Reality Tv: Deception of the Masses?

Reality TV: Deception of the Masses?

Introduction:

Reality television is a huge part of television-viewing culture today. Having roots in American television, the genre of reality TV only soared in the early 2000s following the large success of shows such as Big Brother and Survivor. In 2007-2008, reality TV programming in America captured 77 percent of the total audience watching the top 10 programmes alone (nielsonwire, 2011). As the name implies, it is a genre of television program that focuses on portraying reality. This ‘reality’ is purported by television producers to involve unscripted actions by ‘real’ ordinary people in ‘real’ situations. (Beck, Hellmueller & Aeschbacher, 2012) However, there exists discourse by media critics claiming that the concept of reality TV, as promoted by TV producers, is far from the truth. In short, the claims are that there is no reality in reality TV; or as Potts puts it, it is “nothing short of a conceptual and practical lie”. In fact, situations shown on reality TV programmes are thought to be non-common and rigged(Potts, 2007), while some claimed that there is an interaction of fiction and reality in the shows.(Beck, Hellmueller & Aeschbacher, 2012) These pose a threat to the credibility of reality TV as their claims of being real, honest and unscripted are being challenged. However given that reality TV is slowly dominating primetime broadcast, it seems that the issue poses no threat to its mass-appeal and popularity.

The purpose of this essay is to synthesize and add on to existing research about the deception involved in reality TV. This is done by looking at several popular shows with a focus on the case of The Bachelor and its female spinoff The Bachelorette. In particular, this paper explores the way reality TV creates a false reality to the masses and its motives behind the deception. The theoretical concept of ‘culture industry’ as developed by Theodor Adorno and members of the Frankfurt school will be used as an analytical tool in this paper. Using the ‘culture industry’ concept framework, we will find out how characteristics of the reality TV manifest that of the culture industry. According to the thesis of ‘culture industry’, films and television industries are operating for mass consumption and are driven by profit under a capitalistic economy. Thus the central argument here is that reality TV is 1) deceiving the mass audience by presenting a false reality through manipulating their consciousness, 2) reason being the producers are driven by profit-making typical of a culture industry.

A brief look into the Culture Industry Thesis:

In ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’ under ‘Enlightenment as Mass Deception’, Adorno and Horkeimer believed that contemporary mass culture manipulates consciousness and likened popular culture to a factory mass-producing commodified cultural goods that have no artistic values(Broadbent, 2010). Cultural industries are the result of a capitalist mode of production. Characterised by unsophistication, standardization, and pseudo-individualism, cultural products such as films and music keep people passively satisfied and fetishized with the commodity by creating false needs in them.

The Bachelor Show franchise:

The Bachelor and Bachelorette epitomize the reality TV’s subgenre of a dating show. The Bachelor was debuted in 2002 under ABC channel and it deals directly with relationships between men and women. (Hall, 2005) It features one bachelor searching for his ideal partner out of 25 women. During the process, he gets to have spectacular dates with the women, sometimes in a group, and eliminate one participant with each passing episode during a dramatic rose ceremony. This is repeated until the bachelor narrowed his search to one, usually resulting in a marriage proposal.

The need for standardization:

Adorno stressed that repetition is the essential characteristic of the culture industry. Making reference to pop music, he argued that standardization is inherent in the culture industry as it endows mass-produced commodities with an illusory aura of individuality that is pseudo-individuation. Standardization extends from the most general features to the most specific ones and implies the interchangeability of parts. (Welty, 1984)

Looking at the context of reality TV, standardization of content appears to be a dominant trait (Potts, 2007). The entire reality TV consists of slight variations on a similar theme and the features are interchangeable.

Under the dating show subgenre, The Bachelorette is a spinoff from the largely successful The Bachelor. Producers adapted the format of the male-centric show to a female-centric one and applied the same recipe. Furthermore, other reality dating shows such as Average Joe, Mr Personality and Conveyor Belt of Love present a similar concept of finding one’s ideal mate except that love is found through different methods (the interchangeable parts).

Reality TV thus presents an illusion of choice for the audience as it offers a bevy of programmes yet they are so similar.
Standardization is practiced as shows are more likely to be well-received by having pre-digested formulas. Repetitions are created as producers apply what is tried and proven from other programs in the creation of a ‘new’ program; sometimes only making marginal changes to differentiate themselves.

