Reality television emerged from the rise of documentaries becoming popular forms of media in the middle of the 20th century. Film makers wanted to create something more artistically refreshing, disillusioned by the conventions which cinema had acquired in the wake of bog Hollywood movies. Cinema had become very glamorized and over exaggerated, thus fuelling creators to develop a desire to be candid. They wanted to show what the world was really like, turning away from the over fictionalised concepts of filmmaking. The subjects of these documentaries became ordinary people, showing the mundane, but often simple beauty of their everyday lives.
Once television became a popular medium, there was a larger demand for more programmes to be made. With this demand the expanse of the audience also needed to be accommodated to, as these documentaries were no longer just for a niche community who believed in counteracting the effects of cinema. With nine to five jobs becoming the most conventional way of life for most people in the middle of the 20th century, watching television in the evening and on weekends became a very popular and relaxing form of entertainment. People often wanted to see programmes they could relate to, featuring the lives of people who were similar to them. The natural curiosity about other people lives and the appeal of relatability is what created a platform for documentaries to evolve into reality television.
It was the 1990s and beginning of the 21st century which set the scene for reality TV to become what it has today. The demand and popularity expanded the confines and boundaries of what could be created and the way it is marketed. Reality TV became a business of it’s own within the realm of the entertainment industry. This meant the producers felt they had to mould and orchestrate what they were creating in order to make it the most profitable. Reality TV still focused on portraying fact, but it became a more fictionalised and performative portrayal. People appearing in reality tv programmes have acquired fame and recognition and are known as reality television stars, receiving media coverage and public attention. The irony of reality tv birthing celebrities and causing media storms is the same glamorization that the original documentary makers were trying to counteract.
The 21st century also brought the hybridization of reality television. With a much larger audience to cater to, more and more reality television programmes were made, touching on many different themes and fields of interest. “As many commentators have argued, however, over the latter part of the 20th century its content increasingly departed from any such sense of the mundane. These departures were signalled in particular by the advent of hybridizations that cut across the categories into which programming is customarily divided. Television’s cultural forms have lost their former rigidity and are increasingly confounded.” There are so many different types of reality tv programmes, including shows about emergency services, game shows, talk shows, docu-soaps, docu-soap surveillance, survival shows, dating shows and the list goes on. One of the main dividing aspects about all these shows is how much they are based on fact and how fictionalized they are. Because of all the different fields of interest subcategories and subgenres, it is impossible to define reality television as one genre.
References :
Wood, B. (2004) A World in Retreat: The Reconfiguration of Hybridity in 20th-Century New Zealand Television. Media, Culture & Society, 26(1), 45-62. doi:10.1177/0163443704039709
Pop Genres 2020 