1. Billy Proctor
billyproctor@hotmail.co.uk
Rob Jewitt
robert.jewitt@sunderland.ac.uk
Are you for real?
The politics of reality TV and infotainment
#mac201
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2. Overview
 The broad claims
 Reality and realism
 The background
 Contemporary examples
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3. Reality TV = Revolutionary?
 „In a mere matter of years, this
newfangled genre has infiltrated virtually
every corner of the television world and
very quickly become a staple of every
television programmer‟s arsenal of
program choices‟
 (Huff, 2006: ix).
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5. Reality TV = Trash TV?
 „a development which panders to lowest
common denominator tastes ... In the eyes
of some, much of what has occurred in the
domain of factual television is indicative of
a more general cultural malaise‟
 (Kilborn, 2003: 1)
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6. Reality TV = Trash TV?
 Audience research among
consumers/fans of Reality TV describe it as
„crap‟, „an absolute load of bollocks‟, and
the „worst kind of car-crash television‟
 (Hill, 2008: 105-6)
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7. What is this?

8. René Magritte
The Treachery of Images

9. Questioning reality
 „Television by definition is a medium that invites
questions about how real its version of reality is‟.
 (Misha Kavka in King, 2005: 93)
 Realist texts „never give us a slice of life nor do
they reflect reality‟
 (Morris, 2003: 4)
 This is always a representation [„re‟ +
„presentation‟]. Nobody has unmediated access
to reality. All reality is subjective.
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10. Reality and documentary
 „the term documentary is always much
safer when used as an adjective rather
than a noun‟
 „To ask “is this a documentary project” is
more useful than to ask “is this film a
documentary?”‟
 John Corner, 2002: 258
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11. Access to „the real‟?
 Factual programming = serious?
 A window on the world?
 Educational?
 Social realism: „record and reveal society to
its members for the information and
advantage of them all‟
 (Grierson cited in Kilborn and Izod, 1997: 46)
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12. Representing reality
 „Documentaries are fictions with
plots, characters, situations, and events like any
other. … [They] build heightened tensions and
dramatically rising conflicts, and they terminate
with resolution and closure. They do all of this with
reference to a “reality” that is a construct, the
product of signifying systems, like the documentary
film itself … [This] reality, too must be scrutinized
and debated as part of the domain of signification
and ideology. The notion of any privileged access
to a reality that exists “out there”, beyond us, is an
ideological effect. The sooner we realize all this, the
better‟.
 (Nichols, 1991:107)
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13. From last week…
 Observational documentary
 Cinema vérité
 „fly on the wall‟
 Paul Watson‟s The Family (1974/2008)
 Roger Graef‟s Police (1982)
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14. The Rise of Reality TV
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15. The Rise of Reality TV
 „As we embark upon a new century of
broadcasting, it is clear that no genre
form or type of programming has been as
actively marketed by producers, or more
enthusiastically embraced by
viewers, than reality-based TV‟
 (Friedman, 2002: 6)
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16. The Rise of Reality TV
 „The change in factual programming over
the past 15 years has been
disastrous…Serious current affairs
programmes have either disappeared
altogether or been disastrously
reduced, pushed to the margins of the
schedules, or on to networks which are
virtually unwatched.‟
 (Dunkley, 2000: 20 cited in Kilborn, 2003: 7)
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17. The Rise of Reality TV
 „Reality television is not the end of
civilization as we know it; it is civilization as
we know it. It is popular culture at its most
popular, soap opera come to life‟
 (Greer, 2001: 1 cited in Biressi & Nunn, 2
:146).
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18. Background: early British examples
 Crimewatch UK (BBC 1984-)
 999 (BBC 1990)
 Blues and Twos (ITV 1993)
 Police Camera Action (ITV
1994)
 Caught on Camera (ITV
1994)
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19. Reality TV sub-genres
 Docu-soaps [Driving School;
Airport; The Osbournes;
Made In Chelsea]
 Comedy Verité [The Office;
Brass Eye]
 Game Doc [Big Brother; I’m
a Celebrity; X Factor]
 Lifestyle [I Used to be Fat;
Supersize Vs Superskinny;
What not to Wear]
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20. Problematic umbrellas?
