In 2000, the US version of Survivor debuted and, as the conventional wisdom goes, the "reality" television explosion on US television began. At that time, I was still teaching college students about media aesthetics and analysis and it was not difficult to see the onrushing tidal wave. These programs, including game shows such as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? were cheaper and easier to produce than narrative dramas and comedies. The audiences flocked to these programs and then producers began to pump them out, both original concepts and concepts borrowed such as Survivor. I had no personal interest in these shows, but one thing bothered me that continues to this day. That is the practice of labeling these shows "reality television." Since then, the label has become ubiquitous. Networks (both broadcast, cable and satellite) and syndicators continue to offer these types of programs.
The problem for a grouchy old guy like me is that while these programs are certainly "television", they are hardly "reality." At the same time, the question raised by the use of the term reality television is as old as the technologies that allow humans to fix an image from reality. A prime example would be the photographic work of Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner in the mid 19th century. We have come to see their images of the Civil War as real, although we know that at least some of the images were rearranged and partially staged. The soldiers were indeed dead, but not as they were in the images rendered.
The early days of cinema demonstrated clearly the seeming division of real from fiction. Again, conventional wisdom maintains that the Lumiere Brothers (France) first films were taken from the real world while Edison (actually Dickson's) films hinted at narrative structure. Porter's Life Of An American Fireman (1903) is often credited with breakthroughs that are the mainstays of narrative visual fictions to this day.[Note: French magician and filmmaker George Melies was producing sophisticated narrative fictions by 1896.]
John Grierson is often credited with popularizing the term "documentary." He defined the genre as "the creative treatment of actuality." The director Alfred Hitchcock is quoted as saying "In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director." They are making the same point: while the images in so-called documentary are from the real world, they are subject to the same manipulation as the images created to be manipulated in fictional narratives.
So, to my point, the so-called "reality" programs are themselves fictions. They are subject to the vagaries of image capture (angles, frames, etc). They are subject to the editing process, where the images are made to conform to the Aristotelian narrative construction we have come to expect from fictions. Even when attempts are made to circumvent those constraints by filming the real world in real time (see Warhol's Empire for example), the pull of the narrative and the limitations of the frame make it a work of fiction. Reality is that which you experience in with your own senses in real time: everything else is fake. Just think of the footage never shown on Survivor and you will understand that reality television is anything but real. There may be sounds and images of reality, but they are always constructed as fictions.
About Me
- Jonathan David Tankel
- I am the sum of my parts: student, teacher, scholar, writer, musician, producer, lover, fighter, and cook.
There was a very well done show on HBO called Cinema Verite; which chronicled the making of An American Family. The Loud family were the subjects. PBS bankrolled the project in 1971. In the film, you could see that producer Craig Gilbert stretched the bounds of what was right, in order to "get the shot." Not only that but the Loud's were quite dismayed as to how they were ultimately portrayed and received by the American public.
ReplyDeleteSome 40 years later, the baby called Reality Television birthed by Craig Gilbert, has fully matured and a great deal of the TV viewing public just cannot get enough of it. Whether it's adventure as in Survivor, or fantasy as in the The Real Housewives of ( insert your favorite city here)or pathos as in the old MTV show The Real World, they all have to focus on the negative of human condition in order to keep the audiences riveted. How sad.
"I thought of my good friends and the troubles they had, to keep me thinking of mine..." as the Warren Zevon song goes.
Now the good friends problems can be viewed on TV weekly.
Good example. "Getting the shot" excludes everything outside the frame: it's an aesthetic or practical decision, but a decision nonetheless: it's not reality.
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