How real is reality TV?
Reality Television has seemed to really take off within mainstream media, and gain vast popularity over the past two decades. Reality TV programs have become engrained in most American and European television cultures, and this something that can be associated with the past twenty years, though early forms of reality TV have existed since the fir Cist quarter of the last century. In a very broad understanding, reality TV is the portrayal of real people doing real things, mostly in exceptional situations and with a focus on personality and drama. Some TV stations make the differentiation between scripted and factual content, programs which are still in the realm of portraying something real, but harboring different commercial and creative intentions. The important question is, how real is reality tv in actuality, and should it still be considered factual content, if most of it is orchestrated and scripted?
The initial motivating force for filmmakers was to create something which could persuade the viewing public that what they are watching has a direct connection to real life. One of the first generic influences on reality were documentaries. The term documentary was coined by John Grierson in 1926, and he called documentaries ‘the creative treatment of actuality’. Up until that point the most important screen was cinema, which depicted an overly glamorized view of life, which stimulated the counter narrative of documentaries. The main intention of documentaries at that time was to enlighten the masses to the circumstances of their society, in the hopes that a social reform could be achieved. This type of documentary was creative and experimental using interviews, music and camera tricks. They used an almost omniscient, voice of god type narration, which was condescending to the viewers. Another early influence was direct cinema which was a more discrete and observational type of filming which offered no attempt at analysis. It used a fly on the wall type of technique, valuing intimacy and immediacy. It used a more scientific approach and avoided the social responsibility agenda. Cinema Verite was the French movement of documentaries in the 1960’s, also using a fly on the wall technique, but allowing for the camera and cameraman to appear in the frame. The defining feature of this type of documentary was self reflexivity, condemning the voice of god type narration as falsehood. Free cinema arose in Britain in the 1950’s, using a filming style of handheld camera, real locations and a raw style. The subject matter was ordinary culture and ordinary people, portraying the regularity of everyday life. These documentaries were poetically staged and often focused more on the aesthetic and visual beauty than the actual motive.
All of these early types of reality TV have influenced the way we perceive what is real on the screen, thanks to the techniques, constraints and worldviews which they implemented in their work. One thing that all genres of documentaries have in common is the revelation of the ordinary as knowledge. “There is now a general recognition that all notions of ‘realism’ are historically determined and that the criteria for judging the realism quotient of a text have just as much to do with the audience expectations and with sets of established conventions as with any objective measure for judging how much reality can be transposed to the screen.’ (Kilborn, p.:422)
While the early influences of reality TV may have had the pure intention of portraying real life in a raw way, the reality TV genres which have evolved today have merged the essence of reality and dramatization in order to gain commercial success and accumulate views and public affinity. While these programs feature real people, their actions and relationships with each other often times orchestrated to fit the perceptions and expectations of the audience.
References :
Kilborn, R. (1994). ‘How Real Can You Get?’: Recent Developments in ‘Reality’ Television. European Journal of Communication, 9, 421-439. Doi: 10.1177/0267323194009004003
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