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Example Journalism Essay
What is the impact of 'Reality Television' in reference to the social, political, economic and cultural changes of the last two decades.
In recent years it has been commonplace for British television broadcasters to fill their schedules with a new type of programme. The so-called 'Reality Television' programmes present real people in various situations rather than more established actors in dramatic roles. The popularity of reality shows such as Big Brother, X-Factor and The Apprentice has given American artist Andy Warhol's famous quote In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes even more relevance now then when he said it in 1968. The term 'reality television' has been increasingly applied to programmes which allow people access to appear as themselves, utilising actual or sometimes reconstructed scenes. The programmes are often made possible by the availability, ease of use and technical quality of the video camcorder. However, reality television cannot be solely defined by examples such as Big Brother, and according to some media commentators there are four distinctive categories of the genre featuring people in varying role. There are the representation of the emergency services, such as the police or ambulance services, in dramatised reconstructions of real events (999 or True Crimes), or real video footage recorded by video journalists and/or the specific emergency service (Trauma); the use of ordinary people as subjects of entertainment or humour in spontaneous or contrived situations (You've Been Framed or Balls of Steel); the use of subjects within a professionally produced fly-on-the wall or vérité documentary (Culloden: A Year in the Life of a Primary School); and allowing amateur directors to offer a personalised documentary of an event or way of life (Video Diaries and Video Nation).
It is not only the influx of reality television that has polluted the psyche of the nation; we have seen the rise of popularity of ordinary people whose only claim to fame has been that they appeared in a television programme doing what they would normally do. The exposure they receive from television, and inevitably the printed media such as magazines like Heat and newspapers like The Sun propel them to celebrity status. So are the reality television 'stars' the new (or should that be 'neauvou'?) celebrities? In the past twenty years there has been an astonishing trend for the 'normal, everyday person' to demand to know absolutely everything that can be known about their favourite celebrities' personal lives. Journalists supply the masses with details of their private lives, photographs of them on the beach and sordid tales of their past. This sensationalist style of journalism has contributed to the celebrities in question achieving an almost untouchable position; tabloid journalist Anna Smith once described the celebrity of England captain David Beckham as such is his demi-god status that everyone seems to have lost their sense of reality whenever he walks among them. However, this need from the public for an insight into the lives of the rich and famous can lead to withdrawal from the media, as in the case of British supermodel Kate Moss, or ultimately lead to the complete loss of the celebrity in question, most famously Princess Diana. But one question that needs to be addressed is who actually demands the need for all this information? Is it really the public that are so drunk on the lives of the celebrities, or is it the celebrities that need to be in the public eye to remain accustomed to the lifestyle that they whimsically try to hide? The answer to this question can perhaps be compared to the chicken and the egg. In this dissertation I shall try to determine how the shift has been in recent years to focus on the 'fifteen minutes' of ordinary people appearing on reality television.
The chapters in this dissertation shall be as follows:
Chapter One - Reality Television; Emotional Exposure and Public Judgement.
In the Netherlands in 1997, a television series had audiences hooked on the lives of a group of adults sharing a house that was under surveillance 24 hours a day. The show made national heroes of the subjects and the formula was brought to Britain in 2000 in the guise of the infamous Big Brother. The premise was simple; ten contestants lived in a specially constructed house for a period of 64 days. Their every move was broadcast live on television and the internet, and the viewing public systematically voted contestants off until there was an outright winner who won a cash prize. At the time the show was called a 'social experiment' and 'car crash television', either way it was a phenomenal success, and the people who appeared on the show received more than their 'fifteen minutes'. Other shows such as X-Factor, Survivor and The Apprentice also thrive on the way in which the public form an emotional empathy with the subjects and it is their judgement of these individuals that forms the basis of the show. In this chapter I shall look at how reality television has propelled the status of reality 'stars' into national (and in some cases international) celebrity status in coalition with the acceptance of the viewing public.
Chapter Two - Documentary Series as Soap Operas
In this chapter I shall examine how the current trend for interaction in factual programming has recently evolved; where there has to be a 'story' for the public to remain interested. Examples of programmes that will be explored include Animal Crime Scene where presenter David Attenborough introduces a combination of wildlife and criminal forensics, and Sea Monsters where the presenter takes the viewer back in time with a combination of real locations and computer animation. This programme tries to involve the viewer in a way that the presenter is in danger of being attacked by the titular sea monsters. Are these factual programmes 'fake' in that the facts are generated mostly on a computer and not on location? Does the pure titillation of these particular programmes make a mockery of the factual documentary genre? Is this an example of how recent theoretical approaches challenge the notion of a 'knowable reality', arguing that no representation of reality can be accurate and true? Have the days of the objective documentary such as Wildlife on One almost disappeared?
Chapter Three - Reality Television; Realism or Revelation?
By definition realism is the practice of regarding things in their true nature and dealing with them as they are and revelation is a striking disclosure. Do the opposite stances of these descriptions combine to make reality television what it is? In this chapter I shall investigate the most popular reality shows that embody this combination and introduce realism by putting forward everyday contestants, that the audience can empathise with, and then introduce the revelation by forcing them to do something extraordinary (in Big Brother it may be having sex on camera, in X-Factor it may be performing a number one hit). Are the public not only demanding realism with their revelation (Big Brother) but revelation with their realism? Has society become so intrigued with the lives of the reality television subjects it has created that it demands more of them than is justifiable?
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