out here with a better person,” declared Jerri. “We are having a great time and we are getting to know each other. This is basically the perfect honeymoon without the sex.”
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Colby had different thoughts: “I was just looking for some down time away from the game, and that's exactly what I got.”(cbs.com 2001)
Earlier in the show the audience had been made privy to Colby’s resentment at the thought of sharing this prize with Jerri, whom he was clearly beginning to dislike as a person, and so was placed in the same kind of privileged position often occupied by consumers of fictional narratives. When the tribe subsequently voted off Jerri, the audience understood Colby’s betrayal.
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Conclusion
Television is combining modern, lightweight cameras with an ability to process high volumes of wild footage to produce a new form of entertainment, which has variously been described as “reality soap” and “psycho-games”.
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Instead of actors following scripts in a studio, audiences can see people very like themselves plotting and scheming for advantage in any setting imaginable. The story arc is driven by a game show element which forces people into situations where conflict is inevitable.The audience consumes these shows in much the same way as the live telecast of a sporting event because surprise is a key part of the viewing experience. However the focus on inter-relationships between the contestants brings in elements more usually found in fiction, and suggests that this deepening of the “live” experience resulting from a crossover between genres might account for the extraordinary successes these shows appear to have achieved. In this respect, “reality soap” seems to hark back to the very early years of “live” television when “anything might happen” - and sometimes did.
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Ang, I. Watching Dallas: Soap opera and the melodramatic imagination. London: Methuen, 1985.
Bourdon, J. “Live television is still alive: on television as an unfulfilled promise.” Media, Culture & Society 22(5) 200: 531-556.
cbs.com "Survivor: the Australian outback". 2001.
cbsnews.com "Original Survivors speak out". 2001.
eurodatatv.com New On The Air: Fall 2000 TV Programming Trends. 2001
Hassard, J. Representing reality: Cinema verite. London: Thousand Oaks.1998.
James, A. "Reality shows global impact. Sports keeps pace as genre fave" Variety.com. 2001.
Kilborn, R. “How real can you get? Recent developments in 'reality' television.” European Journal of Communication 9(4) 1994: 421-439.
Newton, A. (2001). "Survivor's deadly fear". The Sunday Times (Perth). 2001: 35-36.
Raphael, C. “Political economy of reali-TV.” Jump Cut (41) 1997: 102-109.
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26 | | Details
Survivor originally aired May 31, 2000 on CBS
Survivor II originally aired January 28, 2001 on CBS
Survivor II airs in Australia on Channel 9, 8.30pm on Wednesdays (the final episode to be aired 4th May, 2001).
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27 | | Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Lawrence David Loch Hill. "Live from the Ministry of Truth: Reality soaps return to the early promises of live television" M/C Reviews 04 May 2001. [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/reviews/features/realitytv/ministry.html>.
Chicago style:
Lawrence David Loch Hill, "Live from the Ministry of Truth: Reality soaps return to the early promises of live television," M/C Reviews 04 May 2001, <http://www.api-network.com/mc/reviews/features/realitytv/ministry.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Lawrence David Loch Hill. (2000) Live from the Ministry of Truth: Reality soaps return to the early promises of live television. M/C Reviews 04 May 2001. <http://www.api-network.com/mc/reviews/features/realitytv/ministry.html> ([your date of access]). |
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