Can reality tv still be thought of as a genre given the high level of hybridity that exists?
“Television’s cultural forms have lost their former rigidity and are increasingly confounded. What was once kept apart is now mixed together”(Wood,2004). Among them, reality TV continues to change and evolve, converging different genres, and this hybridity creates questions about whether reality TV can be considered as a genre itself.
“In fact, reality is not the preserve of one sort of programming. Rather, all media content produces worldliness and so can be typed according to the variety of ways in which it accomplishes this sense of the real”(Wood,2004). So the main elements of television — fact, fiction, entertainment, and advertising — create reality in a variety of ways. Hill (2005), emphasizes that documentary television has led to commercial success by combining certain types of reality formats, and that the cultural specificity of reality programming and the development of certain formats within different broadcasting environments. This appears as a hybrid of reality TV.
Currently, reality TV is evolving into a variety of styles and blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction by including various genres such as entertainment, documentary and drama through steady hybridization. Wood(2004), explains that “Hybridity is typically equated with a radical undermining of the distinction between fact and fiction.” This may drop the details of reality programs. “The loss of detail at programme level is made up for by a more general purview which highlights the complexity of hybridizing trends. Although a widely acknowledged characteristic of hybridity, this complexity has often frustrated attempts at analysis”(Wood, 2004). This can cause confusion about the genre for viewers who are exposed to reality TV.
Reality TV is changing endlessly and is also linked to other genres such as game shows and soap operas beyond documentaries, drama and entertainment. It is true that reality TV is linked to hybridity, resulting in a variety of sub-genres. But Wood(2004), explains that “Given the increased frequency of hybridized expression such attempts at generic identification are understandable, but they have not proved successful.” So It is difficult to separate reality TV itself into one genre and it can be fruitless to try to organize it into one concept.
References
Hill, A. (2005). Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. London; Routledge.
Wood, B. (2004). A world in retreat: the reconfiguration of hybridity in 20th-century New Zealand television. Media, Culture & Society, 26(1), 45-62.
Pop Genres 2020 