 „The formats usually included under this
label have a quite varied relation to “the
real”: some are highly narrativized and
mediated, some are actually just updated
game shows for whom the “reality”
descriptor is more an indicator of format
style than any claim to be capturing real
life, and still others are essentially
documentary in their format and in their
ethical relation to the material they put
before viewers‟
 (Turner, 2010: 33)
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21. Contemporary developments
 „ordinary people have gained
unprecedented access to representation
in the media. Many would
argue, however, that this has not
necessarily benefited those ordinary
people. Indeed, as these formats
developed, television producers stumbled
upon a new industrial strategy for turning
ordinary people into marketable celebrity-
commodities‟
 (Turner, 2010: 33)
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22. Celetoids
 „Celetoids are the accessories of cultures
organized around mass communications
and staged authenticity. Examples include
lottery winners, one-hit
wonders, stalkers, whistle-blowers, sports‟
arena streakers, have-a-go-
heroes, mistresses of public figures and the
various other social types who command
media attention one day, and are
forgotten the next‟
 (Rojek, 2001: 20-21)
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23. Celetoids
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24. Celetoids
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25. Ordinary people and fame
 „What is new is the discourse of self-
disclosure and authenticity enabled by
new television formats such as docu-
soaps, reality TV and lifestyle programming
that allow ordinary people a narrative of
self-improvement and empowerment via
personal self-disclosure and a revelation of
one‟s true authentic self‟
 (Biressi & Nunn, 2008: 138)
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26. Ordinary people and fame
 Chantelle Houghton
 Celebrity Big Brother (2006)
 The only non-celebrity amongst the
housemates
 Chantelle: Living the Dream (2006, E4)
 Chantelle’s Dream Dates (2006, E4)
 Ultimate Big Brother (2010, C4)
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27. Simulation and performance
 Big Brother
 Documented housemates under
duress
 Moved away from social experiment
to focus on performance of identities
 Contestants selected on the basis of
their particular personalities to create
drama, conflict and entertainment.
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28. Working through social issues
 Big Brother
 No longer recording social reality
 Simulating social reality
 „The simulation model at the core of the
reality TV game is producing “real world”
outcomes in the shared public
communicative space of the mediated
public sphere‟
 (Dovey in Austin & De Jong, 2008: 251)
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29. Ethical quandaries
 „while the primary goal of the reality game
show is profit through entertainment and
participation, these programmes also
actively produce the conflicts and
problems of reflexive modernity as a by-
product of their discursive effects‟
 (Dovey in Austin & De Jong, 2008: 256)
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30. Wife Swap
 „Is it possible that a reality TV series, a
programme plucked from that most
condemned and vilified of recent
televisual forms and so enticingly trailed by
a tabloid newspaper could lay claim to
making a socially significant and
potentially radical intervention in its
participants‟ and viewers‟ lives?‟
 (Holmes and Jermyn in Austin & De
Jong, 2008: 234)
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31. Some sources
 Holmes, Su & Jermyn, Deborah (2008) ‘Ask the Fastidious Woman from Surbiton to Hand-wash
the underpants of the Aging Oldham Skinhead...’ Why Not Wife Swap?’, in Austin, Thomas & De
Jong, Wilma (eds.) Rethinking Documentary: New Perspectives, New Practices. OUP: Berkshire
 Turner, Graeme (2010) Ordinary People and the Media: the Demotic Media. London: SAGE.
 Kilborn, Richard (2003) Staging the Real: Factual TV Programming in the age of Big Brother.
Manchester University Press: Manchester.
 Huff, Richard M. (2006) Reality Television. Praeger: London
 King, Geoff (2005) (ed.) The Spectacle of the Real: From Hollywood to Reality TV and Beyond.
Bristol: Intellect.
 Dovey, Jon (2008) ‘Simulating the Public Sphere’, in Austin, Thomas & De Jong, Wilma (eds.)
Rethinking Documentary: New Perspectives, New Practices. OUP: Berkshire
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