The need for standardization: Compromising on reality:

Through watching different reality TV shows, the ways in which reality TV is standardized becomes apparent. Firstly, in The Bachelorette, there is a recurrent pattern of characters. Throughout the eight seasons, all 25 male contestants vying for the “good looking” bachelorette possess very archetypal traits. Notably, almost everyone in the show is considered to be good looking and/or if not, possess some unique trademarks. Their occupations are very striking. In season 8, there is the young and successful entrepreneur, the race car driver, mushroom farmer and Party M.C to name a few. Even the dominantly white racial makeup is standardized as contestants from the minorities are hugely underrepresented and edited to appear stereotyped. (Bauder,2012) Moreover, there are standard characteristics portrayed in participants. The female participants are either constructed to be the “aggressive” ones who are also likely to be the “bitch”, or they are the docile ones who usually lose out. (Potts,2007)

Standardizations are not only applied to characters but for plots and situations as well. Conflicts and scandals are vital for driving the storyline (Osborn,2011).

The above highlights how standardization is integral to reality TV. By using popular formulas, the producers can save on time and resources in making a new programme and minimise the risks associated with introducing audience to new experience goods, thus ensuring maximum profitability and saleability of the shows. However because of standardization, the shows lose their aesthetic values, or in the case of reality TV, its authenticity, as they manipulate consumers for profit-making.

Thus, this supports the stand that reality TV is indeed deceiving the audience. It is the need to cater to the audience’s fetishes for romance and conflicts etc., that producers are forced to use scripts and unrealistic situations. Ultimately, reality shows are for entertainment. (Beck, Hellmueller & Aeschbacher, 2012) Even though the situations hardly represent real life, consumers are kept passively enthralled in the shows tailored for them as the shows gratify their fetishes. People are lead to believe that the process of finding love as it happens on The Bachelor or The Bachelorette is swift, easy and exciting. No independent thinking is expected of them as the show prescribes what they will come to think, leading to the standardization of audience.

However, contrary to Adorno’s opinion that the audience is kept passively satisfied with no independent thinking, some audience may in fact watch the show rationally. From Hall‘s (2005) field observation, some women who were watching The Bachelor in a group engaged in critical discussions about the show’s authenticity. Nevertheless, those who were screaming and yelling at the show are passive as their reactions are prescribed by producers’ intentions.

Commodification and Fetishization of Reality TV:

Adorno claimed that cultural products are artefacts where significance dominates utility; the more interchangeable they are, the more they should naturally drop in monopolistic rent or value. However this doesn’t occur in late capitalism as the widespread of fetishization has caused used value to be replaced by exchange value. (Welty, 2007) Fetishization in this case refers to the veneration of standardized commodities. (Broadbent, 2010)

Indeed for reality TV, the exchange value seems to be quite high. Potts claimed that the use value of reality TV for the viewers is not as a medium for learning or self-improving but instead the use value is being entirely subsumed by the exchange value: tuning in to reality TV programmes simply because of the hype, peer pressures and the top-ten ratings for example. ”There is no longer much, if any value placed upon the content of these shows.” This is “the height of commodity fetishism” because the use value of a reality TV has been replaced by the exchange value.

However that accusation of reality TV losing its use value is quite debatable. The use value of reality TV clearly still exists in the form of personal utility and social utility. The consumption of dating shows like The Bachelor provides personal utility in the form of fantasy and escapism for many as the shows promote the fetishization of the notion of a fairy-tale romance. People devote their time and attention to the shows as it satisfies what they desire through hyper-reality. We also cannot deny the possibility that people may watch The Bachelor to pick up social interaction or dating skills that are actually practical.

Nevertheless, the more time audience spend on watching reality TV and the more they fetishize, the more they are likely to become Adorno’s ‘temple slaves’, worshipping the characters and sometimes dressing and acting like them. (Potts, 2007)

Pseudo-Individualism: You are unique, just like the rest of us:

As mentioned above, the wide choices of reality TV programs promote a fake sense of individuality. Therefore, this may lead to an illusion of choice and individuality among the audience when they try to differentiate themselves from other viewers in terms of the choice of reality programs they watch, or “idols” they worship; when in fact they are as homogenised as the shows.
Mediated quasi-interaction through reality TV shows may also contribute to pseudo-individualism in audience. This happens when shows try to simulate interpersonal communication with the audience and personalize their message to create an illusion that they are speaking specifically to the individual audience. (Isotalus, 1998)
More dominant in reality TV talent shows like American Idol, hosts and contestants will look at the camera asking people to call in to vote as the results lie in their hands. This is when an audience inherits a sense of individuality or even empowerment. The audience is constructed as playing an influential role in determining the outcome of the televisual text. (Holmes, 2004) However, what many fail to realize is that their intervention in reality TV is carefully planned, managed, and modified by the programmers. Instead of having authorship of the environment, they are only playing an active role within an authored environment. (Murray, 1997) This further supports the stance that audience are deceived and manipulated.

