How does Hill (2005) define Reality TV?
By utilizing the various styles and techniques associated with Reality TV i.e. non professional actors, unscripted dialogue, and hand held cameras can be used to create shows about anything and everything; for example match making individuals (The Bachelor/ette), pets, family and even the celebrity as in Celebrity Apprentice, and the ‘formatted’ Pop Idol. Hill (2005) states that, “The term reality TV is so flexible that it can be applied to any type of popular factual programming the industry wants to sell to channels and viewers at home or abroad” (p.g. 45). What this means is the paradigm for a genre specific reality TV show can be sold to other networks/countries who have expressed interest in the reality TV format. The Amazing Race concept was sold to Australia, and New Zealand and maybe a few others, but failed to hit the mark with audience.
Basically there is no clear definition of reality TV because of the competing definitions of what is now reality TV by the audience, scholars and the television industry. She concludes that due mainly to the reality genre is made of a number of distinctive and historically based television. In my opinion, reality TV is a means to draw attention to an idea that may hold the interest of the viewer or not for the sole purpose of entertainment but also cleverly using the emotive spin on the audience to get an emotional reaction. There was an annoying woman on Celebrity Apprentice a few years ago; Amarosa who single handedly had both the female and males detesting her. Eventually she was ‘fired’ by Trump, but you couldn’t help but wonder if she was intentionally kept on the show for ratings.
References
Hill, A. (2005). The Reality Genre. In Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television (pp. 14-40). Oxon: Routledge.
Contestants are also aware of what is needed to remain on the show. In interview, one contestant in Project Runway talked about how he purposely played the villian (against his natural character) - as he was informed by a previous winner of the show that this approach was away to remain in the show. The contestant eventually won - ironically in the last episode he resumed a natural laid back personna - which was quite noticable.
ReplyDeleteI love PR and it's not so much adoration of the garments itself, but rather for the cat fights the designers find themselves in. It was one of the realty TV shows we enjoyed because the editing was so bad it was almost painful; yet enjoyable to watch.
ReplyDeleteIn response to your comment, I doubt that Amarosa was as evil and manipulative as she was portrayed to be. There were moments when she showed real concern for certain team mates. Amarosa herself claimed the producers manipulated the footage to make her appear as the villain. She even claimed that it was a form of constructed reality. I hadn't thought about the contestant perspective. I should've have included that part into my post.