- Can reality tv still be thought of as a genre given the high level of hybridity that exists?
According to Wood (2004) defining reality television as a genre is relatively unhelpful in a critical context due to the inherent tendency of all media content to attempt to “produce worldliness” and a “sense of real”. Especially in an age of increasing hybridity where televised media embrace both elements of the real and fictional, Wood suggests that this categorization is too reductive for the interplay that occurs between the various media types. Smith (2013) presents a similar sentiment, claiming that generalised criticisms of the genre ignore the vast variance that exists in both type and quality, which act to fill the needs of many different audience demographics. Wood communicates this notion of diversity and complexity by first identifying four traditional modes of television. This both showcases the pre-existing interplay between reality and fiction that exists in all television, as well as establish a typology which can better identify hybrid types which have developed out of these initial modes. Wood then outlines four major hybrid hinges which feature interplay and layering of these previously described modes, supporting his claim that the complexity and range of these interactions makes categorizing reality television as a genre relatively obsolete.
The four television modes Wood (2004) identifies are that of Fact, Fiction, Entertainment and Advertisement, all of which feature different methods to construct a reality. Fact refers to programming which claims to cover objective truths regarding the world outside the text. This mode is dominated by News Journalism and documentaries, however practical advice and smaller genres also operate within this category. Fiction, while making no attempt to faithfully replicate the external world, constructs a form of internalised world and attempts to assure the audience of this internal world’s reality. This mode encompasses film and television fiction. Entertainment is a mode of television where characters who exist both in the text and the external world are depicted, where they are expected to act as themselves while participating in various forms of spectacle. These characters being an extension of their external personas informs an implicit link between text and reality, and this feature is most common in genres such as Game shows, talk shows and sport, among others. Finally, Advertisements refer to commodities that exist, with advertisers using fictional/narrative elements to construct products as artificially desirable for the sake of increased sales. While advertising is usually a form unto itself, it can also appear within other genres such as via product placement within fictional television and film. Already, through this typography, Wood (2004) showcases the vast diversity that exists within reality television, already problematizing the use of reality tv as a genre. Problematizing this issue further is the forms of hybridity which have started manifesting themselves between these modes, which both increases the pre-existing diversity within the ‘genre’ and blurs lines between the fictitious and real.
Four major hinges or methods by which these previously stated modes are combined are Re-enactment, Diversion, Absorption and Infomercial. These all vary based on the modes that intermingle and how this remixing is achieved. Re-enactment is described as the reconstruction of real or external events using fictional techniques. Here the boundaries between reality and fiction are blurred due to the text’s preferentiality to the external world beyond the text, in contrast with the fundamental construction of the text as a work of fiction. Wood (2004) suggests that re-enactments often come with an implicit understanding that creative liberties have been taken in service of the narrative, demonstrating that this hinge is a less manipulative version of the hybridisation between fiction and fact. Diversion is a hybridization of Entertainment and fact, where people who are supposedly genuinely themselves – operating outside of designed spectacle – are depicted in generally mundane settings. Spectacle can occur in diversion, but it isn’t the intended purpose of the text to facilitate or cause this spectacle. Common versions of Diversion are blooper reels, behind-the-scenes documentaries or home video compilations. Diversion is a text type which emphases the mundane in the extraordinary and emphasises the extraordinary in the Mundane. As Langer (1998) suggests, there is a dimension of fictionality in such texts as well, where choices are made to artificially heighten this desired sense of mundane or extraordinary, and acting to characterise how both of these qualities are defined in society. Far more common in recent years is the two latter hybrid hinges of Absorption and Infomercial. In Absorption, vérité scenes and information are unpacked and recontextualised via a multitude of smaller dramatic recreations, editing techniques and the additions of a commentator. This is commonplace in certain subgenres of reality TV such as crime or medical shows, in game shows as well as more partisan news or infotainment organisations. Although the core material discussed by these texts are ostensibly real, the means in which such material is packaged can completely alter how the audience reads this information, and is capable of constructing very elaborate and contrived narratives from these readings, making Absorption sit at the crossroads of Fiction, fact and entertainment. Lastly, Infomercial is the practice of ‘program length commercials’, which are designed to sell a product through testimonials, re-enactments and demonstrations. Such texts are manipulative due to their layering of modes, namely fact and advertising, presenting themselves disingenuously as “quasi-news programmes or investigative consumer reports” in order to sell a product (Wood, 2004). As described, these hinges feature a complex interplay between various modes, especially that of fact, which can often be co-opted in order to smuggle in less verifiable truths or outright falsifications. The demonstrated hybridity that exists between these modes showcases a sophisticated relationship between reality television and many other forms of text where one cannot be as easily separated from the other.
By outlining the already complex primary modes of televisions, and then detailing how transgressions between these modes occur via hybrid hinges and their ability to obfuscate the boundaries between reality and fictional media, Wood (2004) underscores the fundamental impossibility of categorizing media using a binary which differentiates between real and artificial. This discussion compellingly conveys the increasing irrelevance of reality tv as a categorical tool and the need to develop a framework which better encompasses the diversity and complexity of television content.
Wood, B. (2004). A World in Retreat: The Reconfiguration of Hybridity in 20th-Century New Zealand Television. Media, Culture & Society, 45-62.
Smith, P. (2013). Heroic endeavours: flying high in New Zealand reality television. In N. Lorenzo-Dus, & P. Garces-Conejos Blitvich, Real Talk: Reality Television and Discourse Analysis in Action (pp. 140-165). Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Langer, J. (1998). Tabloid Television. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203135211
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