Capitalizing on False Needs:

Lastly, reality TV as a culture industry nurtures false needs in the audiences which are addressed and satisfied through capitalism. Instead of needs like freedom, intellectual progress and authentic happiness, audience are prescribed material wants. With the power of advertising (Broadbent, 2010) and product placements in shows, audience are inherited with the false needs whereby they may feel compelled to buy the products even if they are aware of the advertisement. This deception then enables reality TV and capitalism to sustain itself.

Issues on Creativity:

Following the argument that reality TV is churning out products that are standardized and pseudo-individualized, there is criticism about the level of creativity in the reality TV industry. In terms of content production, television in general has been criticized for lacking in innovation due to the over-dependence on formulas and formats (Roberts, 2010). Instead of coming out with original programmes, producers tend to borrow forms and ideas from other shows for their own shows and many assume that format flows represent uncreative risk-minimizing or copycatting. (Dyer, 2010)

Despite the assumptions, a substantial level of creativity can be seen in different shows where producers from other locations “borrow” formulas to use in extremely creative ways, making them fit with the local tastes and culture. (Shahaf, 2009)

Nevertheless, in certain reality TV genres such as dating show, there appears to be no particular show that displays a high level of newness, value, and usefulness, which are the three attributes of creativity (Rehn & de Cock, 2010). In Conveyor Belt of Love, 30 bachelors are rolled out in conveyor belts like sushi to exhibit their talents to single women in hopes of charming them.(Osterhout, 2010) While the idea may seem novel at first, the values and usefulness of the show is questionable. Again, pseudo-individualism in shows may lead audience to think that particular shows are creative when in fact the creativity is constrained by the genre, and compromised for commercial interests.

Conclusion:

Reality TV is characterized predominantly by the standardization involved in its content and production. Operating under a capitalistic mode of production, producers have been using pre-digested formulas in shows to save time, creative labour and other resources involve in creating an entirely new show. They also save themselves the risks of showing new concepts to the audience. Furthermore, reality TV shows are often engineered and scripted to cater to audience’s tastes and desires. Many audiences therefore fall into the trap of believing what they see on reality TV is real. The realism to audience may not have rouse from the fact that they believe the shows are entirely real and unrigged. Rather, the audience feel that shows are real as the shows normalize their expectations of human behaviours and perceived societal norms through the use of stereotypes and formulas. Hence, they are being drawn into a state of hyper-reality and altered mass consciousness.

Reality TV shows also keep audience passively satisfied and fetishized by promoting the fetishization of certain concepts such as romanticism in The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. Some audience watch reality TV not for its use value but exchange value and this further proves how the audience have no independent thinking of their own. The shows also promote pseudo-individualism due to its standardization and mediated quasi-interaction. The audience is then further deceived through the cultivation of false needs from advertisements and show contents, which are satisfied through the purchase of consumer goods or other actions to sustain the economy of the reality TV industry. Lastly, in the process of producing reality TV shows, creativity and artistic values are sacrificed as the industry, typical of Adorno’s culture industry, is driven by commercial purpose.

Summing up, this paper has shown the similarities and dissimilarities between reality TV and Adorno’s concept of the culture industry. We conclude by claiming that reality TV is indeed deceiving the masses through altering their mass consciousness and presenting a false-reality; though there are audiences who are not lured into the deception by resisting passivity and standardization.

References

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References: Adorno, T.W. & Horkheimer,M. (1976) The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception (J. Cumming, Trans.). In Dialectic of Enlightenment (pp. 120-167) Continuum International Publishing Group. Andrae, T. (1979) Adorno on film and mass culture The culture Industry reconsidered. JumpCut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 20, pp. 24-37 Retrieved from http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC20folder/AdornoMassCult.html#5n Bauder, D Beck, D., Hellmueller, L. C., & Aeschbacher, N. (2012). Factual entertainment and reality tv. Communication Research Trends, 31, 1-15. Broadbent, R Heidenreic, A. (2001, Feb. 15) Is reality-television demoralizing our culture? Retrieved from http://hartfordinformer.com/archive/?p=31036 Isotalus, P Mendible, M. (2004) Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV. Commentary And Criticism, 1-5 Murray, S Osborn, B. (2011) Violence Formula: Analyzing TV, Video and Movies, Media and Violence/Part Two, 62 Retrieved 21 Oct., 2012 from http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/violence-formula-analyzing-tv-video-and-movies Osterhoust, J Page, N. (2005, March 31) Reality television” and the American reality that produces it Retrieved from http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/mar2005/real-m31.shtml Potts, G Shahaf, S. (2009) PRIME TIME POSTZIONISM - NEGOTIATING ISRAELINESS THROUGH GLOBAL TELEVISION FORMATS , The University of Texas at Austin Welty, G. (1984). "Theodor Adorno and the Culture Industry," Presented to the Annual Meeting of the Popular Culture Association. Retrieved from http://www.wright.edu/~gordon.welty/Adorno_84.htm Yep, G