How does Hill define reality TV?
"The catergory of Reality TV is commonly used to describe a range of popular factual programming..." (Hills,2005)
Hills states that there is many styles of what we call 'Reality TV', these can include: History or religion factual programming, Biographies, sports factual, lifestyle and leisure,gameshows etc. Hills states that over the years BBC and other major networks have changed the genre of reality TV, this all depends on the channel, and example of this is in Britain, there channel 4 is reality TV with the genre Entertainment, with shows like gameshows or talent shows (Big Brother) or Cultre shows like 'Opertunity' and Historical shows like 'The Edwardian counrty house', The Life genre has shows like 'House Hunting'. Som eother genres of Reality TV include: Contempory biographies, Popular documenaries,Popular factual televsion series, Experiments/stunts (fear factor etc). In USA, reality TV is classified as anything from 'gameshows/talent contests' or shows like 'cops'. Anythign 'factual' is Reality Tv in America.
Reality Tv has been described by Hills(2005) as that there is no proper definition for Reality TV but more varies genres of Reality TV. Audiences love Reality TV as they can truly see themselves in other people. Shows like ' Fear Factor' make audiences think 'what would i do in that situation', this makes audiences feel apart of the show. We as an audience like to watch shows where we can say 'that's real, that's fact or that was scripted'. Because the difference for me between 'Reality TV and my favourite fictional shows is that with Reality TV, the person in front of the camera is real, maybe they are acting as an over-dramatised person, but it is still them, and when Meredith in 'Grey's Anatomy' is acting mean, we all know that she is acting, but when Heidi from 'The Hills' has got her entire face re-done, we know that that is real, not makeup. Heidi really is that stupid.. it brings more life into the shows we watch.
I think as a society we really struggle with the notion of 'reality' TV. I look at our regular drama series Shortland Street, not often (if ever) referred to as reality TV. However, the public in New Zealand often react to the characters on the show as if they are real people. For example, there was a serial killer character during the series last year and he found himself being harassed for his characters actions while out and about outside of the studio.
ReplyDeleteHill struggles to define reality tv in a quick and direct way, and I think this can be linked to the idea that 'reality' is perceived differently for everyone in the first place.
Quite true, i forgot about Shortland street. Reality TV is definetly perceived differently by everyone. I only broadly judged what Hill said in my analysis of the question. Thanks for the input :)
ReplyDeleteInteresting response - and a good comment by Jennifer.
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